I am thinking about a scene in the last episode of The White Lotus.
As a whole, the season was just okay, but it was Laurie’s speech on the last evening at the hotel, to Jaclyn and Kate—the two other thirds of what Mike White calls “the blonde blob”—that made it worth it.
‘As you get older,’ she says, ‘you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices. And when I’m with you guys, it’s just so transparent what my choices were, and my mistakes.’
She goes on to list her loss of belief in work, in romantic love, in motherhood, and her inability to be saved by them. And then she says: ‘But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or god to give my life meaning. Because time gives it meaning.’
She looks at her two friends around the table.
‘We started this life together. We’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful. And I can’t explain it, but even when we’re sitting around the pool talking about whatever inane shit, it still feels very fucking deep.’
I love the quiver in her voice as she says this, the fervour that feels so feminine and so ripe for misogynistic proselytising against. I love the expression on Jaclyn’s face, which I am finding hard to describe even as I rewatch the video I took on my phone on my third rewatch of this scene. She is moved, and brimming, and half-smiling, half-trembling, on the verge of tears. I love the quake in Kate’s voice as she says, meaning it for the first real time, maybe, on this trip: ‘I love you.’ I love it all. To be a girl is to always be a girl.
‘I’m glad you have a beautiful face,’ Laurie says to Jaclyn. She turns to Kate. ‘And I’m glad you have a beautiful life. And I’m just happy to be at the table.’
Sometimes I think that all I have ever consistently been in my life is a friend. There are months that pass by when, like Louise Glück writes, I have written nothing: ‘Not written badly, written nothing.’ God knows I have only fleetingly—in shards and glimpses—been a partner, or even a lover. In the mists of distance, some days turn into weeks before I consciously inhabit my role as a daughter, and, during prolonged silences in the sibling group chat, a sister. (No one can make you feel as desperate as your younger siblings unrepentantly ignoring your textual bids for connection.)
And still, there are no days that I have lived, in memory, where I have not found solace in the knowledge—the living, ritualistic practice—that I am a friend to someone I love.
A friend is not perfect. A friend forgets birthdays and leaves messages unanswered for the whole lifetimes of some small creatures. A friend is moody sometimes, and spiky, and perhaps at her worst but not rarest, a little jealous. A good friend tells you not what you want to hear, but what you need to. She won’t mince words or hold back her opinion, but she will support your rights and your wrongs.
Plato thought the most beautiful relationships we could have were platonic. I once sent this information, misguidedly, in a text to an ex I was trying to be friends with, saying that I hoped we might reach this point in our relationship. (We didn’t.)
I don’t think anyone can convince me that real friendship isn’t sometimes work. As I’ve grown older, the number of people I can number among my close friends has dwindled steadily, to my irrepressible joy. I’ve become more discerning about who I lend my ears and my time to, more conscious of who actually wants a reciprocal connection, and who just wants someone to talk—not to, not with, but at. I don’t call that friendship anymore.
‘When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.’
I know we’re not really supposed to quote Hemingway anymore, but I like these lines from A Moveable Feast a lot.
They make me think of old episodes of Sex and the City, where the four of them are all sitting eating breakfast together, wearing Pucci boots and designer jewellery in some quintessentially beaten down New York bodega. This is very much one woman’s opinion—and one who doesn’t even watch that much TV, at that—but no other show quite captures the realness of what it’s like to have lunch with your friends. What crops up during these moments of breaking bread together.
On rambunctious, delightful holidays with Tara, eating croissants out of paper bags in windowless Airbnbs. Over glasses of orange wine with Iza in downtown KL. While drinking kombucha with Aik Ern on perilous road trips and life-threatening hikes; transfigured, when we’re in different cities, into long afternoons on the phone.
Weeks of silence and then a four-hour long call over dinner with Lisa, or breakfast with Ruhisha. The same thing but in person with Denise and Atikah, when I can catch them. Friends I don’t see for years, like Kristina, Sherlene, or Lulu, but when we meet again at a table somewhere, it feels exactly like it did seven years ago.
Sitting down to supper with Katie and leaving hours later, after tears and giggles in alternating succession. The fact that Karry, who voice-notes me during her lunch break, is always the first person I call after a breakup, whether we’re in the same timezone or not. Milky tea with Emily, whether it’s in Bali or Margate; coffee with my other Emily, on my couch in London or hers in Berlin.
My mother always laughs about how I am always eating or cooking when I call her, because of the time difference. I have my Eat Tokyo rituals with Michelle, and long drives with Gen, who always insists on picking me up for brunch or dinner, no matter how out of the way it is—her love language. Noodles with Jivinyaa, Sally, Zhen Ting, Arief, Kirjane and Jazreen, at the same place we’d go for lunch when we all worked together. Plum wine with Inez. Tennis and couscous with Luke. Cocktails with Sofea.
Delirious lunar new year celebrations with Stefan and Svava over tofu stew; wine-soaked parties at Anna’s with Iris and, in spirit, Lauryn; full moon tarot nights with Jann and Jayme over olives and Krispy Kremes. Elaborate dinners at Nurin’s with Vicky and Jordan. Meeting Charles for lunch near his office, when he’s distracted but it doesn’t matter, because how wonderful is it that we can meet for lunch on a weekday, and see each other later for a play or a homemade dinner, and then a night of doing absolutely nothing?
One of my favourite moments in my life was a few years ago, sitting around the breakfast table with my parents. I was living at home for the first time in eight years, and—for the first time since I was a two and a half—I was the only child in the house. (‘Wow guys,’ I said, my arms thrown around my parents’ less-than-thrilled shoulders as we waved goodbye to my siblings. ‘It’s just like old times.’)
My mother was saying playfully to my dad: ‘Do you love your daughter?’ In a rare moment of sweetness, he chose to answer seriously. ‘I do. And what’s more, I like her as a person.’
In my best moments with people, this, I think, is the relation we are having. Friendship. With my parents, my siblings, with strangers who entrust me to watch their possessions when they go to the bathroom at cafes or libraries, people I have lived with, my teachers, my boyfriend. A recognition and mutual appreciation of each other in our person-ness, our flawed, exuberant humanity.
I’m glad you have a beautiful face, I want to say to the people I have grown up with, have sometimes hated, sometimes idolised, sometimes despaired of, but always loved, in all the messiness and ungenerosity that sometimes trails devotion. I’m glad you have a beautiful life. And I’m just happy to be at the table.