My plan was perfect. Before school that day, I helped myself to the contents of my mother’s makeup bag. It was all too easy, and I went ALL out. As I confidently strode down the aisle of the morning bus, my backpack clicked and clacked with eyeliners, blush, compacts, and bottles of concealer.

I imagined how it would go down. The teacher would hand out the cards after we dropped them into a red velvet bag. While the teacher was handing out the cards I would duck under the hood of my desk and apply some lipstick and blush. When he got my card, he would look over in my direction, and suddenly see me in all my Jaquelinesque glamour and glory. He would realize he’d been feeling the same way as me all along. In my mind, I’m sure my hair was blowing in the wind and the camera flashes were making my eyes sparkle like a De Beers diamond, or at least like the rhinestones pasted onto that fateful card.

When the cards were all deposited into a standard cardboard box, not a red velvet bag, I should have known my plan was hopeless. Still, I hurried my way back to my desk, raised the lid, opened up my backpack full of glamour and got to work as quickly as my little novice hands could. The feel of the makeup ritual was already in my neural map and I confidently reached for the lipstick as I had seen my mother do a thousand times. Mimicry precedes understanding. Hunched up under the hinged desk lid, I liberally applied the brightest red color I could find.

Needless to say, applying makeup in the tiny space afforded by a grade school desk is not easy, especially if it’s your first time. Also, going unnoticed proved to be a lot more difficult than I had imagined the night before while I was secretly plotting inside the time machine I built with blankets and pillows.

Nervous glances from underneath the desktop revealed my hurried and abortive efforts to my classmates. The giggles were contagious. Elbows shot out from the sides of chairs to my left and right causing a shifting ripple of curiosity that was not quite mean-spirited but soon would be.

The jig was up. Everyone was looking. I was doomed and I knew it. I hurriedly smeared my face onto my sleeve, the inside of my shirt collar and even onto my backpack, trying to erase the evidence. I still remember the rough feel of the coarse fabric scraping my face. By the time Ms. Germisnotti (to this day I don’t remember her real name, that’s just what we called her at recess… it rhymed with her proper last name.) caught wind of the commotion, my embarrassed face was a hot red mess, my Vermeer now a Picasso. I remember the gales of laughter sounding like the laugh track on a sitcom. I remember Ms. Germisnotti’s facial expression only making the laughter more uproarious.

Then something poignant happened that makes me remember the details of this day so well. Out of the corner of my tear stained eyes, I notice that He isn’t laughing. Maybe he did looked a bit amused, but I also saw concern for my embarrassment and what my mind intuited as truthful empathy. Despite the humiliation of the moment, I still felt loved.

After Ms.G took me to the girl’s room and helped me wipe the makeup off my face, she slipped me a Valentines Day card that she had stealthily removed from the cardboard box. It was from him! Underneath the To and From sections were four handwritten words: “I think your(sic) rad”

More than 20 years later, I’m still learning the same lessons about love and life. If your partner loves you, then he loves the real you underneath the mask that you wear. He loves you when everyone is laughing at you and you feel you’re at your most vulnerable point. Your partner will love you not out of pity or obligation or gain but because he thinks your (sic) rad.

Taking your mask off, figuratively AND literally, and feeling loved in all your naturalness is the greatest gift that you can receive on Valentines Day. Free your face from the hype and consumerism and allow yourself to feel loved as nakedly as you are.

That sounds straightforward and fun, but it’s not how most of us approach Valentine’s Day. Perhaps as adults we still don’t know any more about love than we did sitting at our childhood desks exchanging cards and candy hearts. From the 1400 varieties of Hallmark cards available, 145 million Vday cards will be purchased and 85% of those cards will be purchased by women. It seems that the female ideal of romance has not evolved beyond the Hallmark idea of what love is supposed to be.

What about men? I would go as far to say that guys for the most part have no adult frame of reference for what Valentine’s Day is supposed to mean. It still means cartoon cards and candy hearts. It feels awkward, obligatory, and a little childish. Most guys would rather just skip the whole affair. (Go ahead and skewer me in the comments if I’m wrong guys!) They buy chocolates and send roses to our offices, open doors for us and practice their posture at dinner time, dressed up and overly attentive, while we “look our best” and smile a lot, making sure the light catches our shiny diamond earrings.

As an online adult entertainer and virtual companion, I get to hear what men can’t or won’t tell their significant others. Valentine’s Day is especially a revealing time of year. If my online friends are any indication, a lot of men would rather just tell you that they “think your (sic) rad”.

Want a Valentines Day you will never forget?

I guarantee you will not need a lengthy debate to simply stay home, without the makeup and diamonds, just being close to each other. Eat your favorite foods together. Turn off your devices and reject programmed television of any kind. Spend that same time instead renewing your faith in each other. Remember what it was like to first fall in love, and recreate that emotional state however you can. Just this devotional act alone will work wonders for your relationship, but if you really want to take it the next level…

Spend at least three hours together on Valentine’s Day in bed. Without makeup, or even clothes for that matter. Spend it together, NOT sleeping. Kiss and be kissed, explore, learn, and communicate with each other.

Allow your face to be “nude”, and wear nothing but your organic micro expressions.

Exchange pheromones, and healthy soul healing comfort with your faces mere inches apart. You won’t find many guys dumb enough to reject this just-for-one-day-idea, even in the world we live in. Baring it all and leaving pretense and artifice behind, you might just inspire an honest and direct “I think your (sic) rad” moment that will feed your soul for years to come as it did mine.

Put your own words on it, spin it your own unique way… but never the less…DO free your face on Valentine’s Day.

To give credit where it’s due, Free Your Face isn’t an entirely new idea. Mygirlfund has hosted an FYF event annually now for the last three years. To gain an even bigger audience, this year they are teaming up with sssh.com, “a smart and sexy erotic website for women, by women” and they will be taking free your face submissions from the general public. (Side by side, pre and post makeup pictures.) Normally, I don’t directly plug site events like this, but sssh really is great, and I feel this is a budding meme or event movement worth wide exposure.

You will be able to find my mug on the Free Your Face tumblr somewhere, and I hope to see yours there as well! I will link to it here if I can find myself there, in the sea of fresh faces.

For more information on freeyourface, and how you can get involved, visit this Tumblr in the coming days.