Darkness falls

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• Love hurts: Weren't invited to Black Hearts? Try these other anti-V-Day events.

One year, a live sheep wandered through the crowd. Another, a swarm of insects crawled all over a teddy bear that had been doused in sugar and sealed in a clear plastic ball. And then there was the “Unfulfillerator”: a chamber in which participants were guided through an entire failed relationship in 60 seconds, from meet-cute (“Hi! Oh my God, I love your coat!”) to leave-angry (“We never talk. Why do you hate me?!?”).

Breaking up is hard to do, and no one knows this better than the organizers of the Black Hearts Party. For 17 years, this annual carnival of romantic pessimism—black attire is strictly required, the freakier the better—has offered a sardonic alternative to the commercial frenzy of Valentine’s Day. What began as a cheeky get-together thrown by three friends at Rutgers University has gradually become one of New York’s seminal cult events. 

So when the trio—Marc Leonard, Darryl Jefferson and Ian MacKenzie—announced that this year’s party would be the last, heartbreak was unavoidable. “The reaction was not good,” Leonard admits. “There’s been a lot of complaining.”

The bash was originally conceived as a rebuke to the cupid-faced cupidity of February 14. “Valentine’s Day was this bizarre, oppressive corporate monster that made you feel like a loser for being single,” Leonard recalls. “And if you were in a relationship you didn’t win either, because you were never doing enough.” (The rest of the year, the creators run a website, blackheartsparty.com, which explores the dark side of love.)

Although the BHP has grown steadily in size, it is not promoted for profit, and its attendance list remains controlled. (The location for this Saturday’s finale has not been publicly disclosed.) “We still think of it as a party for our friends, except now we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of friends,” Leonard says. “We only invite people that we think are going to play and be interesting. We don’t want people gawking on the sidelines.”

Despite the event’s antiromantic bent—or perhaps because of it—the BHP has been one of the sexiest scenes in town. Attendees wear stickers indicating their preferences—yellow for boys, red for girls and green for “not picky”—and experimentation is strongly encouraged. “There are gay men making out with straight women, and straight guys making out with each other,” Leonard says. “Everyone just drops all the labels and pretenses for the night.”

Indeed, some of the most popular BHP games stop just short of Shortbus. In “Wheel of Destiny,” partygoers play a very adult version of spin the bottle. “Pornonymity” sets up a photo studio in which participants can unleash their inner porn stars; faceless photos of their X-rated play are then posted on a bulletin board for public enjoyment. (The game once featured a robot with orifices in the mouth and rear.) Among the party’s perennial features is a shrine to the Black Hearts mascot, Dogcoon. “It’s a photo of a raccoon fucking a beagle, and the beagle is loving it,” Leonard explains. “It seems like an unlikely duo, but you know what? Go for it! That is very much the spirit of this party.”

Yet the BHP has changed in subtle ways over the past decade. “When we started, almost all of our friends were single,” Leonard says. “But over the years people began getting married or hooking up, and we didn’t want to exclude them.” Last year was the first in which all three organizers were themselves in relationships at the time of the party; this year, all three are living with their partners.

This evolution, perhaps, has tempered the animosity that once propelled the event. But the organizers point to another culprit: the unexpected success of their message. In an age of commodified cynicism and iron-on irony, it was only a matter of time until the BHP’s attitude was co-opted by consumerism; and sure enough, black is becoming the new pink. “This weird thing has happened: Corporations are putting out their own anti–Valentine’s Day stuff,” Leonard observes, pointing to Budweiser’s National Break-Up Day campaign and to the ubiquitous posters for dumpcupid.com (which sells hair products). “We don’t necessarily want to start an anti–anti–Valentine’s Day movement.”

It is possible, Leonard says, that the Black Hearts Party will reemerge in some other form in the future. For now, however, he and his cohorts are happy to bring an era to an amicable end. “It’s been a 17-year relationship,” he notes. “That’s better than any of us has been in.”