The Last Valentine

The legend goes that during St. Valentine’s imprisonment he began tutoring the blind daughter of his jailer. During these visits, love blossomed like a flower in the skull. He performed the miracle of restoring her sight on the morning of his beheading. (Ain’t love grand.) Before his execution, the future saint left a note for his beloved, signed: “Your Valentine.” Making the first valentine in history written to a girl named Julia. It seems fitting, and almost poetic, that the last valentine I ever wrote was for a girl named Julie.

I was in the 4th grade and it was an unspoken rule, my teacher made spoken, that each one of us would give every other student in the class a valentine—so that no one felt left out. This was great news! It allowed me to give a valentine to the only person I wanted, without the risk of her knowing that detail. There was no chance of unrequited love. It would just be love drowned in elementary school bureaucracy.

After school, my mother bought two boxes of readymade valentines, twelve count each, for a total of twenty-four—the number of kids in my class, minus myself. Once home I ran straight to my room, closed the door, and demanded that there be no distractions. Dinner would have to wait.

What happened next is a mysterious chapter of my history. I know the ending, but the middle is a muddle—much like the history of Valentine’s Day itself. Depending on who you ask there are various candidates for the actual saint and the causes of his imprisonment—none of which may be the tidy truth. Romance didn’t even enter the picture until Chaucer, loose with history, joined the two in a poem. And of course there is the Christian habit of taking over Pagan holidays, like Lupercalia — which involved sacrificing a goat and slapping its bloody hide on women and crops to attract fertility. History is so often the script of winners, please allow this loser his day in court.*

I opened the valentines. They were the typical ones with superheroes or cartoons on them. The kind where where you might find Peter Pan saying “You’re off the hook!” Or a cute monkey proclaiming, “I’m bananas for you!” Always with a redundant exclamation point.

I saved the best for first and began with Julie’s, but I didn’t love the way I wrote her name. My handwriting was terrible and it seemed all wrong. I started over on the next card, careful not to mess that one up too. But there was something off. Each time. Once it was the swoop of her “J” — It had no passion. On the next one, it was the “L” — I had pressed too hard, too desperate.

And if it wasn’t her name, then mine became the problem. I tried again and again, until I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I had gone through the twenty-four valentines, all made out to Julie.

There was no way I could ask my mom to buy two more boxes, we were not rich (as she often reminded me). Now, I had no valentines to give anyone. I couldn’t slide one into Julie's desk and not the others, and trying to change her name into that of my other classmates had disastrous results.

The next day, my attempt to sneak out of the house without the valentines my mom paid good money for, failed. So I trudged through the playground clutching a ticking love-bomb to my chest.

I threw it away when no was looking and went to class.

When everyone slide their valentines into each other’s desks, I got up and faked my way through it.

Afterwards, I pillaged my pile in search of a card from Julie. I studied it for any sign of mutual destruction. All I saw was the miracle her hands and fingers smoothed into my name.

And so it came to be, on that fateful day, Julie got a valentine from everyone except me — the boy who had given her all the valentines he had.

***

* There are various versions of this event postulated by historians, all of whom are the author himself. One theory supposes that Young Chris actually saved Julie’s** valentine for last and by the time he reached her’s, he misspelled her name, and that is why she did not receive a card that day.

A spokesperson for another major theory claims that the “Miss-spellers” version is ridiculous. And that Young Chris spent many nights writing Julie’s name over and over again while listening to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” — so there was no way he would have misspelled her name. More than likely, he chickened out when it came time to give her the valentine.

Another rising school of thought is that Young Chris had the same terrible handwriting that Current Chris has and that is what kept him from giving Julie the valentine in question. Students of this version have vowed to learn from history instead of repeat it, and to always proclaim their love, no matter how messy it comes out.

When asked about the various theories, Current Chris responded: “What’s the difference, all roads lead to alone.”

** One thing all researches agree on is that Current Chris probably made up the name Julie, so that it was close to the legend of St. Valentine.

Current Chris’s response: “It was a long time ago. There was girl. Her name was Julie.”


The Last Valentine is an excerpt from The Butterfly Museum, Chris’s one-man show on love and other alchemies.