MY QUEER VALENTINE
On the first Valentine’s Day I spent in love, I was in a hotel room 730 miles away from my valentine, trapped on a family trip. Instead of gifts, I sent her an angsty teenage poem I wrote, and she sent me a gif she made of herself saying “I love you.” Instead of a dinner date, we talked on the phone for hours that night, and I held her voice in my ear while I paced barefoot on the scratchy hotel carpet.
Valentine’s Day is a weird holiday. The day might have originated from a Roman fertility festival called Lupercalia, in which women were slapped gently with goat hides, then had their names chosen from an urn to be paired with an eligible bachelor for a year. Sort of like an ancient, pagan version of Love Island. A pope changed the holiday’s name to St. Valentine’s day and set the date to February 14th during the fifth century. In the Middle Ages, the day became associated with love, and the first written valentines were sent in the 15th century. Today, Valentine’s Day is a different kind of festival: its sales reach tens of billions of dollars each year. It’s all about the presents, chocolate, flowers, movie dates, fancy dinners, and cards – fun treats or burdening responsibilities, depending on who you ask.
I personally love Valentine’s Day. I’m a fan of any excuse for wearing pink and red, I’m always down for telling all my friends that I love them, and I’m very into the chocolate that goes on sale on February 15th. But love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is a day that seems to necessitate some kind of reaction. If you’re in a relationship, you go on a date. If you’re single, you’re supposed to be lonely and watch rom-coms. If you’re female-identifying and have female friends, you throw a Galentine’s Day party. There’s a prescribed, accepted way for almost every type of person to celebrate the occasion. But what do you do if your relationship doesn’t fit within the typical heart-shaped cookie cutter of what’s socially acceptable?
That Valentine’s Day, it was hard being so far away from my girlfriend, but distance had been sort of a theme in our relationship. We went to an all-girls high school that frowned upon queer couples, so we never held hands at school. We pocketed quick kisses in empty hallways or in our cars before class to last us the whole day, then sat across the room from each other in history. We texted during class but didn’t look at each other. She wouldn’t dance with me at prom in case our teachers saw. Our friends knew that we were dating, but we had to whisper when talking about our relationship. Hiding our affection reinforced the sense of shame and embarrassment that condemned our relationship. I just wanted us to be a normal couple, to feel like she was mine and I was hers and to have everybody know it. Valentine’s Day that year was no different – I couldn’t touch her.
Navigating a day based on romance while living as a queer person can be especially fraught. So much of Valentine’s culture is based around straight relationships, from the romantic movies to the gendered expectations of who buys the flowers, who initiates the public displays of affection. Even if my girlfriend and I hadn’t been apart, I’m not sure what we would have done; just walking too close together down the street or sharing a chocolate lava cake made both of us nervous on a regular day. We would have stuck out even more as a lesbian couple on a date on Valentine’s Day. Would one of us have bought flowers? Both of us? I remembered my first boyfriend, who had given me a chocolate rose and a Valentine’s card like he knew it was his job – that just seemed so much simpler.
My experience is certainly not true for all queer people; sexuality is as personal and unique as a fingerprint. But, to me, being gay on Valentine’s Day is an experience both uncomfortable and surprisingly beautiful. The holiday isn’t made for us, and we don’t see ourselves in the typical narratives of romance. It isn’t simple. Being queer and in love is complicated, difficult, and often very dangerous, especially for trans/gender non-confirming people and people of color. For folks with these identities, expressing their love outwardly can be an incredible risk and therefore can transform into a brave act of resistance. Valentine’s Day, a holiday all about open declarations of love, becomes a minefield. It’s not always candy hearts and red ribbon.
But at the same time, there’s a freedom in not being the target of Valentine’s consumer culture and expectations. When you don’t have gender roles marketed to you, there are limitless options for how your relationship can function, for who buys the flowers (if anyone does). If queerness means being excluded from the mainstream and the consumable, then hell yeah! We’ll stay home, or go out, we’ll watch Carol and eat chocolate, we’ll protest and advocate, we’ll kiss and fuck and love, or we’ll do nothing at all. We’ll redefine the traditional on our own terms. Unconventionality is romantic and powerful and fun, and there’s no one right way to do Valentine’s Day. All of us, queer or straight or questioning, should get to feel this way.
That night in high school, cradling the phone between my shoulder and cheek in the dimness of the hotel room, was one of the best Valentine’s Days that I’ve ever had. I was sad and angry and disappointed that I was separated from my girlfriend, but when the sun set it was just me and her talking. I doodled her name on a piece of hotel stationary and imagined her cheekbones, wallowing in mushy high school love. We reminisced about when we first started dating. And in that moment, it felt, really felt, like candy hearts and red ribbon.
AUTHOR: Zoe Boggs is a Brown student in the class of 2022. She studies history, and when she's not writing for XO, she's a staff writer for the Brown music department. She loves the XO staff members, baking, eating Southern food, and reading short stories!
ARTWORK: Shelby Kostal