Laura and I were at a party on the Canal Saint-Martin , in Paris, that had slipped into the hours between midnight and the restart of the metro, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a scene that made me move. Three random men had clustered around her, offering visibly unwanted attention; one reacted violently to her rejection by grabbing her by the throat, throwing her to the ground and staying on top of her.
I barely felt the punch to my face that one of the other two landed after I had barrelled into the third and pushed him off her. I only noticed the blood cascading down my chin after the three fled from a passing police car. The next day, we joked about how ridiculous I looked with three stitches in my lip. We met in , as two young Americans in Strasbourg who had been invited to a Thanksgiving dinner. She read the first drafts of things I was writing and kept me company from a distance the year that I spent living and working in southern Chad.
If I was going to be dramatic, it might as well be in a dramatic setting. A ristotle saw friends as mirrors for each other, shared souls dwelling in two bodies, and Epicurus wrote that true friendship is a blessing unlike any other in life.
What is the combined weight of all the literature and lyrics, performance and paint, melody and monument, devoted to romantic relationships?
How much, in comparison, to friendship? A romantic link is, at its best, full of beauty and depth. But from millennial nostalgia for living with friends at college to boomers retiring together β and perhaps fuelled by the experience of Covid lockdowns β there is an increasing focus on treating our friendships with care.
