Valentine's Day in Manhattan - A Rant

    Manhattan on Valentine’s Day is dreadful.  The sheer magnitude of the city becomes this overwhelming weight, an island for the demonically “in love.”  Each block is lined with starry-eyed, moonstruck dunces.  The city transforms into a blur of roses and cheap Champagne.  Messengers mumble and grumble as they carry arrangement after arrangement from one business to the next, each bouquet uglier than the last.  Nobody knows what they’re doing and they smile blindly through it.  The people wait expectantly, either hoping for a delivery or hoping the woman with the Lilies at the cubicle over falls down an elevator shaft.  The Empire State Building flashes this revolting red and can be seen from every dank alley in the city.  There is no escape from those flashing, cartoon hearts.  But it’s not just the Empire State Building in Manhattan, everything is bright red.  Everything stings the eyes.  And the weather is always cold.  The taxis kick up muddy snow as they careen out of control and there are puddles of dog urine everywhere.  As the hours drag, the buildings shade orange and the Hudson glows its horrible winter glow.  The faces yell, each one over the last, each voice becoming less and less sensical.  Rather than argue about cab routes and sidewalk zonings, people shout about the cost of Carnations and stingy chocolate sales; nine million people clamoring for ten percent off their chocolate covered cherries.  Restaurants clog with the overprivileged and depraved, the dining rooms packed well beyond capacity.  You can hear every conversation and every conversation is either boring or tragic.  There is no affection, only that same anxious energy, waiting for the day to be over.  Everybody has this glint of madness in their eye, as if the woman at the painfully close table could grab her fork and pluck out her companion’s eye.  On Valentine’s Day in Manhattan, nobody looks “in love,” everybody just looks stressed.

    Small towns aren’t any better, though.