The Aristotelian Fuck-You

“Oh yeah, I did a thing,” I said.

Apologies – anyone who knows me understands that this kind of intentionally vague non-sequitur is pretty often how conversation goes with me.

“What did you do?” asked Ma. We were belting it round the local lake in the will-I, won’t-I drizzle that threatened to decide “Ah sod it!” at any second and drench us, probably causing the ducks a degree of smug satisfaction.

“I did an Arisotelian fuck-you.”

Ma led the way around the corner of the lake, chuckling at the Canada Geese, just because she could.

“Alright,” she said, as mildly as she ever says anything. She knows better than to give me the satisfaction of asking.

You see, the thing is, I’ve sort of got a feud going with Aristotle. I mean technically I win before we start, seeing as how he’s about as dead as a human being can be. And then on the other hand, technically, he wins, because being as dead as a human being can be hasn’t stopped him getting the better of me before now.

A long while ago, while Disappearing the first time, I read some Aristotle. Ethics, from memory. And old Aristotle reckons that goodness, or self-control, is not exhibited by someone who refrains from the pleasures that would otherwise consume them in passions like gluttony or lust. Abstinence, he says, is essentially the coward’s way out. Enjoyment in moderation, says Ari, is the mark of true self-control.

Now, there’s no real doubting the fact that the man had a point. The complete abstinence from pleasure makes you go… a bit weird. Hence my occasional bouts, the first time round, of ungovernable, swallowed-down fury at happy people eating things I couldn’t allow myself to eat. It’s the same principle, probably, that underpins people so repressed as to hate their own sexuality telling other people who they can and can’t legitimately love, or entirely celibate *cough, cough* men in robes and pointy hats lecturing people about love and sex. When the unhappy people turn out to be the very thing they declaim so hard against (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, and a parade of others, kinda looking at you right now), or priests turn out to have been buggering their underage parishioners, it’s massively wrong and hypocritical and monstrous, but what it isn’t is mysterious – complete denial of pleasure doesn’t work – it tries its utmost to find pathways of expression, and when socially legitimate pathways are denied it, it’ll go down any dark side street of the soul it can find.

So fair play to Aristotle, he knew a thing or two about human nature. But the way I Disappear is in direct contradiction of his ideas – it’s positively ascetic, or as d more accurately calls it, ‘bastard stubborn’ – I lock myself in a sort of invisible Perspex box, and all the things I actually want to eat are on the other side of the box. Hence my occasional homicidal rages against the ‘Normal’ people who eat whatever the hell they like come Summertime, through no fault of their own and good genes. Denial of pleasure turns me strange too.

So an Aristotelian fuck-you is what I call the act of self-daring, of eating something that I shouldn’t eat, just to see if I can. And it is, for me, a ridiculously stupid thing to do. After a year of weight loss that saw me go from 20st 7 to 14st 7, it was an Aristotelian fuck-you moment that started me on the pathway back to 20 stone, when I joined d in a fish and chip supper one night – my Perspex box was broken, and all the demons in my head when it came to food were free to kick the living crap out of me.

“I had a scone,” I said.

While we were away, with the bakery at the bottom of our flat and slightly to the left (Sue’s Pantry, Saundersfoot – go there, you’ll die happy), I decided, one day, to have a scone.

A plain scone, mind you, buttered, and with fresh strawberries in it.

“Y’know what?” I said to d at the time. “Aristotle is not the boss of me.”

“No dear, he’s dead,” she said, having had such conversations several times before.

“Y’know something else?” I asked – all this, incidentally, in the line in a bakery – “Food is not the boss of me either. I’m the pigging boss of food.”

“Yes,” said d, actually turning to look at me. “That’s big. Glad you realise that, honey.”

And so, I bought a scone, and ate a scone, and thoroughly enjoyed a scone, and got the hell on with my day, and my week, and my Disappearing.

I hadn’t even thought to mention it till now, because it’s been so insignificant – whereas longer-term readers will know that in my previous Disappearing, I would have been wailing by now and beating one of my prodigious man-breasts and thinking I’d utterly failed, and probably ordering every shake on the Five Guys menu because after all, “woe is me and what’s the bloody point?!”

Notsomuch, this time round. Clearly the Disappearing continued during the holiday, and I’ve continued in my routine – walk, bike, eat sensibly, lose weight(?) – since I’ve come home. Maybe – just maybe, mind you – Aristotle and I are coming to some sort of understanding.

“Oh,” said Ma, still in her levellest of tones.

“That’s nice.”

Turns out she doesn’t think I have an addictive personality. She just thinks I think I should have one. I thought of all the times I’ve lied when she said that. All the times I’ve sneaked out for a sausage and chips, or a packet of chocolate biscuits, or stayed at home and made one of my ‘special trifles’ (for the recipe, see recent entries) in a bid to force-feed myself far beyond the point of actual pleasure, driven not even by wanting them so much as needing them, to feel complete, to feel right, to feel efficiently self-loathing.

Haven’t done that this time round, I should say. You probably know enough by now to know that I’d have told you if I had, by way of reveling in the judgment of it.

 Still, interesting that Ma thinks I’m driven more by what I think I should be that what I feel I am.

And so far, this Aristotelian fuck-you has gone well - no collapsing in a quivering heap of failure and self-loathing. To misquote Katy Perry - I ate a scone and I liked it (I feel a parody coming on...). And on we go – now, to the SudokuBike!