Sunday, April 19, 2020

You're Ugly When You Drink

Eleanor Blanchard missed the keyhole to her door three times before she was able to get it in. She opened the door and then couldn’t get the key out of the hole. “Come on,” she whined. “Quit it. Give me back my key,” she said. The key slid out and she looked into her apartment. Her lights were on and her friends were sitting on her furniture, clearly waiting on her. “What’s going on? Were we supposed to have a party tonight or something?”

“Eleanor, we need to talk to you,” Sadie said. Sadie Brown was Eleanor’s oldest friend. They had known each other since the third grade and had been together through everything. “We’re worried about you.”

“Uh-oh. Is this an intervention?” Eleanor asked.

“We just want to talk,” Jason said. “We’re worried about you because of your drinking.”

“My drinking? My drinking is fine. It’s fine,” Eleanor said before hiccupping and nearly throwing up.

“We just want to talk to you. Please, Eleanor, have a seat,” Sadie pointed to a chair.

“’Have a seat’, I’m not a child predator,” Eleanor stumbled into the chair. “All right. Let’s make this quick. I’m gonna have to poop soon.”

“I’ll go first since we’ve known each other the longest,” Sadie said. “Eleanor, you’ve always been my best friend and you’ve been very loyal. You’ve stood up to exes and other people who attack me, I’ve always been able to come to you and you’ve always been able to come to me. But you sometimes let your drinking cloud your judgement. Remember after our sophomore year in college we went to Las Vegas for two weeks?”

“That was an amazing trip. We won nearly $10,000,” Eleanor said. “And those strip clubs. Mmm.”

“You got drunk and met this guy,” Sadie continued.

“Yeah, I did.”

Sadie sighed. “You two got hot and heavy and then went back to our room. It was one thing that you and he had sex while I was trying to sleep in the bed next to you but he stole one of our room keys and robbed us.”

“He just robbed us. He got our phones, a laptop, and about a hundred bucks,” Eleanor explained.

“He could’ve killed us in our sleep, Eleanor.”

“But he didn’t and we have a good story to tell.”

“Maybe we should be doing this when she’s sober,” Matthew said.

“Eleanor,” Elisa stepped forward. Elisa Figueroa had known Eleanor since they lived in the dorm their freshman year. They moved in together their sophomore and part of their junior year before Elisa moved out. “We became good friends in college. We had a lot of fun in the dorms and here in this apartment but do you want to know why I moved out?”

“Why?” Eleanor asked, she didn’t really care. Jennifer, who was also in the intervention, was her roommate now.

“You slept with all my boyfriends. Every single one of them. I even warned the last two about you. I told them ‘she will try to fuck you, she will get drunk and try to fuck you’ and it still happened,” Elisa said.

“I think that says more about your boyfriends than it does me,” Eleanor said.

“I asked you not to sleep with them. I sat you down and practically begged you to stay away from my boyfriends. You even slept with one of them after I already had. He got up to go to the bathroom and I happened to wake up. I went looking for him and saw him and Eleanor on the couch, her bouncing up and down on his dick.”

“I…” Eleanor tried to come up with some way to defend herself. “Well, it was a strange man in our apartment. I just followed my instincts.”

“How many of my boyfriends have you slept with?” Jennifer asked Eleanor. Eleanor just looked at her and said nothing. “How many?” Jennifer had maybe brought home a dozen boyfriends in the five years they’ve been roommates.

“Remember that party your sophomore year?” Matthew asked. Matthew had known Eleanor since college as well, meeting in the dorm her freshman year. “You got black-out drunk and invited several guys into a bedroom. You had a gangbang with at least six other guys. You passed out halfway through it but they kept going. I went looking for you and found you, covered in cum, and asleep on the bed. I picked you up, carried you into the bathroom and I bathed you. I scrubbed all the cum off you and brought you back to bed. I locked the door and stayed with you to protect you.”

“Matthew, I told you never to mention that to anyone,” Eleanor was clearly upset as she was starting to tear up. “You promised you’d never tell anyone.”

“Drinking puts you in a bad place where you make bad decisions. You put yourself and other people in danger,” Matthew said.

“Why don’t you finish your story, Matthew?” Eleanor gritted her teeth.

“What?”

“Finish the story. Tell everyone that after you cleaned me up and brought me back to bed, I woke up. You were laying next to me and started rubbing and kissing you. Did you not kiss me back? Did you not climb on top of me? And did you not also have sex with me?” Matthew was silent. He saw everybody else looking at him. He crossed his arms and turned away from Eleanor. She wiped a tear away and cleared her throat. “None of you are better than me. None of you. At least I can admit that I’m not perfect.”

“We don’t think we’re better than you. Like Matthew said, we don’t want you to make decisions that could put yourself or the people you love in danger. Or do something really embarrass,” Jennifer began. “I think it was the third or fourth time we had got out together. We were really drunk and were heading back to your place. You suddenly really had to go to the bathroom…”

“Oh, that’s reminds me,” Eleanor held up a finger and spun it in a circle. “Let’s wrap this up.”

“You had to go to the bathroom and instead of waiting until we got home, you pulled down your underwear and squatted down on the sidewalk. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem but you didn’t just pee. You took a shit on the sidewalk. People walked by, people saw and heard you. I don’t know if this will change you but I did lose some respect for you,” Jennifer revealed. “I’ve now also lot respect for you because you been sleeping with my boyfriends.”

“Again, I think that says more about your boyfriends than me.”

“Your drinking also hurts people,” Jason said. Jason and Eleanor had known each other since high school. Jason was just about as close to Eleanor as Sadie had been. Jason was the one to hang out with Eleanor when she would go partying. She had several close friends who were older and were able to get alcohol. “We went to a birthday party in our freshman year for, what was her name, Melissa? Missy? That kind of nerdy girl we knew from high school.”

“Misty,” Eleanor said.

“Yeah. Misty. When we got to the party, Misty had her hair done differently and Eleanor made fun of it. It was cut differently and looked kind of childish but you don’t say anything about it out loud,” Jason said. “When Misty started opening presents, Eleanor began making fun of the presents calling them childish or saying how much she hated each one. Eleanor only had a couple drinks before we went. She wasn’t even that drunk,” Jason explained.

“Maybe this really isn’t about my drinking. Maybe I’m just a bitch. A bitch who likes booze and sex,” Eleanor said. “This story time was great and all but I got to see a man about a turtle…” Eleanor began to stand up.

“You raped me,” Jason suddenly said. Eleanor froze then dropped back down to the chair. “That party we went to our senior year of high school. At that house Nathan and Joey moved into. We were all starting to pass out and you went to bed with Joey. I stayed up a little longer to talk with Sadie. Remember this, Sadie?”

Sadie nodded.

“We all heard you fuck Joey then you came out and went to the bathroom then went back to the bedroom. Sadie and I went back to sleep along with one or two other people on the floor of the main room. I had to get several times to pee and vomit. Finally, I just stayed in the bathroom. It was a pretty big bathroom so other people could walk around me. I passed out on the bathroom floor and you came in to go pee. You peed and you kept talking to me. I don’t remember if I was answering back but you kept talking to me. After you flushed, I felt you on me. You were sitting on my thighs and undoing my pants. I asked you—I do remember this—what you were doing. You shushed me and began jacking me off. I kept telling you to stop but you kept going. You then got more on top me. I was inside you. I told you to stop again and you kept going, grinding on me while I laid nearly unconscious on the floor of a bathroom. You kept going until I came and then you just left me there. You raped me and then left me nearly unconscious on the floor of a bathroom,” Jason was shaking, nearly crying. “I don’t know. Since you don’t seem to care about taking a dump in public on the sidewalk, or abusing a young woman on her birthday, or making guys cheat on their girlfriends, or getting violently gangbanged, or setting up your friends to be murdered then you probably won’t care about this.”

Everyone was silent for nearly a minute. Finally, Jennifer got up. “I will, uh, be in my room,” she said and turned to leave.

Everyone else stood up and silently began to leave. Jason continued to sit on the couch, looking at Eleanor. Neither one moved for another minute. Jason slapped his knees and stood. Silently, he walked past Eleanor and left the apartment. Eleanor continued sitting silently.  ▩