OP-ED: Allow Me to Serenade You with the Soft Sounds of Prerecorded Love Songs

Marie, I want this to be a night you remember forever. I know Valentine’s Day is a week away, but honestly, I can’t wait any longer. You mean the world to me. So tonight, I’ve prepared a veritable symphony of the softest, sweetest prerecorded love songs that a heavily discounted “Now, That’s What I Call Love Music” CD can offer.

I remember when we first met at Rhino’s like it was just yesterday. I thought it would be like any other night. Never in a million years would I have expected to knock back a couple tequila shots and go home with the first girl too drunk to stand.

I remember the way the soft light hit your stiff, sequined tube dress with a cheap imitation Ms. America sash hanging nonchalantly off your shoulder. I remember how you coyly looked up at me with those big brown eyes and softly cried, “Oh my god that’s sooo funny! Hey, you’re cute! I can’t believe I’m not even DRUNK yet. I’ve had, like, so many shots.” Even then, I knew I wanted to take you home and fill your heart with the joy that comes only from Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love.” But I was afraid you would think I was moving too quickly. So I bit my tongue and held back my iPod as we made our own sweet music that night and then stayed together out of sheer laziness and desperation for another year.
Last week, as we sat awkwardly in that Starbucks while you regaled me with tales of how fat you were getting, shoveling coffee cake into your mouth, I realized in a sudden epiphany that there was only one way I could truly demonstrate the bottomless depths of my love – 23 tracks of the smoothest crooners from K-Ci and Jojo to Boyz II Men. Anything less would just seem trite and manufactured.

Anyone can walk into a store and pick up a ring or put a giant bow on a Lexus. Shit, even inbred retards can make a mix CD, but it takes that special someone – the one you were meant to settle for – to lovingly offer up the underwhelming repetitive simplicity of back-to-back Seal songs.
I know I’m a hopeless romantic, but I can’t help myself.

Sometimes when I’m at work I fantasize about sauntering past the vanilla incense and Yankee Candles burning like the fiery passion within me, and softly, ever so softly, pressing play as the booming voice of Tony Bennett accompanies my gentle, casual swagger towards to you — your eyes filling with gratitude and tears streaking the excessively applied mascara and clown-like blush. And then I think of all the years we’ll spend together; of all the nights we’ll awkwardly make love, starting and finishing before Kelly Clarkson can even complete her moving tribute to enduring love.
Marie, I guess what I’m trying to say – what every cell in my body is aching to make clear – what my voice longs to cry out through hackneyed and lazy writing is: you’re the one that I want. Woo. Woo. Woo.