And it drove the florists nuts. "Oh, that's original," she'd say, her cynicism seething and frustration mounting and breathless with every stem of Babies Breath used as filler in a bouquet. Sometimes the notes would be excessively long, and in the middle of me reading the slop through loosely controlled laughter, she would say "I think that's enough," and right in mid-sentence we'd stop as if her dad walked in on a hot make out session mainly starring me. At one point a florist and I decided the customerıs note wasn't sincere enough, and took it upon ourselves to add several strokes of romantic genius to the card. He probably got laid that night, the bastard. As an unspoken and untested rule, the male florists tended to be more tolerant than the women, for which reason I never figured out. Maybe it had something to do with empathizing with the struggles of brotherhood. It rained hard Tuesday night, pelting the open window to my right with East Coast ferocity. I was riding the crest of the new wave, finding friendly conversation making fun of customers with distant florists and slacking off in general. My fellow workers were equally lax, as the management corralled us temps into a back room with little supervision. Although two temps, Mira and Jaimie, pounced like kittens on every incoming call, most of my coworkers leveled out a step or two above being sprawled out on the floor. We leisurely fielded calls in between chatting with the florists, but the focus of conversation in that back room where it seemed like everyone but me knew each other, was the planning of a rave. One girl­I donıt know if she was being paid to be there or just hanging out in the room­talked constantly on her cell phone while slouching cross-legged in an office chair, spinning, and relaxing with such a pronounced effect that it looked like her whole body was happily resigned to spending the rest of its life being sucked down a drain.

Like Jaimie, Mira, and the Drain-O girl, Stephen was also in on the rave, of which they all spoke loudly enough to let me know that this was Their Big Project, throwing out DJ names like inside stock tips, giddily planning the ways theyıd refuse people they didnıt like at the door, and yelling out designated Titles they each would hold the night of TBP. "Steve, you're the bouncer for the night, if anyone gives you shit then you tell them to get the hell out." "I don't know if my girlfriend is going to make it on time. My girlfriend has to work until 10 p.m. That sucks for my girlfriend." (I hold a special case of contempt against Steve since he flaked on fielding the customer calls on the third day.) The rave had all the makings of a big slumber party planned before parental permission and one that would fail as soon as they found out about it. That was the other thing: while they all spoke about Their Big Project such a superincumbent way that they might as well have been talking about themselves in the third person, they all made damn sure that the stranger in the room (i.e., me) knew each and every one of them had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Nearly every other sentence began with the reassurance that they indeed had a boyfriend and they weren't just making it up for my sake or to crush my hopes. "Well, my boyfriend thinks that's a good idea," or " My boyfriend says that she's a slut." Everyone here had a boyfriend or girlfriend, even the most hideous, brain-gnawing atrocious girls and boys who'd in all reality have difficulty having human parents. And never any names; it was always the general and universally no-questions-asked "my boyfriend," or "my girlfriend." Maybe it was the proximity to this supposed (wrongly) ultimate day of all intimacy rapidly approaching at 1041.666 mph that gave them such queasiness about the harsh realities of spending it alone. Last year I actually spent VD with a girl, who will henceforth remain unnamed, but considering current evidence, it was probably a fluke. (She's from Canada; we met at ummmŠsummer camp.) Along their way, presumably, to crush me, I inadvertently found assurance to stay single for the rest of my life.

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