The objects of our affection

From preppy perfume to Portuguese love songs, six writers share the Valentine's Day goodies that really get their hearts racing.

Read more: Romance, Object Lust, Life

Feb. 14, 2006 | Each Valentine's Day, like clockwork, well-meaning lovers hoping to woo their sweeties spend a small fortune on roses and cardboard hearts stuffed with chocolates. Even those who'd usually prefer a slice of pizza to steak tartare and jeans to a suit jacket, somehow find themselves dolled up and sharing a candlelit dinner. For a holiday that supposedly celebrates the excitement and passion of love, hasn't it all become rather stale?

So, in honor of Valentine's Day -- and in the hopes of spicing things up -- we've revived our Object Lust column and dedicated it to the unsung romantic gifts and goodies that really set our hearts aflutter. Go ahead -- throw out your drugstore cards, your sweetheart candies and your long-stemmed bouquets. Because whether it's a favorite scent that makes 'em swoon or a stylish new contraceptive, our writers prove that the most romantic gifts don't always come in shiny heart-shaped packages.

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Preppy perfection

I'm at the store downtown where I buy my perfume and cosmetics -- one of the last, great independent department stores with chitchat and gift wrap, with a pneumatic tube that rockets your money to the customer service department upstairs. It's Clinique free-gift-with-purchase week and I'm waiting in line, daydreaming about the high-tech moisturizer that will smooth my forehead, when I notice a glass tray of men's fragrances on the counter: a reflected bouquet of matte black bottles, Windex-blue bottles, clear glass bottles filled with amber liquid and lotions, and a candy-green glass bottle with a golden lid. Ralph Lauren's Polo cologne.

I pick up the bottle and squirt it on my wrists, and it is upon me: those golden years before my disdain of all things preppy, before I discovered New Wave music, before my daily applications of Chryssie Hynde eyeliner and fragranced body oil from the Body Shop, before Morrissey instructed me that meat was murder, before I dissected the Aryan undertones of the Polo ad campaign in my women's studies class, before I wished to both fight the patriarchy and date cool, moody musicians.

I rub my wrists together and breathe in my freshman year of high school. I was a Midwestern suburbanite who favored marshmallow-scented lip gloss and designer jeans. My fragrance of choice was Ralph Lauren's modestly named Lauren, which came in a square maroon bottle and smelled like polite girls. My boyfriends wore Polo cologne and button-down Polo shirts, ironed by their mothers, their brand loyalty blind and loving.

By boyfriends I do not mean boys who professed their horny devotion. Mostly they were just boys that my friends and I hung out with during the first two years of high school. We rode around in cars drinking 12-packs of Budweiser: In memory it is always winter and hopeful, the heater cranking, the commingling of beer burps and Polo not unpleasant. One starry December night when we were supposed to be at the Christmas formal -- as if! -- we partied at Kevin Strickland's house, while his parents were in Ohio burying a dead aunt. The snow turned to ice. More snow fell. We were stranded at the Strickland house.

All night.

When I bring my face to my wrist, to Polo cologne, its lime and spice overtones, cloaking what? -- What is it? -- I'm back at the Stricklands' house. And then I'm back, not as far back, to my college dorm, trying not to cry in front of my roommates as I read Raymond Carver's short story "Distance." The last line is this: "They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else, the cold and where he'd go in it, was outside, for a while anyway."

And so I don't buy the fancy moisturizer, I forfeit my free gift. When I watch my cash shoot up the pneumatic tube, I think: I am a jackass. I waste money. But on the drive home I put the bottle of Polo behind the steering wheel like a dashboard Jesus and watch the sun move through the green glass.

-- Mary O'Connell

Deflowered

For years I bought into the conventional wisdom: Love is best symbolized by roses. (Well, OK, diamonds, but I hadn't gotten to that stage in my life yet.) And so I faked it with the men in my life. That cord of long, thorny stems, topped by an anemic tuft of pink petals? How lovely. That squashed and scentless bouquet, obviously nabbed at the last minute from the floor of the corner deli? I'm so touched. That cluster of tea roses, as tough and hard as betel nuts? Oh, you shouldn't have. Really.

So in thrall was I to the cult of the rose, that when my true love gave me a calla lily one Valentine's Day, I was taken aback. In flower literature, callas are associated with "magnificent beauty" -- not such a bad thing. But where were my roses? What was this odd trumpet of a flower? It looked so dignified in its vase, even slightly uptight, like a floral Katharine Hepburn. But the longer I studied it, the more I began to fall under its sway. The stem curved slightly, and the flower drooped just a bit, as if bending into a lover's arms. The petals were a chaste white, true, but they formed lips that encircled a fleshy, turgid stamen in a manner that could only be described as ... suggestive. The velvety whiteness practically begged caressing. My flower was a magnificent beauty with a dirty mind -- a virgin waiting, so to speak, to be deflowered.

Accompanying the flower was a Georgia O'Keeffe card, "Calla Lily on Grey." The suggestions written on the back can't be printed here, but they involved lingerie, hot fudge sauce, and a scarf. (It turns out, by the way, that calla lilies make great ticklers.) I keep the card on my dresser as a reminder that I can armor myself in the most staid suit, or don the chastest white nightshirt -- and still not be wearing underwear underneath. And that's worth remembering every day of the year, not just Valentine's Day.

-- Juliet Eastland

Next page: Music played late at night, in dark corners, to accompany stolen kisses