Joe Valentine

This post was originally published on February 13, 2003.

I’m just your average Joe. I read the New York Post. Love Kraft Dinner. And I haven’t missed a single episode of Joe Millionaire, the hottest reality show of the year.

Joe is a studly construction worker who earns $19,000 a year, masquerading as a guy who just inherited $50 million. The Fox network has flown 20 bimbettes to a French chateau they have been told he owns to compete for the chance to become Mrs. Joe and share in his supposed fortune.

Each week Joe takes three or four bimbettes on a “date” to places like Paris, Corsica and the Riviera and, at the end of each episode, has his butler show those who have somehow displeased him the door, leaving those who remain to fight like alley cats for his attention and affection. Joe’s avowed goal is to narrow the field to the one who loves him not for his money but for what he really is – a guy who can’t afford a comb – and to ask her to become his bride.

The show is a mega-hit. Women love it because Joe is handsome and virile. Men love it because Joe is living every man’s fantasy – sleeping with beautiful but dumb women who are throwing themselves at him. (Hint to bimbettes: Any guy rich enough to own a chateau doesn’t call it a chateau. Hey babe, let’s go back to the chateau and jump in the hot tub. He calls it a house.)

Without having to spend a penny of his own money, Joe and his bimbettes are flying around in private jets, enjoying thousand-dollar dinners and shacking up in swanky hotels, after which Joe gets to tell those who didn’t do exactly what he wanted them to do to take a hike.

As I write this Joe is down to two bimbettes. Inexplicably, he has kept Zora, a substitute teacher who has the personality of a trout and bikini insecurity. His other finalist is Sarah, a gorgeous blonde who looks like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. There’s more to Sarah than meets the eye. The Post revealed she has appeared in fetish films.

How can Joe find out if they love him not for his money but for himself?

Take a tip from me, Joe. Spend tomorrow with them the same way I’m going to spend it with my wife. It’s a ritual we’ve repeated six or seven times but never on Valentine’s Day.

Our celebration will officially start at 6 p.m. tonight when, in lieu of Hershey’s Kisses, I’ll start popping Dulcolax laxative tablets every two hours until 2 a.m. I’ll wash them down with Citroma, which bills itself as “the sparkling laxative,” pretending it’s Champagne.

I’ll spend most of the night in the bathroom moaning. In the morning my wife will find me in the fetal position on the family room sofa.

And at noon she will drive me to the hospital for my colonoscopy, a procedure I need annually because of a family history of unpleasantness in that particular netherworld.

She will sit patiently in the waiting room until I wake up from the anesthesia, by which time the doctor will have shared with her glossy photos of any polyps he found and removed. At that point I’ll be passing approximately as much gas as Kuwait.

She will then drive me home with the car windows down as I continue to fire away … put me to bed … sequester herself across the house as far away as possible from our bedroom … and watch TV as Clyde, our dachshund, snores at her feet.

Now I know this may sound a bit extreme, Joe. But the way I see it, it’s easy for a woman to fly with a guy to the south of France in a private jet, eat truffles, drink Champagne and snuggle all night under a down comforter in a luxury suite overlooking the sea. But that’s not necessarily love.

Love is watching TV on the most romantic night of the year with only a dachshund to keep you company because your husband scheduled a revolting medical procedure without even considering that February 14 is Valentine’s Day.

If Zora or Sarah can do that for you without complaining, congratulations – you’ve got yourself a keeper.

And if not?

At least you'll know if you have polyps.