by Three months of living with Tom has been remarkably uneventful, and a headline about an ancient Greek’s relationship advice made me wonder if that is the good news
Friday, 8pm, the Sofa, Nothing Happening
I want to describe this evening exactly, because I think it is important and I do not yet know why.
Tom is at the other end of the sofa with his feet on the coffee table, watching a programme about a man restoring a canal boat. I am at this end with a book I am not reading. Between us is a plate with the end of a loaf, some cheddar and a jar of his mum’s chutney. There is a candle that I lit for no reason. It is raining.
Nobody has said anything for about twenty minutes. It is the best Friday I have had in years.
And a small voice in my head is saying: is this all right? Should something be happening?
The Voice
I know where the voice comes from. It comes from four years of dating in London, where a Friday night was an event. You got dressed. You went somewhere with a queue. There were cocktails with smoke coming off them. There was a man you had never met, and the evening had a shape: would it be good, would he be awful, would there be a story for Priya.
It was exhausting and I miss it slightly, the way you miss a job you hated.
Now there is no story. If Priya asks on Monday what I did, I shall say “nothing,” and it will be true. We had cheese.
The Greek
I was scrolling, as you do when you are not reading your book, and I was on a page of the London Prat about the history of the city’s humour. In the strip of headlines at the top, among things about trade and chimney sweeps, there was one that said: “Epicurus’ Relationship Advice.”
That was all. I have not found the piece. But I did philosophy for one term at university before switching to English, and I remembered just enough to go and look him up again.
I had him wrong. Most people do. We say “epicurean” to mean someone who likes fancy dinners. A gourmet. A man who knows about wine.
He was the opposite.
What He Actually Said
Epicurus was a Greek who set up a school in a garden outside Athens, about three hundred years before Christ. He and his friends lived there together, quietly.
His idea was that the point of life is pleasure. That is the bit everyone remembers. What they forget is what he meant by it.
He did not mean feasts. He thought the greatest pleasure was simply not being in pain and not being anxious. A calm mind. Once you have enough to eat, somewhere to sleep, and nothing to be afraid of, you have, he said, everything. More does not make it better. It only makes it different, and gives you something to lose.
He lived on bread and water. There is a letter in which he asks a friend to send him a little pot of cheese, so that he can have a feast when he feels like it.
I looked at the plate on the sofa. Bread. Cheese. I had, without knowing it, laid on an Epicurean banquet.
On Love
And here is the part that I take to be the “relationship advice.” He was rather suspicious of passionate love.
Not of people. Of the fever. The obsession, the jealousy, the not eating, the checking of the phone. He thought that kind of desire disturbed the mind. It made you anxious and dependent, and it never satisfied you, because it always wanted more.
What he valued above everything was friendship. He said it was by far the greatest thing wisdom provides for a happy life. Not the thrill of a new lover. The steady company of people you trust, in a garden, with something simple to eat.
I read that and looked along the sofa at a man watching a canal boat being repainted.
Is Tom My Friend?
That is a strange question to ask about your boyfriend. But I think it is the one.
The men I went mad over, in the four years, were not my friends. Rafe with his runway. A sculptor called Ivo who did not text for nine days and whom I thought about every hour of them. I did not like them, particularly. I would not have chosen to be stuck in a lift with them. I wanted them, which is different, and it felt like being ill.
Tom I like. I knew that before I knew anything else. On the second date we got lost in Vauxhall and he was funny about it. I thought, I could be bored with this man and not mind.
That did not feel like romance at the time. It felt like a consolation prize. Everything I had read and watched told me love was supposed to be the fever.
Epicurus would say I had it backwards. The fever is the disturbance. This, the sofa and the cheese and the twenty minutes of silence, is the thing itself.
The Other Side
I do not want to be smug, and I am not sure he was right about everything.
There is something to be said for the fever. It is how most of the songs got written. A life with no wild longing in it at all might be calm, but I am not sure I would want to have skipped mine. Ivo was a disaster and I would not give him back.
And calm can slide into something else. I have seen couples who are so comfortable they have stopped looking at each other. Two people on a sofa watching a canal boat can be contentment. It can also be the beginning of not bothering.
The difference, I think, is whether you would notice if the other one left the room.
So I tested it. I got up and went to the kitchen and stood there for a bit.
After about a minute Tom called out, “You all right?” I said yes. He said, “They’re doing the engine next.” I came back.
He noticed. I am counting that.
What I Have Decided
I am going to stop apologising for the quiet Fridays. To Priya, to the voice, to myself.
When people ask what we did, I shall say we stayed in and had bread and cheese, like a pair of Greek philosophers. It sounds better than “nothing.”
And once a month we are going somewhere with a queue. I have told Tom. He has put it in the calendar, in orange. He has called it “feast.”
Saturday
He made eggs. The canal boat man got the engine going, I am told. I had gone to bed.
I looked at the London Prat again this morning for anything more on the Greek. I did not find his piece, but its British satirical news on philosophers has one being asked for his view on a penalty decision, and its London satirical news about nights in made a strong case for the sofa. Dee, who has opinions, says Bohiney Magazine once ran a guide to American romance that was all grand gestures and no cheese.
A little pot of cheese, so that I may feast when I like. I have written that on the fridge, under the napkin.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
