Anyway, until I get too carried away with parenthetical explanations, the point is that she was talking about two guys who've had sex with the same girl, or two girls who've both had the same guy. Kinda funny, as it reminded me of why I stayed home all day yesterday, rather than joining the very threesome of women I'd left the night before. (They were calling from a bar by 1 p.m.! Yah, I'd really like to be 8-9 hours drunk when the utterly baffling questions and topics start flying...)

So one of those girls, who is a lesbian, complains often enough of being out with other lesbians and encountering the awkwardness of being in a group where several people (or all involved) have hooked up at different times. I've tried to tell her that it's not just lesbians, and in consideration of that group I dubiously call "friends", this statement is very true.

Often enough, I will find myself sitting at a table where it just happens to come up that one person at that table has slept with everyone else at the table at some point, or more commonly everyone at the table has had sex with at least 2,3, or 4 of the others present, at different times.

So is my social circle just unusually slutty, or what?

Nah, really, I think that was what I was trying to express to lez friend B. I think it's a normal enough result of any loosely affiliated group of single people, should they all spend enough time together. That is, I suppose, so long as those in that group do not tend to think we should avoid past sex partners like the plague.

So these are the people you're around a great deal of the time, you undoubtedly have some enjoyment of their company else you wouldn't spend so much time with them, you are comfortable and familiar with one another -- really, what is required other than a mutual (if fleeting) attraction, and the opportunity (sp?) to act on it?

Yet in the harsh light of day, it may not take very long for those who've fallen in bed with friends to decide that "friends" really should remain the operative term.

Leaving morality issues aside (I am amoral, for the record, not immoral), I have to wonder if this is really the ideal way to go about things. Would it be simpler if we were all just a tad bit more chaste?

Perhaps, but now that I think on it I was part of such a chaste group at some point when I was younger -- we were all friends, we spent pretty much all our free time with other members of this circle, and though attraction between various members was obvious, no one was shagging anyone else. Well, I'm thinking that situation was tougher, because eventually the sexual tension that could build up when we all hung out could get intense.

I recall noting several times, at some point whatever else is going on the primary activity of the current get together has become flying I-want-to-fuck-you eyes zooming all over the place. Sometimes I wondering if the entire group would suddenly go nonverbal, and collapse into a huge orgy that would make us all feel rather weirded out the next day.

Nah, much better I say to get it out of your systems in smaller interactions, where the immediate repercussions are not quite so all-inclusive. You can't talk to anybody about the impromptu orgy you took part in last night, because anybody you'd talk to about it was there. See the problem?

Eh, it's almost noon on Sunday ... and suddenly, I can sleep in as late as I want tomorrow. I'm tryin real hard, really, to be upset about being unemployed once again. But, the still mostly-useless limb continues to tell me that it's really for the best.