drunk

Meg

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I have been with my boyfriend 8 years, since we were just 18. We’ve kept in touch with high school friends and one of them was having a pool party over summer. Our friendship group has a lot of guys in it but something happened which really shocked me at the party. This was well into the night and I was pretty drunk by this point. I was in my swimsuit talking to another girl when one of my boyfriends friends came over and put his hand on my bum. I was drunk, and shocked so responded ‘Hi XXX’, he quickly removed his hand and then we had a brief exchange where I pretended he hadn’t just touched me inappropriately, and he walked off. This friend had been travelling for years and recently returned, my boyfriend adores him and was saying how great it was to have him back. I was shocked by the behaviour because it was so out of character. I started to think I had drunkenly imagined it, but I know it happened. Anyway, I’ve been left feeling annoyed, confused, guilty even, about it. Also because this guy has a girlfriend who wasn’t at the party. I obviously can’t tell my boyfriend either as I don’t want to cause trouble..

celia

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I worked at a cafe where most of us were pretty teen girls. There was an older cook in the back who I thought was pretty cool. One day he was obviously drunk, and all of the servers knew, but no one did anything about it. I think my manager was just desperate. I went in the back to dump out the mop water and he followed me, making sexual comments. When I bent over to poor it out, he took out his phone and took a picture of me bending over. I was in shock, I dont even remember if I asked him to delete that. The work environment was to program us into never making a scene, always smiling, doing anything to make the customer happy, and pretending that everything was pleasant. From prior experience, like almost being blinded by chemicals (breaking OSHA regulations for eye wear) and having to go through extensive eye tissue treatments from corrosion,I am certain my female boss would not have done anything, and would pretend nothing had happened. Other girls have told me of similar harassment from him, and one of them told and nothing was done about it.

Marion

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Two years ago, I haven’t moved out from my parents that long, a friend from home visited me. We went and had a couple of beers and he slept over at my place. I didn’t really worry about it because I have known him for a long time by then. But he didnt just go to sleep. He started to feel me up and ended up between my legs. I had do really use force to get his hand out of my crotch. Endet up with letting him feel my boobs to stop him from doing anything else because I didn’t feel powerful enough to really push him away.

Max

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I took a job at a convenience store which sells a lot of alcohol. I’d been working there for a week when I was left in the shop by myself on a busy saturday evening. Where I worked wasn’t sketchy at all, just the occasional drunk. But a middle-aged man came in with his friends, jeering and shouting. When he sees me behind the till, he immediately leans over the counter, puts a hand on my shoulder and asks if a ‘pretty lady’ like me has snapchat. I politely say no, and don’t bother to correct him that I’m a trans-man. He tried to slip me his number when i told him i had a girlfriend and wasn’t interested. He starts shouting in my face, calling me a faggot, slut, etc, and insisted i was just playing hard to get. I then refused to serve him, At which point he said he was going to cut my throat after i finished work, before leaving. I called my manager as soon as he left, and all he said was “You should expect it” and chastised me for overreacting to a regular customer, and it was just an empty threat. I left that job within the hour, and I had to get my flatmates to escort me home. The guy was waiting, but seeing my male flatmates made him back off.

Mina

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I worked for a London company with a lot of older sales guys, some would drink in the lunchtime, they called me a lesbian as I didnt have a boyfriend and one called me a prostitute for no reason I can fathom except that he was always drunk in the lunchtimes and he was abusive and toxic, they made sexual jokes all the time and I didnt leave as I was scared and had to pay my rent which was high and I was quite new to the corporate world, so vunerable, looking back I wish I had left years ago when the comments started, although I would now never put myself in that situation, they also didnt pay me for new client accounts that I brought into the company.

lou

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I went to my first proper party last night and drank and got a little drunk. A bunch of boys needed a ride home and we agreed since we know most of them at least kind of, and most of them are nice. One of them had been quite friendly all night and even asked me to be his pong partner; by the time we reached the car I was feeling the booze and he insisted I had to sit next to him bc I was the only one small enough. Once I sat down he immediately put his arm around me and started stroking my thigh, moving under my leg towards my butt and up my side toward my chest. I kept wiggling trying to signal my discomfort, put my hand under my butt to act as a blockade but he persisted. Leaning his head into my neck, breathing on me, kissing my shoulder. Eventually I turned to him and said “I know what you’re doing and we’re not doing this.” And he acted shocked and innocent. I went on trying to keep the mood light even tho in all honesty I wanted to cry, I wanted to get out of the car, after years of studying rape culture reading horror stories thinking that could never to me, feeling the kind of paralyzingly fear every women has described, I instead said “we were pong partners once, you know what that means? Absolutely nothing.” He goes “oh it means a lot of things” as he leaned back into my neck. I grabbed his wrist and pulled his arm away from me, he then protested “I can’t fit in the car like this come on.” And so again I agreed for whatever reason and said “fine you can keep your arm around me but only PLATONICALLY okay?” He said okay but he didn’t mean it. That was the longest car ride of my entire life.

Nadia

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Molested by half-conscious friend. It was in Brighton, quite a long time ago. I was with an old cis male friend of mine. We had been at a party and we had agreed that I would be staying over at his on the sofa. Unfortunately for this story, he got incredibly wasted. I realised this on the way back to his. I wasn’t quite sure how out of it he was, he was still speaking, mildly, but it seemed that he was operating with basic motorised functions but not really himself for a number of hours. When we got to his house, he didn’t seem to have the keys. Later we found that his keys were in his pockets. Now I know to have checked them but he was still talking to me so I thought that he might have lost them on the way back or at the party. I can’t remember why but I also didn’t have money at the time either. This basically meant that we were on the street for a number of hours. I was quite unsure of what to do. I needed to look out for my friend, stay with them, until they were more themself. I waas holding his hand as we walked around near the lanes. It would have been seriously dangerous for him without my assistance. We were going to be on the streets for the rest of the night, morning, with basically nothing. I was worried about getting really cold. I used to get to know homemless people in Brighton quite a lot. In Brighton there is a lot more of a friendly atmosphere (than compared to, for example, central London which is where I moved to a few years later) and so it’s not uncommon for people to hang out with homeless people and talk to them there. I ended up spending time with a homeless person which at first was great. I thought company! & they offered me my and my friend a blanket. To my horror, whilst I was speaking to the homeless person, out of no-where my friend started to touch me inappropriately, the most sensitive, intimate and traumatised part of my body. Incredibly shocked by this, I moved away from him and within a few moments he had adjusted where he was at and he did it again. I don’t want to go into more detail about how horrible this felt. I said his name and told him to stop it not sure if he could hear me. Now, what was – amongst the obvious horrible ness of this – also disturbing was that I knew he was semi-conscious. He was reaching for the most sacred and intimate part of me when I hadn’t given any sign of consent in a semi-conscious state. Who the fuck was this? What’s going on?! Am I communicating with this persons subconscious?! Great. ‘Cause it’s freaky shit up in here and I do not know how to deal with molesting parts of people’s subconscious, at least at that specific point in time psychologically. Also – how did he know that’s where that part of me was? I mean, why wasn’t he going for my feet, or some part of me closer to him? It was very obviously direct and disturbing. What should I feel about this? Seriously…what the hell…my friend just molested me when he was semi conscious. Also! If he was in any way conscious, this was a friend of mine, I trusted him…I mean, he knows about my past about this stuff, I have told him about it to ask for support and help. Really quite angry. Really quite confused. Also simultaneously and still (rather ironically at this point) really concerned about his wellbeing. Also! How am I going to explain this to him the next day? I mean I have to… I have had so many uncomfortable conversations with people only out of necessity about such things. ​It’s pretty surreal and I really don’t mean in the dreamy sense. SO BASICALLY, I got up, moved us to the North Lanes – not really knowing how to process all this but knew I had to move as the homeless person started being creepy too and I was like BLAHHHH – I went just round the corner to the North Lanes. It was too early for people to be around much, but it felt safer and I found a great bench (outside the bagel store facing the on-foot path with loads of cafe and shops that were about to open) in the North Lanes which seemed like a good place whilst I meditated near. Someone from a cafe gave me a muffin for free but was also creepy – really spun me out and gave me a tiny glimpse (but obviously not a real representation as I am hugely privileged in various senses such as being white, I seem cisgender to others, having a home, usually having the option of a roof over my head from family and friends and so on) but a small idea of how dangerous is can be being female-bodied, vulnerable and on the street. I mean there were so many creeps and my friend sexually assaulted me when he was out of it. Really sucks. He was really sorry. I’m glad that he accepted it happened and was really sorry about it. It does help when people do that.

Anonymous

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When I was in high school, I went to a party where the host continually offered me drinks. We were not dating, not in the slightest. Eventually, I was so drunk on grain that I could hardly think or see straight. I spent the night there. He talked me into it. I don’t remember much but I know my ass hurt the next day. I wasn’t a virgin, but had never had anal sex. He laughed about it, even made a comment in my yearbook about “that one fun night”. To this day, I don’t know if I was raped, consented or something in between, but for decades I have lied about it, hid it, and have never spoken about it to anyone but my husband.

hollywils

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When I was 17 I went to my best friend’s house party and had a bit too much to drink. I accepted a lift home from a boy I’d known well throughout my school life and someone I felt safe with. He drove round the corner, pulled over the car and started to try to initiate foreplay with me. I was too drunk, which I recall him saying as well, and crawled to the backseat of the car to distance myself from him. He also moved over to the back. I was lying down on the backseats when he started masturbating. I was very drunk, confused and don’t have much memory of this part now (I assume from repression), but I remember him looming over me and eventually finishing over the top I was wearing. He then drove back to the party and made me get back out of the car, meaning I had to return to the party in which a lot of my peers were at. For a long while, my friends and peers found the incident funny. I felt it was all my fault, I shouldn’t have got in the car/shouldn’t have got that drunk, and that I should be really ashamed and embarrassed. It was only when someone in my year group approached me after hearing about what had happened that I realized I wasn’t the one in the wrong, because he simply told me that him and his friends were appalled by the boy’s actions and that they were sorry to hear of what happened. Even so, I’m still teased by friends about the event today (3 years later) and feel like a lot of my friends don’t understand fully why what he did was wrong – it’s easier to just laugh and embarrass me about it. The boy completely denied that he did anything wrong when the peer mentioned above tried to talk to him about it. His defense was that he could have done more, but he resisted. We spoke once after the incident, in which he told me that the only good thing about me was “my tits”.

Kasia

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Some men think I am not worthy of normal treatment. They do not shake hands with women. Even when I stretch my arm, they ignore it, they just greet other men. It annoys me so much. They also use those silly names that are supposed to be polite phrases I guess, like “kobietko” (it is “you tiny woman” in Polish). Some men think I need their approval. They whistle or comment my appearance out loud when I come by. Sometimes they do not say a word, but they look at me in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. It is not a compliment for me. It is an insult. Some men don’t respect my autonomy. Once a guy at a rock festival grabbed my boobs from behind and squished them. He was drunk and didn’t want to stop when I pushed his hands away. I felt disgusted. Some men don’t respect my will. One time someone I knew for a long time and trusted stripped me from my pants though I said a clear “no” and forced me to passive oral sex. I felt raped but could not protest any more because I was so surprised and affraid. It still hounts me.