One Seven Four: Holiday

Well, it's 14.  March. One month after Valentine's. And while I know that it's Pi Day, it's also Steak & BJ Day.

I'm assuming that the gender warriors are angry about the concept of Steak & BJ Day, and while in and of itself makes it a holiday worth celebrating, I do see a few problems myself.

Now I'll admit that when I think about Steak & BJ Day, the first thing that goes through my mind isn't a list of long-legged, sharp-hipboned  supermodels. My first thought is...a 1.5-lb. porterhouse, medium-rare, from my favourite steakhouse here. I'm not sure what to make of that. I suppose it could simply be age, though it could also be my own obsessiveness. As I've told Ms. Flox many times in our discussions of such matters, I do obsess over presentation and formal style. I can't begin to enjoy the story if the props and the setting aren't right.  While I could obsess over lovely co-eds or my personal list of fashion models (Ms. Rubik, Ms. Kloss, Mlle. Valade), the porterhouse matters. Formality always matters, though I hope not to the complete exclusion of all else.

 I suppose I do feel a certain amount of psychological exhaustion here on the holiday. I like the idea of  Steak & BJ Day, and I like the idea of a ritualized day for sexual gifts to males. Yet I do think I'd be exhausted tonight if I had to take part in a Steak & BJ Day ritual. It's not just the performance anxiety a gentleman of a certain age might feel (imagine being the one who drops the chalice at the Mass!), or not merely that. It's also the fear that on the one day in a year when sex and a romantic dinner might be offered to me as a gift, when I'd be the one receiving rather than giving, everything would turn bad or disappoint.  After all--- it's not the sex itself that's the key here. It's the formal ritual, it's the walk though the measured, formalized steps of the scripted performance.

I suppose I should note that it's Pi Day as well, and that I had no pie. I suppose I could've bought something at lunch, but even Key Lime pie is merely flavor and texture. It's not a ritual.

Ritual is about socially-ascribed value, but it's also something that's safe from mere individual feeling.

14 March is a night when one considers that there are neither steaks nor wet-lipped girls in one's life. I suppose I can have a porterhouse this weekend. The restaurant will still be there. It's possible that a Young Companion might join me. But there's something exhausting and depressing about the two things (or either thing) not occurring on a ritually-designated night.