(EDITORS Be advised that the first letter in this column deals with matters of a sexual nature. While the language used is not graphic, the subject may be offensive to some readers.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We happen to live in a part of the country where it is not at all uncommon for long-time married people to engage in brief, recreational affairs with other long-time married people.

From time to time, I have been approached for this purpose by members of our social-neighborhood-PTA-corner market set; I have politely demurred, with no hard feelings and continued goodwill. The etiquette of that conversation, I am proud to say, is not the subject of my letter.

Rather, I wonder how to conduct an ongoing relationship with the person thereafter, particularly as it takes place in a close-knit community that includes my spouse. Sometimes the person in question (or, shall we say, the PIQ) is a guest at my home, or the parent of one of my children's friends.

I cannot be angry. After all, the person did not intend to damage my marriage, only to seek discreet diversion in a setting which, as I'm sure the PIQ sees it, is safe for this purpose precisely because all of us are so firmly ensconced in the folkways of our community. Both the PIQ and myself are wholly comfortable simply ignoring the matter, just as one would ignore a broken platter at a dinner party. Should I be?

GENTLE READER: Why not? If the community is as blithe as you say, and not a seething cauldron of marital accusations and disappointments like the rest of the country, all of you must be practiced in the art of ignoring the obvious.

Miss Manners assures you that this is the only civilized and considerate thing to do after declining such attentions. A lady or gentleman takes the position that the person in question was carried away, drunk or otherwise acting out of character, and pretends it never happened. Any winking reference to this person being a failed seducer is not nice.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: While I have relatively good table manners, I seemed to miss the lesson about how not to let food eaten from a fork drip sauce onto my clothes.

When eating pasta at a restaurant, I managed to get not one, not two, but four tiny drops of olive oil on my brand-new silk shirt. After spearing a couple of pieces of penne, I tried brushing them on the side of the bowl, then holding them above the bowl for a little while to let the excess oil (and there was much excess) drip off of them. I then sort of pushed my neck forward, but this didn't do the trick.

Is it OK to just tuck a napkin in my neckline? Bring a plate quite close when I'm eating? What are my options?

GENTLE READER: Not wearing silk when you are going to eat greasy food. Picking restaurants that go easy on the olive oil.

If you are unwilling to make these sacrifices, Miss Manners suggests putting a bit of bread on the side of your plate and parking the dripping morsel on that until it is fit to be lifted. And keeping handy a scarf that you can fling over the damage to your wardrobe.

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It is time for sweet remembrance of auld acquaintance.

(We use the quaint spelling at this time of year to remind ourselves of all those high school classmates who were mangling their perfectly respectable names in the pathetic hope of making them look exotic. How much fun it is to embarrass them by using those odd spellings, now that they think nobody remembers.)

Or rather, reminiscing would be sweet if it were the sweet acquaintanceships that people remembered. Miss Manners has noticed that it tends not to work that way.

Whom do you spend more time thinking about: The person in your prom picture whose idiotic get-up you unaccountably admired at the time, but whose calls you started avoiding your freshman year in college? Or the one who laughed derisively-- and publicly -- when you proffered your heart?

Who plays a bigger part in your fantasies of settling old scores: The loyal friend who saw you through troubled times but had outgrown you by the time you might have reciprocated? Or the bully who caused you all that trouble?

Who is the person you dream of dazzling by achieving untoward success: The kindly senior employee who took the trouble to guide you? Or the rival who tried to thwart you?

Miss Manners sincerely hopes that you reserve a warm feeling for those figures from the past who were good to you. No one regrets more than she does the miserable fact that rudeness makes a more lasting impression than kindness.

But such being the case, she might as well derive from it a stern lesson in manners.

The lesson is that although the world changes, humiliating memories remain fixed. Everyone accepts the second half of this proposition, although some let old defeats continue to rankle while others remove the sting by turning them into amusing stories.

It is the first part of this lesson that people seem to have difficulty grasping.

You know that you have changed as you matured, and are likely to fancy that you changed for the better. You grew out of your shyness and into your nose-size, achieved a reasonable life if not the success you hoped, and have proved socially and romantically desirable, at least to some. But you have a hard time recognizing that others are not right where you left them.

That homely, unpopular kid you found so easy to scorn may now be a beauty or a celebrity. The friend you no longer needed may have become influential. The rival you tricked may have been promoted above you -- or could even be writing a book about the business.

And you may be sure that the one thing about them all that has not changed is the memory of how badly you treated them when you thought you could get away with it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I will be attending a black tie dinner, which I am fairly sure actually means "black tie" when it says so. I have a pair of long, white kid-leather gloves -- about four inches above the elbow -- and I was wondering if they would be too formal.

Also, I can't manage buttoning and unbuttoning them myself, and I know you are supposed to remove them when you eat. Would asking whoever is sitting next to me to unbutton one be, well, too flirty?

GENTLE READER: Flirty is hardly the word. The prospect of your dinner partner's undoing your gloves, button by button, would be so erotic as to mesmerize not just him but the entire table. Why do you think strippers are so fastidious about wearing long gloves?

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Miss Manners can rescue you from temptation. Over-the-elbow gloves are for white tie occasions. For black tie ones, your gloves should go only to the elbow (or within an inch of the end of a longer sleeve). Those you can peel off yourself, provocatively or not.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: In December of last year I was in New York City, and went with some friends to see the World Trade Center site. It was a moving experience, and afterward we recouped our spirits at the nearest coffee shop. Waiting in line ahead of us was a New York City firefighter in full gear, obviously on a short break from his work at the site.

I was seized with the impulse to buy the man a latte. However, I could think of no way to do this gracefully. He was ahead of me in line, and so I could not dart ahead and slap money down on the counter.

As a woman, I know precisely what to do if a strange man should offer to buy me a beverage at a bar (if asked, decline with thanks; if the drink just appears at my table, convey fulsome thanks via the waiter but leave promptly). But there seemed to be no way to reverse-engineer this knowledge. In the end, I timidly did nothing.

What should I have done? None of the alternatives -- buy a fistful of gift certificates and thrust them at uniformed persons, write a check to one of the WTC charities -- seems quite satisfactory.

GENTLE READER: This is a fascinating example of how the changing circumstances of social context affect etiquette.

Your interpretation of offering to buy a stranger's drink as being an overture to, ah, courtship, was valid before the attack. In the months following, however, the motive of wanting simply to thank Ground Zero workers was universally recognized. You could simply have marched to the counter and said, "I'd like to buy the brave firefighter a latte," put down your money, and returned to your place in line. Miss Manners promises you that the firefighter would not have protested, "But I'm a married man!"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have decided to cut someone out of my social circle. It's nothing that that person has done, and I like her very much, but I've come to feel that there are some very fundamental differences between us, and to continue association with her will only hurt us more in the long run. I drifted away from her a few months ago, saying I needed some time and space, and have found that life without her has been much more restful.

Does etiquette mandate that I tell her what I'm doing? I don't want to hurt her feelings, but have no interest in resuming our former friendship. Should I just remain quiet and distant or do I owe her some explanation (which could get me sucked back into everything I was escaping from)?

GENTLE READER: Etiquette mandates that you do not tell her what you are doing, much less why. It knows no way of saying "Life is more pleasant without you" that spares the feelings of the person in question. Miss Manners is afraid that you will have to do this the traditional way, by claiming to be too busy to see her.

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