How is it Friday? And mid August?

I'm going on a police ride along tonight. Don't ask. It starts at 7 pm and goes until 7 am, if I want to stay that long, which I guess depends on what beat I end up assigned to and how much coffee I can inject into my body by then. Tomorrow I'm heading to the Big City to have dinner with RBH before he goes to a conference. We have something like twelve hours together, I haven't seen him in six weeks, I won't see him for two more. Which would be ridiculous except that he's moving back to his house soon and I'll see him virtually every weekend and for a few full weeks in the next four months.

"I'm not sure who would come to my wedding."
"You know [z and y] would come to our wedding."

(Not my boyfriend.)

A lot of my close male friends have... been around the block a little. My three good friends from post-grad are notorious womanizers. Charming men with egos the size of small countries, but all of them genuinely love women. One is currently in a monogamous relationship, the other is working on it, the third doesn't really believe in monogamy. I've never been involved with any of them, at all, despite sleeping in some of their beds. Womanizing men know there is no better asset than an attractive girl who's just a friend, for so many reasons. Typically, we end up talking about sex, post pint three. I know some of the most lurid skeletons in their closets, and I'm more honest with them than I am with my girlfriends about my own romantic life.

Many male friends from other areas of my life, the long term ones, tend to have the same characterisitics, although a few of them I have been involved with from time to time, generally in the PG sense. I genuinely have a lot of love for all of them. And, it's not territorial. I'm always well liked by new girlfriends and I really hope we all end up happy, I will dance at their hypothetical weddings.

My guy friends weigh in on who I'm dating with bluntness my female friends reserve. The single ones, when they're feeling lonely, delve into the commitment fantasy shared by all of us who avoid commitment for various reasons: maybe someday, maybe you and me. That we'll get through the phase of constant uncertainty and one day just blast out to Vegas and make a life of it. And I think I get the same thing they do. A back up, a failsafe, a feeling that even if who I'm with didn't love me tomorrow, someone would. I could make a phone call, buy a plane ticket, and someone would be waiting at the airport gates to take care of my broken heart and tell me I've never looked better.