"It's a Hallmark holiday, about as deep as a sympathy card bought at the supermarket."

"It's a pseudo-holiday created to get consumers to buy shit between Xmas and Easter."

"How meaningful is a supposed token of affection that you are obliged to give?"

This Valentine mentality is a relatively recent successor to the one which dictated that you had to do something original every year. From the pressure to impress with something, anything other than a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a dozen red roses, it was a short step to boycotting the day altogether. Men breathed a collective sigh of relief when Universal Valentine Disdain (UVD) was adopted by women on a large scale, and they fed it with strategic charm ("Oh, honey, you know I love you 365 days a year. No overpriced dinner is going to prove that.")

So, is Valentine's Day as dead and buried as St. Valentine himself? Does it remain, vestigally, exclusively as an occasion when our mother's twist our arms to buy a Hallmark card for our grandparents? Or, for people who don't get out enough to buy heart-shaped doggy biscuits for their annoying terriers? Yes and no. The case against V-Day is irrefutable; if the holiday were tried in court, it would lose. What argument could one make that a gift made under duress is evocative of any true sentiment? It's not analogous to birthdays and Xmas. Yes, the same sense of obligation is there but the gifts on those holidays are not emotionally loaded to the same degree, nor are they specifically for couples. No other relationship is expected to 'progress' in the way a romantic one is. You're not looking for signs of increasing commitment in your brother's birthday present nor divining for dramatic evidence of how much your mother loves you in her Xmas gift. What possible incentive could justify consuming more crap? It helps the economy? How romantic. There really is no logical argument in favor of it and the fat little cupids are nauseating.

So the following may come as a shock to some male readers: Secretly, deep down, your woman wants you to do something for VD. No matter how vociferously she scoffs on the surface. In fact, the more she scoffs, the more likely she is to be secretly harboring a hankering for a cheesy heart-shaped box of chocolates.

Some caveats are in order here. First, this is a blatantly heterosexist column. Lesbians, homosexuals, furries, trannies, and others may not relate to this advice. Second, of course there are exceptions. Some couples have a genuine understanding to mutually ignore the holiday with which they are well content. But they are rarer than you think. Most of the time, when this appears to be the case, you have him relieved that she so readily and sincerely agreed with his earnest "We don't believe in that Valentine schmaltz do we, honey? All my other girlfriends have been too cool for it too…" and her secretly wishing to come home to find the bed covered in rose petals. She doesn't complain—that wouldn't be hip, modern and cool—but she feels a vague sense that she is missing out. No, she tells herself, nothing he could have done would have been indicative of his feelings; it would have been merely gift-by-rote. Better to focus on what he does the other 364 days a year. Why do I need a forced token to know he cares? That's sooo dated.

Mistress Rowena once had a slaveboy boyfriend who gave her chocolate-covered strawberries every V-Day. This embarrassed her at the time. She was liberated; she'd made the first move - at 14. She was alternative (green hair!) and sweets were so. . . conventional [shudder]. None of her circle celebrated VD with their variously significant or insignificant others. In fact, it was a complete mystery why he did it. It wasn't to be unique (i.e., to do it simply because no one else was); it wasn't because she expected it—she'd made it clear she didn't with the obligatory Hallmark-holiday-disavowal speech. And, frankly, even amongst the lowbrows who did "celebrate," it was universally acknowledged that men hated the chore of V-Day, living in terror of Not Getting It Right. Well, he was ahead of the game there: if nothing was expected, he could hardly go wrong. Riiiiiight…

Years later, Mistress Rowena enslaved another male who professed to ignore V-Day for the usual reasons. Every year of their (lengthy) relationship, the day passed unacknowledged in any way, heartshape or form. And eventually it dawned on her: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Erm, I mean she realized that his claimed disparagement was a socially acceptable excuse for laziness. He didn't want to get off his arse for her so he wore the hip cloak of disdain to justify it. Strawberry Boy's offering, it seemed now, was actually far from meaningless. Just the simple effort of picking out a simple gift on his own showed his appreciation. The fact that it was VD didn't take away from that one iota. It should, but it didn't. Even if it was expected, fulfilling the obligation still meant making some effort. Did Mr. Scornful ever do anything spontaneous and unlooked for the other 364 days of the year? You know the answer to that one.

Is it totally pathetic that we need a day to stop and smell the pussy? Of course. Is it our busy lives in modern industrial capitalist society that prevent us from appreciating our partners every day? Or is it human nature to take loved ones for granted? It doesn't really matter what the reason is. The fact is that, without noting it in our Palm Pilots, we'd practically forget to wipe our own arses nowadays. Scheduling a day once a year to lavish some time and attention on our third halves is a poor substitute for doing it more often, and it ain't gonna save the suit who has a standing order with the florist or asks his secretary to pick up a little something for the wife on her lunch hour. But these people have problems that are beyond the capacity of any mere holiday to cure. Stripped of its distasteful veneer of commercialism, V-Day is an excuse to reconnect. If you don't need a day earmarked for that, great. Just remember, our romantic relationships are one of many competing priorities. It's no sin if you don't have time to light candles and give your partner a full body tongue wash 7 nights a week.

So, what's my advice? All you cool, urbane guys out there—yes, you dressed in black over there, especially you. Get your arse in gear this year. Show your appreciation. You don't have to feed the machine—a foot rub, or, better yet, a full-body massage, will go over much better than flowers. And a home-cooked meal, even if the only thing you can cook is a grilled-cheese sandwich, will go over much better than an overpriced restaurant excursion. Cheesy works too; cheesy can work well, in fact. I guarantee you she's never gotten a heart-shaped box of chocolates from anyone other than her dad. And not since she was 12. Pretend it's tongue-in-cheek, if that makes you feel better. VD celebrations can convey the message, "I'm only doing this because I have to." They can also say, "I love you so much that, if you died, I'd masturbate on your grave every day so you'd still get my juices inside you." It all depends on your attitude. Your only objective is to show her that you don't take her for granted. Which you do, the other 364 days a year.