My boyfriend Evan and I are not the kind of couple you’d see in the movies. Our eyes didn’t first meet across a crowded room. He doesn’t shower me with flowers and chocolates, nor do we spend our dates walking along a quiet beach at midnight. Instead, our relationship is relaxed and comfortable. We try to keep things fresh and fun rather than prescribed and perfunctory. We usually spend our time together playing video games or hanging out with mutual friends. We also play a lot of ping-pong and are trying to learn sign language together. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy things that we do together, though, is eat pizza.
It may be a little odd to have pizza be a uniting element in a relationship, but somehow it never bothered me. 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 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 foods we shared that night were hot dogs and s’mores.
The first time Evan and I hung out together, though, on our first quasi-date, we made a pizza. 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 far from 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.” And of course, he added, he knew it would be fun. I smiled and took a bite of the pizza, looking down slightly to hide my blush. I was suddenly self-conscious, nervous that he was watching me eat and very embarrassed about how I looked. I thought if he was going to be that way I might as well give him a show; I smiled as much as I could, hoping that he’d be able to see how happy I was. I don’t remember how the pizza tasted, but looking back that was hardly the most important part of that day.
This pizza was the first of many that Evan and I have since shared. A few weeks later, he explained to me his family’s tradition of “Pizza Day,” which 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, and different restaurants. As simple as it was, to me it was nothing but magic.
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 the song “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 told me 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 couldn’t help myself. It was just downright fun.
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 the sense of closeness and familiarity between us was almost as palpable as the pizza dough. We were seasoned now, spiced with basil and oregano like the tomato sauce that was simmering on the stove. Evan’s three cats were still weaving their way through our legs as we cooked, but I looked at them now as old friends. His parents and brothers, too, were no longer strangers to me.
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