V-Day has passed, and the smell of dying roses and melting chocolate lingers in the air.

Romance came and went like an episode of “Tom Green,” and chances are, you missed an opportunity to engage in what I recently crowned the perfect date.

On the way to see “Rent” in Des Moines last week, my girlfriend asked, “Would you be going to see this if you weren’t dating me?”

Not one to be out-cultured, I responded, “Of course … if the tickets were free.”

I’ll admit, I’ve never been much of a musical fan. I enjoy live music, and I enjoy live theater. I just don’t enjoy them together.

My resentment toward musicals probably has something to do with my first high school theater experience in which I played one-line Joe in “Oklahoma.”

Two and a half months of singing the same damn song over and over may not have been so bad if I wouldn’t have been stuck next to a dyslexic kid who could never quite get the “O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A” section right.

I’m also a realist, who traditionally don’t enjoy musicals. I think it has something to do with perpetually wondering why a tough guy in a leather jacket is singing, “I wonder what she’s doing now?”

But “Rent” is different.

“Rent” is a musical for women and men.

Actually, I prefer calling it a “rock opera.” It just sounds more artsy.

And believe me, the music in “Rent” is rock. There’s even a complete band set up on stage — the first clue I was going to be entertained.

“Rent” is the “La Boheme” for the MTV generation, which is fitting because watching it is like watching “The Real World,” only there are seven Pucks and, of course, they’re singing.

All of the characters in “Rent” are young and rebellious, which makes them extremely likable.

And men: have no fear of sexual tension because of the four leading women, two are lesbians, one is an HIV-positive junkie and the other is a man.

You will fall in love with them but not in the same way you do with Gwenyth Paltrow in the surprisingly revealing “unwrapping” scene in “Shakespeare In Love.”

Women will dig all of the characters, especially Mimi and Joanne, who have that cute girl power thing goin’ on.

My date took a liking to Maureen, a sexy performance artist and incorrigible flirt who left her aspiring filmmaker boyfriend Mark for Joanne.

Granted, I was a bit troubled by this at first until she explained it was Maureen’s humor that was appealing.

Which brings me to yet another reason why “Rent” is the perfect date.

It collides so many emotions that you go from laughing one minute to crying the next.

By the way, did you know there are five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes in a year?

You see, “Rent” is even educational.

Actually, I did learn a lot of things from “Rent,” things you can’t learn about AIDS from a lecture or pamphlet.

I learned how the HIV-positive deal with everyday adventures like work and dating.

I learned how friendships are more powerful than money and technology.

And most importantly, I learned that women love musicals and the men who take them.

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Corey Moss is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.