What's Love Got To Do With It?!

I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Let me qualify that last statement. I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day due to years of working in an industry that serviced that very holiday. (And is it a holiday? I mean, no one gets off work. Not everyone loves the idea behind it. But I’m losing the plot and this is just the second paragraph.)

For years I worked in a handful of florist shops around Charleston. There was a list of deliveries that would rival Santa’s flowing to the floor. From red roses to teddy bears. From greeting cards to potted plants. (Hey! The flowers are nice, but plants hang around.) All over town, for hours upon hours and days upon days, I was tooling around in a delivery van making everyone else’s dreams of love come true. 

Later that night, it was a cozy evening under the covers. Many times! Alone. It’s when I’m not alone at Valentine’s that sitting there under the covers with my someone, things get really awkward. The last thing I want to do is go out for dinner or see another flower. Cause who doesn’t love romance? 

While I love, love, love romance, I’m not big on Valentine’s Day specifically. Leave the other 364 for huge romantic gestures. 

We could go into a deep dive, comedic history. We could chat about the handful of Catholic saints carrying the moniker of Valentine or Valentinus. We could discuss how Valentine’s Day is another holiday hijacked from Pagan traditions. We could rap about how it’s just another commercial occasion to take a dollar out of your pocket and place it in big businesses’ pockets. But let’s save those conversations for another time. 

Let’s talk bad first dates. (Do you think someone with synesthesia sees red when they think of schadenfreude?)

I, at one point, was in the dating pool. And going out on a lot of first dates, I had a standard “let’s get to know each other” plan. It’s simple. Pick up fast food from the drive-thru, drive to the beach and enjoy the sound of the ocean with a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. It worked… for a while. 

I wasn’t coy about this plan. It would give me and the lady a chance to get to know each other without a large investment of time or money. We would either like each other and continue the dance of future plans or we would go our own ways and keep in touch as needed.

But there was one… 

A friend of a friend. She and I had a lot of similar interests. Comedy, musical theater, etc. Then the big day finally rolled around. We were going on a date. The first date. The first date that had been my standard and a plan of which she was aware. From the moment she got in the car to the moment I took her back to her car, the conversation was like pulling teeth. Painful and, in some cases, unnecessary. 

One highlight of the evening: this was during the holiday season so I took her to the Festival of Lights. It was outside of the norm on a first date and I should have known better. We were sitting on a swinging bench watching a series of lights that created the illusion of a frog jumping into the air from a lily pad into the water. Nothing about this screamed romance, but I leaned in for a kiss all the same. 

She scooted away to the other side of the bench. 

I don’t know what she expected. More importantly,  I don’t know what I expected. She quietly got up and told me that I was… “predictable.” 

And so it goes…

Theater is fun. But everyone dates everyone. Eventually, I took my shot with a girl whom I thought was way out of my league. I asked her for an evening out. She surprisingly said, “yes.”

Let’s shelve the beach picnic for this outing.

We ended up at a now razed bar. I like to drink and so did she. Let’s toss back a few and see where the evening takes us. Great idea, right? 

She ordered vodka and Red Bull after Vodka and Red Bull. (In retrospect, as we weren’t going to an all-night rave, I was surprised, to say the least.) She could keep up drink for drink, shot for shot. She was a half-foot shorter than me too. We settled the tab and headed back home to continue talking. 

At the time, I was driving a Buick that was practically a land yacht. It floated on the pavement. Pulling into my driveway, a slight bump greeted us. As we took the bump, this beautiful young lady looked at me and smiled. Right before she spewed for what seemed like a lifetime on my face and clothes and into her gorgeous long brown hair. To this day, I don’t know how everything liquid in her body ended up on just the two of us and almost none of it ended up in my car.

I carried her up two flights of stairs and into my shower. Changing her without destroying her modesty, I washed her up (when did she eat spinach?), put her into some of my sleep clothes while I washed hers downstairs and laid her in bed for a good night's blackout. 

I took her home the following morning. Short of the incident in the driveway, I did have a pretty great time. I asked if I could see her again. She meekly replied, “no.” And that was that. 

Love doesn't just happen within the confines of February. It happens at Mardi Gras… which I now realize as I’m typing is actually in February. Between the beads, floats and multitudes of debaucherous twenty-somethings, I found a girl. Like, a good one. A soon-to-be lawyer. I won’t go into all the details of the wonderful time we had, but it was that. Wonderful. 

“But Brandon,” you say. “This is about bad dates,” you say. 

I’m getting to it. Sheesh.

I met her at the Orpheuscapade, Harry Connick, Jrs’ swanky, black-tie affair after one of the biggest parades of the entire event down in New Orleans. After a good bit of dancing and just enough alcohol, I was completely taken by this girl. I was feeling myself and I used some of my best material to impress her. 

“What did you say, Brandon?” you ask?

I don’t know. Alcohol. Remember? 

When the lights came up in the house in the wee hours of the morning, our lips were locked in a tight embrace. I followed her home and, short of a brief period when we were separated on Fat Tuesday, we were together for 72 hours. Then, my friend Kristen and I got in the car and drove 12 more hours home. 

“Still doesn’t sound like the world’s worst date, Brandon,” you say. 

You got me. It wasn’t. But… It was the world’s worst timing. You see, there were murmurs in the news about a terrible cold/flu/virus on the rise called COVID-19. You might know this wonderful friend as the Coronavirus. My Corona, if you’re feeling nasty. 

A week after I met this girl and convinced her to date me-- a few hundred miles between us-- the world shut down. We texted daily. Called every couple of days. Zoomed multiple times a week. But pure budding love couldn’t keep up with the dark shadow of a changing world. After a few short months, we were no longer a “we.” We were once again a “she” and an “I.” 

See? I told you it was gonna get bad. 

How to end things here? I sometimes have a dream that I’m the monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark playing with Marion Ravenwood. All of a sudden, the attention is on me - even Indiana Jones himself. I stumble and fall to the table, my body limp. I’m dead, they realize, as I consumed a poisoned Medjool meant for our hero. Sallah mournfully mutters, “Bad date.”

For those of you who have someone, Happy Valentine’s Day. May the occasion bring you and yours closer together. For those of you without, Happy Singles’ Awareness Day! It’s just 24 hours later. And for those in-between… Keep hope alive!

~ Brandon L. Joyner