So I’m at a bar with a few upstanding Binghamton gentlemen FRIENDS about a week ago. Going with the flow of the usual blunts and bitches conversation, I tuned in at this statement: ‘Whatever dude, you can hook up with her. I mean, we hooked up like twice but like, we’re FRIENDS and shit, so go for it.’

The girl swap didn’t bother me ‘ the incestuous dating pool we all operate in should be expected at this point. But what did faze me was the FRIEND part. I mean, everyone hooks up with their FRIENDS: girls, boys, gay friends, straight friends ‘ everyone seems to just hook up with everyone, then shrug it off and let things go back to the way they were before.

But doesn’t that contradict the definition of friendship? Mr. Webster claims that a ‘friend’ is someone we are ‘attached to by affection or esteem.’ OK, well clearly Mr. Webster has not been to State Street. Or watched ‘Sex and the City.’ Or been exposed to my life, or the lives of my FRIENDS.

Maybe it is our age and the college free-for-all. Or maybe it’s the way a part of our society has evolved, emphasizing a culture where physical and emotional attachments are completely different. Sex and love can definitely co-exist, but for a lot of people, they are two totally different things.

Yet isn’t friendship in a different category altogether? In the back of your mind, friendship usually implies something that is platonic. If you want to keep a friendship secure, you leave making out out of it. I find that at times I’ve relied on some of my guy friends more so than any boyfriend. But this creates an emotional attachment that, if intertwined with sex, would be an awful lot like a relationship.

But once that gateway is opened, is it ever really possible to just say no? And why would you want to? The ‘what if’ is cool; it makes it more interesting and a lot less boring. It’s fun. There is a degree of comfort in hooking up with your friend ‘ there is no stress or pressure. But it’s dangerous, too. Because it means you have to both be at a point where there is a huge amount of respect. A point of constantly maintaining the distinction between this gray area and a relationship (and not applying relationship standards, apparently). A point of acknowledging how important that friend is to you, but being able to leave the physical stuff where it belongs, behind a closed door.

If you’re not at that level, then it just isn’t worth it. It just seems to me like too much work. Unless you’re Carrie and Big. Or Ross and Rachel. Or basically any other fictional couple whose chances of survival in the real world would be slim.

I guess friendship really is what you make it. You can set it up with members of the opposite sex, or same sex for that matter, with whatever boundaries you choose.

Nora Slonimsky is a junior English and history major and is the assistant Opinion editor. After writing this column, she spent the afternoon crying her eyes out over how much she is going to miss her friends who are graduating, regardless of if or how much she has made out with them.