Love. For many of us, the prospect of love is the reason we wake up in the morning. It’s something we strive for all our lives, and an ideal worth repeatedly running our fragile hearts through the gauntlet of pain and disappointment time and time again in hopes of finding. It’s why we bother trimming our pubes.

But once we’ve been fortunate enough to experience the special sentiments of both feeling love for, and being loved by another, how should it be shown? In all, there’s no single answer to that question. Be it: The occasional sweet note a passionate, work-bound young Turk leaves by the coffee pot as his lover sleeps; the way in which you each align your breaths to make the brisk autumn air billow before you while strolling on a romantic lakeside path; knowing full-well you’d volunteer your life to save hers without a second thought on the matter; simply telling the other “I love you” even half the time the thought comes to mind.

Contingent on the life to which you’ve willingly attached yours, there are infinite methods to display one’s affection for another. However, an easily-sold and wildly uncreative contemporary American society has essentially ritualized the practice of showing love. “Thoughtful” displays of candy, flowers, jewelry, upscale dining and pre-written cards have streamlined this once beautiful and vital process, transforming modern “love” into a largely calloused and deeply impersonal industry.

Yet there is one present practice that conveys all the emotion of a Keats sonnet, all the glimmer of a rare opal, all the scarcity of a prized truffle, and the speciality of spice tirelessly transported direct from The Orient. The motherfucking heart-shaped pizza.

Worth the decreased pizza circumference.

Valentine’s Day is a day that makes me want to commit suicide (slightly more than usual) whether or not I’m in a relationship when it hits. Merely taking part in the formality serves as a reminder that you’re not part of the individualized and organically loving couple you envision yourself to be, but rather of the majority of the country that cuts corners in their relationship, watches reality TV together, and who needs an excuse to have a night out followed by sub-par sex. However, not celebrating V-Day serves as a reminder of your loneliness. It’s lose-lose, really.

But the heart-shaped pizza is one aspect of this Hallmark Holiday I can get behind. It’s the only event I know about where the world’s best food is re-shaped to fit its specifications… save for that Monday in late January when I was served a Za that, by coincidence, kind of resembled to Dr. King. Yeah, a pumpkin- or turkey-shaped pizza would be more badass, and I’d totes sling jizz for a Yom Kippur-shaped pizza (mostly because that’s not a real shape) — but as far as pizzas being shaped as things goes, I’ll take what I can get.

The heart-shaped pie offered around the country on Valentine’s isn’t actually shaped like a real heart (try Maria’s Pizza for that), but I find it both touching and ironic that a pizza can be fashioned to look like a heart, while simultaneously destroying the hearts of those who consume it. It’s almost Shakespearean in that way. So this Valentine’s Day, when you’re tempted to go through with another cliched night of wine, pricey food and store-bought sentiments of half-assed thoughtlessness, stay in instead. Put on some James Brown, pour your better half a glass of their favorite micro brew, slap a novelty apron on yourself and your significant other, and make homemade heart-shaped pizzas together. To go the extra mile, offer to clean up. 

Trust me, DoZ readers. It may seem like a cheap cop-out, but some of my favorite times with girls involved us making meals together. And not to toot my own horn here, but let’s just say I know my way around a romantic gesture.

I really did.

Column, Heart-shaped pizza, T. Mario, Valentine's Day