Always hit the X

O’ Intrepid reader, let me tell you of a tale so jarring and so scarring that almost 10years from the incident and yet it still invokes a deep sense of dread and anxiousness in the bottom of my stomach every time I’m asked to hand my phone over to anyone.

Our story begins in my early twenties this was before the time of aggregated food delivery apps where technology had proliferated into all corners of life but was yet to become invasive. I had recently moved to Washington D.C for my new job and post college life was going as well as ones does in blissful ignorance while attempting the whole adulthood thing. I got a job in consulting and that meant a lot of traveling which sounded like a great idea at the time. Get paid to go visit new places while being put up and fed in some of the snazziest hotels in the area… I mean sounds great right but there’s a dark side to not having any roots, it gets really hard to maintain a group of friends in any one place. So when I got a message from an old college friend saying she had moved to D.C I was ecstatic, there was someone else I knew finally moving into town and with similar obligations I figured we would be able to more easily form a circle of regulars. My assumptions were accurate, we rekindled our friendship and from there we would hang out whenever we got the chance.

One evening we were scheduled for our game night it was generally a group of 4 consultants who would gather around and play a board or card game while getting sloshed. However this game night was a bit different, my friend who was hosting had her sister over and there’s nothing I can say other than she was gorgeous. She was the type of girl that had a light air around her and would just draw peoples eyes towards her no matter where in the room she was sitting, auburn hair, stunning heterochromic eyes and a laugh that was as charming and light as the morning dew. I was love struck and the stars had aligned in my favor or so I thought at the time. The night was going great, everyone was getting along Alice my friends sisters and I were making light flirtatious remarks and really hitting it off. Our other 2 friends noticed and as the game came to a natural stopping point made their exit.

It was just the three of us left and as inebriated nights tend to go we landed up playing never have I ever, while figuring out what to order. We finally made the decision to stick by the time-honored tradition of drunken pizza. This friends, is where the night takes an unexpected turn. I distinctly recall how it all played out. We were sitting in these low bottom bamboo chairs on the balcony having a smoke when we decide to order the food. I take out my phone and unlock it, then proceed to hand it over to my friend since she knew the name of the place and it’d be easier for her to order the food. I hand over the phone and she presses safari and the browser pops up; at this point I see my friends face contort into an expression of shock as the distinct sound of flesh hitting flesh as a woman’s moans can be heard over the speaker. My heart racing, everything froze, my brain was yelling, everything went numb for what must have been the longest couple seconds, as the realization of not having cleared the browser after my pre party preparations came all over me (yes, phrasing). I jumped up grabbed the phone out of my friends hand and tried to lock my phone only to make it worse by turning the volume up. Flush red at this point and with a look of shock and horror on both girls’ faces I mumbled something incoherent and stumbled my way out the door and into the first taxi I could find.

My friend came from a fairly conservative background and although we have been able to laugh about the incident since, it was a year before we saw each other and I never did get her sister’s number. I always wondered how things could have played out differently and since have always double checked my browser before leaving home and even now a decade later when I hand my phone over to someone there is a sinking feeling of dread that I forgot to clear the browser or something else embarrassing they will find on my phone if I let them use it, not to mention ITS BEEN YEARS SINCE I WATCHED PORN ON MY PHONE….