can someone else bid on an item but have a friend use paypal to pay instead on ebay?

As you have indicated that you don't have a pay pal account linked to your eBay account you can use another account to pay. This can be messy to do. What I would suggest is if you have already won the item and have been sent the win notice you can do this (unless the seller asks you to wait for an invoice). On your win notification there should be a "pay now" button. Click this and the next page should ask you for payment type, select pay pal if not selected by default. This will then take you to the pay pal website. Your friend will need to enter in their log on details here.

I would also highly recommend that you review all instructions from the seller in the this listing before proceeding further.

yes, when you go on ebay and click to pay your friend enters his paypal user name and password and that'll be ok!