I’ll admit that I like to get down at the occasional school dance. On such a night, I will probably spend an hour getting ready so that I might look like I spent only five minutes throwing together some effortlessly casually cool outfit. I will have prearranged plans to go with friends so that I won’t have to walk in alone, but also so that I may have at least one person who is obligated to tell me I look hot. Then of course I’ll tell myself, “You’ve worked hard this week, Lily. There might be parent/teacher chaperones here, but don’t let that stop You from Only Living Once.”

So, yes, I do like to indulge in the school-dance game. As a teenager in her senior year who is still waiting to be invited to the parties with all the cool drugs, I am not hesitant to walk into a dark and dank high school gymnasium with dozens of sweaty, erratically-moving pre- and post-pubescent bodies and unleash my most famous dance moves. Despite what music pages people ‘like’ on Facebook, no one can resist Turning Down for What to the tune of a good ol’ top-40 song.

I do like these events. I do, I do. I buy into the whole damn thing. And yet.

Even I acknowledge that at a school dance, I act a little bit more dumb and immature than I usually would on a normal day. I yell profanities and throw out rude gestures and do things just short of sexual harassment to friends and strangers. And somehow this is okay, my solid excuse being that I Do What I Want.

I guess what I’m trying to understand is, what gives us the confidence to be so inappropriately different? Maybe I’m just prudish, but is it weird that I freak out when I see my friend’s little cousin getting hormonal on some nameless dank bitty? When Monday rolls around, how am I supposed to look at my close girlfriend or that kid I used to sit next to in math when the last time I saw them they were getting down hardcore on someone’s lap?

I guess it’s none of my business how you do your business on the dance floor. A high school dance is sometimes the only place for you to let your freak flag fly. Who am I, a Berkeley reject, to judge the spandex-clad youth of today for letting your booty get the best of you? Do What You Want, What You Want With Your Body, just know that I am never going to look at you the same way again.