What You Tell Yourself at Parties

Julian’s birthday started well. Then, somewhere around the third hour, a few girls lost count of their vodka intake and ended up in corners, and the usual cast of opportunists materialized—the type who spend their evenings at parties waiting for exactly this moment, apparently never wondering what that particular patience says about them.

I spent the entire next day arguing about it with my best friend. Her position was that some people wouldn’t mind being touched while unconscious if they knew who was doing it—which is the kind of logic that only holds together when you’re already committed to the conclusion. I kept coming back to basic words like decency and honor. She batted them away.

Her counter: guys wouldn’t complain if an attractive woman did the same thing to them while they were passed out. I said that was completely different. She said I was being inconsistent. Maybe I was. But there’s something specifically predatory about the setup—watching, waiting, moving in on someone who can’t respond—that doesn’t seem to shift depending on who’s doing it or to whom. The unconscious person didn’t consent to anything. That part stays constant regardless of how the rest of it gets arranged.

We didn’t resolve it. I’m not even sure she was entirely wrong about how some people would feel in retrospect. I’m just sure that doesn’t matter.