When D Met Her Match

Can men and women ever just be friends? I say yes. So imagine my unease last week when a recently-acquired, platonic male friend revealed his decidedly non-platonic feelings for me.

"But... you can't possibly feel that way; we're just friends, for God's sake," I stammered, with my usual poise and subtlety.

"Men and women are never just friends," he shrugged, emphatically. "Men will always have an ulterior motive. They're saving their female friends for future or emergency sex."

I reeled, horrified. At least 5 of my bestest friends are male. Surely they can't be saving me for a future desperate date, when their hair has fallen out and all the supermodels have been married off? And what about J? Yes, people have oft' mistaken us for a couple, but they're silly people, with smug, married, suburban lives, who simply don't know any different. And besides, it is precisely because J is a platonic friend that there could never be anything more between us. Considering that he knows every last sordid detail of my life (and some of it is very sordid indeed), it's a wonder he is still my friend, let alone anything else. Although - and he may not remember this - I did once make him promise to marry me if no one else would and I ever got lonely...

"Haven't you noticed," Platonic Male Friend continued, "how fat girls never have any male friends?"

I consider this, feigning outrage while desperately searching back in my mind to when I was 5 dress sizes bigger than I am now, trying to remember if I had any male friends (and, oh, dammit, I don't think I did).

"You're wrong," I said, simply.

"D," he said, seriously. "Have you ever met or been on a date with a man who didn't want to sleep with you?" I stared at him. "I can predict with some confidence that you have not. Men are wired as such. It's innate."

The faces of my male friends flash briefly through my mind. All entirely platonic; a few boundary issues at some point here and there, but so what? All relationships - even platonic ones 0 are based on a degree of some kind of attraction. I once snogged my (female) friend, P, in the Oxo Tower (much to the delight of the clientele of Investment Wankers), and another female friend, S, on the rooftop bar of Lizard Lounge in Las Vegas. So what? It doesn't make me a lesbian any more than it makes me want to be nothing other than just friends with my platonic male friends.

You know what, though? Suddenly the Platonic Male Friend who revealed his true feelings for me is looking a whole lot more attractive...