Cymaxpiece Theater Presents: The Real Story of Valentine’s Day

On February 13, 269 AD, a handsome young man named Valen sat under an apple tree playing his flute. Blessed with the dashing, chiseled good looks of a 21 Jump Street-era Johnny Depp and graced with the one day world renowned charm of George Clooney, young Valen was your classic heartbreaker in a time when poor dental and physical hygiene prevented such people from existing. An admirer of nature and all things lovely, Valen was no stranger to propositions from fathers begging him, offering him gifts and treasures, just to marry their daughters. He was offered goats and farmland and bushels of straw and once a very strange contraption called a 1981 De Lorean DMC-12 by an eccentric scientist with wild hair, but Valen did not accept any of these gifts as he didn’t want to marry any of these ladies. Fine though they all were, he had his deep brown eyes set on Tyne, a fair maiden in the next village.

Though it was accepted and even encouraged for neighboring villagers to marry one another to avoid possible inbreeding, Valen’s father did not want his son to become attached to anyone, for he was, without Valen’s knowledge, arranging for him to marry Sintra, the prosperous mayor’s daughter.

But oh, how Valen pined for Tyne! He watched her as she went to the shared river to fetch water, and spied as she fed hay to the horses. He felt stirrings in his loins he had never experienced before. He must go see her!

After dark, when the townsfolk were sleeping, Valen mounted his horse and galloped fervently toward Tyne’s village, all at slumber. He rode toward her cottage and threw hay at the window. When this failed to awaken her, Valen took out his wood instrument and began to play the most beautiful Kenny G-influenced fluting. Tyne appeared at her window and looked down, entranced by the melodic ecstasy that was Valen’s sweet rhythm. There she saw him, the boy from the neighboring village who caused a stirring in her loins she too had never known before.

She quickly ran outside and found him, down on one knee with flowers he had plucked from the field. He presented them to her and then and there, without uttering a word, Valen and Tyne knew they were destined to be together and would announce it to their families in the morning.

As the sun rose, on February 14^th, Valen approached his father to tell him the good news. But his father had plans of his own. Waiting outside was Sintra, wearing a white dress. Crushed, Valen tried to explain his love for Tyne, but it was too late. Valen was to marry Sintra.

Tyne had told her family about her impending nuptials, and they were thrilled. They dressed her in the finest silk and walked her over to Valen’s village. Much to their horror, Valen was already standing at the altar with Sintra, though his miserable face told Tyne all the dismal details she needed to know.

With that, Tyne marched up to Sintra, and scratched her like a rabid mountain lion. She clawed at her hair and laughed gleefully as bloodied chunks fell from Sintra’s head. Pieces of fabric flew and teeth clattered to the floor like marbles from the hands of a child. With her nose smeared to the left side of her face, and her swollen flesh forcing her bruised eyes closed, Sintra gracefully bowed down, and the proper wedding took place.

From February 14^th 269 AD on, Valen and Tyne were thought of as one. And Valen remained forever afraid of his wife. Especially on their wedding night.

She walked into their new love nest, expecting rose petals and wine, but was greeted with nothing more than a pile of hay and warm ale. “This will never do!” she shrieked and opened her laptop to find a new bed. A poster bed, a metal bed or a sleigh bed . . . what to choose? It was too difficult to google all of these, so the always intelligent Tyne visited Cymax.com and found thousands of selections of all three bed styles. When their new bed was delivered, Valen and Tyne stared at each other, their loins stirring again, only this time they knew why.

Bow-chicka-bow-wow.