Valentine's Day Memories

I won't be celebrating Valentine's Day this year because I’m traveling. Actually, at this very moment, I’m in a jail cell in downtown Seoul, where I was thrown after a bread-related incident in a park, but at least for once I have a roof over my head for the night. 

Spending Valentine's Day in a cell makes me reflect on my own lack of a love life. It’s so nonexistent that if I were to write a memoir about it, it would be... a pamphlet. 



There was a time I thought I had found the one. Yes, the memories take me back to Paris, France, in the 1800s. Me, a grumpy yet distinguished ghost coming home from my night shift at the opera, walking down a little cobblestoned alley, enjoying the stuffy Parisian spring air and the uplifting stubbornness of the French, when suddenly I noticed someone waving at me from an apartment balcony. A bright robe, decorated with lace, with delicate blue flowers embroidered on the hem. 

Naturally, I pretended not to notice and drifted casually past. A minute later, I glided back down the same alley in the other direction; I still didn't cast a single glance toward the balcony, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw them waving at me again. I stopped at the next block to ponder what I should do with this person who was clearly head over heels in love with me. 

I went into the nearest restaurant, found a mirror in the washroom and checked whether my robe was presentable. I grabbed a bunch of tulips from a flowerpot on a restaurant table and thought: carpe diem, fortes fortuna adiuvat, and even gloria in excelsis. I rushed back to the alley, found a fire escape, and climbed up – tulips in hand – to woo the lace-clad beauty with a ferment and turmoil that would have impressed even the mighty Casanova. 

Casanova probably didn't climb fire escapes with a sheet fluttering around him.

As I picked myself up from the alley, I noticed that some of the tulips had snapped after my fall, and my previously spotless sheet was covered in mud. I brushed myself off, entered the apartment building through the front door, walked up the stairs, and after knocking on various doors – receiving insults and having various objects thrown at me – I finally arrived at the door that led to the building's balcony.
Waiting for me on the balcony was the lace-clad beauty, which is to say... a bedsheet drying on a clothesline, swaying in the wind.

I carefully placed the remains of the tulip bouquet on the balcony railing, tipped my hat, wished the sheet a good evening, and without losing my dignity, exited the building into the Parisian spring morning. And that was the end of that.

A long-distance relationship wouldn't have worked anyway. A great artist like me comes and goes as he pleases; nothing keeps me in one place for long… Hey, officer! How much longer is this going to take? Not that I don't enjoy it here, but I have a ride waiting! I'm going gambling with other penniless lost causes and I can't afford to be late! Hello? Hello! Do you realize I can't be stuck here when, for once, I actually have plans?


...

Next Chapter: Stud or Dud?

Previous Chapter: Bread and Games

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