Guide to Having Sex on Everybody’s Coats.

College is a very stupid time for a human being to be alive. A very stupid time. This is why people always bore you with “college” stories. This is why I always bore you with college stories. College kids are stupid. You make stupid choices and everything seems like it’s important at the time when it’s happening, so it seems like it’s a good story when it’s really not a good story.

Like, “One time me and my buddies got really bored and we drove out into a hayfield with a pony keg and started this huge bonfire, but this guy got mad and shot at us with a shotgun, and we had to sleep in the woods because our one buddy freaked out and left us out there, but really it wasn’t even a farmer, it was just this one dude’s buddy and the two of them just stole our beer for a party they were having.”

Maybe that’s a good story, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Nobody really comes out ahead in it. I do know that. You’re either bragging about being duped, or you’re bragging about how you duped somebody, and either way you’re bragging about how important beer was to you and how funny it is to steal the car of and/or have your car stolen by somebody you kind of know. It’s really a lose lose lose lose scenario. Full of stupidity.

I have college stories of my own, and they suck just as much as that one, and they’re full of just as much of the central controlling theme in all college stories as that one in the hayfield I just made up (it probably really happened like 470 times), namely: we were young and stupid and we did something stupid that we wouldn’t do now, but wasn’t it great that we were that young and that stupid at one point in our lives?

Well, yes and no. Yes it’s great to be young and stupid. No, it’s not great that you’re not that stupid anymore. You can and should be just as stupid now as you were in college. I am. I do stupid things all the time. Yesterday I played Dynasty Warriors 6 for ten straight hours. It was very stupid. By the time I was done, my eyeballs felt like they’d been licked by a dehydrated house cat, and I was seeing little life meters above strangers’ heads. But that’s not adequate to report to anybody as if it’s a story. It’s just a stupid thing I did.

It’s not even the stupidest thing I’ve done in the last 48 hours, either. That would have to be not doing laundry. I have continued to not do laundry for a very long time now, and it’s stupid. I’m down to the comparative-smelling phase of getting myself dressed in the morning. Why didn’t I do laundry? Because I had ten consecutive hours of Dynasty Warriors 6 to play. That’s why.

One time in college I had sex in the coat room of a party on top of everybody’s coats.

I had no idea it was going to be sex until it was sex, though. So it’s not like I walked into the coat room and said, “Hey baby, let’s do it on these coats.” But after a little while of making out that’s exactly what ended up happening on those coats. When you’re in college, that’s how sex works sometimes. If you’re good at making out, sometimes it just turns into sex kind of by accident. Kissing and having sex are two points on the same continuum, and nobody’s discovered the rules of where one should turn into another because everybody’s only had sex like 4 times ever. So it’s possible and even vaguely likely that you could accidentally have sex on everybody’s coats.

At one point we had to stop and stay perfectly still as somebody searched around for their coat in the dark. I’m not sure if that person noticed that there were two people having sex on their coat. Then when that one person left, we continued to have sex on the coats.

I realize that this is a gross thing to do to somebody’s coat. I would not particularly want strange people I don’t know to have sex on my coat. Probably. I would have to see the people with my own eyes first. I definitely wouldn’t want to discover any kind of sex-related stain on my coat without knowing where it came from. It’s hard to say how I’d react to it, though. I have no moral high ground here. I’ve had sex on peoples’ coats. Once you do that, the cat is kind of out of the bag as far as hypothetical reactions to a person having sex on your coat. Mostly I think it’s permissible as “a stupid thing that happened in college,” whether you’re talking about having sex on coats or having coats under sex.

And technically it was the coats that were intruding. They were on her bed.

I know one thing for sure about my hypothetical reaction to a couple of people having sex on my coat: it would involve astonishment. That’s because since having sex on the coatroom bed that one time in college I have never ever put my coat on a bed at a party. You just never know what’s going to happen. I prefer to put my coat somewhere I can be reasonably sure it won’t be sexed-upon. Like hanging in a closet or under the bed or up on top of the photo booth or wedged behind the refrigerator. The more obscure and unsex-like place I can put my coat when I’m at a party, the happier I am.

There are other practical reasons for obscure party coat placement besides avoiding other people’s sexual discharges. For one, if you spend 20 second wedging your coat behind the fridge, chances are good that no matter what happens at the party, you’ll remember where you put your coat. You won’t have to search for it. Behind the fridge is not especially valuable coat real estate. It won’t shift or get lost in a sea of other coats. Nobody’s going to walk off with it by accident because it looks like their coat. It’s just going to be there behind the fridge where you lodged it when you came in.

I also believe that this strategy is a good theft deterrent. I just feel in my bones that my coat won’t get stolen or broken into if it’s behind the fridge. You’d have to really be casing me to even know it’s back there. And if you wanted to rifle through it, you’d really have to draw a lot of attention to yourself. So later if I get my coat out from behind the fridge and my iPod’s missing, I can say, “Did anybody see a guy pulling this coat out from behind the fridge and rifling through it and stealing my iPod and then shoving it back behind the fridge in the exact position I left it in?” And then I’d probably find out about that dude and go do… something.

Another great thing about shoving your coat behind a fridge is it draws attention to you when you’re just entering the party. It’s a great icebreaker. If somebody asks why you are shoving your coat behind the fridge, you can say something funny, like, “safety first,” or “I don’t want anybody to have sex on it.” And then you’re the party weirdo, which is fine because having a party weirdo around at least gives everybody something to talk about, like asking, “Who’s the guy drinking whiskey out of an old jelly jar?” And responding with, “I don’t know; I saw him shove his coat behind the fridge earlier. He told me not to have sex on it.” That guy is always good for a party, and the party is always good to that guy. Parties are about building up mystery points until you get people daring other people to talk to you. It’s way easier to shove your coat behind a fridge than it is to walk up to a stranger and just say hello out of the blue.

The weirdguy effect is also cumulative, like a week later when people ask you what that stain or weird burn mark is on your coat, you can answer, “Oh, I shoved it behind the fridge at a party last week.” Potential girlfriends love this, because you’re like a project they can work on. They can imagine showing you all about how to put your coat on a hanger in a closet.

And that’s great because you can imagine telling them, “But what if this happens?”

And then you put your coat on the ground and start making out on top of it.

Who knows what’s going to happen then. Maybe sex. You can’t plan for these things.