I just spoke to my parents on the phone. Mom and Dad had gone to a sports bar to watch football because my dad is too cheap for cable. Mom, who isn't the biggest football fan in the world, used the opportunity to do a little people watching. She was hoping to shock me with her reports of what she saw.
Two couples came into the bar together during the game. For about an hour, the men proceeded to buy drink after drink for the women until, by my mother's count, the women had consumed eight beers each. The women were quite tipsy as my mother noticed when passing them on her way in and their way out of the bathroom (which, knowing my mother, was just a pretense for greater access to overheard conversations). When the couples left one hour and two baskets of buffalo wings later, the women were, in my mother's words, \hanging all over the men.""
Was I shocked? No, not shocked at all. Situations like this happen every weekend on State Street. OK, I was upset because it is always disturbing to hear a tale of alcohol, flirtation, and potential coercion, but I can make myself feel a little bit better because I don't really know what happened. I was also upset because these couples were older than your average undergrad and also older than I am.
I mean, what my mom witnessed makes me uncomfortable to say the least, but it further disturbs me to know that as we get older we apparently learn nothing from our mistakes. Or maybe these men had learned that getting women drunk was a successful technique for coercing sex. Or maybe the situation was marginally less sinister than it appeared, and these couples just use alcohol as a crutch to loosen there inhibitions. I guess that I don't know and can't know exactly what happened unless my mom pulled a Tearoom Trade-type maneuver (ask your friendly, neighborhood sociology TA for an explanation of this classic sociological work) and copied down their license plates as they drove off. That would enable me to do some follow up, if highly unethical, research. But, I digress.
Anyway, the point of writing this particular column is to wax moralistic on you all. Combining drinking and sex is a recipe for disaster. People end up doing things that they didn't set out to do. I am not just talking about sexual assault or one night stands. Drinking increases risk for engaging in unprotected sexual acts, too. I feel like it is really important to remind us all that we should be careful when we drink. I am not proud to admit it, but as an undergrad I went to parties where friends of mine felt compelled to ""watch"" me and make sure that I didn't do anything stupid while I was drunk. Fortunately for me, the worst mistakes I have made at parties involve spilling wine (always red) on carpets.
I am not aiming this message at women. I am aiming it at all of us. No one wants to wake up Sunday morning realizing that they have just slept with their best friend's partner or that the person in bed with him/her really doesn't want to be there. A friend of mine once dated a boy who told her that he would never have sex with her when she was drunk because he wasn't comfortable being uncertain if she really meant to consent to sex with him. I can't help but think that that is sweet. Sweeter, perhaps, than Boone's Farm wine.
