OK, so: February is a trick month, in that you think January is over—"January, January cold and gray / what basic food item can I not afford today"—and you go a bit mad on payday and you yell things like "SHORT MONTH" while throwing wads of $50 bills at your Uber driver, and then you realize: Hold on, February is actually low-key quite miserable.
Like, yes, the ground is dewy and the plants are slowly blooming into life, but also it's still the gray abyss of winter, still everything sucks, still sometimes the wind can hit you so hard you start involuntarily crying out of one eye. And then on top of that, all the shops have Valentine's teddy bears holding little squishy hearts piled up by the tills. How can we love when the world is clawing against us? How can we feel hope when our New Year's diets have already gone by the wayside, dumped in the lay-by of January like a truck driver's murder victim?
Anyway, here's all the stuff you're going to have to deal with this February!
IT IS SPRING AND EVERYONE IS HORNY IN A WAY THEY CAN'T EXPRESS
"Look at those firm, stiff daffodils," everyone says. "Heh: lambs, right? You know where lambs come out of? Sheep vaginas." They pause. "After a ram has sex with it. With the vagina." Everyone takes another chip. You are sitting outside in a pub garden, even though it's not quite warm enough to sit outside yet. Everyone is fidgeting and looking from side to side. The sap is rising. Everyone is, ever so subtly, pushing his or her crotch against his or her jeans. Thin sunbeams make everything look bright in that washed out way. Wispy white clouds smudge across a periwinkle sky. "I want to fuck," you croak, your voice dry with an unknowable arousal. "I have to fuck something."
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IT IS A LEAP DAY AND THAT IS INTERMINABLE
Remember last year when we had a "leap second"—a rare atomic clock thing that meant high-functioning terrestrial clocks were more in tune with distant astronomical time—and it was essentially a complete non-issue for normal God-fearing folks like you and me, because it happened at midnight, and it lasted for a second.
Still, did that stop Terry from accounting from stopping you in the kitchen that day and asking you, "What are you going to do with your extra second, then, eh?" and nudging you while you were trying to pour the milk? So you got milk on you? All for the driest banter this side of the Sahara? Milk all on your suede work shoes? Was it worth it? Terry? Was it? Terry? With your special padded chair that is supposed to be for your RSI, Terry? We know you don't have RSI, Terry. You just wanted a slightly larger, more ominous-looking medically-prescribed chair. Is this how empty a husk your life is, Terrence? That the only remaining power move you have to play is a desk chair and a special wadded pad to go along the edge of your keyboard to slightly lift your wrists. Is it. Terry.
Well, it's 2016 and there's an entire day of it. "What are you going to do with your extra day?" people ask. Well: It is a Monday, so probably just go to work as usual. Meal Deal lunch. Try to get the quick bus home. Something microwavable for dinner. Watch some prestige cable programming you're not sure if you "get." Laundry. Wash up. Wank myself to sleep. Try not to sob at the sheer dreadful forward march of life, life stomping and moving ever forward, each day one creak on the wheel closer to the abyss. Life, the huge and terrible machine. A monstrous, diesel-breathing beetle with metal pincers the size of skyscrapers, picking its way through the idyllic countryside, leaving a grievous black furrow where its ghastly abdomen kissed the mud. Something like that.
IT IS SOMEONE'S BIRTHDAY AND THAT IS INTERMINABLE
Ah, yes, the Leap Day birthdayers are here, and this is their year. "Ooh, look at me, I'm seven today!" they say. They have a "SEVEN TODAY!" badge and they are making a big fuss about their Thomas the Tank Engine cake in the office. Blowing out candles and everything. Little pointed birthday hats and genuine thumbs up. On the scale of "people who are inordinately proud about having the most minor and inconsequential of oddities about them," Leap Day birthday people are right up there with the left handers and people who can juggle. Oh, look, he's explaining how normally he celebrates on March 1 while playing with a yoyo. You're 28, mate. Grow up.
A MOMENT WHEN YOU GENUINELY DOUBT YOUR SPELLING ABILITY AND, IN TURN, SAY THE WORD "FEBRUARY" OUT LOUD
What is that "r" doing in there?
VALENTINE'S DAY LOOMS LIKE A HEART-SHAPED SPECTer OF DEATH
There are two kinds of people: those who are extremely cynical about Valentine's Day, and those who think Hallmark cards are actually good. Sadly, all good relationships are built on that sort of chalk-and-cheese natural conflict, and so it all comes to a head on Valentine's Day, where romance likers and non-romance likers are forced to have a $150 meal with each other in a low-lit restaurant, and you have to do flowers, and cards, and little chocolates wrapped in red foil, and you have to pretend that sappiness is OK.
I suppose in small, once-yearly doses romance is actually fine, and that treating the person who loves you and puts up with you for the other 364 days of a year is about the least you can do, and that there is nothing undermining about buying and carrying around a heart-shaped cushion that says "I WUB WOO." There is nothing worse, after all, than stoic, romance-less dickheads who say things like, "It's just a corporate holiday invented to sell them little boxes of chocolate." But does that make it any more bearable to walk into a supermarket that's decked out with shiny heart-shaped bunting? To watch people get massive, unwieldy bouquets of flowers delivered to them at work? No, it does not. It absolutely does not.
MAKING DESPERATE LAST MINUTE VALENTINE'S PLANS
Just a quick warning: If you haven't made Valentine's Day plans and you are planning something any fancier than Chipotle, be warned that that isn't going to happen for you, and that you have fucked it. Everything is booked and it has been booked forever. I don't know how it works in other places, but if you're in a city and you haven't figured Valentine's out yet, then I guess I will see you in the line at Chipotle, me in a suit, furious girlfriend, clenching a bottle of garlic peri-peri while madness erupts around us, romantic tables interrupted occasionally by massive groups of post-workout bros, guacamole drought on the horizon. That will be you and that will be me. And, honestly, we deserve it.
PEOPLE GETTING ENGAGED AND GOING ON ABOUT IT ON FACEBOOK
I think you can get a pretty decent measure of whether people are good people or not based on the following metric: If they were to get proposed to, would they say the words "popped the question"? Like: "He finally popped the question," or: "I can't believe he popped the question!" or: "Feeling like a princess! Question = popped! xxxxx"?
If yes, this is not a good person. This is not a person you need in your life. This person is going to create a new "life event" on Facebook on February 14 at 9 PM sharp, and literally the next day you are going to get invited to a "Save the Date!" 100+ notification Facebook group. It is best to just quietly unfriend them now.
ALTERNATELY, THE FRENZIED HORNINESS OF KILL-OR-BE-KILLED FEBRUARY 13 TINDER
... or any dating and/or fucking service. OKCupid users, frothing at the mouth, furiously scrolling back through four years' worth of un-responded messages. Plenty of Fish users screaming "THERE ARE NO MORE REMAINING FISH" out of an open window in the direction of a road. Everyone on Happn doing laps of Leicester Square in the hope that, by the law of averages, somebody half-fuckable will pass them by. Tinder users swiping so hard they break their phone screens. That post-apocalyptic, pre-Valentine's blood-in-the-water frenzy. "Drink?" you ask a hundred people in a row. "Drink? Drink? Drink?" You arrange to meet 25 people the next day. They are all white-eyed and tight-knuckled.
Isn't it all meaningless, though? Isn't it all so trite? The hollow loneliness that can only be inspired by other people's joy. The Valentine's Panic. Should we really let the settled, coupled-up numb happiness of others impact upon our own? Should we really care? Yes. The only true chance of happiness we have in this world is clinging to the thin tree branch of someone else's love while our parachute fails and we plummet towards the abyss. The only lasting impression we ever make is on other people. Valentine's Day is a grim reminder of that. Everything is meaningless and love is the only chance at redemption we get. If you don't have any on February 14, hustle until you do. The doomsday clock is ticking and we haven't got long on this Earth. Cling to someone desperately before it's too late. Buy them flowers and tell them they mean something. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.
Anyway: Happy February!
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