Doing some warm down stretching on the front steps of my apartment building after a beautiful misty night's run, I witnessed the whole sorry spectacle of a guy picking up his Valentine for a night out. He was wearing a pair of Carhartt pants and heavy work boots that have never seen a speck of gypsum dust or any time on a road crew. As he passed me going up the steps to the front door he pulled out a phone and starting texting. He waited expectantly until one of the young women who lives in the building appeared. She was dressed in a red coat, gray wool leggings and gray knit hat. They clasped hands like middle-school lovers and refused eye contact with me as they left, but I got a decent look at the guy. He seemed in his middle to late thirties -- a good ten years older than my neighbor -- and he was suffering from male pattern baldness.
I used to see the young woman with a nice young man all the time. He was cherubic without being overly soft; seemed like a nice young guy. Well, I guess he got kicked to the curb.
I saw the young woman interact with her father one time at the mail boxes. I got the impression that she is spoiled. But she is pretty. I'm sure she will make plenty of men miserable in the years ahead.
The song I'm listening to on the iPod the whole time I'm taking in this Valentine's ritual is appropriately Langhorne Slim's "Colette":
But prior to that I was cooking up the center of a blissfully traffic free Federal Avenue when Alarm Will Sound's cover of "Cliffs Remix" by Aphex Twin appeared on the iPod. I passed a guy carrying a bag of groceries and walking his golden retriever, and I asked him, "Is that your Valentine?"
I'm a free man.
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