Pepperoni Love

It’s a little odd to think about pizza as being a uniting element in a relationship.  Me and my boyfriend Evan aren’t exactly the kind of couple you’d see in the movies.  We don’t exchange flowers and chocolates, or take walks along a quiet, mesonoxian beach.  Instead, among other things, we eat pizza.

Pizza has always been one of my favorite foods.  When I was growing up, though, it was in somewhat short supply.  My penny-pinching parents would often scoff at my requests to order pizza for dinner.  The few times when they consented to my wishes, the pizza was a wonderful treat.  I supplemented my pizza cravings with alternatives as often as I could.  I loaded my mom’s shopping cart with pizza bagels and pizza pockets from Meijer’s freezer aisle.  I tried my best to buy lunch when my school cafeteria had pizza on its menu.  I just couldn’t get enough of the stuff.  I never got tired of how the gooey cheese, sweet tomato sauce, and zesty pepperoni flirted in my mouth with every bite.

When I first met Evan the summer before my freshman year of college, I didn’t know that he shared my passion for pizza.  We met at a bonfire at my friend Brian’s house, and the only food we shared that night were hot dogs and s’mores.

The first time Evan and I hung out together, though, our first quasi-date, we made a pizza together.  He had prepared the dough and sauce ahead of time, and when I got to his house he plopped a hunk of moist, white goop on the countertop in front of me and told me to knead it.  I’d never kneaded dough before, and my hands were clumsy as I pushed tentative indents in the dough with my fingertips.  He shook his head and showed me the correct technique, using the heels of his palms to achieve a more even shape.  We switched off a couple times until the dough was sufficiently flattened, and then piled on the sauce, cheese, and pepperoni.

The pizza was hardly circular, and my inexperienced kneading led to an inconsistent thickness in the crust.  Still, when we put it in the oven, my mouth was already beginning to water.  The pizza’s aroma filled the house a few short minutes into cooking, and it was damn near torture to endure the waiting.  My stomach growled loudly, voicing its impatience.

When the pizza was finally ready to eat, I eagerly grabbed a plate and cut myself a large slice.  Evan, on the other hand, hung back.  Wasn’t he going to have any? I asked him.  He just shook his head and said he wasn’t hungry.  Then why on Earth did we make pizza if he wasn’t planning on eating it? I asked.  He smiled and gave a small shrug.

“I like watching people eat,” he’d told me.  When I asked him why, he shrugged again and said, “Food makes people happy.  I like seeing that.”  I smiled and took a bite of pizza, looking down slightly to hide my blush.  Evan only ate a small piece of the pizza, but he said he enjoyed it even more because of that.

This was the first of many pizzas that Evan and I have shared.  A few weeks later, he explained to me his family tradition of “Pizza Day.”  It was a simple enough concept; every Friday night, his family would order pizza for dinner.  They never had the same pizza twice; every week it was different toppings, different crusts, different restaurants.  To me, this sounded magical.

And so, pizza became a link between us, a shared love which served as a foundation for our budding relationship.  Every once in a while, I’d come over to his house on a Friday night and he’d give me a piece of cold pizza from the nearly-empty box that sat out on the counter.  We’d listen to “Pizza Day” by the Aquabats as we ate the pizza together.  I’d joke that they wrote the song just for him.  Other times, we’d split the cost of a Hot N’ Ready from Little Caesars and eat it together, no matter what day of the week it was.

During Christmas break of my sophomore year, Evan and I made another pizza.  This time, he let me do all of the fun parts.  I helped him make the dough from scratch, and got to watch it rise before my eyes in the saran-wrap-covered tupperware that we placed it in at the back of his counter.

The tomato sauce was my favorite thing to make.  Evan had bought a large can of Hunt’s skinned, whole tomatoes and dumped them all into a bowl.  It was my job to do the preliminary processing; I got to crush them into a pulp with my bare hands.  Each tomato burst with a satisfying squishing sound as I squeezed them between my fingers.  Pulp, juice, and seeds squirted out of each little ball, as if their insides were eager to become sauce.  Evan laughed at me for finding such glee in this simple task, but I didn’t care.  It was one of the most enjoyable cooking experiences I’ve ever had.

Standing in Evan’s kitchen and watching him knead pizza dough once again, I found myself becoming lost in memories.  I thought back to the last time we’d made pizza together, more than a year previously.  The difference in mood between the two experiences was striking.  So much had changed in the time between, and yet somehow so much was the same, as well.

We were no longer the giggly 17 year olds we were when we met.  We had more than a year of long-distance relationship experience under our belts, and a sense of closeness and familiarity which seemed almost as palpable as the dough.  We were seasoned now, spiced with basil and oregano like the tomato sauce that was simmering on the stove, and more solidly grounded in our relationship.  Evan’s three cats were still weaving their way through our legs as we cooked, but I looked at them now as old friends, practically my own pets.  His parents and brothers, too, were no longer strangers to me.

It’s hard not to be mindful of changes as I look back on our relationship, but I know that some things will always be constant.  The toppings, crusts, and seasonings of our relationship may change, but, like Pizza Day, we’ll always have a strong foundation to fall back on.