Choosing A Drunk Girl Over My Friends

About a decade ago, I was in my early twenties and working at Best Buy. Most of the employees were male, and I was struggling to make friends in this new west coast environment after moving to California from Maryland. People were closed off. Cliques were already formed, and newcomers were largely unwelcome into established social circles.

But I was determined, so I tried harder. I’d had a lot of friends in high school, and wasn’t about to give up on having a social life while I was young and primed for having fun. It was actually encouraging that there were so many guys to chat with, since I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy and haven’t had a lot of female friends. I figured it wouldn’t take me too long to find my crowd if I just kept at it. It also seemed funny to me that even in our little Best Buy store, there was a social hierarchy. Even so, I was excited when some of the “cooler” employees finally invited me over for a party.

This was my chance. All it took was meeting a few people, and then suddenly you’d have social groups and eventually, best friends. I’d been very lonely, so this invite was a turn of fortune and meant this night was really important to me.

There were maybe a dozen of us at the house party, give or take a few as the night went on. We took shots, “iced” each other (this was that strange cultural moment when friends would force each other to chug Smirnoff Ice for fun) and watched music videos while playing games. Jenga, as I recall, was one I played a few times that night.

At one point, I noticed the girl sitting across the table from me was swaying side to side and struggling to keep her eyes open. Beside me, one of the guys who worked in the camera department and had his big, fancy DSLR out to take pictures. He noticed the girl too, and suddenly everyone was looking at her.

A couple of the guys started teasing the girl for being drunk. She was wearing a spaghetti strap tank top and I could see the boys leering at her. One shouted at her, “Show us your tits!” and others joined in. I’m pretty sure I was quiet, or maybe laughing a little, uncomfortably, but not expecting their jeers to actually come to anything. I’ve been in this scenario, or something like it, many times. Boys get rowdy, girls tolerate. At least that had been my experience up to that point.

I really didn’t know these particular guys that well, aside from some interaction at work, but was hoping to become their friend. To come to more parties, to meet more people. As they continued prodding the inebriated girl to flash them, though, I could sense my own desire to belong changing.

She shouted back playfully, told them to f*ck off, or something like that. But they continued, growing louder, and eventually she relented, lifting her shirt for just a moment as the guy next to me quickly snapped a bunch of pictures on his digital camera. She had her eyes closed. I don’t think she even knew the pictures were taken. The guys were satisfied, and shut up for the moment.

Everyone relocated to the kitchen to take more shots, except the girl, who I learned was one of several roommates who lived there. I heard her plod upstairs to her room to go to sleep. Suddenly, I was alone in the living room, and the camera was next to me. The viewfinder was frozen on an image of the drunk girl’s chest, and I picked it up.

I looked up at the kitchen to see if someone would catch me, maybe figure out what I was up to and yell at me, but no one was paying any attention. They were laughing and seemed to already have forgotten what just happened. It only took a moment for me to decide what to do. I fiddled with the camera for a moment until I figured out how to delete the photo, and I deleted all of the ones he’d snapped of her in that moment her shirt was up.

The partiers returned to the living room, and to my surprise, picked up the camera to examine the photos. They were angry when they realized what I’d done, but I owned it. So I was a buzzkill, a party pooper. So be it.

I said, “It wasn’t right to take pictures like that of her while she was wasted. She can’t have known, and anyway, she should be able to trust you guys. She’s your roommate,” I scolded them, as if that fact should make a difference.

Obviously I know now that predators, and even just people who take advantage, come in all forms. I shouldn’t have expected them to have any more respect for someone they knew than they would have for a stranger. After all, she was a stranger to me, and I appeared to have more respect for her than the people who should have been her friends.

You would think that you could trust those closest to you, though.

You would think.

As you can probably guess, I didn’t feel very welcome at the party after that, and left. They didn’t invite me over again.

Still, I felt good about what I’d done. I also doubt she ever found out. Who knows, maybe she got drunk again the next night and they got to retake their picture or worse, but I can only hope that someone else was there to stand up for her. Or better yet, that she learned these people weren’t really her friends, and went on to make higher quality ones. As for me, I started over in my quest for connection. Better to have no friends than bad ones.

It takes some courage to do the right thing, to actually exercise empathy rather than just feeling it, and sometimes there will be a cost. You could lose money, social capital, time, or any number of things. In the end though, you have to live with yourself and being a good person is well worth whatever you have to suffer for it. Even if you’re just doing something small to save someone embarrassment, even if they never know you did them that favor, it matters. If you can help someone, if you can intervene when something wrong is happening, do it.