I’ve occasionally been told by women I know that I’m a good friend. I’m pleased, and don’t dare say that, in general, I tend not to put next to the word “friend” adjectives that refer to a hierarchy of feelings or reliability. They seem pointless to me. I would never say, for example, “she’s my best friend”, for I would have to deduce from it that I have friends I like less; others I don’t trust so much; others with whom I feel less kinship. And if I did, it would occur to me to wonder: why do I consider myself the friend of these women? Why do I consider them my friends?

The word “friend”, in the presence of hierarchies of this type, isn’t apt. Maybe we should acknowledge that a bad friend, an unreliable friend, isn’t a friend. Maybe, to be clear, even if it’s painful, we should learn to say not “a friend” but “a woman I spend time with, or have spent time with”. The problem is that it comforts us to have many friends – it makes us feel popular, loved, less alone. We therefore prefer to describe as “friends” women with whom we have little or nothing in common, but with whom, if necessary, we fill a void: we spend an afternoon in a cafe, we drink a glass of wine, talking about nothing in particular. Never mind if later, at the first opportunity, we call them gossips, snakes, sour, touchy.

The fact is that a woman friend is as rare as a true love. The Italian word for “friendship”, amicizia, has the same root as the verb “to love”, amare, and a relationship between friends has the richness, the complexity, the contradictions, the inconsistencies of love. I can say, without fear of exaggeration, that love for a woman friend has always seemed of a substance very similar to my love for the most important man in my life. Where is the difference? Sex. And it’s not a small difference. Friendship isn’t constantly put at risk by sexual practices, by how much danger there is in the mixture of lofty emotions and the pressure of bodies to give and be given pleasure.

It’s true that today, from what I can see, sexual friendship is increasingly widespread (in Italian, I’ve sometimes heard the lighthearted neologism trombamico, or “friend with benefits”). But it’s a game that seeks to keep at bay both the pervasive power of love and the rite of pure sex. We’ve known each other for a while, we trust each other more than strangers, we go to a bar, a restaurant, the movies, have sex.

But I still wouldn’t say that it’s sex between friends. Just as great loves are rare, and lovers, on the other hand, numerous, so great friends are rare; meanwhile, acquaintances with whom we may, from time to time, end up in bed are numerous.



• Translated by Ann Goldstein