[Apathy's_Child]

So, having started to emerge out the other end of the “She’s gone and she doesn’t want you back, get over it brah” tunnel, I’ve been propositioned by someone else. This is a girl I’ve known for like five years now, who has become one of my best friends in recent years, and who I fucking love.

We always kind of sparked, but we were never single at the same time (I’d been with the same girl since I was 19, right up until a few months ago, and she’s had various boyfriends going on although she’s not currently attached). You know how sometimes you have friends of whatever sex you’re attracted to, but that shit never really enters your mind ‘cause they’re just your bud - then you have those others where you spark enough to know that if you were single at the same time, something would definitely happen? She would fall hard into the latter camp. There was never a single moment when we were attached to others where we would have done anything, despite the many, many nights we’ve spent alone drunk out of our minds. We were with other people, so it wasn’t like that to the point where we would’ve actually done anything. But we both knew, and always joked about the fact, that if we’d met at a different time in our lives uglies would’ve gotten bumped to SHIT.

I’ve been single for a few months now and am feeling a lot less fragile about it, and I know this friend would be interested in taking that it bedways if I made the move. I’m not just being a hubristic asshole – she basically told me, indicating that we could just go on as friends if I wanted, but essentially, she’d be game if I were. And I kind of think I am – she’s awesome and love her – mostly in a like-I-love-my-buds kind of way as a matter of circumstance up until recently, but like I said, even though we knew nothing would happen, there’s always been that extra dimension of “if” that makes me think it might not be a bad idea. But THEN I start wondering if I’m just complicating a friendship I value, for the sake of the itch. Having witnessed friends not work out, I’m wondering if “don’t shit where you eat” would be the best maxim for both of us.

To actually BE a hubristic asshole for a moment, neither of us are exactly short on offers. Which seems to suggest that if we’re awesome as friends, then maybe it’s stupid to complicate that shit for the sake of scratching itches we could both get scratched elsewhere without any drama. Then I think, but, but, she loves comics and awesome music and John Waters and Gasper Noe and the Modernists and most of the things I love, and we get on and we laugh our heads off at each other and we’re completely at ease in each other’s company, both know each other’s faults inside out and still like each other immeasurably. Which in turn, kind of seems like a stupid reason NOT to fuck someone. That kind of relationship takes work, and years, AND compatibility to establish, so it seems kind of dumb to walk away from... pretty much the exact thing you’d be looking for with someone else.

Then I return to the itch, and the cycle starts all over again.