By Anna David

Every few years, the term for sleeping with someone you're not dating seems to change. About a decade ago, these hook-ups were simply referred to as "booty calls." For a blessedly brief period over the past year or so, the phrase "fuck buddy" was tossed around, a déclassé term for an already far-too-déclassé adventure/temptation. I'm happy to report that "friends with benefits" seems to be the current term du jour, which is surely a sign that horny commitment-phobes are getting cleverer, if not more mature.

Whatever you call it, certain facts remain consistent. First and foremost, this activity leaves no room for prudes, which means that ladies who tend to summarize encounters with phrases like "We just kissed," "We did everything but," or after-the-fact Clintonian declarations like "it wasn't sex" should probably forgo these adventures for Saturday Night Live. But this is a minor issue. The most significant aspect of all - the one rarely, if ever, discussed - is the reason these encounters are what they are. The truth is, one or both of you have decided ahead of time that the other isn't dating material. Either somebody's already got somebody - a fact that seems to, disturbingly, bring out the heathen in most - or somebody doesn't think somebody else is up to par.

My friend Paul, a randy Brit who considers the girls he hooks up with to be "somewhere between girlfriends and hookers," admits that the women in this category are either not attractive or "not presentable in some other way" - which could be a decidedly unsexy thought in the midst of what should be a blissful romp.

The problem is, no matter how little you may want to introduce your bed buddy to your inner circle, the sheer giving and taking of body fluids can eradicate all that your head is telling you. In other words, it's scientifically proven that having sex releases oxytocin, a bonding hormone that tends to throw the whole "friends with benefits" equation completely out of whack. (Take note: studying up on oxytocin can provide you with a great many relevant facts that can be used to convince a puritanical friend to enjoy certain benefits - notably that babies who aren't touched don't release oxytocin and therefore don't develop normally.)

Long before my brief foray into this chemically charged territory, I had imagined sex-only connections to be the ideal answer. Since I've never been particularly skilled at navigating real relationships, I'd envisioned that these affairs would contain all the pleasure and none of the petty jealousies, insecurities and fickleness that actual relationships always brought out. Then I met Greg.

Greg was not what any girl might call a sex god. Decidedly overweight, conversationally crass and brazen to the extreme, he ambled up to me at a party one night with more nerve and confidence than I thought a guy like him should have. I'm not sure how much time passed between my wondering who the hell he thought he was to making out with him in the bathroom but suffice it to say that his powers of persuasion would put most politicians, not to mention hypnotists, to shame. The fact is, we women tend to be suckers for cockiness in men, no matter if it's alcohol-induced, phony, obnoxious, or all three.

A few nights later near the end of our first date, when he casually mentioned that he was seeing someone else but was extremely attracted to me, I could all but hear the words "Flee now!" emanating from the "red flag" part of my brain. (The fact that he'd shown up tipsy, had immediately placed his thick hand squarely on my thigh and seemed obsessed with money had actually already produced a succession of red flags.) But the somewhat unsettling fact of the matter was that I liked his hand on my knee, was attracted to his brazenness and found his alpha male tendencies undeniably alluring - surefire evidence that men don't need to sugarcoat their basest instincts in order to win over women.

And so that's how I found myself sleeping with a guy who didn't really take me out on proper dates (if I recall directly, our first dinner was also our last) and was prone to showing up on my doorstep late at night without warning.

My excuse for being involved in such an unhealthy, inconsistent relationship that even those without the faintest knowledge about psychology could see wasn't exactly reinforcing my self-esteem was pure and simple: the sex was amazing. Or, more accurately, to be desired as a purely sexual object, without any of the sensitivity and anxiety that most men seemed to bring to the equation, felt amazing. It was the only time in my life where I felt like I had lost control of my body, or in fact relinquished it to someone else. To be touched in a way that was purely for physical pleasure encouraged me to embrace my own sexuality all the more. It wasn't unheard of for me to spend a full day in bed with this guy and then not see or hear from him for a week.

The affair also provoked me to occasionally act completely out of character: I distinctly remember one time I passed his place on my way to the gym - we lived, as if the devil himself had arranged the geography, a block and a half from each other - and a force descended upon me, strongly urging me to knock on his door. I fought it. The urge came back. I stuffed it down again. But that desire - which had now developed into a full-blown compulsion - overtook me and I found myself stepping right out of step class and into his bed.

The last time I saw Greg, he was urging me to leave a party with him, while the girl he was "dating" chatted with his brother on the other side of the room. I declined. He kept asking. After the third or fourth no, he gave up and walked away. The end of these affairs, it seems, are as anticlimactic as their beginnings are dramatic.

What I ended up learning from my experience in the "friends with benefits" stratosphere is that the nomenclature is misleading. Greg was never my friend - at times I actually felt he was my foe - and the heartsickness that our arrangement ended up causing (alas, I seemed to end up a victim of that damn oxytocin) far outweighed any benefits.

My friend Mike, who chocks up the male attachment to sleeping around to basic, biological, spread-the-seed urges, thinks that the fuck buddy concept -- he hasn't graduated to the new term -- is actually a ruse. "It's an equilibrium that cannot stay," he concludes, while noting that he's had "strong and lovely" connections with women in this context. Even he admits that casual encounters seem to have an inexplicable way of filling one's sex quota by metaphorically, if not literally, distracting us from seeing that possibly terrific person across the room.

Maybe it's that my friends and I are getting older but it's beginning to seem like there may not be a need for new terminology when the term "friends with benefits" wears out its welcome. Christ, even Paul, who used think there was nothing more pleasurable than bedding a slew of new ladies each week, seems to have had his fill. "It's like take-away Chinese food," he opines of casual sex encounters. "Tastes great at the time, but if you see it in your fridge the next morning, you can't believe that you actually ate it the night before."

SIDEBAR: IF IT'S NOT BROKEN… Of course, there are plenty of people - fictional and non-fictional alike - that seem to live by "friends with benefits" principals. Here they share their words of wisdom:

"I wasn't dating him. I was fucking him." -- Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct

"Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue most of my life." - Jack Nicholson

"She's not a girl, she's just a friend of mine." - George Roundy (Warren Beatty) in Shampoo

"Girl trouble, for me, is when you fall in love - that's fucking girl trouble. If you have a bad lay, that's not girl trouble." - Colin Farrell

"As crazy as that sounds, meeting a man in a hotel room for a few hours and then going back and putting my son to bed and not seeing that man again for a few months is about what I can handle now." - Angelina Jolie

"My husband took the car. Will you drive me home?" - Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) in The Graduate