inappropriate

Meg

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..

Charlotte

My friend and I came out of the ladies’ toilet in a club, to find two much 50+ year old men purposely blocking our path. They said ‘We think you two are gorgeous’ and asked us repeatedly if we wanted to go with them, very immediately asking for sex. Another woman we had befriended in the loo tried to tell them that we had boyfriends and to leave us alone- they completely ignored her. She was around 30 and we are 19 so it was pretty obvious the men were targeting us because we’re younger. After their continued harassment where they received no positive response from us (I literally wasn’t looking at them) but I looked up and stuck up my middle finger at them. They were immediately angered and offended, we managed to pass them but they one of them said ‘I’ll follow you home’.

Catherine

When I used to work as a lifeguard (recently quit as I couldn’t handle being the workplace object), I went for a swim after working a shift. My colleague was lifeguarding and wearing the wrong colour socks for our uniform, so as I was in a good mood I decided to joke around and tell him ‘you’re not supposed to be wearing those socks’, to which his response was ‘I’ll only take orders from you when you’re wearing a white bikini’.