Flowers, Manners and Cigars

I had to run out today to pick up flowers for some friends of my parents who are celebrating their anniversary this evening. And, of course, I had the experience of walking home with flowers in my hand which, of course, gathers curious looks from everyone who passes by-- and not just looks, but 'knowing looks,' 'speculative looks,' and 'aw, isn't that sweet looks.' How humiliating. Anyway, as I'm walking home, flowers in hand like some young lover with machinations for the evening, it occurred to me how long it had been since I had bought flowers for anyone, and it took me some time to think of when it was, probably seven years ago. Yes, it seems everything happened 'a long time ago.'

Strange isn't it, though, that at least in North America we associate flowers with either love or death, with romances or funerals. Stranger still, these days to give flowers during a romance is a faux pas, a kind of grandiose overstatement that supposedly identifies the giving party as taking things entirely too seriously, or, at least, too naively. That's too bad, really. I truly wish we lived in a society that was less jaded, less given to exaggerated interpretation; after all, we think nothing of bringing a bottle of wine when we are invited to dinner by someone, and yet to give flowers is not seen in a similar perspective. I dunno. Especially as a male in this ever-so-jaded society, it's harder and harder to know what to do and what not to do, what's right and what's not; every gesture, even simple, apparently innocuous ones, can be perverted from their intention in one way or another. Years ago, on campus, I saw a young woman coming up just behind me as I was about to enter a building. I waited the extra two seconds, and held the door open for her. She responded by stopping and slapping me in the face and saying, "What, do you think I can't open a door for myself?" I stood there, half agog, half resisting the temptation to the slam the door in her miserable face; but it speaks to the extent to which try to read whatever we want into common everyday gestures, and how we try to typify people according to our own expectations, and at the cost of undermining the basic codes and principles of a civilised and well-mannered society. And, to be totally honest, I find myself feeling very anachronistic a lot of the time.

We live, sadly, in a society that more often than not simply has to find a cynical way of looking at things. And as much as I embrace cynicism in other ways, such outright cynicism is debilitating. After all, as Freud reminds us, even if we take him as being defensive in his original context, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a bouquet is indeed just a fucking bouquet.