Last weekend I went out with two guy friends. I haven’t had guy friends in a long time. Probably since the first or second year of university.
The night started out good – we were listening to music, having a couple drinks, and filling each other in on the past few years we hadn’t been around each other.
We had nice chats walking to the bar – tipsy of course. We spoke about how things hadn’t worked out with his ex, and how I feel like a different person since we were 19 and met at my uni. Things were good.
We got to the pub and I wanted to get a drink. I went up to the bar and a middle aged man approached me. He had bright blue eyes and was good looking for his age. He asked what I was drinking and was disappointed when I said gin and tonic. He offered to buy me one anyways and I obviously accepted the free drink. I’m not sure what was said, but things got a little tense between us and I remember giggling and joking as a way to diffuse whatever was going on. Before walking away, he turned to me and said “don’t worry, it’s not like I spiked your drink or anything”. 
My jaw dropped. Had I not already been a few drinks in, I’m not sure I would have had the guts to say something. I asked him how he could think that was funny. He told me to relax (a red rag to a bull) and I walked to a table by myself, hoping he didn’t approach me again.
Most of the time, I’m not engaged enough in conversations with guys at the bar to actually remember the details in the morning. What he said though, shocked me. It scared me realizing he thought being spiked was trivial enough to joke about, and how he was comfortable saying that in front of not only me, but his friend and the female bartender as well. It scares me more that it even entered his mind to joke about it at all.
Spiking drinks is on everyone’s minds in the UK right now because of its prevalence in the past month. Having been spiked in my first year of university, I know how scary it is to wake up in the morning not remembering a single thing and only being able to string together the night based off of what your peers saw of you. Between laughs, the guys I was with in first year described how I had to be carried up the hallway of our residence because I was “so drunk”. We all thought I was just too drunk. It wasn’t until days later I realized I had only had one drink that night, and that I had left it unattended in the res room for too long.
That guy who bought me the drink last weekend was obviously an asshole, so I moved on and carried on trying to make the most of my first night out in Wales.
My other friend arrived. We’d kissed at the club a couple times a month prior, and had briefly messaged back and forth since then. The first time we met we went clubbing in London and it took him the entire night – and me prompting him – for him to actually kiss me. He had stressed how he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable, and I appreciated a guy taking it slow and ensuring my comfort even in those drunk moments.
This night, he walked into the pub and I immediately knew he was drunk. He was more comfortable with me – hugged me when he walked in, whispering in my ear that he was happy to see me, holding eye contact, buying drinks. 
We walked to the next bar and held hands…I was excited to see where things would go.
At the next bar, I was still the only girl in our trio. As the night progressed, the guys got more and more drunk, and this one got more and more handsy.
I could feel his eyes on me as I was dancing, making friends, buying drinks. We’d been kissing the whole night.
I then met a Welsh guy and got chatting. He wanted to buy us drinks, so I followed him to the bar. He ordered a Sol for each of us and before I could pick up the drink, the guy I’d come to the bar with had grabbed me and pulled me back to our table. He wouldn’t let me go back to the Sol guy. 
In the moment, I was upset because it was rude to have left that friendly guy at the bar with a drink he’d not ordered for himself. In the hours after though, I was pissed. The fact that this guy felt so entitled to me that he dragged me away from a conversation I was enjoying, is wrong. He physically pulled me away without so much as a word to me. I had no say in it. Trying to move away from a guy who is a foot taller than you is obviously easier said than done.
We got back to the table. I’m starting to get irritated by how drunk my two friends are. I go to the bathroom, come back, and my one friend is gone. I’m supposed to be staying the night at his tonight…I’ve never been here before and don’t know my way around.
I then remember I have his keys in my purse – good, he probably didn’t go far then.
I look around the bar and only find my way too drunk “friend” who continues being extremely handsy with me.
Hands up my dress, hands on my underwear, fingers pulling down my top…Fingers in my mouth and pulling my hair. This is all in public – on the dance floor of a bar.
I told him to stop, and that he needed to chill out and drink water. He couldn’t even focus his eyes on me enough to hear what I was saying…But his hands were on autopilot.
I got him water, and I started to feel a bit panicked, not being able to find my other friend. I called him over and over and had no answer.
Friend #2 ran out of the bar and because he was too drunk to hardly speak, I went after him and needed to call us both a cab. While on the phone to the cab company, he pushed me up against the wall, kissing my neck, hands again, up my dress.
A guy walked by who looked about our age. He shouted at us, “you gonna take her home and fuck her, buddy?” I pushed him off me and gave the cab company our details.
Waiting for the cab, he doesn’t take his hands off me. He then whispers in my ear, “I can’t wait to be inside you”.
I felt like bursting into tears. The panic turned into just disappointment. Was this really happening again? I’d been looking forward to seeing him after weeks of chatting about poetry and travelling and our favourite books…and he still views me as something to fuck ??? An object he can just feel up and use his strength with and assume he can handle however he wants?
I’m no stranger to casual sex. I’m fine with going home with a guy and expecting nothing emotional following, but here? He was blatantly ignoring my signals to stop. He had assumed that because we were drinking, because I was wearing a tight dress, because we’d kissed, that he could do whatever he wanted to me, and so he did.
The cab came and we got in. Even though he was in and out of sleep – too drunk to even sit up straight, his hand was still up my dress, between my legs. No matter how far I tried to scooch on the backseat, it kept coming back.
He then grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch. I ripped it away and told him to stop. He fell asleep. I focused on trying to get us home in one piece. I then heard him vomit all over the footwell of the backseat. It went through my mind that he was so drunk he couldn’t even hold his liquor, yet his mind was still together enough to want to hook up with me in the backseat of a taxi? Someone explain.
We eventually got home to my other friend whose keys I had. We carried the other up the stairs and eventually got him into bed. I told my friend that that was an awful night. We eventually started joking around and I don’t remember what it was about. He playfully grabbed between my legs though, not knowing the night I’d already had at the hands of the friend he described as gentle, kind, and humble.
The rest of the weekend, the guys knew I was upset, but I don’t feel men understand the depth of nights like these.
The fact that both of them felt so entitled to touch me however they wanted, with no regard for my feelings, is frightening. I was not a stranger who – in their minds – wasn’t worthy of respect…I was a friend. Someone they’d had deep, important conversations with. They still felt that they could treat me this way because I’m a woman.
In the morning, they both apologized. It wasn’t lost on me that they didn’t remember half the night, so the apology had a couple holes in it.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d had worse done to me at the hands of guys…and guy “friends”, but the situation sat heavy in my mind.
From start to finish, I had encounters with men that night that made me feel unsafe. It made me feel like just by virtue of being a woman, I am unsafe in all spaces at night. If friends I had trusted had done these things to me, what about someone who doesn’t know me or value me at all?
It makes me sad thinking about these types of nights. It makes me scared to go out with no girls around. I went into that night looking forward to meeting new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and having a good time as a trio. I’m not sure where it went so wrong, but I – the only girl – am left bearing the brunt of what went on. It’s a familiar narrative.
The point is that men need to hold each other accountable. Stop telling girls your friends are “good guys” and that they’d never do something like that…because you don’t know them as well as the girl he’s been drunk and left alone with.
Stick up for your female friends – we’re tired. We’re tired of trying to prove we’re worthy of respect in bars and house parties and public transport. We are worthy of not being touched without our consent.
I really don’t know where these happenings are going to end…But men are the biggest part of the problem, and so they need to be the biggest part of the solution too.
Protect your girl friends. Hold your guy friends accountable. Open the dialogue. Be better.