It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and New York’s intrepid Jada Yuan has spent the past few weeks finding out what New Yorkers are doing to celebrate the day. Unsurprisingly, she found a lot of New Yorkers were pretty cynical about theHallmark holiday. Stephanie March said that she and Bobby Flay “won’t be prisoners to that kind of marketing,” and Chace Crawford said he’d “never been that into” Valentine’s day. (We think this is because he’s never had us show up at his house covered in whipped cream before. It will be different this year, Chace.) Even professionally uncynical celebrities, like Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler, aren’t that into V-Day. “We give each other gifts all year round, so Valentine’s Day is kind of superfluous,” Doonan said, causing us to barf a little. So instead of the usual roundup of celebrity holiday plans, we’d like to offer you a short compendium of advice, wisdom, and meditations on love in the age of Obama, courtesy of J.D. Williams, a.k.a. Bodie from The Wire, whom Jada ran into at Love, a performance of short plays, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation earlier this week.
On Marriage
“I think marriage is something where you wake up and look at someone and you’re like, “Oh shit! We married! We’ve been together like six years!” I think that’s how marriage occurs. When you’ve decided to be with someone, and they’re just there.
On Making Them Wait
“I have on Valentine’s Day made a woman wait for a gift. Because everybody’s got to appreciate something. You know. You can’t just be being expecting.”
New York: But that’s terrible!
“She might have been somebody who needed to wait. Meaning, she already expected a gift when she shouldn’t have. Like maybe I didn’t know her that well. Or maybe we wasn’t really on speaking terms, really.”
On Hookups
“In a hookup, a man is going to get his. He’s almost ready to lose it before you even take your pants off. Don’t expect any man when you’re just hooking up, or as we like to call in the hood, ‘smashing off,’ to fulfill you, unless you’re with someone who’s like, ‘Well, if I’m gonna get it, you’re gonna get it.’ Most men grow up with the mentality when they’re younger that once I get it, it’s over. Everyone knows that once he gets his, he’s like, ‘Good-night. Talk to you in two hours.’ But it’s also about being discerning about partners. Just get a partner that doesn’t want to walk away embarrassed. Like me! I’m not trying to sell out the rest of the dudes, but there’s a certain class of men who don’t want to be embarrassed, and if we care about that little bit of our reputation, we will not let you walk away without at least one orgasm. At least! Whatever we’ve got to do. Just get the one and you can’t talk shit! There’s a class of guys that are like that. So if you waste your time on a pretty boy who expects you to jump on top of him and go until he finishes and then you’re wondering why, now that he did that, he’s not gonna put his tongue on you, it’s YOUR fault.”
On Being Able To Tell If He’s Any Good Or Not
“You know by the kiss. How he kisses is how he is in bed. In conclusion, it’s all about the kiss. If you and the person are kissing, you know. If you’re not kissing, you can tell by the way he touches you. If he grabs your tits within the first two seconds, he’s nothing but a big grabber. If he holds you and moves his hands down the rest of your body, he’s going to do that all over your body. If he’s patting you on the head and shit, leave. Don’t deal with no patting. No patting! This is 2009. Barack Obama is the president. We can’t do patting no more. It is our patriotic duty to rub, caress, soothe, stroke. All those things. We grown now, people!”
