(channeling my inner Carrie Bradshaw)

Picture a typical New England city house. It’s tall and narrow, with shutters on the windows and shingles on the walls, with a little bit of yard in front and a little more out back. The next house is fairly nearby because this is Watertown. It could be Somerville or Brighton or any of the other towns that ring Boston; they all have streets lined with just this house.

Picture that it’s early fall; it’s a little crisp outside, and it’s nighttime, so we’re indoors; the windows are all shut. We’re in the basement, in fact, where there aren’t windows, and it’s just the three of us—me, the guy I want to be my guy, and the guy who’s been his best friend since they both were little kids. It’s just the three of us, and we’re in the basement, in the weight room. They are each lounging in an armchair, whereas I’m sitting on the bench press, because no one else is usually allowed down here so there is no other seat. They’re each sitting in an armchair, because this is where they drink 40s in the winter when it’s too cold to sit on the basketball court, because this is where they lift weights and drink 40s; this is their pad. They love this pad; it’s where they feel most like men. They’ve been sitting here since they were kids; it’s been their man place for all that time.

I am only allowed in here because I have offered to teach them how to smoke pot. This is hilarious because I’ve only done it twice before myself, and it’s hilarious because it took a lot for them to admit that there was something like this they hadn’t done, for them to ask me to bring the pot over and show them how to smoke it. But I am in love with one of them so I do it happily, and I get the chuckles from the high but also from watching them, because these are big boys, ripped with muscles, and they are lounging in armchairs with their athletic-socked-feet resting on some very heavy weights, and they are practicing blowing smoke circles and falling out of their chairs like idiots. I can’t hold it against them because this is what happens the first time you smoke pot; I can’t hold it against them because this is how I think the first time should be, like it was for me, with a good friend there to laugh at you and love it.

But I do get bored at some point, so I go upstairs. I don’t know how long it takes them to follow me, but they do, both of them, and I find myself in the living room, on the sofa, in the dark. The one I love is on one side of me; I am, in fact, resting against his chest. He is stroking my hair, his lips are gently pressing against my cheek, and I am suddenly sober, because we have spent a lot of time almost this close together but not quite. But there is something else taking place now. The other one is here too, on the sofa, in the dark. He is on my other side, and he, to my surprise and not-surprise (because I know all about him, a friend of mine used to date him, and she has told me just how sexy, dirty, kinky he can be), is putting his hands on me. What is startling for me is not that he’s doing this (because I know him, and I know he’s wanted to) but that he and the other one are both making their different kinds of move at the same time, on the same girl, and they are too stoned to know they’re both at it at once!

When I realize what is happening, I find it marvelous, and empowering; I am elated that I am both loved and wanted; I am stoned and think this must be so. But I am a good girl, a practical girl, and so I squirm my way out of there, I make my way to bed. In the morning, when I arrive at the breakfast table in the pajamas of the one I love, the other one glares at me and begins not to speak to me for months.

A conversation I had with friends recently brought this story to mind. It was a funny chat over dinner about the mapping of sex connections among friends. Picture a social networking web, but instead of linking people based on where they went to college or where they’ve worked, it’s by who they’ve slept with. Now my innocent reaction to this was, but do you really know people who’ve slept with each other’s people? And I seemed to be the only one in the room who did not. I’ve spent a day thinking about it, and the closest I come, personally, is the story you just read. I did have one friend who slept with her good friend’s then-boyfriend-now-husband in a hot tub late one night in high school, but I really can’t think of any crossing-overs of friends and beaus or exes in my adult life or my friends’ adult lives.

I’m sure, however, that some of you could tell me I’m wrong about that. I don’t actually need to know the details of other people’s sex lives, so no need to share if so. But as I’d already been pondering a similar question but in relation to things more serious, I asked these friends if their sex web would work just as well for dating—and sure enough, they said yes. In fact, a couple of them said they’d dated the same people as their friends had more than once. I was surprised because they said this didn’t damage any friendships; they said it was cool on all parties’ fronts.

I once learned the hard way that it isn’t always like that. Years ago, I made the seemingly innocent mistake of asking a co-worker for the email address of her ex-boyfriend, and I got virtually slapped in the face. Now mind you I thought I was completely in the clear. These two had not dated since high school; it was almost ten years since they’d had sex. I didn’t think anything of liking the guy; if my friend was still friendly with him so many years later, I figured he was fair game. But she was horrified that I’d asked; and when I brought it up with a mutual friend, she told me to think about it: he was her first time, her first love. You don’t let go of that. So I conceded; she was right. And I certainly didn’t like the guy enough to make my friend feel any worse.

I think something similar happened with the two guys and the pot. The one who was pissed at me in the morning wasn’t upset because I’d rejected him; we all three knew full well who in that pair I wanted to be with. I think he was pissed because he felt like a jackass. It was his best friend he was competing with that night, and I assure you, those are two guys who never would’ve focused on the same woman sober. There’s just a pact among friends, I think, that says you don’t do that.

I was surprised last year to find that not everyone knows about that pact. A guy I briefly went on some dates with later asked out one of my friends, and I was hurt. She did what I thought was the right thing, which was to tell me about it and ask how I felt. I acknowledged that it made me feel crappy, and she immediately let it drop. But I felt bad, knowing she would’ve liked to say yes. So I got in touch with him, and I let him know that I thought she’d only said no because of my feelings, because of that pact. And though we hadn’t dated in any serious way, he got that.

Ironically, a few months later, I reflected on that experience and thought I’d made a mistake. In reality, the two seem great for each other, a much better fit than he and I would be. And that let me realize that, like with everything, there are gradations of the rules on this. Sometimes there is too much history, too much baggage, for it ever to feel good to have a friend cross your dating path. But other times there aren’t open wounds; other times you’re happy to see that person you dated happier with someone else. The tricky thing, I think, is knowing what’s what—knowing when you might be putting a friendship on the line and when you might not.