I didn’t invite the internet to Valentines Day.  Sorry internet.

I actually like this strange holiday.  Not because its a celebration of romantic love –I celebrate my romantic love the old fashioned way: by fucking– but because it’s just so very sadistic towards lonely people.  In the depths of gloomy February, when you haven’t felt an amorous touch or heard a loving word in too long, every florist, shopkeeper and couple decides to rub their happiness in your face.  You get to feel like an orphan on Christmas morning.

What’s not to like about that?

On the day before Valentines Day, on February 13, I celebrate a much more important event to my romantic life.  It’s the one year anniversary of my first fart in front of Shalome.  Although it was unintentional (I might have been bending over or something) a noisy bit of gas escaped my backside.  I stood there aghast.

Farting has never improved a relationship.  It leads to nosepicking, sweatpants and dutch ovens.  Farts are the funeral bells of romance.

I almost ended the whole thing right there.  But, against all odds and my better judgement, we persisted in our certainly doomed relationship.  We just had to accept that mistakes happen while endeavouring that farting would never become routine.

A year later, I’m proud to say it hasn’t.

A lot of people seem to think love is about being as comfortable as possible with a person.  I disagree.  Love is about fear, crippling self-doubt and showing off.  Did Romeo and Juliet look comfortable to you?  Love is discomfort.

A relationship on the other hand, if it’s to last, needs a certain degree of comfort.  Working on all cylinders all the time will burn you out.  But it also needs respect.  You can tell how respectful you’re being by how uncomfortable you feel.

In a relationship, you should be comfortable enough to know that if you err, you will be forgiven but you should also have enough respect to never view forgiveness as permission.  It’s not.

So after that dark, farting day, I have never made a habit of farting in front of Shalome and she has paid me the same respect.  But, strangely, on our one year fartiversary, as if in some morbid celebration, she let one rip in her sleep.  There must have been some special magic in the air.  Gassy magic. Noisy, gassy magic.

With work, I can forgive her “little” mistake.  But that’s just the sort of guy I am:  A hero.