It’s that time of year again. No, not the one where we spread peace and joy. I’m talking about that time of year when we pack into crowded, overly-lit stores and overrun Amazon’s servers frantically searching for the ‘perfect’ gift for our significant others.
Young people everywhere are anxiously biting their nails and trying to figure out whether their on-off again, late-night hookup is serious enough to warrant a present in the sober light of day. In these situations, I prescribe communication. Please, clarify with your partner what sort of expectations you both have in terms of gift giving.
Otherwise, you’ll end up like my younger sister, who last week purchased a wonderful present for her Communist boyfriend. When she told him she had secured his gift, he replied: “Gifts? Disgusting! Christmas presents are but tools of the bourgeoisie designed to blind workers to the fruits of revolution!”
You’d think, given that I’m an Enneagram type one and a Taurus, that I would have picked out my present for my girlfriend weeks ago. Not so. This weekend, my mother asked me what I’ll be getting her. “Dunno” I said. “Probably a sweater or something.”
My girlfriend, I explained, had already given me my present last week: a new Yeti travel coffee mug, which I desperately needed. My mother was appalled at our lack of mystery and romance.
But, need I remind her of some of her and my father’s failed gifts of Christmases past? There have been sweaters (which he returned), nice underwear (which wasn’t her size) and a hand-made sign for our beach house ... which was promptly hung incorrectly on the back porch, where no one could see it.
A few years ago, my father bought an electric lotion warmer as a gift for my mother. “What would they do with an electric lotion warmer?” we wondered, before immediately wishing we hadn’t.
The ‘perfect’ gift for a partner seems ever-elusive, and rightly so. How could it be possible to convey the true complications and complexities of love in an object that can be wrapped in paper and set under a tree? No matter how much you spend, no gift can say what you want to convey better than you could with your own words and actions.
An orgasm, however, is free*.
