"What If Someone Wants To Sleep With Me When They're Drunk?"

So you wake up in the morning with a hangover, and a tattoo of Spongebob Squarepants farting on… you’re not sure who he’s farting on, actually. The tattoo is poorly enough done that you’re only certain it’s Spongebob because it says “SPANGBOB” in wavering letters above it.
Scratching the clots off your blood-sticky arm, you stagger off the couch. Your friend Micah’s there, his tattoo kit by the wayside. “What happened?” you ask.
“Wild night,” he grins. “You got hammered.”
“Obviously. Why do I have a tattoo?”
“Ah,” Micah says, shrugging it off like you’re making a joke. “You’ve been talking about getting a tattoo for months.”
“I’ve said I’ve been saving for a tattoo.”
“No need to pay! You know I need the practice. Been telling you that for months. I’ve been wanting to do it for free on that lovely forearm of yours, and last night you said ‘Eh, go ahead.'”
You’re doubtful of that. You don’t recall last night. It could be that maybe you thought that Farting Spangbob was a hoot, or maaaaybe that Micah decided to break out his newfound tattoo skills upon you when you couldn’t say no. You can’t say.
But now you’ve got a tattoo. And Micah hoping to do another later this afternoon.
————–
Now. This is obviously a “should you have sex with drunken people” metaphor, and particularly dim men will say “A tattoo isn’t the same as having sex with someone! Tattoos are permanent!” And before you say that, kindly ponder the fact that there’s people who’ve gotten HSV during drunken escapades, and there’s no laser removal for that.
(Not to mention that little risk called “pregnancy” if you’re of the female persuasion, which guys often forget about as when pondering the permanent consequences of sex. Which is a shame, as an unwanted pregnancy in a sex partner can affect a guy a hell of a lot as well.)
And this essay’s a bit of a mirror. Many people will look at it and conclude the lesson of this narrative is, “Well, the protagonist shouldn’t have gotten that drunk.”
But you know what the other lesson is?
Micah’s kind of a dick.
Micah did things of potentially permanent consequence to his buddy, fully aware that he might regret them come the next morning. Because we all know stories of people who’ve done things when they were hammered that they wouldn’t normally have done sober, and while one lesson that can be extracted is “You shouldn’t drink a lot,” the other lesson that should be extracted is, “If you’re interacting with someone who’s drunk, you shouldn’t take them at their word.”
This is well-known. Legal contracts have been voided because someone was drunk when they signed them. In many states, bartenders are legally obliged to cut customers off after a certain level of drunkenness because drunk people can’t make good decisions. In fact, reputable tattoo parlors won’t take drunk people at all because they don’t want the risk.
By sleeping with someone who’s drunk, you’re a disreputable tattoo parlor, which is to say you’re Micah.
Do you want to be Micah?
Again, this is a reflective lesson, because some folks will double down on the “The Protagonist was drunk, he deserves anything that’s coming to him,” all the while avoiding the independent issue of whether Micah should be doing things to drunk people that he’s well aware they might not want come the morning.
If we’re talking about “personal responsibility” and “the known risks of being drunk,” then at the very least Micah is being unwise by exposing himself to the hazard of taking a drunk person’s word as bond. And at the worst, Micah’s a scumbag predator waiting for someone to get drunk so he can do things he is fully aware they would dislike when sober.
Literally the best thing you can say about Micah is that he’s not quite as dumb as his friend, and that’s being kind.
So I personally feel the lesson should be, “You should avoid doing things to drunk people whenever possible.” Don’t be a Micah.
Ah, but that’s if Micah’s sober. “What if Micah himself is drunk?”, and that’s a trickier question if Micah is himself impaired.
But it’s kinda funny. When The Narrator is drunk, lots of people would say that any dangerous activity he consents to is foolish, and he deserves any consequences he gets.
But when Micah is drunk and doing things to the narrator, those same people would say that the dangerous activity that Micah has consented to – which is to say, exposing yourself to potential accusations of unwanted tattoos – is foolish, Micah shouldn’t be expected to know what’s going on then, and this all becomes the narrator’s fault.
Strange, how the script flips when you’re invested in Micah’s well-being.
Whereas I’m consistent in my beliefs: I believe that whenever possible, you shouldn’t aid drunk people in making potentially unwise decisions, even if the drunk person is really hot.
Because trying to sleep with drunk (or otherwise judgement-impaired) people is a risky goddamned business with potentially permanent side effects. If it’s a decision I know with 100% certainty that they’d be okay with in the morning, I might do it – if my wife, who has slept with me regularly for seventeen years, decides she wants to bang me shitfaced, well, I’ll take that risk.
But it is a risk. And I wouldn’t do anything new or crazy in bed with her, because the next morning she might wake up and be very mad about Spangbob.
Why take that risk, when I can ask her sober the next morning and, assuming she’s as into as she was the night before, potentially Spangbob the shit out of her the next evening with assured consent?