The P.D.A Syndrome

fanfair

Sex is back-hail the revival of P.D.A. (Public Display of Af fection). Those days of keeping a certain distance from one's partner in public are over; now couples aren't just asking to get seated next to each other, they're asking to get seated on top of each other. Prompted, perhaps, by highprofile canoodlers such as Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, Manhattan's stylish set has rediscovered the adolescent joys of wandering-hand trouble, hickeys, and going to the movies not to watch the movies. Hot-and-heavy maneuvers spotted at trendy restaurants and benefit performances include torrid French-kissing sessions (during intermission) and ostentatious forays "to the bathroom'' (the hippest lovebirds re-emerge looking a little spent, with mussed-up, not moussed-up, hair, dreamy eyes, and blouses buttoned up wrong).

The new perfect partners for the callow nineties look to be guileless and nubile—the sort, in fact, that never heard that sex was out.

CHRISTA D' SOUZA