Whatever you do, don’t wear red

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, that corner where all major holidays apparently wait it out, and romantics everywhere are slowly shifting into a palpable state of panic.

MANILA, Philippines - I’m talking to you, bro. You, wearing the clueless face at the flower shop –– mums can mean only friendzone or Twilight Zone, so put those down. You, holding up the patterned silk tie to the light –– it’s not gray, it’s mauve. You, trying to compose a witty “Will-you-be-my-Valentine?” text –– man up and just call her already.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, that corner where all major holidays apparently wait it out, and romantics everywhere are slowly shifting into a palpable state of panic. My brothers, for one, keep asking me where they can get hold of the fruit-and-chocolate bouquet I brought home the other week (see fruitsinbloom.com). It’s only a week until Valentine’s and planning the perfect date –– one that doesn’t involve roadside roses, matching red outfits and getting serenaded with bossa versions of I’ll Be at the bar at the end of the street –– is the order of business.

Thanks to a particularly traumatic Valentine’s experience, I’m kind of a V-Day Grinch. Among the things that bug me about this particular holiday is how I have to consciously not wear red. I have one red shirt and it makes my skin look yellow. I never wear it, but on the one day that I shouldn’t, I always end up wanting to. It’s a tale as old as time: someone tells you not to press a red button and you just have to get your clammy hands all over it.

The same goes for dressing nice on V-Day. I resent that I must always be in something grungy to avoid getting the obligatory “Uuuy, may date ka ‘no?” comment. The thing is, I am always in “premeditated grunge,” but on the one day that I must pick out the pair of pants with the worst fit, the filthiest wash and the most number of inappropriately placed tears, I feel like dressing like a lady.

You can’t try to not be a loser and set a “night out” with your other unattached but equally awesome friends either, because exposing your datelessness to the outside world means running into canoodling couples on the benches of Greenbelt, or basking in the irony of being seated in a candle-lit corner table, or making knowing, awkward eye contact with other groups of “singles.” Worse, you could run into an ex –– the one who got away from your doting kung fu grip, and you won’t even have a revenge boy on your arm.

You can’t spend the day with your parents because, while they will think it’s sweet that you chose them to be your dates, they will worry about you and might even ask if everything’s okay, and it’ll all be downhill from there.

So what’s a girl to do? While the guys are busy buying shiny presents for the women in their lives, while those without women in their lives are busy with NBA 2k13 (business as usual), while the women with men in their lives eagerly anticipate what their boyfriends have planned… what is a girl to do?

I am leaning towards spending the day at home to redecorate, make myself a carb-laden, ridiculously cheesy, butter-based comfort meal, and maybe drown my irrational issues in Cookie Butter while ogling Gabriel Macht and @halfadams on Suits. But then again it’s only the eighth…. The hopelessly irrational part of me that wants to wear red –– a gorgeous Valentino kind of red –– on Valentine’s Day, is still looking at the glass half-full. Some people like to say that February the 14th is just like any other day. So I guess that means it’s safe to say that, just like any other day, anything can happen.