‘AJLT’ Asks an Important Question: If You Pay Your Friend’s Rent, Can You Bone in Their Bed?

Carrie’s brief, grief-filled interlude between committed monogamous relationships has already come to an end. The eighth episode of And Just Like That…, titled “A Hundred Years Ago,” takes place about a month after Aidan walked back into Carrie’s (and our) life with that jacket. And it seems he’s sticking around.

Remember, the reunited lovers can’t hang out at Carrie’s apartment because it holds the ghost of their relationship’s past. So the episode’s opening scene drops us into a sex den (hotel room) that Carrie and Aidan have been filling up with fuck smells and sounds for approximately one hundred years (every other weekend for a month) while they order $26 omelets (that is the actual price of the omelets.) They pause fucking for like 20 seconds so Aidan can say, “I want you to meet my sons.” Upsetting.

It’s immediately clear that Carrie is dick drunk (a condition where someone is having so much fantastic sex they enter a fugue state) and she says as much to Miranda. “I’ve been having orgasms like I’ve never had in my entire life with anyone—including Aidan,” Carrie says, before wondering if her decade-long marriage to Big was a complete mistake.

The main danger of being dickmatized is that one abandons all common sense—and Carrie does just that with the little of it she has. She prances into Che’s vet clinic (where they’ve been working since their sitcom pilot got dropped) with the grand idea of renting out Che’s apartment to use it as her and Aidan’s erotic Pied-à-terre. It isn’t entirely clear the arrangement (but I’m pretty positive Carrie is fully paying Che’s rent? Though maybe it’s just when Aidan is in town?) but nevertheless, Che immediately agrees.

Carrie and Aidan immediately make themselves at home, furnishing Che’s bare apartment with all sorts of kitchen appliances and utensils. They’re in a sweet nesting stage that serves to deflect from the fact that they are probably fucking constantly in Che’s bed, which brings me to the question: If you pay your friend’s rent, do you get to fuck in their bed?

The argument for “yes” is that if someone is leasing the use of their home to someone else, the leaser gets to do home things in it—which would seemingly include rubbing and bumping one’s private parts as one pleases. And I suppose Che knew what they were agreeing to, though they don’t strike me as someone who reads or thinks too much about the fine print of agreements.

I, personally, lean towards “no.” And not because I’m a prude who thinks sex ought to be confined to between your own two sheets. Fuck wherever your heart desires (within reason.) But I do think if you’re an adult of certain means, which Carrie with her little outfits very much is, you shouldn’t impose your hanky-panky haze on your friends and their lifestyles! Find a cheaper hotel. Sell one single shoe and stay at the pricey hotel you’re already at. Blindfold Aidan so he can go into your old apartment, Carrie. Though that’s probably too kinky for the world’s most vanilla sex columnist.

What’s even more peeving is that it’s framed as doing a big favor to Che, who is having trouble making rent. Perhaps it is. But you aren’t really going to find me sympathizing with Che’s inability to pay Hudson Yards luxury housing rent after having one (1) career success. The whole arrangement feels disastrous and way too intimate for two former coworkers.

Eventually, I imagine Carrie and Aidan’s sex haze will clear or Che will want to move back fully into their place. Whoever comes back to their senses first will end this questionable sublet.

In the meantime, it’s been enjoyable to continue watching a friend group with the most inconsistent etiquette rules in the city live their lives with abandon.