Valentino

Valentine sounds kind of Italian to me. "Hey, Valentino! Get ova here. The game is almost on." And then he comes out of the kitchen, and he's a short, hairy Italian guy with a bit of a beer gut. He's got some cheap beers in his hands that he gives to everybody. Come on, yeah - he's a little sloppy looking, but he's generous.

When watching the game he doesn't quite get as excited as everyone else when the good team scores or has a good defensive play, but he likes the friendships, the camaraderie. When the game is over, half of the guys go home to their wives and kids. The rest either go to the bar to hang out longer, or play some poker. Fifty years ago, they would have played music together, but these days nobody knows how to do that.

Valentino goes to the bar, because he doesn't want to go home to his empty apartment yet. Plus, he hasn't cleaned in a while and there's some nasty garbage under the sink that he needs to take out. He enjoys his company at the bar, and sees some other friends that watched the game. "It was a good one wasn't it. We almost had it." Tough loses are sometimes better for bonding than good wins. Real fans stick with the team when they lose, that's how you know the difference.

Some bars have jukeboxes, some have loud music playing all of the time, and others still have live music when there is music and otherwise are pretty quiet. This place was quiet until the band started playing. A bunch of old jazz and blues songs - Sinatra, Martin, Armstrong, B.B. King, and others that Valentino didn't know because he only knew the famous stuff. Valentino is more of a classic rock/80s rock guy. But this is ok.

After some drinks and being social, people start leaving. Valentino has his eye on a woman he'd seen in here before. He thought she had a boyfriend or something, but she was smoking hot and by herself and some girlfriends. Tight jeans, tight DKNY shirt, straightened blonde hair, and just the right amount of make-up (which was actually a lot). She smelled good too. He was going to talk to her before the night was over, when the right time came. Then she looked like she was heading to the bathroom, but really she just left out the back. It took him a good half hour to realize what happened, but he leaves to go home in good spirits anyway.

It was late, so he quickly takes out the garbage before getting in bed. He falls asleep quickly, and has many dreams. In one, he is a fireman and fights a fire that is taking over an apartment. He runs in there and saves women and children and a dog. But just as the fire is getting under control, he realizs that the whole thing is fake and everyone is just trying to make him feel good about himself. He leaves and goes down a long alley in the darkness and sees some women talking and laughing together in a little circle. He can't hear what they say, but he is afraid to stare so he walks by. He is looking for a bathroom, and when he finds it he wakes up in real life and goes to the bathroom. Gets a drink of water and goes back to bed.

The rest of the night continues in similar eventfulness. For a while he is a hunter chasing after a herd of elk. Then for a while he is going to be a juror for a murder trial, but after the preliminary hearings doesn't have to because they didn't like what he said about giving everyone a fair chance. And then finally he finds himself back in the bar with his friends and the woman he didn't talk to. Only this time she really notices him. She comes over to him and takes off her shirt showing her large breasts. This seems very sexy to Valentino who gets very turned on. She says some things in a sort of dreamspeak - he understands her, but there are no actual words just incomprehensible sounds. He never touches her but found this experience exhilirating.

He wakes up extremely well rested, but finds that he had the first wet dream of his adult life since he was 14 or so. This seems odd to him, but maybe a good sign of things to come. Valentino, as one might imagine, is superstitious. If you watched the game with him, you would have known this. He always closes his eyes on kick-offs, and when his team scores he has to always make the same hand gestures of excitement. For a while, his friends made fun of him for it, but he is so consistent in his superstitions that now other guys join in with him. But this is not what Valentino is thinking about. He thinks about the woman in his dream, who was different than the woman in the bar even though it was supposed to be her. These thoughts make him feel odd, and he decides not to go to the bar again for at least a week or two.

He spends the rest of his morning watching TV after taking a shower and eating breakfast. Maybe he reads the paper later, and maybe later he goes and gets some pizza.

Unlike Valentine, Valentino isn't a patron saint of anything. He is just a man living his life. There's no holiday named for him, and on Monday he has to go back to work at the auto repair shop. He is a man who gets dirty in his job, and feels the ache of using his muscles all day. He is a man who doesn't ask for anything in his life other than what he thinks needs. And he is a man who probably needs more than he thinks he does, but he somehow makes due.

Valentine sounds Italian to me. Like someone that you might know and see once in a while in a local bar somewhere back east in Jersey or a working man's city like Chicago or Detroit. Maybe you've met the guy and know who I am talking about.