The Valentine’s Day Tuk-Tuk Massacre

I don’t remember the last time my wife and I did anything for Valentine's Day. I think that may be because the last time we did anything on Valentine’s Day was never. I’ve always thought it was a stupid holiday. Is it even a holiday? It’s not.

However, my wife made it into a holiday for our kids when they were little. She invented the Valentine’s Monster, who apparently threw dice and caroused with the Easter Bunny and delivered treats to our kids on February 14th. There’s much more to the backstory and I can put you in touch with Jennifer if you’re interested. If there’s anything I approve of, it’s lying to our kids when they were young to bring them any sort of wonder and joy. If there’s anything else I approve of it’s giving our kids any sort of ridiculous tradition that they might pass on to their own children if they ever have any. If our daughters are in their forties and one says to the other, “Remember the Valentine’s Monster?” then my wife wins the coveted parenting achievement award. Hands down. Full stop.

If you knew my wife and I, you would know that we are complete opposites. My wife has little to no interest in what I’m into and I have little to no interest in what she’s into. Of course, there are some overlaps - and that’s where we live together. I’m a firm believer in the Yin and the Yang. We occupy that edge where the white meets the black. I don’t think you need any more than a slim line of overlap. You can stuff a ton into that thin edge. There can be entire worlds built there and that is what we have done.

Here’s how I interpret this graphic. Jen is the white space on the left. She’s open and free and curious and lives in the light. I’m a devout introvert who prefers to stay in the shadows and observe. Then there’s that all-important seam where the two come together. And there are those two opposing dots. That black dot in the white is Jen surrounding my pitch black with her light and weirdness that influences me. I need that or I’d be in complete darkness. The white dot is me surrounding her light with a bit of darkness. I’m not sure she needs that - but I balance her. What’s important is that it’s only those two small dots. We don’t need to be one fully white circle together. We don’t need to be one fully black circle together. In fact, that would suck. She needs just a little bit of what I am and I need just a little bit of what she is. Even though I’m about twice as heavy as her - if we sit on the see-saw of life - it balances. It’s not always completely even - but it balances over time. We offset each other perfectly. Balance my friend. Balance. 

Well, that was a bit of a tangent. What I was trying to get to is that we went out to dinner on Valentine’s Day. Hold on. I think it’s time for another tangent. As I mentioned previously, I think Valentine’s Day is stupid. If pressed, I believe Jennifer may think it’s stupid too. As someone who lives in the light, she enjoys talking about kissing and hugging and holding hands - all things that publicly I would say make me want to vomit. As a good Yang, it’s my job to know that these things are important to her. But if that’s true, then it’s also true that as a good Yin, she has a responsibility to know that sitting in a dark room alone screaming silently at the unfairness of life is important to me. And I think we’re both fairly good at appreciating those things about each other. Maybe we can hold hands while I scream? 

Jesus Christ. Let’s get to the point if there is a point. We’re out to dinner for Valentine’s Day at an Indian Restaurant. I dig my wife and I find her extremely attractive. She digs me but I can’t imagine she finds me attractive - I mean - have you seen me? I’m a firm believer in and a big beneficiary of the Beauty and the Beast quotient. I’m also a firm believer that a sense of humor can fell any woman (or man) alive. There are times when we both dig each other in a fairly deep way and sometimes that syncs up. She started talking about how long we’ve known one another. I think we met when she was 19 and I was 20. We started dating a couple of years later. We’re in our mid-fifties now.

Then Jen sort of horned in on my dark side for a bit. She was saying how it was incredible that we knew each other when we were so young, and then we decided to grow old together, and now we are growing old together. Then she went on to point out the happy fact that one of us was going to die and leave the other one, expressing how horrible that is, but also how beautiful it is. I was mostly concentrating on how good the vindaloo was, but I had to agree. Horrible and beautiful. That’s life, right? Nailed it. “Can you pass me a piece of garlic naan?.” But one of us is going to die and leave the other one. That was the takeaway. We let that sink in. It’s not new information. What can we get done before that happens?

Then she said, “Could we just quit everything? Could we just say fuck it and go travel wherever we want to go together? Shouldn’t we do that now - because you’re not looking so good and you might die at any second…” That last part was implied by her look because I was grasping my chest as the spicey as hell vindaloo caused my heart to palpitate just a bit. 

Could we just say fuck it? I pictured our IRA balances in my mind. They’re easy to picture because there aren’t too many numbers to commit to memory. “Um…” I said. Because who the hell knows? Could we just take off to travel the world and try to live on what we’ve saved? Sure. We could. But how many years would we get until we’d have to sell our teeth and plasma? Would it be worth it? Should we do what we want now before it’s too late and sell our plasma and teeth later? Maybe. Probably. Definitely?

Generation X is endowed with an oversized level of angst. I believe that this is the defining characteristic of our generation. If we reach a plateau of any sort - relationship stability, financial stability, family stability - stability of any kind puts us on edge. There’s no fun to be had on a goddamned plateau. What can you do on a plateau? Croquet? Kite flying? We seem to need to either be climbing or falling. Resting on a flat surface is uncomfortable. There’s no propulsion. There’s no struggle. Our impulse is to head up or to head down.

Jen was on edge. She was serious. I have a well-established “Do It All Now” mentality. But a mentality is worthless until it’s put into action. I’m great at thinking it. I want to be great at doing it. I want a bit of wind, a bit of caution, and the ability and will to throw.

I said, “What about a tuk-tuk race across India?” Jen said, “What the hell are you talking about?” I explained. It’s something that a friend of mine did a decade ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You buy a rickety tuk-tuk, you drive it thousands of miles, it breaks down, you get lost, you get stuck, you get hurt, you puke, you drown, you freeze, you collapse because of the heat, you bleed, and you probably don’t make it to the finish line. I gussied it up a bit for Jen, but that’s the gist.

I saw Jen thinking about this. Thinking about the discomfort. The hell. The danger. The diarrhea. (I can always tell when she’s thinking about diarrhea.) I said, “How many more years do we have where we could we actually do something like that?” Don’t tell her, but my next thought was - “Are we already past the years when we could actually do something like that?” She said, “Let’s do it. Text our friends and let’s see if they want to do it too.” Those texts have yet to be responded to in any definitive way.

And now - something has been put into motion that I will do everything in my power to keep in motion. The only outside force I’m worried about is Jen coming to her senses. A tuk-tuk race across India as a married couple in our fifties is a horrible idea. Jen’s nervous system becomes frayed driving down the highway in the safest vehicle available to man. She grabs my forearm and slams the imaginary brake on the passenger side floor if there’s a dim brake light to be seen anywhere in front of us within a ten-mile radius. Picturing her speeding and bouncing seatbelt-less through New Delhi traffic on a three-wheeled lawn mower is like picturing Mother Theresa riding a mechanical bull in a bikini. By that, I only mean that it’s difficult to imagine either one happening. Jen likes spa treatments, not leech treatments. Jen likes mud baths with a glass of wine, not being stuck in the mud with no glass of wine. Jen likes pleasure and joy, not chaos and mayhem.

It will be hell. I know it will be hell. An excursion like that will bring us both to the brink of murder. An excursion like that will surely put us into the 95 percentile of likely divorce. An excursion like that could certainly turn a perfectly good Yin Yang into a neon Fuck You.

But if we do it - we will someday look back at ourselves on Valentine’s Day 2024 the same way we look back at ourselves in our early twenties when we imagined what it would be like to grow old together.