When a girl who’s a friend (not go be confused with a girlfriend) needs to spend the night at my apartment, I am always obliged to let her stay. I’m even so kind as to offer up my bed…well, with me in it of course. Hey, it’s better than being banished to the living room couch that’s in a dark, dingy corner that feels like a cell no matter what time of day you stumble in. I figure it’s a fair trade.

I shouldn’t have to list all of the implicit rules that are tucked away inside the Bediquette 101 handbook to my friends. These rules are unspoken for two reasons: I’m far too awkward to say them and they’re far too awkward to be said aloud. I’m not about to tell my friend to get her grimy feet off of my calves as she carves away her initials on my skin with her dagger-like toenails. She should know better than that.

We first learned these rules from our grade school sleepovers and we all know them to this day. But recently, it’s getting clearer that my group of friends has simply forgotten or has chosen to ignore them altogether. All right, as a disclaimer, the straight man in me is not complaining. It’s my straight-man-with-personal-space-issues who is upset.

For example, spending the night at my friend’s apartment (let’s call her Sally), was commonplace and we would often push her and her roommate’s beds together to give us more room for while we slept. It was a good idea in theory, but not in practice. My own crack, practically wedged, was often stuck in the large crack between the beds with blankets that barely reaching my knees. I would wake up freezing and unable to move the next day because my back hurt so badly (not to mention the times when my legs would outright refuse to move to get back at me for drinking too much vodka the night before…but I digress). This was all in the name of ‘friendship,’ they used to tell me.

One night, while I was lying there with one of my arms extended over my head, “Sally” proceeded to pluck out each and every one of my armpit hairs, awakening me from dead sleep. If you’ve never experienced that horror, I can tell you I’d prefer to get bamboo shoots shoved up my fingernails.

Please turn to page 37 of Bediquette 101 and look under “No plucking, ripping, or waxing hairy areas (especially those that are ordinarily not shaven or groomed) while your bed-mate attempts to sleep.”

“You have a lot of armpit hair, you know? My ex-boyfriend only had a little bit,” she told me as we were lying down.
Refer to page 69 of your trusty manual and look under “Off Limits: Comparing specific body parts of ex-partners while in bed with your friend of the opposite sex. Writer’s Note: It’s unfair and uncalled for.”

Well, Sally, there are a lot of things wrong with this statement. First and most important, why are you even looking at my armpit hair? And who cares if I have a lot? My pits don’t smell and that should be all that matters. Secondly, I am not your boyfriend and therefore you have no business even touching me in a place where I put deodorant, let alone amputating my armpit hair. In fact, I wouldn’t even want my own girlfriend touching me there. Against all logic and common sense though, I soon began to date her after a drunken night of Scrabble. Under those circumstances, you could only imagine how healthy the relationship was.

More recently, I wound up in bed with yet another friend who had the amazing ability to projectile vomit. Rather than sleeping on the outer side of the bed, she chose to sleep against the wall, pushing me off the bed each time. She would then leap, with her legs flailing, from the bed, to sprint to the bathroom. While I know she was sick, why not be decent and avoid taking away my ability to procreate by kneeing me in the crotch every ten minutes with involuntary alcohol palpitations? Or how about let me get my beauty rest instead of waking me up intermittently to be as miserable as she was?

Glance over page 83 in Bediquette 101 and read carefully the rule about bed positioning when you plan to awake before your friend, or say, puke all over the place.

Have I learned my lesson though? The answer, in short, is an absolute ‘no.’ I will continue to deal with the kneeing in my Charlie Browns, borderline molestation, invasion of personal space and annoying chirping alarms. Unlike my old friends, who I know now didn’t do anything for the sake of ‘friendship,’ I really do have friendship at heart. It can be a scary world out there for women, especially when they’re wasted and walking through Alphabet City at four in the morning with a bunch of skeezy old men who are looking for some. So, I give my girl friends ultimatums: get in a cab and go home or if they’re too broke or cheap, hop in bed with me. If they’d only just lie there…

Photo: flickr courtesy of Joe Shlabotnik.