Valentine’s Day countdown, kittens! You know I love this day even if you think it’s just an excuse for the charlatans that run the diamond industry to peddle its lies. Whatevs, me likey shiny things, even the fake shit. I just went through my giant fishing tackle box filled with bling memories, all tarnished and busted up. Why does conventional society insist that earrings have to come in pairs?  Hardly any of mine match and if they do, one of them is missing a rhinestone or an essential dangly bit, that makes me so fucking sad. I found a pristine pair of gold Playboy bunny earrings, I bought them them for myself, ironically style-wise even though I am actually a cheap whore (no, I’m not). But! I can’t shove them in my ears because MY HOLES HAVE CLOSED, is this some sort of natural metaphor that has the gods of fertility laughing at me? I shall show them, later on today I will slam down a bunch of vodka and thrust them into my ears whatever it takes. There will be blood. By the way, you know that the original Valentine’s Day was to honour ancient Christian martyrs but that whole dance got tiresome so that in the High Middle Ages, Chaucer and his poet hos decided to make it all about boning, although they called something else back then, like “bownyng.” These were simpler times, when the one you wanted to betroth your boneage into was the one that had your heart in a romantic way. Now all our modern feelings are repressed by constant communication punctuated by those diabolical emoji emoticons and everyone is so fappingly confused. And afraid. And there’s no boning, not even for the wicked. SIGH.

I like chocolate, too, even if I have to buy my own Toblerone bar. The giant one, the size of a quonset hut. Fuck and ouch.

This Valentine’s Day, my fantasy would be to take some olde tymey ecstasy and go see “Fifty Shades of Grey” with an audience full of bitches also on chemical drugs.  I think it would be epic, let’s make it happen. This has got to be one of those times when you can honestly say the movie is better than the book, but judging by the trailers, that’s not saying much. I’m not sure even that awesome Beyonce song can save this mess. But drugs can!

I’m trying to read the book right now. I am actually charmed by how badly written it is. It reminds me of the sardonic stories based on Harlequins I used to write as a hobby when I was a teenager. I used to give them to my English teacher, who looooved them, but I always wondered if she got the joke or she got swept away by my jacked-up romance bullshit. Anyway, I think even in grade 9, I was a better writer than E.L. James and that’s not saying much. If you made a pie chart out of the content of this book, 75% would be descriptions of breathing. I get so bored, I can only flip through it, trying to find the juicy bits. I can’t fucking find them, SO MUCH BREATHING. And eating, which I am pro.

I don’t think I respond to contrived erotica, it’s kind of like watching professional porn, it’s just too slick to feel real. Even trying to make Barbie and Ken hump (when you were a kid because no, you did not do this as a grown-ass mom when you were cleaning up your daughter’s room while she was in kindergarten) is more titillating cuz Ken doesn’t actually have a weenie much less a boner and Barbie is so rigid, she can’t even starfish. The thrill is in frustration. GRIND DAT PLASTIC! Remember?

Anyway, I personally have never had a fantasy where “my breath hitched” when a man said “Let me make love to you, Anastasia,” while stroking his beautiful cock in one hand and holding a cat o-nine tails in the other. Every word that last sentence closed every hole in my body, even the ones I didn’t now I had. And my eyes bled.

Okay, there’s no way I’m going to read this book but I will write the fan fiction! Isn’t that how it started, as X-rated Twihard prose? Mine goes in another direction, it’s  middle-aged milquetoast erotica, set in where else? The Home Depot, hold on to your moobs, middle pudge,and mudflaps, here goes:

Beverly Shipman walks into the Home Depot, the giant doors automatically opening for her. She is disheveled, her hair, still smooth from her Tuesday blowout is in need of a root touch-up and is in a high ponytail. Underneath her black parka, the one with what looks like a pair of metal scissors on the left upper arm, she is still wearing her flannel pyjamas pants, boldly coloured and emblazoned with cartoon monkey faces. And stuffed into a pair of Uggs. If this wasn’t a sight you see every day, and you came here from a time machine, just by the outfit, you would think this woman was  50 shades of cray. But she barely registers and she slips through the doors like a ghost.

Furnace filters? She wonders where and looks around the big box warehouse. The smell of freshly cut pressurized lumber fills her nostrils and goes straight to her temporal lobe which triggers a memory response that sends a rush of blood straight down to her blowfish. WTF. She tries to ignore this sensation as she looks up at the signage and makes her way down the giant aisle.

Even though the store is cavernous and confusing, the colour orange whets her appetite. There’s a Harvey’s inside this one, beyond the self-serve cash registers. Maybe when she finds her filters, she will pick up an order of fries. Too bad there’s not a Swiss Chalet, she could really go for a quarter chicken with extra gravy, yes, bitches, EXTRA gravy, it turns out it’s all just liquid and cornstarch, not fat, she can drink it if  she wants, fuck the sodium content and fuck her nutritionist. She salivates. Breathes, more lumber smell, blowfish gets bigger, tingles now. Focus! Snap out of it! Find the filters!

Finally someone in an orange apron is standing in front her. On his bib, written in a black Sharpie is “Al” which could be short for Albert? Or is he being tongue-in-cheek and he is A-1? He smiles in a kind peepaw way, he has sparkling blue eyes surrounded by crowfeet and liver spots. His generic darkish hair is white at the temples and pulled back in a tiny wispy ponytail.  He must be one of those Freedom 55-type retired baby hippie boomer dudes with nothing to do but hobbies and Home Depot. (ed note: if that’s a type then sign me up) His shoulders are sloped, and some giant ass white hairs are sneaking out like tentacles out over the top of his collared polo shirt, but he has muscly forearms, and this does not go unnoticed. Beverly smiles. Probably for the first time since her husband left her last month for his mistress of 11 years. Who says it doesn’t happen? It happens! They leave and you are left alone!

“Can I help you find something, Miss?” He asks. MISS! Not Ma’am! Like the young hipster clerk at the liquor store who barely even looks at her, calls her Ma’am when she buys her bottle Belvedere and has the audacity to ask her if she’d like a bag. Yes, of course a bag! Jesus Christ, I want a bag! What am I, a hobo? I don’t deserve a bag? Is that what you think of me? Oh, wait, never mind, I can fit it in my Kate Spade tote. Okay.

 Al smiles at her again. A warmth rushes goes through her core and her blowfish blows a sweet, tiny bubble of hope.

“Yes, please, where would your furnace filters be?” She asks, flushing blood all throughout her veins, she feels alive.

“Oh, they’re over in Aisle 8. let me walk with you,” he points in the direction and they move forward. His hand grazes her left arm, the one with the metal moose knuckle on it, and even through the layers of fabric and goose down, she feels an electric charge. Her legs feel light suddenly, although her Uggs are covered in slush and weigh as much as a bag of hammers. And look like two bags of gross medical waste.

Suddenly she has a hot flash. It’s not because it’s hot in the Home Depot in the deep freeze of February. It is precisely two fold, the vodka hangover and hormones. This is the basic schedule of what happens to old bitches all the live long day: Hangover, hot flash, drink, lather, rinse, repeat. She unzips her parka, but of course that ridiculous decorative ball of fox fur gets caught in the spokes and she lets it go halfway. She forgot that she was wearing only her pyjamas bottoms as most of the time she sleeps naked because of the motherfucking hot flashes so there’s actually nothing else on underneath. Hungover, menopausal bitches are that absent minded. So her zipper is stuck and her boobs are basically flying out of her parka in the middle of the Home Depot on a Tuesday morning. She holds her coat shut but in doing so, her Kate Spade tote swings and hits Al, or A-1, upside the head, and he turns around. Like a magpie, older men have the sharp shooting instincts down pat, his eyes go straight to her tittage before she has a chance to cover them up.

There are two of them, one slightly bigger than the other and therefore droopier, the vein configuration resembles a muddled map toward two erect cherry cola coloured nipples, approximately 2.75 centimetres in diameter…holy shit, one of them has a piercing, so he thinks, but it’s not actually, it’s part of the inside zipper tab grazing the nipple as she clutches her coat shut. Wow, he thinks, and that’s basically all he thinks for a moment that seems to stretch out longer than the beginning of time. Al, and that is his name, short for Alonso, hasn’t seen real life flesh boobs since Christ was a cowboy. His wife has long since abandoned him, not physically, but spiritually and sexually, and yes, they still share a bungalow where they raised their two children, who are now grown. but he sleeps in his man cave, in the basement. The humming of the furnace soothes him to sleep after his nightly fap, to reruns of “Hot in Cleveland.” Valerie Bertinelli. Nothing wrong with that.

When he finally finds his words, he says, “I know all about furnaces, can I help you?”

“Yes, I have a mid-efficency furnace and it’s so cold in my house these days, ” she bites her lower lip coquettishly, “I was googling on the internet and maybe I need to change my furnace filter? The pilot light is still on, so I know the furnace is okay…” Her voice trails off, a look of barely anything goes over her face, or at least that is his perception, he’s still staring at her tits with that part of his eyes that aren’t his actual pupils which are still looking at her in the eyes, but is the tip of his dick, it’s one of the mysteries of science, yo. Dicks have eyes. I.t says so in a Chaucer poem, trust.

“Oh, well if you have a mid-efficency furnace, you should actually be using the cheaper furnace filters, let’s the air go through easier,’ he pulls out a pack of filters, 3 for $5.99, seemingly made of popsicle stick wood and blue plastic silly string.

“What?” She is incredulous, “I have been buying the $35 furnace filters for over twenty years! Are you sure? Also I have a pet dog. With fur, not hypo-allegenic breeds with “poo” at the end of it name. Do those filters work for my dander situation?”

“Yes,” he says with manly manliness and actual real-life know-how, not the fake kind that you can spot a mile away from someone who is full of fucking shit that he mis-read in a manual,”The looseness in the cheap shitty plastic not only lets the air go through, the dander and fur that you speak of will get caught in the nettle, the only caveat is that you have to change the filters every 3 months instead of once a year. Still cheaper and your heating bills will go down expediently.”

“Oh!I wish I had known this sooner!” She exclaims. Her breath hitches. Her parka swings open, her tits fall out, one by one. Kind of, one gets caught in the zipper again, the floppier one, but that’s okay. He leans over and hands her the filters, 3 for $5.99.

“Is there anything else, I can help you with?” He asks, his apron is now a tent, kind of pointed south, but still.

Her blowfish explodes.

Fin.

Okay, Happy Valentine’s Day all, spread the love cuz that’s all we have! ❤