A few weekends ago, I went to Las Vegas, where I met up with my friend Cristina, her friend Craig, and some of his poker buddies. I’d tell you what happened in Vegas, but you know the saying about that: No.
Sunday afternoon, following a late check out, I squeezed into the middle seat of a Toyota Forerunner, and just like that, Cristina, Eddie, The Captain, the aptly named Turtle, and I set off through the dusty Nevada/California desert.
“Maybe you girls can help us out with this equation we were working on earlier,” Turtle swiveled his head around to face Cristina and Me. This would have been a really polite conversational thing for a person in the front seat to do, except when that person is the driver…
“Okay…” Cristina and I replied in nervous unison. We fixed our eyes steadily on the road before us, hoping he’d get the hint. He did not.
“So, basically, we’ve determined that time,” head still swiveled, he now took both hands off the steering wheel in order to emphasize each element of the equation. “Time, plus money,” another two-hand shake for emphasis, “equals sex.” Ending his equation, he thankfully put both hands back on the steering wheel.
“But what we can’t decide is,” hands off the steering wheel again, “what are the values for these variables?”
“Uhh, I don’t know, but, how about we turn around and put both hands on the steering wheel?” I laughed nervously.
“Yeah, seriously.” Cristina seconded.
“What?” Turtle now jutted his head in the back seat in order to hear better. The car swerved, and Cristina and I looked at each other.
“Okay, see, when you’re seeing a girl, you have to put in a certain amount of time — like, hanging out. But, you got to put in a certain amount of money — like paying for dinner. But when,” hands off the wheel again, “does that pay off?”
Eyes still focused on the road, pleading Turtle to do the same, Cristina responded, “there’s an infinite number of possible values for those variables, so the equation is unsolvable.” Surely this answer would satiate Turtle enough for him to turn his head in the direction of the road? It didn’t.
“What?” He craned his head further back.
“There is no one answer.” It came out as one sentence though, more like, thereisnoanswer! “There are too many people in the world, too many circumstances — it just doesn’t work as an equation.” I quickly translated Cristina’s answer from High School Science Teacherish to Dudenese. “And also, the road!”
Realizing that he hadn’t even so much as glanced at the road for a full 5-minutes, Turtle slowly turned his head around.
“But there’s gotta be like an average.” He continued.
The guys continued to argue that there is a steadfast equation for this situation out there, while Cristina and I tried to humor them, but eventually Turtle declared, “There is one. We’ll find it.” From the seat beside him, The Captain nodded. Cristina shrugged her shoulders non-commitally, then focused her attention out of her own window. Discussion, closed.
This was followed by a more interesting discussion: Can a guy ever get out of the “Friend Box”?
“Highly unlikely.” Cristina answered.
“Yeahh, not likely to happen.” I confirmed.
“Wowww.” Eddie answered.
“No shot? You guys are harsh!”
“I mean, not no shot. But, in general, I doubt I would date any of my guy friends.” Cristina shrugged her shoulders again.
“What about have sex with?” Eddie asked. There was silence following this question, but it was more contemplative than damning.
The whole Friend Box, is a phenomena as old as time itself. It reminded me of the time, Sophomore year in college, when one of my friends introduced me to The Ladder Theory. Which is a theory that explains how heterosexual* guys and girls interact with one another. According to the theory, whenever a girl meets a guy, she places him on to one of two ladders “friends” and “sex”. Guys on the other hand only have one ladder: “sex”. Let’s take a look at the sex ladder, and Ladder Disparity, eh?
Ladder Disparity
The ladder is obviously a two-way process. When Bob meets Jane he puts her on his ladder and she puts him on her ladder. It often happens that one person is a lot higher on your ladder than you are on theirs, or vice versa. The leads to a situation that looks like this:
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Notice that Bob has Jane very low while Bob is very high on Jane’s ladder. He is most likely rich and she is most likely ugly. Anyhow this is a classic case of disparity. If we connect the two points we can make a right triangle. The resulting hypotenuse “c” is the magnitude of the disparity
c = total disparity
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It’s possible for one to move up and down a ladder, but almost impossible for a guy to “jump” from one ladder to the other. Or so goes the theory. It’s actually really interesting, I recommend checking out the above website, because plus it’s really funny.
Following that contemplative moment of silence, in which no answer was revealed other than uncomfortable “uhhs” and nervous collar pulls, a fight broke out when Eddie claimed that calling a good friend “asexual” is the biggest insult a guy can ever receive from a girl friend…perhaps the term “cuddle bitch” should have been used instead?
But then we got past the Agricultural check-point, and the sun started to go down, and there was nothing ahead of us save for miles of open road, and a hush settled over the car. As the desert stars began to turn on, I imagined we were on a space ship, sputtering away towards infinity.
A Blog of Two Cities 