Why singles fear Valentine’s Day

One Valentine’s Day (my girlfriend Natalie) went out and bought herself a fur coat during lunch just so she could come back to the office and say: “Look what I got.”

It’s not true that Christmas is the toughest holiday for singles to get through. Valentine’s Day is worse. At least on Christmas Day you can go home to your family and feel loved. But if you go home for Valentine’s, all you’re likely to feel is silly.

The anxiety brought on by this holiday already has begun. If you’re like me, you’ll be opening your mailbox every day this week with shaky hands, hoping to find a card with your name on it.

Shrinks may not know this, but the fear of not receiving any valentines is practically primordial. It’s a big complex, right up there with the Oedipal and the Military-Industrial. I don’t remember much about grammar school, but I remember how much I dreaded the appearance every February 14th of a large box, covered in red construction paper, with a slot on top. We were to deposit into it valentines for those classmates that we liked and secretly wanted to get valentines from. The terrible thing was that you never knew whether the cute blond boy across the aisle was going to reciprocate.

I used to be afraid that I wouldn’t get a single card, and everybody would notice, or, if they didn’t, the obnoxious fat kid who inevitably was chosen to deliver the cards would tell them.

In fact, that never happened. If Donny, Henry and Arthur didn’t come through, Helen, Diane and Susie always did. Women can still be counted on to remember. A few years back, when my friend Patti and I were between boyfriends, we gave each other valentines so we would be sure to have something to put on the mantel.

It’s early enough to send valentine greetings to all your friends in the hope that a few of them will get the hint. Valentine’s Day is also a perfect excuse to do some heavy-duty flirting via the mail. Of course, that could be embarrassing if the recipient isn’t interested, but at least you won’t have to witness his or her disinterest.

I found the perfect card for someone you are secretly lusting after. “Thinking about you on Valentine’s Day brings to mind a question once posed by a great French philosopher,” it says on the cover. Inside it asks the question foremost on your mind: “Foolez-vous around?”

If that sounds a bit bold, there are more ambiguous valentines, including ones quoting Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. You can’t be responsible for what they say.

That should get you through the card crisis, but you still have to survive the actual day. With Valentine’s Day falling on a Saturday, you’ll at least be spared watching bouquets and boxes of candy being delivered to everyone else in your office.

My girlfriend Natalie got so tired of that, one Valentine’s Day she went out and bought herself a fur coat during lunch just so she could come back to the office and say: “Look what I got.”

However, there’s still the not-very-cheery prospect of being dateless not only on a Saturday night, but on Valentine’s Day to boot.

Faced with a situation like that, I always think of what Sally Bowles, the madcap heroine of “Cabaret,” would do. She’s the one who sings, “What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play.”

Sally would no doubt invite everybody that she knows and quite a few people that she doesn’t to a spur-of-the-moment Valentine’s Day bash. She would wear all red and serve steak tartare, pimentos, strawberries, red peppers, red cabbage and red caviar, of course.

Or she would take them all to the Valentine’s Day performance of “Beach Blanket Babylon” — no matter that it’s been sold out for weeks; she’d find a way to get in. Or else the Bowles party would go traipsing off to the Cow Palace to watch the “Walt Disney on Ice” show or to a bowling alley where Sally would have arranged for Champagne and hot dogs on a silver tray.

If all that sounds like fun, there’s no reason you can’t take a cue from Sally and get out of your room this weekend.

And may I be the first — but not the last — to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day.

This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle Feb. 9, 1987.