not my best, but it is advice

Dear Rev.Mike,
I just spent all last weekend at my at my ex-girlfriend’s best friend’s house in Portland. The first night I stayed there we are totally petting and rubbing, and in any normal situation, I would just go in for the make out part. but, I know that A) she is my ex girlfriend’s best friend, and B) she had recently gone through a crazy break up. So I am hesitant although we both kind of want it. The dirtbag me thinks I should have just started kissing her, while gentleman me is happy I didn't take advantage of this girl, who is also a good friend of mine (do you think it possible for guys and girls to be good friends? the age old question I guess, but I keep changing my mind.....)
So my week at her place was like this weird not-world where we slept in the same bed, and did all the typical intimate shit people do when they are into eachother, except we didn't make out due to massive feelings of guilt. The forbidden fruit as it were. And its probably better that way, since I don't want to fuck up any of my solid friendships. I need a opinion from someone who isn’t friends with all of us. What should I have done? and/or what should I do?
Thanks, Lamenting in Los Angeles

Dear Lamenter,
There are, of course, numerous unwritten codes on the subject of fooling around with friends of exs and exs of friends, but I submit that those codes are usually unwritten by the person who isn’t getting laid in the situation. So, my thought has always been that if you are single, and she is single, and you want to make out, and it seems like she wants to make out too, then fuck the code and you go for it. From my experience there is rarely any long term fallout from these types of things. Jealousies may flare up, awkwardness may ensue and friendships may end, but the post relationship relationships usually have a short life span anyway. Shit like this is an expected part of life, after you reach a certain age every person you know has slept with another person you know. You just take turns being the person who is wronged and the person who is doing the wronging until you get married.
I understand that she just got out of a relationship, but maybe she was afraid of taking advantage of you a little bit. From her perspective, she might not want to use a friend like you as a rebound. Here’s the thing: there is almost definitely no future in a relationship with this girl in Portland, but so what? Amazing weekends have been spent in these ephemeral mini-relationships that have no future due to sticky wickets like distance or taboo, both applying in your case.
I think you would have been surprised how easy it is to get past the initial guilt. You go through that quick Don Draper moment where one of you lightly pushes the other one away, saying something like, “This is wrong” or “I… just…”, but then you go right back to kissing anyway. Proximity would remain, your innate skills would kick in, passion would build, and the amount of booze previously consumed will always considerably assist you at this point in the night. For fucks sake, brother! she had you sleeping in her bed! Not the floor or the couch, mind you , but her bed! I don’t mean to bum you out, but as Robert DeNiro told Sylvester Stallone in Cop Land, “I gave you a chance to be a cop and you blew it!”
From personal experience I can say that I have regretted not making moves much more often than making one. I mean, lets face it, neither of us on Don Draper. Hell, I’m not even Sylvester Stallone’s half-witted and deaf by the end of movie sheriff from Copland. Two stories come to mind.
First, some sappy nostalgia: I was when I was hanging out with this girl who was dating a friend. Their relationship wasn’t anything serious, a couple months at the most. And he was really more of an acquaintance to me than a friend, but he was good friends to good friends. We hung out every day for weeks, much more than she was hanging out with the other guy, always under the guise of friendship, but after awhile it was obvious we were into each other. Things came to a head one night when were hanging out on a playground (like only nineteen year olds can) and she asked me to kiss her (like only a nineteen year old can). My heart squeezed its contents out all over my insides, she was beautiful, she was funny, she was awesome, I wanted to kiss her. I wasn’t even thinking about sleeping with her, just kissing. But I didn’t. I stuttered and stammered and said, “ah, man, I want to, I really do…” for long enough until I thoroughly ruined any moment we might have been sharing. I couldn’t be the guy who messes around with other guy’s girls. I couldn’t take the judgments that would come from my friends. We started hanging out less right after that, of coarse, she broke up with the acquaintance not long after that, of coarse, and eventually one of us moved away. Now I’ve been married for three years to the woman I would not trade for any person past, present, or future, but I’ll be damned if I still don’t regret not kissing that girl on the playground thirteen years ago.
Second, some nasty nostalgia: I was drunk and flirty with one of my exgirlfriend’s friend in a motel hot tub. We kept stopping things as soon as they got started, being all, “this is weird” and “should we be doing this?” until circumstances finally eroded into me jerking myself off on the bathroom floor while feeling her up in the dark next to me. A few weeks later we did ecstasy together at my apartment and she explicitly said she thought it’d be hot to go down on me while high, but I wanted to be a gentleman and not rush things after the last debacle so we agreed we would listen to the first side of the Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album three or four more times (by the way, just so you know, that is what passes for gentlemen behavior at this day in age, not begging for the blowjob you were promised while on ecstasy). Then we thought it’d be fun to toss a watermelon off my balcony and something about the explosion of that damned bulbous fruit affected her high negatively and I was left jerking off again, but this time not until the next morning... and alone.
I tell you this to bring home the point: I was afraid to fully act was left with all of the weird guilt and friendship strain with very little, well let’s just call it none, of the pay off. But also I tell you out solidarity for the brotherhood of self-cockblockers because I feel bad that all I did was tell you lost your shot and you’re never going to get another one. Did I mention you’re not going to get another shot? You might have had a small window, perhaps a couple months, to get back up there and have another shot, but I took a couple months to respond to this, so, yeah, sorry buddy. But is it really such a bad thing? Unless a relationship blossomed that was worth one of you making a major relocation, there is no future with her. There will be other girls for you to have marvelous, meaningless sex with. And, in the end, dude, she’s you’re ex-girlfriend’s best friend, you shouldn’t go sniffing around there… there’s like unwritten codes about that.