Last night I was hanging out with one of my close female friends. She’s a metal-worker who swears like a sailor and is covered in tattoos. On top of that, she gets along with me, which means that she’s cynical, bitter and sarcastic. So we were sitting at her house and she was messing with me and generally calling me a loser in that way that friends do, when the phone rang: her boyfriend.
Instantly there was a full-body transformation. Her back arched and her chin suddenly became locked to her shoulder. The hand that wasn’t holding the phone found a strand of hair that, judging from the intensity of the twirling, was close to being spun into gold. And then there was her voice. At first I thought that she wasn’t speaking at all. Then I realized that words were coming at a pitch reserved for dog-whistles and bat-sonar.
It’s moments like this that I enjoy messing with women—not out of cruelty, but out of the amusement I get of watching them switch from “girlfriend mode” to “friend mode” and back again, instantaneously.
Girls get the same way around babies and puppies. I don’t really have any point to this observation—I just think the whole process is adorable beyond words.
The most difficult part of maintaining a friendship with an ex is that change. It can be hard to go from being the one who made her voice switch octaves and her fingers find her hair, ear, or the rim of her glass, to just being another guy. It can be done, but it’s hard not to take it as a shot to your ego.
I think I’ve done a good job at maintaining these relationships in the past. There are a number of exes I still speak to. How else would I have been able to get my sex-references?
Still, it’s like changing from the sun of someone’s universe to just another star. It can be done, but you have to understand that 1) it’s for the best and 2) every star in the center of someone’s universe.
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