Dear Abby: What If I Can't Help Myself?

Our intrepid etiquette columnist intones: there's a time and place for P.D.A.  But when! And where?  Read on for a moral compass beyond W.W.J.D.

This weekend, at an unnamed fraternity party, I saw yet another drunken hook-up. This time, however, I noticed two minor deviations from the norm: One, instead of being freshmen, these people appeared to be older (see attached picture). Upperclassmen recklessly engaging in minor sexual deviance at a frat party? Weird. Shouldn’t these two have been at Smoke's or, even better, in private?

And, two: Instead of standing in a dark corner or on the side of the room, this couple decided to engage openly in their acts of barely restrained passion between the exit of said frat and the bar. This was a relatively well-lit area, and they were surrounded by the 21+ (or the card-carrying majority) who were trying to get their beer.

Now, I’m not going to deny here that there’s maybe the slightest possibility that one or more of my friends, and numerous unidentified others, have seen me engage in what I will affectionately term “a mistake.” How many of us, post-freshman year, can honestly deny this? But what I am going to say is, I try to stay out of the light, away from the sole exit to an over-crowded frat and far from the beer. I think that if anyone is coherent enough to consider the very few complexities of briefly making out with a complete stranger, he or she will realize that these are generally good guidelines to follow.

Reader beware: As I am not, in fact, Emily Post, but am rather merely a College sophomore, and perhaps the above-listed parameters will change as I grow older and wiser; until then, however, let’s try to keep our anonymous make-out sessions just that: anonymous.