Review Mode: Sometimes You're Allowed to Assume Two People Are Fckng

Sure, you can unlearn reductive ideas about romantic vs. platonic expressions of intimacy, but sometimes if two people are all over each other, it might just be that they're hooking up.

Welcome to Review Mode, a biweekly newsletter where I mark up my social interactions, mining my, like, medical-grade self-monitoring for your reading pleasure.

I’m always shocked at how physical some of my friends are with each other. Like, I’m constantly seeing platonic friends touch in ways that I really associate with sex and romance It’s forced me to question a lot of my assumptions about how people express affection and to realize that friendship is a lot more expansive than I give it credit for.

Still, when someone’s got their arm around someone else all night, and that someone is constantly finding every possible excuse to touch the person, they might just be fucking.

In my last Review Mode, I wrote about amatonormativity: the concept that our society prioritizes romantic relationships above all others. Those norms can sometimes convince us that physical affection is restricted to sexual/romantic encounters—that you can only cuddle, for instance, with someone you’ve had sex with or want to have sex with. That’s a really limiting idea. It can keep us from fully exploring the depth and intimacy of friendship.

It’s an idea that I’ve been unlearning for a long time. I’ve watched friends dance up on each other and sit on each other’s laps and play with each other’s hair, and I’ve had to remind myself, “Just because they’re comfortable and easy with physical touch in a way you simply aren’t, doesn’t mean they’re hooking up.”

I’ve also seen people really gush about their friends both privately and publicly. That’s not the dynamic I have with most of my friends—I tend not to be the most effusive person—but it’s one that I admire and often envy.

So, when my friend Drea posted a super enthusiastic birthday Instagram story for another friend, Joanna, going on about how beautiful and amazing Joanna is, I thought, “Wow, Drea’s so nice.”

A couple days later, when we were all at a party together, and Drea had their arm around Joanna for most of the night and kept doing things like brushing Joanna’s hair behind her ears, all I thought was, Huh, I never realized those two were such close friends.

A quick note on heteronormativity: obviously, gender plays a role in the assumptions we make. If it were a man and a woman, I probably would’ve jumped to “They’re fucking.” (For a while, I was making a point to not assume that about men and women who were spending a lot of time together and being physically demonstrative. But then they always turned out to be fucking, so I went back to my first assumption.)

Still, this Drea-Joanna situation was kind of a case of boy-lesbian-girl-lesbian. If I’d let heteronormativity do the work for me, I still would’ve arrived at the right conclusion.

But I didn’t. In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with not realizing that two people are a couple. In fact, taking an outside view of myself, I could even think it was kind of sweet that I would interpret their affectionate behavior as friendship. But it wasn’t so sweet when I made my naivety/obliviousness everyone’s problem.

Because I was standing in a group conversation with Drea, Joanna, and a few other friends. Perhaps in an effort to broadcast your platonic intimacy is normal to me, and I don’t assume that cuddles mean fucking, I asked Drea, “Are you still seeing that woman—what was her name, Lindsay? From the drag thing?”

Drea, Joanna, and everyone else in the group stared at me. Drea took a moment to even register that I’d really just asked what they thought I’d just asked.

Finally, they said, “….No.”

“Oh!” I said, too loudly and too quickly. “Are you— is this— how long have you two been dating?”

Then everyone laughed. At me.

The Lesson That I Should Probably Learn from This: Man, sometimes a spade is just a spade.

Carson’s Life Updates

• First Review Mode live show was really fun! Follow @reviewmodenyc on IG for future updates, and join my mailing list for updates on shows near you.

• Last week, I went right from an erotic trans life drawing event to a crafternoon collage party. It’s possible that I might be living my best life.

• I changed my phone wallpaper to the city of Townsville, but it’s too bright when I’m trying to wind down for sleep. Any better suggestions?

  

The Boilerplate

Carson Olshansky (still they/them, despite the haters) is a Brooklyn-based comedian and writer. You can follow them at @carsonolshansky on Instagram and TikTok and at @carson-olshansky on YouTube.

Join their mailing list to find out about shows near you (which helps us all be less reliant on social media technocrats).

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