Out From Under

It’s Valentine’s Day, and a young woman’s heart turns lightly to thoughts of … chocolate! Well, mine do, at any rate.

Some out there make a great show of eschewing Valentine’s Day. Sophisticated and oh, so worldly-wise, they rise above the dictates of crass commercialism. Their love is real and pure and true. Or maybe it’s hot and sweaty and rough — but it’s theirs and theirs alone. THEY will not be romantic dupes of corporate culture. THEY will not be manipulated into cheesy Hallmark sentimentality.

To which I say, “Piffle.”

Most of us do not spend each and every day celebrating our love and ensuring our loved ones know how much we appreciate their presence in our lives. Arguably we should, but the reality is, we tend to muddle along and lose sight of these things. So a set date on the calendar where we stop and smell the relationship roses is not such a bad idea. As to the commercialism?

Consider this: Nothing is more blatantly commercialized than sex. Nothing. Can we go an hour in our culture without seeing some super-sexually charged ad, some demand that we buy this, do that, wear this, eat that, all thrust at us on the platter of sex and sexyness? Yet, somehow, you don’t see people swearing off sex in fits of cultural high-mindedness, in a desire to rid their lives of the taint of commercialism.

‘Course not. You just do it your own way.

Same for Valentine’s Day. My way is chocolate. (You wondered when I was going to get back to that, didn’t you?)

My way is chocolate, even though I don’t eat it a lot. My personal edible vice is potato chips. But, much as I love their acidic bite on my tongue, as satisfying as the rattling crunch of their shattering crispiness is between my teeth, I know that Miss Vickie’s Salt and Vinegar potato chips are NOT sexy.

Chocolate is. Sweet or bitter, its rich and creamy silken swirl in your mouth is sexy. The words of chocolate are the words of sex and sensuality. And it’s equal-opportunity sensuality, too. Whether you have someone at your side and/or in your bed this Valentine’s Day or not, you can have chocolate.

You can go the cheesy commercial route with a heart-shaped box o’ chocolates, or the bouquet of chocolate roses. You can paint it on your lover’s body. You can clone-a-willy. (In chocolate!! Yes, them again. I saved this one for Valentine’s Day.) You can buy a few truffles in exotic flavours and savour them slowly.

(picture: Gigi Cakes)

Perhaps the most erotic thing I stumbled across was the chocolate bath. It’s in Japan, but isn’t it nice to know it exists? If it feels good to luxuriate in the sensuality of chocolate on your tongue, what would it be like to immerse your whole body in it?

Something like this, maybe?

(picture: via Gizmodo)

Isn’t that just yummy? The curves of her hip, that lovely line of the spine, the trails of pale chocolate goodness running down her skin, all surrounded by an undulating lake of glistening chocolate. Yes. A chocolate bath. The stuff of fantasy.

Sadly, the reality is more like this:

(picture: Spluch)

I think I’ll stick to the fantasy.

So. Valentine’s Day today. Never mind the Hallmark stuff. Ignore the pink haze on the commercial horizon. Just take a moment today to savour someone positive in your life: your lover, your parents, your friends, yourself.

You don’t even have to do it with chocolate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 6:50 am and is filed under Ilona's Take. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.