The gays aren't allowed to sell the blood any more. Total cootie-phobia.
Many lifetimes ago, I quit a job at which I had suffered beneath a piddly middle manager who was a rageaholic sick in his own disease. My then-honey ended up footing my share of the bills after the unemployment checks ran out. When the holidays rolled around, I had almost no money to speak of. I sold some books to a used bookstore, and many musical recordings (I shall not reveal the format so that this tender tale may seem timeless) and with that money I bought a blank book with a red velvet cover and two fountain pens, one red and one black ink.
On the top of each page I inscribed in red ink with my most beautiful possible penmanship a series of inspirational verses, quotes and epigrams, leaving plenty of room for my then-honey to write down his own thoughts and dreams, giving him the black ink fountain pen for just that.
That holiday, he opened his only present, and as he leafed through the book, his eyes welled up with tears and spilled all over the handmade wrapping paper and even the red velvet of the book cover. He expressed that no gift had ever touched him so deeply or moved him so much.
Overall, it didn't cost very much money, but it was a bit of an investment of time, doing my best to make each page just so, and with no errors or ink splotches. But the time it took to create such a personal present was well worth it.
By the next holiday, that honey of mine had left me. As is usually the case, the stress of having to help a spousal equivalent through such a long fallow period, proved to be our undoing. There are limits, even to such soulful generosity, and, I found, that once somebody crosses it, there is no going back.
I often wonder what the black ink says in the red velvet book that helped create our last whimiscal holiday together.
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