and he had his head cut off by a roman.
actually, enidd could have done with her head being cut off – after a disease-free winter, last week she finally succumbed to the nasty cold that was laying everyone else low, and since then she has felt as miserable as a pig out of shit. add to this the fact that the man flew to barcelona on sunday (unfairly leaving enidd to cope with the tough job of getting up in the morning and other such onerous tasks), and you can see that enidd didn’t start valentine’s day in a happy mood when the alarm woke her at five thirty. yes, five thirty. in the morning. enidd volunteers on thursdays, and homeless people (most inconsiderately) still need their hot oatmeal, even if it is the festival of love and their chief washer-up[1] has a chest cold.
when enidd got home she went straight back to bed, where the man, who’d arrived back from barcelona the previous evening, was pushing up ambien-fueled z’s.
enidd didn’t re-wake to flowers, chocolates or a padded card. nor was she expecting them. as the man says, valentine’s day is just a hallmark festival. enidd and the man don’t go out to eat on that night either. as the man says, all you get is a slimmed-down dumbed-down menu aimed at people who don’t usually eat out and aren’t expecting much. if you detect a note of sour grapes in this, you might be right. enidd thinks that, for example, making your own card and cooking a romantic meal would avoid both of these problems. and huge diamonds are never a disappointment, she finds.
luckily, enidd had taken matters into her own hands and arranged some valentine-based entertainment for her and the man. she had booked them tickets to the theatre, to see a comedy improv called “how we first met,” in which the performers act out scenes from the early parts of couples’ dating lives. real couples from the audience, that is. it sounded like a hoot.
she and the man arrived at the herbst theatre, which turned out to be a big posh number near the civic center. they had a few minutes to spare so they queued to buy drinks - beer for the man, and champagne for the lady. you have to get pizzed in the theatre, it makes the plot that much clearer.
time to get to their seats – but as they handed over their tickets, a big shouty person informed them that the four of them couldn’t come in to the auditorium. it was enidd and the man only, no accompanying booze allowed.
rejected, enidd and the man found a bench in the corner of the foyer and downed their drinks quickly like sad street alcoholics. “sometimes i fucking hate america,” said the man.
“yeah,” said enidd. “it’s ironic that in a former soviet state like molvania you can do what the hell you like with your $2 champagne in its real glass glass, but in the land of the free, you’re not allowed to go in with your $8 champagne in its plastic glass.”
as it turned out, enidd and the man would have been better off staying in the foyer and ordering another round or six. “how we first met” combined the worst of big brother with the best of sitting in the dentist’s surgery waiting for root canal work. the show worked like this: five couples from the audience had been pre-chosen from their answers to an email questionnaire. enidd finds it hard to imagine that these were the five most exciting relationships in san francisco. to be a bit bleedin’ obvious, none were gay[2], none were mixed race and none had a huge age gap. to be less bleedin’ obvious, nobody met on a bus trip through africa, nobody met while belly dancing on the 7:56 to menlo park, and nobody met when the girl’s previous boyfriend jumped out of a london bus and tried to run them over[3]. these people met in bars, where they though the other person looked cute and phone numbers were exchanged. the end. and thus the reality show dragged on - a endless interview with the five couples in the front row, with very little improv and even less humour.
the audience loved it. the lesbians stopped kissing and started screaming “ooooo” at any tense moments in the story - like for example, when he forgot her phone number and took three days to call her because he had to call another friend to get it[4]. and as the audience reaction grew hotter, enidd and the man grew colder. they sat in their little bubble of britishness, feeling more and more alienated. they hadn’t come to see daytime tv, or read blogs[5]. they’d come for a laugh.
“are you enjoying this?” enidd asked.
“no,” said the man.
so they sneaked out through the side exit and walked back to the car, whinging about how the show had promised more than it delivered, and how much money they’d wasted.
when they got to their car, they found that the driver’s side window had been smashed, and their gps unit stolen from the dashboard. there was a note on the windscreen saying, “happy valentine’s day from the down-and-outs of the tenderloin.”[6]
[1] well, second-in-command washer-up, but it doesn’t have the same ring.
[2] except the two lesbian couples beside and behind enidd and the man, who snogged, continually and slurpily.
[3] this is enidd’s story, in a nutshell. she could spin it out, pioneer woman style, but she thinks it’s more “car wheels to enidd squeals” than black heels to tractor wheels.
[4] this example is true
[5] ironic, huh? just keep reading, there’s no side exit from enidd’s pages.
[6] not really. not really the note, the car window really was smashed.
enidd and the man have discovered a new drink – or rather, like greatness, a new drink has been thrust upon them. the michelada is a mix of lemon juice and cold mexican beer, served in a glass rimmed with salt, and there is nothing more refreshing when the tropical sun has been beating on your head all morning. 
enidd may have mentioned that the mission, where she lives, is a latino area. this is a good thing, because sometimes you get a bit tired of america, and when you do, you walk down the road to 24th street and you’re in nicaragua. 
time for a tale of molvania.
