An Amusing True Story About This One Time I Tried To Prevent Date Rape

On my way from my car to go see a couple of bands play at a bar I notice a couple walking on the sidewalk about a half block away from me, a man and a woman, both dressed reasonably nice. The woman is talking loudly and angrily and having trouble walking in a straight line; the man is doing his best to steady the woman.

I cross to the other side of the street and keep walking.

As I get closer I can see the woman is not just drunk, but extraordinarily, famously drunk - frat party drunk, comatose drunk, vomit-at-any-minute drunk. Sick drunk. She seems to be struggling weakly against both gravity and her companion, who does not seem inebriated whatsoever, and moreso than that seems to be doing his best to shut her up and hustle her into the apartment complex they're now standing in front of.

It's not quite ten PM, central standard time, on a Saturday night.

The woman is clearly angry at the man, and clearly not used to being this wasted. The man, on the other hand, seems every bit as calm and collected as the woman is upset and disoriented. He also looks about ten or fifteen years older than the her, now that I've got a better look. The woman is yelling at him now, pushing at him. She takes a swing at him with her purse, misses, and falls squat on her ass.

I've had friends who've been drugged at clubs or bars. It's awful. When she fell onto the pavement like that I had to stop walking.

"Hey! Is everything okay?"

The guy looks up while attempting to help the woman off the ground. He seems more agitated now. "Yeah, we're fine."

The woman has been yell-muttering unintelligibly this whole time. She does not like being helped up. "She's just drunk is all," the man says. The woman starts protesting semi-coherently.

I'm bad at confrontation and I'm good at minding my own business but at that moment I was beyond pissed off at the guy. He went on a date with some girl, doped her up, and now he's trying to hustle her into his apartment before she passes out. At that moment he was everyone who's ever taken advantage of anyone else.

I raised my voice. "It's not even ten o'clock. Who gets this drunk at ten o'clock?"

He sighed a little bit. "My wife."

She steadied herself on his shoulder and yelled across the street to me "It's because I'm a Republican and he's a Democrat!"

I smiled and wished them a good evening, told them to take care. I continued on to the bar, grateful for the happy ending. I felt like shit.