Hi babiiiesss,
It’s February in NYC, which means that love is in the air! Or maybe it’s just pollen? Either way, I’m crying. 🥲
📣 BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!! 📣
I’m throwing a VALENTINE’S DAY COMEDY VARIETY SHOW @ Chelsea Music Hall on Tues, Feb 14th at 7pm!
It’s gonna be the honkiest, horniest, wildest westiest(?) show of the century—you can expect standup, magic, justice under a court of law, and even an exorcism! I booked acts from Late Night with Seth Meyers, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, Penn & Teller’s Fool Us, & more. I promise it’s THE place to be on vday.
Hurry and get your tickets here!
What else is new? I got ghosted by a guy and then got some press for it. All press is good press—especially when one diligent journalist goes out of their way to mention that someone in my comments called me a -8 out of 10, look-wise. Big thanks to her source: @inc3L_b000bs_FCKUm0m69, for bravely speaking truth to power.
It’s also pretty cool being known online as The Girl Who Got Rejected. It’s kinda like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in that I have brown hair now. The only difference is no one’s going out of their way to avenge my emotional murder, and my vibe is a lot less Rooney Mara, and a lot more roomba stuck in a corner—I keep banging the same walls (boys) over and over again, then wondering how I got so broken.
Speaking of, I dyed my hair brown and weirdly don’t look like Bella Hadid. The tone I chose didn’t immediately turn me into a size 00, which seems like a manufacturing problem. Something they don’t tell you about being brunette is that it only works if your name is Emily. It also means that with your blonde days behind you, you don’t have more fun anymore. You have the same amount of fun as everyone else and you’ll die like everyone else too. Don’t like the realness? Sorry. That’s brunette Stef talking.
February is a great time to find out which one of your friends isn’t cumming, based on how often they say things like “Valentine’s Day is a fake holiday peddled by Big Chocolate,” and “Hallmark did 9/11.” Get those friends a nice pair of anal beads and a gift card to Aritizia. They need it more than you do.
And sure, it’s true—Valentine’s Day only exists so corporations can capitalize off our loneliness in the form of pre-written cards crafted by some guy who’s likely stalking his ex girlfriend. It also forces many of us to confront a devastating truth: that we’re dating someone with *severe mental illness.
*someone who thinks silver-plated, heart-shaped necklaces are in any way, shape or form, legal.
If you or a loved one have received a gift from Kay Jewelers in the last 5-10 years, you may be entitled to compensation. And you probably have mesothelioma.
If I’m being honest, I’ve never had a particularly good vday. There was that time in 2013 that I lost my virginity to my high school boyfriend, but not before he gave me my first official Valentine’s Day gift…a gram of molly taped to a blank CD. He moved to Tahoe the next day without telling me. But you probably already knew that.
There was also that time in 2021 that my therapist canceled on me—via email—the morning of the holiday. She forgot she was “going out of town” with her [JUMP SCARE] “boyfriend.” I know. I’m suing for malpractice.
I’m trying not to be too cynical, though, because most of my friends are in serious relationships. I’m actually learning that couples like to hang out with me a lot. Like they reeeeeally like me. In the same way that people really like mangled, three legged dogs. They’re cute! In a sad way.
I think for people in relationships, I provide an excellent foil. Whenever they’re having a bad day in their secluded Park Slope brownstones, they can just close their eyes and conjure an image of me covered in smut and bodily liquids, trying to score a mid 27 year old in the streets of Bushwick, feigning like some kind of a dick junkie.
If there’s ever a moment where they question their decision to shack up at a young age, they need not think of anything but that time I had an HPV scare from an aspiring DJ who told me he wanted to “turn the book Lolita” into an “ambient track.” I can see how that’s validating.
I guess Valentine’s Day sucks because for a lot of us, it’s a lose lose. If we’re single, we’ll probably spend the night alone with our vibrators, secretly wishing there was another warm body in our beds (so they could hold the vibrator in place for us). And if we’re one of the lucky ones in a relationship, we’ll likely be disappointed that our partner didn’t go above and beyond for the holiday, even though we specifically told them not to.
It’s embarrassing to want to celebrate a day that deep down we know is just a capitalist circle jerk, but it’s also incredibly human to crave love and affection from every person you’ve ever made eye contact with. So where does that leave us?
My advice is to look at the pragmatic, but ultimately more depressing bright side: Valentine’s Day isn’t unique—pretty much every holiday exists to make Walmart and Jeff Bezos richer. When you break it down, everything is bad, which means nothing is bad either. Let yourself off the hook and make a reso for a romantic pre-fix dinner with whoever you can laugh about it the most with. Whether you’re single, taken, or in your sending nudes to your guy friends era, get absolutely plastered and remember—everyone dies alone anyway. ❤️
See you at my show!
with love & pessimism,
stef
