The Valentine Years: Rotting Candy, Dirty Cards and Unrequited Love

“The Valentine Years,” my last two years at West Hollow Middle School (seventh and eighth grade), were the only two years of my twenty-three in which I have received Valentine’s Day presents from a member of the opposite sex. (Sorry mom, the Popcorn Factory tins were tasty, but NO, I will not make out with you.) It's interesting that at this time in my adolescent life guys chose to pay attention to me, since it was BY FAR the height of my pre-teen awkwardness (read: fugliness). I straddled the “in-between” phase in a frizzed-out, shoulder-length blunt cut, blue-trimmed mouth metal that marked the near-end of my seven year relationship with my orthodontist, and a wardrobe that included tapered jeans and a random GAP baseball jersey that I inexplicably wore on sixth grade picture day (Did I even like baseball? Or the GAP?). Dazrazzle, will never let me live that down.

(Please peeps, send pictures if you have 'em.)

Miraculously overlooking my stringy frame and snowflake sweaters, a few guys actually went out of their way to “date” me in middle school. The first of these strapping young fellows was Ted Rosenquist. Ted was a year younger then me, but he was the guy all my seventh grade girlfriends adored. Ted, of course, turned out to be gay, immediately squashing my chances of avoiding one of the clichéd dating inevitables. I was young, yes, but I should have known. We DID first meet in Chorus and Drama Club. What a talented Tevia he was.

Ted and I maybe kissed three times. I can’t remember if he was good, I can’t even remember how long we were in our “relationship.” All I remember is that on Valentine’s Day Ted presented me with a gift bag full of candy of the drug store holiday variety – large bricks of milk chocolate molded into heart and cherub shapes, sheathed behind the display plastic of decorative boxes. At least one of the hearts had a face carved into it, finished off with colored, sugar-button eyes. I recall this with clarity because I kept that candy, in Ted’s gift bag, in my bedroom armoire to periodically reflect upon its cheesy implications. I didn’t eat a single piece of chocolate; I simply stored the candy away, a souvenir of my very first “real” relationship.

Fast forward. One day, freshman year of college, my mother calls me.

“Stacey Lauren! How long have you been keeping this disgusting, cruddy chocolate in your cabinet?! There is a major pest problem in here Stacey, it’s fucking gross.”

I had kept Ted’s chocolate in my armoire for SEVEN YEARS. Conveniently I wasn’t in the state of New York when mom figured this out. (I’d like to give a shout out to my mother and to the exterminator who helped rid my room of the infested remnants of Ted’s chocolate love, once and for all.)

The only other man who tried to woo me with gifts on Valentine’s Day was Paul Bennett. Paul may have bought me candy. I think he bought me a rose. I didn’t care much. I was hot for Paul’s brother Dave.

Dave Bennett was another baby-faced youngster (I was going through a phase) who became the object of my not-so-subtle obsession right around the time of my Bat Mitzvah. I flaunted my wiry frame and wrote him psycho love notes, and although he was cordial enough, (his nervous message to the camera on my Bat Mitzvah video: “Umm, hi Stacey. You look very nice, and, ummm, pretty. Bye.”) he didn’t have reciprocal pubescent longing for my skinny brace-face. Granted, my overly aggressive approach most definitely sabotaged any chance I had with the kid (which in reality, still probably equaled zero.) but I wanted to make sure Dave wasn’t mistaking his feelings of love for feelings of violent repulsion.

One night, I was hanging with Dave at my friend Kat’s house. I really must halt to explain Kat Piedmore’s house for a minute. There were absolutely NO RULES at Kat’s. This was the place where kids (myself included) played seven minutes in heaven and spin the bottle for the first time. This is where we would eat raw cookie dough until we were ready to puke, where kids would JUMP OFF THE ROOF onto Kat’s backyard trampoline. It’s amazing her parents were never sued. There was never active supervision of any kind. Kat’s parents were always rumored to be tucked away in their bedroom or doing work in an office I could never seem to locate. Mom’s station wagon was almost always in the driveway, but for some reason she never skirted past us in the kitchen, never checked on Kat in her room, never asked when I had arrived or when I was going home. Kat Piedmont’s house was the No Restriction Zone. Kat’s was the one and only place where the quintessential Stacia/Dave Bennett experience could have taken place.

One night after school Dave, Kat and I were all hanging out at the house when Kat left me to talk with my crush in her room, door closed. Maybe it was the artificial steaminess of Kat’s blacklight and lava lamp igniting the dark room. It probably had something to do with my frustration at my inability to lock Dave under my thumb, and it was definitely related to the overflow of hormonal juices suddenly pumped into my system upon my thirteenth birthday. But no sooner had Kat closed the door, than did I slam Dave up against the wall to shove my tongue down his throat. I was a fan of the hard sell. The move was executed completely against Dave’s will in a minor deviation from the ever popular “no means no” mantra (“no means yes?”). I assumed he would be turned on by my gutsy move, but it became clear pretty quickly – when he called his dad to pick him up – that my moves didn’t stir a twitch in my shy man’s loins.

Thinking back on it now, I probably scared the living crap out of him. Fuck you Seventeen Magazine for your shitty ass advice.

So Kat introduced me to Paul. Paul, Dave’s older brother, was in his first year of high school and was actually slightly better looking than the younger Bennett. He was also strangely free of standards that would have prevented him from picking up a middle schooler who was currently toiling for the attention of his younger sibling. Paul and I hung out at Kat’s a few times after school (for some reason Kat used to hang out with both brothers but dated neither) and we did end up hitting it off reasonably well. Enough for him to gift me on Valentine’s Day.

So again, I don’t really remember what Paul bought me for V-Day, 1996, but I DO remember the cards. That’s cardS, plural. Paul, that crafty little devil, mailed a sweet little “decoy card” to my house the day before Valentine’s Day. I can't recall if I even showed that one to mom. Valentine's night, Paul’s father dropped his son off with a gift and another card, which I opened with Paul in my upstairs bedroom (door open). The front of the “real card” depicted a woman sticking her long red tongue in a man’s ear as he exclaimed, “Ooh! That tickles!” The inside of the card had something to do with pulling my pants down to give me a good licking. (Thanks Daz for being on top of that one.) That wish was not so easily granted seeing as how my father popped his head into my bedroom every ten minutes. Paul also added a handwritten paragraph of his own describing dirty things a fifteen-year-old might want to do to a fourteen-year-old.

As soon as Paul left I ran downstairs to show my mother (who thought the card was hilarious).

So much for the decoy.

Happy V-Day Ted and Paul (and Dave, what the hell).