The Necessity of Doing it Doggy Style on Valentine's Day

Here we go again. Valentine’ Day is leering around the corner and bank accounts are taking strenuous hits with little or no sexual antics to be shared because most couples will be too bloated from their celebratory steak dinners or too depressed from spending so much money for such dainty quantities at the currently hot, overrated, upscale restaurant that was probably an abortion clinic only three months ago and most of the inventory is still probably being used for some culinary purpose.

While the rationale romantics do the wise thing and stay home, some choose to go to a movie. The women will be dragging their men to see The Vow, another glamorized romantic movie about things that will never happen to you, but to be fair; in accordance with history, the proper movie to be viewed this church-abandoned holiday is The Grey. Yes, the one about wolves, cunningly stalking survivors of a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness.

Valentine’s Day originally paid homage to martyred saints, both named Valentine; one from Rome, one from Terni between 200 AD and 270 AD, and sharing no connections with romance as it does today. The only connection is that both events occur on February 14^th. Even when Catholicism planted its roots in Rome in 318 AD, still there was no connection between love and Saint Valentine’s Day.

The more accurate beginnings behind the meaning of Valentine’s Day begins in the pre-Roman era as Lupercalia – the “Wolf festival,” honoring the release of health and fertility; still, no love, but seriously, when has love ever had anything to do with buying expensive gifts and having fancy dinners? We’re really trying to impress someone enough to get their pants off. Through drunken logic and a mammal’s basic biological need for reproducing do people think they are in love; so, Lupercalia is clearly more in tune with today’s intentions for celebrating Valentine’s Day.

The reason to watch The Grey ties itself to the celebratory actions of Lupercalia. The festival lasted from February 13^th through the 15^th. It honored Lupa, the she-wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus – the founders of Rome. The Luperci (brothers of the wolf) carried out the rites of the festival. They would sacrifice two male goats and a dog, and with sacrificial blood would anoint two younger Luperci on their foreheads. They would then slice the skin from the animals and adorn them. With whips made of bloody animal thongs and intestine, the Luperci would run around the walls of the Palatine city where girls and young women aligned themselves to receive playful thrashing from these bloody flesh-belts intended to prevent sterility, guarantee their fertility, and ease the pain of their childbirth.  

Love is a manmade concept. As mammals, the need and the tools for baring offspring are built inside of us, and as a romantic I truly believe that expressing one’s love goes beyond a single day, because believing to know that you are in love and that this love worth maintaining takes more hard work than anyone is willing to admit. There will be more hard times than great ones, more trials than revelries, but it is possible to find true love and to ensure it is everlasting. Yet, if you choose to honor that love on Valentine’s Day, to do It properly, you have two choices – 1) Burn yourself alive in front of a church – 2) Slice open a wolf and use their intestine to whip blood on to the woman you care about.

Personally, I’d stick with a homemade meal, a movie, and an extra nasty version of Christmas sex.