不同年龄的人咋看情人节：40岁前是痛苦的源头

　　In the supermarket, all the T-shirt-wearing teddies, helium balloons, oversized padded sateen cards and serried ranks of roses looks like some sort of terrible crime-scene . Who is all this stuffed stuff for, precisely, and does anyone over 40 (never mind 50-plus) still acknowledge Valentine’s Day, much less celebrate it?

　　印着泰迪熊的T恤衫，氢气球，超大的填充锦缎卡片和重叠罗列的玫瑰，使得超市像一个糟糕的犯罪现场。这些东西是为谁准备的？准确地讲，40岁以上的人还知道情人节这回事吗？是不是很少庆祝了？

　　I’m not sure when I went from?minding about Valentine’s Day – actually caring what happened on February 14, and who it happened with, and how it happened, and what shoes I was wearing while it happened etc – to seeing it as another seasonal retail opportunity. Yet as I canvass opinions, my friend Ellie tells me: “I hope every year to get a card from a secret admirer. Is this sad? I’m 66!” Not sad, no – but possibly unusual.

　　其实我对情人节没有什么概念：2月14日发生了什么，和谁发生，怎样发生，发生时我穿着什么鞋等等。我只是把它看成另一个零售季。然而，当我和朋友Ellie谈论这些想法时，她告诉我：“我希望每年都收到一个神秘爱慕者的卡片。这很悲伤吗？我已经66岁了！”这并不悲伤，但是也许不寻常。

　　“Well, I’m 48 and taking my beautiful wife to Copenhagen for the weekend,” says another friend, David. So that’s me told. Still, I tend to agree with Janie, who is definitely over 40: “It’s the least welcome of all the ’Days’. Pure marketing schmaltz, good for florists, rose growers, restaurants and card makers; love declarations should be 365 days a year!”

　　另一个朋友David说：“我48岁了，我周末带着漂亮的太太去哥本哈根。这就是我得到的答案。我很赞同Janie的说法，她已经40多了：“这是最不受欢迎的日子”。情人节已经单单变成了销售，对花店，玫瑰花商，饭店和卡片制造商有好处。爱的誓言应该每天说不停！”

　　“I went through a phase of doing the flowers thing the day before,” another friend, Jim, tells me. “Just to show that I knew what was going on but wasn’t going to be marketed at.”

　　我的另外一个朋友Jim告诉我：“前天，我一直在弄花。这只是为了展示我了解正在发生的一切，但是我不想被交易。”

　　Are my gay friends d’un certain age any less cynical/more “romantic” than me? Tim, a forty something chef, admits that he and his partner “are celebrating our 17th year of not celebrating Valentine’s Day, though I can’t remember why. People in catering will tell you it’s a nightmare – restaurants full of tables-for-two and all the Valentine’s-y angst means it’s one of the worst shifts of the year.”

　　我的同志朋友们，会因为到了一定岁数就不浪漫了吗？Tim是一名四十岁左右的厨师，他承认正在和男友庆祝17周年纪念日，而不是情人节，尽管我记不清具体原因了。餐饮业的从业者会告诉你，情人节就是噩梦！所有餐厅都是两人餐桌，情人节忧虑意味着这是一年中最差的一班。

　　But please do not assume “romantic” things have never happened to me. They have. I’ve been engaged, married, bred a brace of fine male children and, low boredom threshold notwithstanding, I have achieved none of those landmark rites of passage alongside the same person. I have been kissed, passionately and publicly, on a Parisian bridge at midnight by someone to whom I was neither engaged, married nor with whom I expected to procreate. And I have (ahem) made love in broad daylight on a deserted southern African beach. Yup, I’ve been there, done romance, bought the T-shirt… And if it all sounds a bit Les Amants du Pont-Neuf meets From Here to Eternity, then that’s hardly surprising; most of us?take our romantic cues from movies and books.

　　但是你别断定，我从来没有经历过浪漫。我经历过。我也曾海誓山盟过，也曾婚嫁，养育了一个优秀的男孩，这些都很容易。但是所有这些具有里程碑意义的事情，都不是和同一个人经历的。午夜的巴黎桥头上，我被一个没有想过要订婚，结婚甚至生育的人激烈而公开地拥吻过。我在一个荒凉的非洲南沙滩上，光天化日之下做爱。我在那里感受了浪漫，购买了T恤衫……如果这和《桥上恋人》里面的片段相似，你也别感到惊讶：我们大部分人都是从电影和书本上寻找浪漫线索的。

　　I love the day. However, it is my old school friend Dee who wins the last word on Valentine’s for grown-ups: “For me it was a source of pain and humiliation, pre-40. Post-40, I savour the security of knowing that if it were important to me, I would be suitably fêted.” Now that’s what I call a happy ever after.

　　我很爱这天。但是，我的老朋友 Dee说的话，最合成人的情人节心声：“40岁以前，它是痛苦和屈辱的源头；40岁以后，我已经品味到它对我的重要性，我将盛情款待。这就是我现在所说的极乐。

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