Distinguishing a filler relationship from a real one is key. Most likely, you must depend upon your friends to do this for you, since by definition you will be unable to. One of the crucial characteristics of a filler is the suspension of disbelief, so when your filler starts playing air guitar in front of your friends, you pretend that it’s just not happening. You turn away and wait for the song to be over.

When Isobel arrived at Max’s apartment, the TV was on low in the background. Nick at Nite. His guitar case was open and notebooks were spread on the floor. A purple candle burned brightly from its position on top of the giant speaker.

“I’ve been working on a new song,” Max said, as if that weren’t clear. “It’s called ‘Mannequin.’” Isobel smiled, frozen. Sure enough, he pulled her down to the floor while he sat cross-legged, guitar on his lap, and began strumming and singing in his Brooklyn accent:

“Mannequin, Mannequin, what a perfect face/ Mannequin, Mannequin, please tell me what’s my place/ You stare and stare and seem to see/
Mannequin, mannequin, please see me…

“That’s as far as I’ve gotten,” Max said, strumming his guitar with a flourish. Yeah, in more ways than one, thought Isobel. She smiled tightly. Another filler bites the dust.

Fillers can never shout that they are fillers. In order for them to succeed on any level, they have to suck you in just enough that you can close your eyes. It’s the same blindness that lets you cry freely at “E.T.”

Nigel was my classic filler. An Australian film producer, he’d just landed a major picture deal from Warner’s, his first feature. He was suave and charming, but just a little too suave, a little too charming, to the point of being slick. I knew that he was living with his girlfriend in Melbourne; I had also been told through friends that she’d just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Nigel rewarded his brush with success by following around World Cup soccer, and on a hot July day, we drove down to Stanford to watch Colombia play Mexico. I’d met him three days ago; we’d already slept together, and while I knew he wasn’t Mr. Long Term, he played the game well enough. Until…

“Pull over here,” he directed me. We were driving alongside an industrial park. “You are so hot. So sexy. Let me just…”

Reluctantly, I parked under a tree. We kissed, beads of sweat rolling down our faces in the 98-degree heat. He slid his hand under my T-shirt, and I responded by grasping his shorts. He moved one of his hands behind my neck, he began to gently, gently push my head down.

“Uh,” I said. “I don’t think this is such a good place…”

“Come on, baby.”

“No, really. We’re in the middle of an open air parking lot.”

“You are so hot, baby.”

“Yeah, I am,” I said, trying to move my head out from under his hand. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to.”

I looked up. He was frowning. And I knew, in that split second, just looking at those furrows between his bushy eyebrows, the slight coldness that had crept into his blue stare, that the bubble had been popped. I sighed loudly.

“You know what?” I said, sitting up, straightening my t-shirt. “I could really go for a sandwich. Something really, really big. Roast beef, with lots of lettuce, and tomato, maybe even a club sandwich.” I pulled out of the parking lot and merged into the traffic. “Tell me about the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. It must be really hard on you. When’s your flight, again?”

On their first date — a walk around the reservoir at Central Park — the conversation moved easily. Harry was apartment hunting; like all New Yorkers whose housing is imminently threatened, he was obsessed with the topic. Sarah could relate; she’d just moved into a closet for $900 a month. They exchanged old war stories like only New Yorkers can.

On the second date — lunch at a noodle bar in SoHo — they talked about their family. Harry had grown up in Connecticut, in a town near where Sarah had grown up. They talked about siblings, parents and Connecticut. Still, no hint.

On the third date — cocktails at the sculpture garden at MOMA — Sarah had two glasses of wine. Feeling warm, she languidly began to talk about the Hillary-bashing book. “Thank God the truth’s coming out about that manipulative bitch,” he exclaimed. “Isn’t it obscene that those two are still in office? Don’t worry though, they may get in office again in November, but Starr’ll impeach that lying sack of shit.”

Sarah’s dreams suddenly vanished. No, it couldn’t be… but, yes, it was true.

“Harry is a… ” Sarah choked over the phone, gasping. “I can barely say it… a Republican.”

That was it for Harry. Harry was history.

“Maybe you could just not talk about politics?” I asked doubtfully. This being the 20th century, the religion question was obviously moot.

“Sure,” she retorted nastily. “Just the way you gave that Perot supporter a chance. He didn’t even get to tell you his name.” I winced. She was right: I’d cut off Mr. Perot Voter the second I learned of his political affiliations. He’d failed my Personal Litmus Test, which I believe in aplying as deftly — and as quickly — as possible: Who did you vote for in 1992?

“Sarah,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “I’ve heard that some Republicans are okay. I personally would never go out with one, but have you noticed how tolerant they are of us Demos?”

“Patronizing is the operative word, here.” Sarah was firm. “Besides, the last time Harriet went out with a Republican, he couldn’t get it up. Remember?”

“Actually, I think he was a Libertarian.”

“That’s even worse.”

Okay, I admit it. Some people are agists, some people are sexists. I am a politicist. I cannot, and will not, ever sleep with a man who supports Pat Buchanan, Bob Dole or George Bush. I will never date anyone who voted for Perot. I will barely talk to anyone who invokes Richard Lamm.

Good for you, James Carville and Mary Matalin, if you can make it work. But I’d like to know, what do you talk about over dinner?

Nevertheless, you’ve always found this person attractive. Oh, yes, you have. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be friends. It’s just a simple truism that male/female friendships are grounded in mutual appreciation. It has been noted in various Hollywood films involving Nora Ephron that men focus on the physical attributes, whereas we women can be seduced by other, more subtle qualities, like a sense of humor or the ability to listen.

But that’s besides the point. One day, you may be with your pal, doing the same old things you always do — chatting, burping, making derisive jokes about Perot supporters — when suddenly you realize that, for some odd reason, he or she looks very good. Maybe it’s the smell of Cheer emanating from his wrinkled yet freshly laundered T-shirt. Maybe you suddenly noticed what long fingers she has. Or maybe the chemistry was exactly right that day, at that precise instant, for no reason whatsoever. It will be entirely unclear why the issue suddenly became an issue at all.

I’d been friends with Mariano since high school, when he came over from Ecuador as an exchange student in our senior year. The first time I saw him, he was walking across the street, loping, really. He had a distinctive gait and curly hair that stood straight up, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked moody and tragic underneath his dark complexion — quite a feat when you think about it.

It became quickly apparent that Mariano had about as much interest in me as he did in a persistent case of dandruff. This being California, he was far more curious about the flower-skirted Deadhead chicks, a group of women to whom I was violently opposed. Nevertheless, we became friends. I swallowed my pride, contenting myself with the few crumbs of attention he’d throw my way: “Courtney, you can meet me to Hooley, no? You have party, bring with her and I come.” “Sure, Mariano,” I’d say half-heartedly. I tried to bring it back to the intellectual ground, always a safe bet with him. “It’s ‘Julie.’ Have you written your paper on ‘Hamlet’ yet? Do you want me to proofread it?”

Jump ahead to 1996. We’ve been friends for 13 years now; in the interim, I’ve lived abroad, gone to grad school, loved and lost, thrashed through various family traumas and finally returned to San Francisco. He’s gone back to Quito, moved to Mexico City, gotten a medical degree, loved and lost and resettled to San Francisco. Now in the same city, we forge ahead with our friendship: movies, talks on the phone, advice to whomever happens to be lovelorn. Solid friends. Until…

One night he unexpectedly showed up at a party I’d told him about a month earlier. “Hey…” I began. I was about to ask him what he was doing there when I recognized something in his eyes. It was the same intense look he got on the soccer field when he was trying to blast the ball past the goalie.

“I thought you might want a ride home,” he said.

“On your motorcycle? I thought you didn’t have an extra helmet.” “We’ll take side streets,” he said. We zoomed up and down the empty streets, taking hills and alleys that I didn’t know existed. Finally, he pulled his motorcycle onto the sidewalk in front of his apartment building and turned off the motor.

I paused. “What are you doing?”

“I thought it might be interesting if you spent the night.”

I thought for a moment. Over the passage of time, my attraction to Mariano had faded. It had mutated into a warm, downy feeling, devoid of sexual fantasy. I was perfectly happy with the occasional movie, the weekly phone calls. And to have sex with him? Now? What did it mean, what would it mean? Could we still be friends, would we become a couple, would we be friends who fuck occasionally (never a workable arrangement)?

I went into defer mode. Jumping off the motorcycle, I confronted him. “After all this time, you want to fuck? What are you saying, Mariano?”

“You don’t have to put it so crudely,” he said, slightly offended. “We don’t have to do anything.”

The logical action, given my comfy friendship with him, would have been to ask him to take me home. Naturally, I didn’t do that. I compromised (with whom?) and spent part of the night at his house. In the middle of the groping stage, I asked him what he was thinking about.

He looked startled. “Actually, I was thinking about your breasts.”

I took a cab home around 5 a.m. The thought of looking at each other in the morning light and talking about it or not talking about it was too daunting.

Now, we chat on the phone fairly regularly, though I perceive not as much as before. Some of the ease, the wonderful unconsciousness of a good friendship, seems to have been lost. I, of the double-x variety, try to probe him on his feelings about that night, which are cagey at best. “This isn’t going to wreck our friendship, right?” I ask.

“Of course not,” he says.

What’s that tension, then? I want to grab and ask him, probe further, see if I can find an answer in his steady dark-eyed gaze.

But I don’t.

In her search for love amidst an endless stream of lunches and cocktail parties, Bushnell paints a bleak but funny portrait of her sisters in heels as they get everything they want except for a husband and children. We follow the intrepid, hungover “reporter” from a swingers’ club (where the hottest thing was the buffet table) to a male forum on threesomes; from dinner with men who bed models to a bawdy ladies’ tea where a serial dater is dissected. During the last third of the book, the voice shifts from the first person to that of Carrie (aka Bushnell). As she chronicles her relationship with Mr. Big (aka cigar-chomping “Vogue” publisher Ron Galotti), you may begin to understand why these womens’ relationships fail.

One compelling aspect of these juicy, fast-reading pieces is that they offer an insider’s view of a very elite Manhattan. Sure, names have been changed and events modified (and who knows how she records those quotes), but if you’re a bold-faced-name junkie, you know who she’s talking about, or can at least enjoy speculating. Bushnell delivers the bad news about love in Man-hattan in an engaging “he said/she said” style (“He gave her more drugs and she gave him a blow job”), as though she were hoarsely whispering in your ear during lunch at the Royalton.

As compelling as Bushnell can be, by the midway point of “Sex and the City,” the book’s message is painfully clear: In her New York, locating and securing a powerful husband is, sadly, a woman’s ultimate accomplishment.

I wrapped my fingers around my coffee cup, trying to unstiffen them. “How was it?”

“Great. Always great. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that way if we were doing the boyfriend/girlfriend thing. The occasional is just fine with me. He has this new thing that he does with his finger, when I’m thinking it’s his tongue…” I sighed, tuning out. It had been so long since I’d had sex that I could barely concentrate, I was so filled with envy and longing. But then I heard “…of course he thought I had a condom, and I thought he would bring some, but… well, you know the routine.”

“So you didn’t do it.”

Isobel looked a little guilty. “Well…”

“Come on Isobel. You aren’t serious.”

“I know, I know. It was stupid.”

Is it just my impression, or has the fear of AIDS disappeared?

Case #2: “I met this guy at Club Universe,” Tim tells me. “Do you want to hear this story? Maybe you could write about it. He was into, like, everything. We’re at his house, watching this bootleg of ‘Trainspotting.’ I mean, how cool is that? He, like, totally rips off my t-shirt. Totally rips it! I couldn’t believe it. You know, it was like sex used to be. Totally uninhibited. Neither one of us gives a shit.”

“Yeah? You mean, literally?” Butt sex has never been a favorite of mine, and I don’t particularly like to hear about the gory details, either. “You used a condom, right?”

“Uh, well, it broke, kind of early into it.”

“No. Please. Don’t tell me this.”

“I know. It was dumb. But we didn’t, you know…” It’s not like Tim to be coy, but I was so angry at him I didn’t want him to finish.

“Oh, Miss Judgmental, here,” he said, seeing my face. “As if you haven’t done the same thing.”

“No, I used to do that. I don’t anymore, I can tell you that. And you’re an asshole, Tim, for being my friend and not using a condom.”

In the early ’80s, my boyfriend was a well-known local musician. He bore a striking resemblance to ex-Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders. When we started going out, someone confronted Isobel: “Why’s Courtney going out with that junkie?”

Actually, John had dabbled. No, more than dabbled, he finally confessed: He’d been a regular user, and had been run out of town by a Louisiana judge who’d threatened to send him to Angola if he ever saw John’s face again.

He was clean now, he said, and had been for some time. Still, most of his friends attended regular shooting galleries, and John too had participated in them, but only occasionally.
Fast-forward to winter of 1986. John is getting sick all the time. Colds, flu, coughing, general malaise. We were living in London, and finally a doctor said to him: “You need to get tested for AIDS. It’s a gay disease, but you could have it.”

The results were negative.

A year later, he takes the test again. Still negative. Maybe it was that wonderful British weather. He takes it again, and again, and again, every six months. Negative, negative, negative. To this day, as far as I know, the results have always been negative.

I’m not a believer in God, per se, but this seemed to me like a warning if there ever was one. I’ve been tested myself about six times; each time, I wonder why I was lucky enough not to contract the virus.

I also count myself lucky to know personally only six people who have died of AIDS. This doesn’t count a former teacher who died in the early ’80s, an acquaintance who’s dying right now, and an immediate family member who is HIV-positive.

How sad that we still let luck play such a major role in our lives and deaths. Hasn’t the specter of AIDS taught us anything at all?