There is a time in every relationship, whether it’s a frienship or involves sex or both, where you realize the other person knows you almost as well as you know yourself (and is quicker to admit that, yes, you would buy a Liza Minelli album if you knew no one was looking).

But not long after that realization hits comes an inexplicable moment when that bond is shattered, when you question not only that person’s true knowledge of who you are, but if you can trust them with your Liza Live on Broadway DVD.

It can happen in a split second, as when she buys you a four-pack of some fruity malt-based beverage made by a company that has no business making anything but hard liquor (Smirnoff or Bacardi) and then says, “You’ll like this because it’s kind of a beer only better.”

Or it can play out slowly, the agony stretching out over a period of an hour or two, like the first time he brings home a movie starring one of those actors on Friends. Only it’s one of the guy actors.

It happened to me not long ago. A very good friend of mine, whom I will call Paula because that’s what she likes to go and happens to be the name on her driver’s license, invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner.

“Now I want to warn you,” she said. “My mother will be there. And my sister. And her husband. And I know how you aren’t too crazy about that.”

How right she was. I was not crazy about that. Paula’s mom hasn’t liked me since I dropped the F-bomb, only it was more like a laser-guided F-missile to a woman who firmly believes that “a good blow” is simply a weather term. If she were a contestant on “Spot that Sex Euphemism,” her buzzer would remain as silent as the audience at a Rob Schneider movie.

As far as her sister and brother-in-law, well, they lived in Albuquerque. Voluntarily. Even people who live in Albuquerque aren’t crazy about people in Albuquerque.

Paula also said she would not be serving turkey or ham, not my favorite meats (unless they were fried). Instead it would be pork. And while she was going to pop open a bottle of wine, she also would have plenty of beer that did not start with the words Bud, Coors or Miller.

She knew me so well.

Or so I thought.

Being a man and thus forced to live with the genetic inability to pitch in, I watched football and waited patiently for that moment I would be called to the table. My beer was cold, the football was good and the pork smelled delicious.

This could well have been the best Thanksgiving ever, making up for the ban on the F-bomb by saying things like, “There’s nothing better than great social intercourse,” in hopes I could get Paula’ brother-in-law to cough up his wine (yeah, he drank wine, which is almost as bad as living in Albuquerque),

It was a good day. Until I sat down at the table.

Paula, knowing me very well, also made sure to have jellied cranberry sauce. Not the real sauce with real cranberries in real juice. But cranberry sauce as God designed it, a gel that made this really cool sucking sound when it came out of the can, landing on the dish with a wet, slimy plop.

So as I settled into my chair, I looked for dish that held one of my holiday favorites, knowing the cylinder-shaped treat would shimmer smartly under the lights, cut into half-inch-thick circular wedges that leaned against one another like fallen dominoes. Because when I saw it, I would take the large spoon that surely accompanied the dish and scoop up two of the perfectly shaped slices and drop them onto my plate in such a way as to hear that satisfying and very moist plop.

Only I didn’t see it. There was the pork, the sweet potatoes, the rolls, the out-of-the-box stuffing. All the traditional Thanksgiving foods.

Except for the jellied cranberry sauce.

“Paula,” I asked. “The, uh, you know…”

I hesitated, hoping for the best. Maybe the can was still in the kitchen, needing only to be opened and the contents tastefully arranged. Maybe it had slipped her mind and it was still in the pantry. Or maybe she was waiting for just the right time, to present the jellied cranberry sauce in the middle of the table with a flourish, the piece de resistance to the Thanksgiving meal.

But what if she had forgotten it altogether? As impossible as it sounded, what if she hadn’t purchased it at all. What if the jellied cranberry sauce sat alone of a grocery store shelf a few miles away, behind doors that were locked at 4 p.m. in observance of this wonderful day?

A shudder ran through me.

“What?” she said.

“Did you buy cranberry sauce?”

“Of course. How could I forget?”

Aw, sweet relief. Well, I’d just pop up, open the can and do it myself, even if my Y chromosome screamed in agonizing pain.

“Great,” I said. “Let me get it. Where is it?”

Paula gave me her patented “You’re an idiot” look (reserved for those rare occasions I do something really stupid, like open my mouth).

“It’s right in front of you.”

“Where?”

“There.” She pointed to a white bowl and was indeed in front of me.

I peered inside. I saw no jellied cranberry sauce. All I saw was this dark purple glop, these irregularly sized chunks of, of …

Jellied cranberry sauce.

How could this have happened? How can you take one of nature’s most perfect foods and utterly destroy it like this? Why not put a four-cylinder engine in a Ferrari? Or paint the Golden Gate Bridge a UPS brown? Or open a Wal-Mart inside the Louvre?

“What the hell happened to it?” I said. “Did it tick you off somehow, causing you to beat it into submission? Did you use it to release your suppressed anger at your family? Or is this just another case of cranberry abuse?”

I expected a logical, well-thought-out explanation, an answer that would cause me to nod my head in agreement and say, yes, I understand, it was the only thing to do.

“I couldn’t get it out of the can,” she blurted. “I had to scoop it, so there you go.”

“What?” I said. “You couldn’t get it out of the can? That’s it?”

“Yeah. What else do you want? The spoon’s right next to it.”

I was, of course, still grieving.

“There must have been a way to remove it from the can without destroying it like this, turning it into cranberry gruel,” I said. “I mean, you open the can, use a can opener to open a few holes at the bottom and it slides right out. Then you slice it. That allows those at the table to pick their favorite slices, like the ones that have the indentation from the can, because those are always the best because those ridges just burst with flavor.”

“You’re rambling. Get over it.”

“But how can you do something like this? Did you even think before you started hacking at it? As you tossed it into the bowl, didn’t the unappealing nature give you a clue that what you were doing was just plain wrong?”

“Look,” she said, “I know how to get cranberry sauce out of the can. But the cans are different now. They’re molded at the bottom so there’s no way you can use a can opener on the bottom. There’s no lip. So you have to scoop it out.”

My mind raced with alternatives.

“Why couldn’t you poke the bottom with a knife? Or an icepick? A screwdriver, yeah, a Phillips head, that would have been perfect. A couple of pokes and that baby slides right out of there like pulling your-“

I don’t need to finish that sentence like I did at the table. Suffice to say the F-bomb quickly took a back seat to, well, let’s just say Paula’s mom was well aware of the euphemisms for male and female genitalia.