What would Valentine’s Day be without images of a golden-tressed boy armed with bow and arrows? The arrows represent feelings of love and desire, and they are aimed and cast at various individuals, causing them to fall deeply in love…
— from “The story of Cupid” posted on the Webb Weekly, A Family-Oriented Publication, February 10, 2021
That’s a serious question. What would Valentine’s Day be without Cupid?
A lot safer, for one thing.
Although many of us think of Cupid as a fat, innocent little cherub with a toy bow and arrow, out for a bit of romantic fun… that’s merely a marketing ploy by the Hallmark card company and other retailers, when they transformed Valentine’s Day from a minor Christian feast day into the second-most-expensive day of the year.
The truth is much darker… but we don’t want to face the truth. How could a cute little guy with white wings, a round, pink bum, and curly blond hair be even the slightest bit naughty?
Part of the problem — and I blame it mostly on oil paintings from the 16th century — is that Cupid is not a cute little cherub. That’s a silly romantic notion. Cupid is actually a demon from the depths of hell.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit too strong. Cupid is a practical joker from the depths of hell.
The Romans understood the situation much better than we do nowadays. They taught their children that Cupid was the offspring of a love affair between the God of War — Mars — and the God of Beauty — Venus. Given that parentage, even a child could easily understand why Cupid grew up with serious behavioral health issues. But instead of seeking counseling (because they didn’t have counseling in ancient Rome), Cupid worked out his sociopathic tendencies by causing totally incompatible people to fall in love with each other.
Take my own story, for example.
There I am at City Market, standing at the magazine rack on Aisle 6, flipping through the latest copy of Vogue. Typically, I would have been looking at some other magazine — Guns & Ammo, for example — but on this particular moment, I had a Vogue magazine in my hands.
Suddenly, I sense someone behind me, and I turn quickly to find a dark-haired woman looking over my shoulder.
“You like Vogue?” she asks.
I have to think fast. “Well, yes, every now and then. I like to find out what the feminine sex is reading and thinking about.”
She ponders my response for a moment, and smiles. “That’s interesting. Every now and then, I like to find out what the masculine sex is thinking about.”
The tone of her voice, as she said that, was like Cupid’s arrow into my heart. Not exactly a pleasant feeling. Just an overwhelming feeling. I didn’t even have to think about what to say next.
“Well, maybe we should have lunch together, tomorrow.”
And the rest was, as they say, history. Three years of discovering the many ways that we were ridiculously incompatible, and another year of extracting the barbed arrows out of our hearts with the help of a couple of money-grubbing lawyers… while Cupid stood in the shadows, laughing at his practical joke.
I could hear him laughing.
My second experience was equally weird, and fateful. I came out of the Pagosa Bar on a Saturday night, hopped in my car, and backed into the blue Ford Pinto behind me. (I will swear on a stack of bibles, there was no car parked behind me when I went into the bar, three hours earlier.)
A woman with wild, bleach-blonde hair, wearing a red down jacket, stepped out of the Pinto, and we stood there on the sidewalk together, silently looking at the damage to her grille and headlights.
“Well, now you’re going to have to marry me,” she said in a straight deadpan. Then she broke into a silly laugh.
That laugh shot me right through the heart, and I realized she was right. (But I still had to pay for the damage.)
The second marriage lasted almost six years. Cupid probably was starting to worry that we were going to make it work.
I read somewhere that people will likely spend more than $18 billion dollars this year, on Valentine’s Day, trying to fool themselves into believing in true love. I’m just waiting for the vaccine.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.