I've always thought, "Sure, why not?" And as such, I always had lots of female friends. Of course, one point from the movie was true: The sex thing is always out there, and it does sometimes complicate matters in ways that wouldn't come up in heterosexal same-sex friendships. But, so long as you are really friends, I thought you could always work past that.

Well. Fastforward to present. I know lots of women, yes. And I would consider several of them real true friends, and some others at least friends in some manner. BUT. (You see, these days there just has to be one.) Today, none, and I mean not one of these relationships has "the sex thing" relegated to an only occasionally relevant issue. In fact, these days it's usually rather crucial.

Of the women who I'm at least peripherally friendly with: I'm either acutely aware of my attraction to them, their attraction to me, or both, in each and every relationship. Which means, while we may well interact as friends, the probability of it evolving to something else looms quite centrally.

Of the women who are actual close friends? Ha. Well, as it turns out there is not a one of them, at this point, that I have not already had some sort of romantic complication with. Okay, romantic or sexual. Sometimes both.

But what it all boils down to -- at this point in my life, I still know a lot of women -- but at some point, the capacity for completely platonic friendship seems to have diminished, replaced by ... well, I guess a world that is more genuine to a sense of probability.

I mean, it's not as if the close friends who I might have been involved with are somewhat less friends for it -- to the contrary, we probably could not have become as close as we have without the issue being resolved in some sense or another. It does leave a slight grey zone however, because ever after having crossed that line you're never quite sure when it is being or should be crossed again. Like, what was a clear dark line is smoothed out into a fuzzy, wide grey area.

I wouldn't call it particularly bad about the friends/potentential partners, either. The biggest difference there seems to be that in my younger days, I always decided pretty quick whether I could imagine me and a particular person happily satisfied with one another the rest of our lives, and once I thought we couldn't, the remaining female was potentially perfect friend material. Again, I think I'm far more cognizant of possibiilty, today.

Isn't the whole concept of gestalt, or synergy, that something altogether unique is created in the combining? How can you truly know what will result from putting these things together, until you have?

Perhaps these two together do not stimulate one another at all, and just sit together unchanged.

Perhaps these other two, when put together close enough, react so powerfully to one another as for each one's composition to actually change, and for the two to bond together into something altogether new and valuable.

So what's the downside? I can't really just hang out/bullshit on the phone with a female mind. I mean I can, but should the conversation wander into love/sex/dating (only something I think about ... hm, "occasionally"...) then it's no longer a casual friend thing, it's "relationship" stuff.

For instance ... a while back, I'm talking with one of my best friends, who happens to be a lesbian. We're talking about sex, and I joke, "Honestly, I'm really just incredibly easy. I don't think I've really ever turned down anybody, once I knew they really wanted me."

What was a light-hearted conversaton about indulging in slutty behavior suddenly takes a rather serious turn.

"Well... you have to be at least attracted to the other person, right?" she says.

Okay, I'm not always the quickest on the uptake. Seconds later, I would recall that she and I had fooled around at some point. (Yes, sometimes some lesbians do that. And yes, they still are lesbians.) But initially, I attempt to keep the humorous tone going.

"Not really," I say. "Pretty much, if I know they want me, I'm there."

This statement is met with an uncomfortable silence that my ESP-like awareness cued me in to recognizing as hurt feelings. And thereafter, I scramble to clarify that no, honey, I really was kidding about that, it has not been my policy to sleep with any and every nasty grody body that just happened to want mine.

But, seeing as we're "friends", to take it obviously into relationship repair mode seemed inappropriate. The truth is, she's a very attractive girl and I was really quite surprised and happy that she ever let herself stray back into heterosexual foolings-around with me. What I had to end up amending to was:

"I've never turned down somebody I was already attracted to once I knew they wanted me..."

I think she probably thought I was lying, but it's the truth. And this is what I mean about missing female friends. True, the second statement better reflects my actual behavior. But it's a much less funny joke, considering that it only makes sense. Why would you turn down somebody you want who also wants you?