Today is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is the one day each year which we set aside for purposefully expressing to those we love how much we love them by buying them adorable and/or vaguely smutty Hallmark? cards. Unfortunately, every time I set foot into a Hallmark? store, I inevitably end up hovering in front of the Precious Moments? display case, hypnotized by their evil, spiralling eyes. My blood slowly begins to boil in a murderous rage, and at this point I either purchase a lilac-scented machine gun and go mow down the customers and employees at the Chick-Fil-A next door, after which I am taken out by police snipers, or my face contorts into a violent grimace as I smash the cases and everything in the immediate radius with my bare fists, and soon I bleed to death from the resultant severed arteries. So, needless to say, I avoid Hallmark? stores whenever possible. Happily, I am a bitter, hateful person who loves nobody, so it is not much of a problem.

Therefore, today, while others were thinking of the feeling of love in their hearts, I was thinking about the feeling of pain in my right tit.

I know what you’re thinking. “You are a man. What know you of tit pain?” Well, I’m not claiming to suffer from a broken back from double Ds or bruises on my face and stomach from running down a flight of stairs without proper support. Nay, support has nothing to do with the nature of my complaint. Nevertheless, pain is pain, tits are tits, and in the case of men the best verification that one indeed has tits is to have pain in one. While getting out of my van yesterday after work, I misjudged the distance from my stylish faux-leather satchel to my body, and as I stepped out, I pulled the bag toward myself, thinking to put it over my shoulder, but instead clobbering my right tit with a great deal of force ? at least, a great deal of force relative to the average amount of force at which tits are ordinarily clobbered.

“Ow! My tit!” I hollered, attracting the attention of old ladies and small children at play in the middle of the street. As I had their attention I figured I would make a show of it, so I did a little dance of pain, jumping, spinning, rubbing my sore tit. Later that night, as I lay in bed, I dreamed that I was at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and that the female gymnasts were using my right tit as a springboard for the pommel horse. “Dammit, Dominique Moceanu, stop jumping on my tit!” I woke up screaming.

I knew I should have called in sick to work today. This afternoon, as my brain was ordering white blood cells by the thousands to my right tit in order to fight off the dull pain that remained ? apparently to the point where all of my other motor functions were slowed ? I ran smack-dab into somebody. In fairness to my brain, the corridors in the office where I work were laid out by Frank Lloyd Wrong, the eccentric sadist architect. However, this mitigation was unhelpful, because the person I ran into was smaller than I, and the point of impact on her body was her shoulder, and the point of impact on my body was ? wait for it ? my right tit.

“Ow! My tit!” I hollered, for the second time in as many days. Like a leaky bucket that has been refilled just before the water all runs out the bottom, the pain had returned to my tit. The woman was very apologetic, but it was not her fault. I explained to her that I had been very careless about my tits lately, or at least just the one. She nodded understandingly and rushed off to call building security.

As I write this, I have a frozen steak on my tit, hoping to keep the swelling down. I went shopping on Amazon for a protective chainmail sports bra, but boy, is THAT place ever misnamed.

Happy Valentine’s Day, from the very bottom of my tit.