Lust in translation

I hate Valentine’s Day, I really do. I hate the cheesy cards, the abundance of pink, the over-priced sterile roses and the loved-up couples walking arm and arm – even when I am part of a loved-up couple myself. Bah, humbug!
Okay, I’ll be honest. At least part of my dislike of this Hallmark Holiday is the fact that when I was a spotty 13-year-old, Valentine’s Day was one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing days of my life.
The nuns, a girl with bad body odour and me seemed to be the only people wandering around my school without some token of affection from some equally spotty teenage boy.
My romantic lot in life has decidedly improved since then. But I still can’t help but feel suspicious of the entire occasion.
It’s supposed to be our annual celebration of love. Instead, it’s a triumph of marketing over common sense.
As all women know, Valentine’s Day is often more about romantic one-upmanship than anything else: who got the most cards, the biggest bouquet or the most extravagant gift.
In our consumer-driven culture, it’s not enough that you buy an appropriate gift, the more expensive the better. If your Valentine offering is a last minute purchase of a scruffy-looking teddy bear when that bitch in marketing got diamond earrings and a weekend in Paris, fur may fly. We may know that you love us, but come February14th, we want the rest of the world to see it too, in big, big letters. Or some of us do anyway…
Being single may be a lifestyle choice 364 days of the year, but it relegates you to a kind of romantic Siberia on Valentine’s Day. According to a survey done by Match.com 12% of single people would consider getting into a temporary relationship just to avoid being without a date on Valentine’s Day. And, surprisingly, men were more likely to do this than women.
My own early personal traumas aside, the thing I dislike most about Valentine’s Day is that it diminishes love, turning it into something cutesy, pink, and trimmed with lace.
In many ways, Valentine’s Day is a lot like Westlife.
Both suggest a reductive definition of love, stripped of passion and lust and turned into something manageable, an emotion you can sum up with a soppy card or three-minute ballad.
In January, the Pope released an encyclical in which he stated that sexual love without divine or spiritual love reduced the entire business to ‘mere sex’, the rutting of animals in heat.
Now, the leader of millions of Catholics he may be, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t know what he is taking about. I don’t know about you, but I prefer expert opinions from those who have had some experience in the field about which they choose to lecture.
Anyway, his Holinesss has got it the wrong way around. It is not divine love that transforms erotic love into something more than sex; erotic love is one of the most important components in a romantic relationship that helps make divine or unconditional love between two people possible.
For too long, lust has been regarded as the evil twin of love. This is preposterous. Without lust there is no sexual passion, and without sexual passion there is no romance – and therefore no romantic love. As most of us know, sex without love can be a very good thing – it’s sex without lust that’s a problem.
The way I see it, there are two types of lust. One is that nagging feeling of frustration we all feel if we haven’t had sex in a while.
This is generalised lust and we have good reason to want to sate it. The second is the lust we feel towards a particular person. A specific lust that can only be abated by the person to whom it is dedicated.
The problem of generalised lust is easily solved. After all, it’s fairly easy to get sex if and when you want it.
But for me, this kind of sexual experience is only marginally more satisfying than masturbation. I don’t ask for much from my lovers and am happy to forego spiritual and divine love for someone who makes me really want them, who directs my desire towards them, forsaking all others, at least temporarily.
A while ago somebody asked me how many times I had been in love. I found this question difficult to answer. Depending upon what your definition of love is, I could say once, twice or many more times.
I have taken risks, spent money I didn’t have and flown halfway around the world to be with certain men, but without ever harbouring hopes of gold covered invitations to a spring wedding. Maybe this wasn’t love in the classic romantic sense, but it wasn’t ‘mere sex’ either. It was passion, it was lust and it was very, very good.
It is this directed lust that is the magic ingredient in sexual relationships. This is what turns them into something special. Nothing is sexier than another person’s naked desire for you, and only you. It may last a few hours or a whole lifetime. But without it, there can be no romantic, as opposed to Platonic, love.
My dislike of Valentine’s Day is not because I am unromantic – far from it – but because it bypasses all this messy and wonderful passion.
I have no objection to flowers, perfume, lingerie, jewellery and dinner in fine establishments (bring ‘em on!), but only if I can have a mainline to that essential lust too.
What I want for Valentine’s Day is hot breath on my neck, scratches down my back, my lover’s insistent tongue between my lips, sweaty bodies sticking to the sheets and lovely, lovely orgasms. And you know what? Chances are I won’t get it. Damn! Come February 14th I will be on a long haul flight home to see the parents. But you never know. I am bringing Thomas along with me. So perhaps I’ll finally get to join the Mile High Club. Now that would be a Valentine’s Day worth remembering.