The Friend Zone, Naked Friends, and Other Not-So-Platonic Things

I have a question I think most twenty-somethings would consider burning (or at least fairly itchy): where in GOD’S NAME is the friend zone actually located??

Can I get some coordinates? Are we talking about being stopped at the five yard line with 10 seconds remaining or being sidelined altogether? Is the friend zone some kind of relationship purgatory – the holding cell of the blossoming romance? Or is the friend zone more like the right lane on the interstate: meant to be passed?

No one seems to have a clear definition of where the friend zone actually is, who resides there, and what exactly goes on inside the parameters, but we’re ALL talking about it. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find Wikipedia has dedicated a page to the friend zone, Psychology Today has published on the subject, and even a writer from the Chicago Tribune has taken a whack at trying to uncover the goings on of this most loathsome platonic space. Need further proof? Just check out Urban Dictionary. There are four rather lengthy definitions exploring the nature of the friend zone, its regions, its application, etc. And then there’s my personal favorite: “(3) The friend zone - When a girl decides that you're her friend, you're no longer a dating option. You become this complete non-sexual entity in her eyes, like her brother, or a lamp.” For Christ’s sake, the Oxford English Dictionary Online added the friend zone to its litany. But all this talking is to no avail, because I still don’t know WHAT THE DAMN THING IS.

Here’s why I say this: the friend zone corresponds in our cultural imagination to a space where only lovelorn (or maybe just sexlorn) men end up when the objects of their affection (or lust) ain’t biting (or whatever else). Okay. Sure. Penny friend zoned Leonard for two years. Rachel friend zoned Ross multiple times. Pepé Le Pew tried FOREVER to get Penelope Pussycat to give him a shot, but the dog just wouldn’t hunt. Er, well, cat.

Still, I’ve got to ask about our long-suffering lady brethren. Can’t we be friend zoned? I know Billy Crystal already told us this was virtually impossible; according to him (or more accurately, Harry), we’re supposed to believe straight men are walking sex machines thinking of nothing but how to get women (specifically every woman) into bed – and then maybe to hang out long enough to date a little. But, if this is true, why are so many of my remarkable lady friends perpetually pulling out their hair over blockhead guys who can’t figure out if they’re cooking dinner for these girls because they wants to date them or because they really do want to prove that they can do more than microwave Spaghetti-O’s? Bottom line: I CALL BULLSHIT. I don’t know about you gals out there, but I’ve been placed squarely in the friend zone a few times before. And each time I end up crying over Friends reruns and desperately clutching my copy of Mansfield Park while I yell at Fanny for being such a damn moron. This is what “friendship” looks like, kids.

It seems curious that, as a society, we seem to wholeheartedly buy into the idea of the friend zone – and the humor therein – despite the lingering anomalies. For example, do our best friends belong in the friend zone? Can we zone hop? Can we put ourselves in the friend zone?!? OH, and what happens if, say, a fella friend zones me, but someone else friend zones him? Are we zoned together? Seriously – I’m not actually trying to hang out in this murky platonic wonderland while I pine over him and he pines over someone else. Because awkward. So here’s my question: is the friend zone a multi-regional place? If that’s case, I’d like to make a reservation at the Friend Zone Waldorf, thank you.

Of course, when you take into account the advent of the Naked Friend, the whole notion of the friend zone becomes even more complicated.

What is this Naked Friend I speak of? Well.

I have a best friend. We’ve known each other since we were twelve. At this point, we’ve literally been friends longer than we haven’t been. She knows everything about me – literally. All the weird, perverted, and sincerely uncomfortable elements I wish no one ever had to know, she knows. Our sisters are best friends, our moms are best friends, and I think our dads might be best friends if they weren’t both so socially awkward. We’re so close that I can freely listen to her pee while we’re on the phone, and it doesn’t freak me out. Ours is the stuff of friendship legend – one of those relationships that gets turned into a caricaturized sitcom friendship played by better looking actors. I’m forever putting decorations on the wall but forgetting to clean the lint trap; she thinks I have the fashion sense of an 80 year old Jewish woman but sews me pretty pillow covers anyway. Seriously, that’s love.

I’m also very close to another girl, My Married Friend (so called because, ironically, she’s married). She eloped with her husband when she was nineteen – and by eloped, I mean went to the beach and got married in some lady’s yard in front of a rusted motor boat and a Jesus lawn ornament. And, even though all of our mutual friends have been comrades their whole lives, we didn’t know each other until college. However, during my junior year of undergrad, all of the hallowed forces of the universe lined up to bring us together. And since then, we’ve been eating our way to a beautiful friendship, one slice of beef pizza and a child’s portion of spaghetti at a time. She is the Christina to my Barb. (Yes, that makes me Wanda Sykes; my inner spirit guide is most definitely a black lesbian with a fro.) The bottom line is we were meant to be.

Until recently, I lived with a roommate I met during my first year of grad school. She’s my exact opposite in every way. She grew up on a North Carolina mountain about fifteen minutes outside of Asheville. Given her southern mountain upbringing, she speaks the crazy mountain talk, and about 85% of the time I don’t have a goddamn clue what she’s saying to me. I swear to God I need captions when she gets excited. She also eats the most peculiar food concoctions I’ve ever seen (i.e. cornbread and milk joined together in a chunky mess in my nice coffee mugs), and she always, always has a bottle of Coke around. Yet, in spite of the country rearing, she’s probably the most intelligent, anal person I know in actual life. I’ve literally never seen someone do school work every day of the week. (As a general rule, these are usually the times I’m sitting on the couch watching The Nanny on Nick at Night and praying I wake up early enough to finish what I need to do the next day.) Still, despite her various OCDs, she never seems to remember to put my hand towels back on the oven rail, nor does she load the dishwasher in any logical pattern I can comprehend. And, truthfully, I love everything about her – including the odd mix of Appalachian WASPiness and Timberland-wearing sass that combine to complete her. Or maybe because of it.

These are not naked friends.

Contrary to Girls assertion that platonic women friends take baths together while eating cupcakes, we don’t. Unless we’re lesbians, in which case the bathing is part of the deal. And maybe cupcakes if she’s an awesome girlfriend.  (Take note, fellas.) Generally speaking, though, girls aren’t sudsing it up together unless sex or alcohol – or some combination thereof – is involved.

No, the Naked Friend is a whole different animal.

When you do finally discover sex – which I’ll admit was a bit later in the game for me – you’ll realize it’s really, really fun. Not in the 50 Shades of Grey, everyone gets off like they’re popping soda cans kind of way, but in an it’s nice to be near you, I like the way you smell kind of way. Sex is, for many of us, both extremely anxiety provoking and that which we most desire. Like Taco Bell – delicious in the moment but so caloric you’ll have to work out for a week to be able to button your pants again. It’s this dichotomous nature of sex that complicates the whole concept of the naked friend.

However, watch any media depiction of twenty-something life: apparently we’re all in bars every night, wearing Gucci, tipping back vodka cranberries, leaning over pool tables like porn stars, and bating ridiculously hot potential sex partners with the mere power of our eyes. Maybe some of us are. But more than likely, you’re sitting at home with your cats (or dogs) exhausted from a long day of trying to prove your worth at a job where no one gives a crap about you. Which makes the Naked Friend hard to come by.

For most (if not all) of us, the Naked Friend is a rarity, like a precious gem or an intelligent Kardashian sister. And why? Because a lot of us who choose to get naked together aren’t feeling anything remotely like friendship. Let’s be real: wanting to touch privates with somebody else (and then really going the whole nine yards) is the only thing separating couples from buddies in the first place. Still, it seems to me that a great many of us in our twenties are convinced that nudity is a perfectly acceptable part of friendship. As in, we can see each other’s business, go a few rounds, smack each other on the ass, and then head out for a burger and a pitcher. I’m not denying the existence of the Naked Friend, mind you. But I do wonder: are naked friends maybe (just maybe) always already on the friend zone highway without even knowing it?

Given all the complexities, you might be inclined to think the friend zone is something like Gilligan’s Island for unrequited love, and naked friends just aren’t sober enough to know that’s where they really are.  It’s easy to assume that all of us in the friend zone are living out our days in various states of anxiety – and in Thurston Howell’s case, drunkenness – waiting for a tug boat to come along and scoop us up. True, we might meet some fairly interesting people along the way. I mean, after all, we’ve got a doctor and a movie star. (Although I’m having difficulty believing Carrie Mulligan has ever been friend zoned. Hell, I wouldn’t friend zone her.) Nevertheless, the friend zone still fundamentally appears to be the relationship equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. Except with potential suitors. So more like the Island of Sexless Chums. But this can’t be, right? Just look at the naked friends! They are friends. They are naked. They are naked friends. So someone please tell me, what in the actual fuck is the point of the friend zone if we can get naked together and then kick back with a case of PBR and play a few rounds of rummy?!

Alright, alright. Don’t panic. Drop that complete Friends discography and put hard liquor away.

BECAUSE, despite the dire outlook, I’ve also been wondering lately if perhaps there’s more to the Naked Friend and the friend zone than simple friendship. Could it possibly be that, for a large majority of twenty-somethings, the friend zone is a place to cool our jets while our “friend” tries to get their bearings about them? Please note what I’m offering here isn’t advice on avoiding the friend zone; rather, I’d like to think of it as a way to make peace with the anxiety, the frustration, the late night boozing and ensuing haziness, the way-too-personal gestures that are in no way merely friendly, the weirdly out of place kisses or maybe the ill-conceived roll in the hay, and, generally, the lack of geographical awareness. If there’s a highway into the friend zone, there’s one that leads out, right? Maybe it’s all just a trial period. And maybe not. But think of it this way: at least you’re among friends. 

All original content copyright Kimberly Turner, 2013-2013.