AcmeShorts

It was the state-mandated day of romance, and Woman wanted her box of fucking chocolate. Not even romance they're pushing, strictly speaking, I thought, fastwalking to Walgreen's, breathing February in through my nose so hard it made my eyes tear, more like a national stroke your woman's ego day. The whole fucking American concept of love, in fact, hijacked by a Cosby Show feminine value system: monogamy, fidelity, domesticity. And if you dared challenge any one of these sacred cows, you were immature, even immoral. I charged without hesitation directly for Walgreen's' electric sliding doors.

What the fuck? The whole thing's set up like some bullshit mystery cult, where every manjack has to pretend he's happy in his Hendrixian "plastic cage," paying fealty to his bitch-goddess at all times with reassurances that she's the most beautiful thing he ever saw. Meanwhile, beauty remained a completely arbitrary social construct, and what the old-timers said turned out to be true, as usual: you can't even see it anymore, once you've lived in close proximity for any extended period. "The once-beautiful face becomes familiar, neutral, grounding out the static charge of your fantasy projection," I said to the cashier as I paid for the biggest heartbox in the store.

I came home out of the cold and poured myself some coffee. I could hear her descending the stairs, no doubt excited to get her blood-candy. All my life I've seen religions in the most removed and contemptuous way, as silly collections of rules with obvious goals for its adherents. How could anyone exist within those rules in such a narrowminded fashion, without any objectivity? This is how, this is what it's like to live inside a religion, one whose theology has actually penetrated your consciousness to the point where it short-circuits your own rationality and personal moral response. No more, I pledged, accepting my girlfriend's sincere and ecstatic embrace.

Yeah, so I bought her the food. What the hell else was I supposed to do? Fuck you.