Opposite Sex

"Boys and girls can't be friends," I calmly explain to her. "It's not your fault. Actually it has nothing to do with you," I continue.

She darts a glance at me as I see the uncomfortable astonishment wash over her face.

I have this theory, well it's actually a rule. Boys and girls can not be friends. I should qualify the previous statement with the caveat that this friendship cannot exist without sexual tension. As a girl you will read this and think of every guy in your life that maintains the posture of a friend, hoping to expose the flaws in my logic.

There are many reasons that boys and girls are not friends. Chief among them is the fact that guys and girls often don't have much in common. The following example will plainly illustrate these differences. I met a girl, who conveniently lives on 81st in between Neurotic and Ridiculous. Upon meeting her at the bar for drinks and a bite to eat, it becomes painfully obvious that I'm in for hours of tortured misery. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a title claiming, "I brought you something. This book changed my life, but I don't need it anymore." Skinny Bitch was far from Earth-shattering and I did everything I could to stifle my involuntary reaction - laugh. That one gesture, while nice, set the tone for the night. After an hour we had covered the following topics: Skinny Bitch, going to school at F.I.T., and the strained relationship that developed between her father and her. At the brink of insanity, I made up an excuse to leave and walk her back to her apartment. During the walk I was accused of thinking that her Yves Saint Laurent bag was a fake, which is comical because I didn't even know that people cared about things like that, let alone whether this girl would actually own one. All in all the night was awful, but all was not lost as I got sufficiently drunk. In retrospect, this was a gigantic waste of time because when I think about it, I would have been a lot more content sitting on my couch playing Fifa with my roommate.

As a guy I'm concerned with a handful of things, which don't include handbags, fashion, shopping and Jolly Ranchers bathed in Zima. I like spending my time slugging beers, talking about sports, and talking about girls (read, sex).

Now let's talk about the male who you consider to be a friend, who you think has no interest in you sexually. It's true when you hang out you both have fun. He provides the male perspective when you curse my gender. Most important, he has not yet tried to cross the line and cop a feel. Now ask yourself if you've ever been in his company while he's blackout drunk. The answer is probably not, because if he was that inebriated he would have tried to swap spit with you (everyone knows it doesn't really count if he gets denied on account of being belligerent). He is not your friend. He just thinks he can endure months and even years of the title hoping that you'll become weak and eventually cave in to his pithy sexual innuendos.

Granted there are exceptions to every rule, but this one tends to withstand the test of time.