Not the make-out couch!

It’s safe to assume that if you’re in a bar and you’re flat on your back, there’s trouble.

But if you’re looking at the ceiling, and you have neither passed out nor been knocked out, chances are good that you’ve found the make-out couch.

Oh, don’t pretend you’ve never been there. It’s that dark little nook with armless seating that practically forces bodies to recline, or at the very least, maintain significant body contact. An uninspired version might be a simple two-cushion love seat, shoved to a back corner. A more imaginative choice, say the curtained bed at the Hotel Figueroa bar, is quite likely to become a public platform for interpersonal exploration and to inspire shouts of “Hey, get a room!”

I’ve been surveying the make-out couch phenomenon around town ever since I ended up cheek to cheek on a shrunken settee in the back of the Edendale Grill. Given a choice between a hard barstool and a charming velveteen couch, I took the velvet. I might actually have had some fun there if it hadn’t been for the setup. It faces two club chairs (“Mind if we sit down?” ask the strangers), a table, the kitchen door and the pathway to the bathrooms. Affection on that couch is going to be a very public display, and I’m not that kind of girl, thank you very much.

Days later, I was sipping Lillet with a bunch of girlfriends at the Peninsula Hotel’s dark and elegant bar when we assessed the room’s potential as a make-out spot.

“Oh, no one makes out in the Peninsula,” scoffed Ms. D. She considered it in bad taste to lock lips in an expensive hotel bar in the middle of Beverly Hills. I’m here to tell you that that very bar has loads of potential. It’s dark. It invites lingering. The banquettes are comfortably upholstered. Lo and behold! Canoodling! Distinguished gentlemen kissing gray-haired women! Gray-haired women leaving lipstick on the collars of distinguished gentlemen! Young men in three-piece suits getting familiar with nubile young women -- right here!

And as I occupied a banquette in a tight little corner, blocked from view by a four-foot-square pillar, I had to consider my seat a first-rate make-out couch. Yet, this was girls night. Perhaps another time.

Sooner than I expected, that time arrived the next evening in downtown Los Angeles. While scouting for a new place to chat with an erudite and hunky gentleman friend, I dragged him into the Golden Gopher, a former dive bar on a skanky stretch of 8th Street. It’s dark, loud, friendly and the decor a little bit wacky. Heading to the relative quiet of the outside courtyard, we found nowhere to sit. We did, however, find a place to lie down -- the make-out couch. Like an overgrown futon, this canoodling couch is essentially a bed. It is, in fact, a bed. And that’s where the trouble comes in.

There I was, with a handsome gentleman, and the only place to sit was this oversized, very bed-like couch. Sure, you can sit upright, but the extra depth means your legs are outstretched, kind of like you’re a little kid sitting on the grown-ups’ furniture. Even though that outstretched position enables everyone to admire your sparkly new heels, it feels faintly ridiculous. The bed-like proportions force you to recline.

In moments, I’m flat on my back, staring at the sliver of sky between the tenement high-rise buildings and I realize, I’m flat on my back in a bar! I Am in A Bed in a Bar and There’s a Handsome Man Next to Me!

And then it happened. Suddenly, his mouth opened, he closed his eyes and he ... yawned.

Valli Herman can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.