<h3>Buddy List</h3>

“I can’t believe YOU don’t have a Fuck Buddy!”

We were sitting in Starbucks in Union Square, caffinating before hitting the bars in Chelsea. The surprised exclamation was directed at me.

“I dunno,” I shrugged, “I like having sex with new people.”

“But don’t you have any regulars?” asked Justin, one of the friends I was out with that night.

“I guess I have semi-regulars,” I said slowly, thinking out loud. “But it’s more like people I’ll call up after a really long time, and hook up with again … and then not see again for another really long time. There’s nothing regular about it.”

“Having a regular is great,” chinmed in SeattlesBest, a cute friend of Justin’s who was in town for the weekend. “You get to know them, know their bodies, know how to pleasure them more.”

“Yeah, then comes the other problem,” I replied, “They fall in love with me.”

“PFFFFT!” Justin exclaimed, almost spraying his latte. “You’re just THAT good, huh?”

“Damn right.” I smiled.

“That’s why you just have to be straightforward with them up front,” said SeattlesBest. “If you don’t want a relationship, make it clear it’s about sex and nothing else.”

I sipped my coffee, considering all this. “So you all have fuck buddies?”

“Yep.” “Definitely.” “Several.”

I spent the next couple of days thinking a lot about the F.B. concept. Of course the idea was nothing new – everyone’s known about fuck buddies since season two of Sex and the City. But did everyone really have one? What really surprised me was that there were so many people out there willing to BE an F.B. Having one is one thing, but isn’t being a F.B. a title most people would find unappealing… kind of like being “The Other Woman”? Of course I realized – if you have an F. B., then by default you are an F. B.

On Saturday I sat down with a Bloody Mary and my friend Mattitude for brunch at Vynl.

“I have this guy who’s been my fuck buddy for years,” he told me. “He’s a little older, and even though I know it’s stupid, I feel like that’s a reason I can’t date him. Well that, and he told me from the very beginning he didn’t want another relationship. So, we’ve just had a lot of sex.”

“Is he your only one?” I asked.

“No, there’s one or two others.”

I started to think that maybe I really had been missing the boat on this one. Fuck Buddies were the latest trend! How could the whole world, or at least all my friends, have F.B.s, and how could I not have know about it? Had I just never asked, or was everyone keeping their F.B. a big secret? Most of my friends aren’t the secret-keeping types, especially about their sex lives. With one exception, a friend I’ll call TightLips, who has the infuriating quality of refusing to answer any questions about his personal life. By pure coincidence, I found myself at TightLips’s apartment in Astoria that very same night.

“People find it surprising that I don’t have a regular fuck buddy,” I told him.

“YOU don’t have a fuck buddy?” he exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes. “Well,” I replied, “Do YOU?”

TightLips shrugged, averted his eyes, and muttered “I don’t know,” in his infuriating way.

“C’mon!” I shouted. “You don’t have to give me his name, or address, or his Manhunt ID.” He shot me a dirty look. I continued, “Just tell me, cause I know you’re not dating anyone, if you have a regular guy that you’re sleeping with.”

“Wellllllll…” he replied coyly, “There are a few people…”

I was shocked. TightLips had a FEW people?? That was the last straw. The whole world had gone fuck buddy crazy, and I had missed the memo. I decided I needed to rectify the situation, starting immediately. I scanned through the contacts in my cell phone, weighing my options. I landed on the name of a 21-year-old actor I’d met online several weeks before. I paused to consider. We had hooked up twice, and both times the sex had been surprisingly hot. He was a 21-year-old actor, so clearly there was absolutely no potential for a relationship of any kind. And as I thought about it, I recalled that we actually did have a conversation about neither of us looking for a relationship. I typed out a text message.

Hey hottie, what are you up to?

He replied almost immediately. Goin out with friends later, but not for a few hours.

Me: Sounds like enough time for some fun – want to come to my place?

Him: I can be there in 30.

And just like that, my list of fuck buddies had begun.