Halloween.

JAMES

Last week at a large and particularly debaucherous Halloween party, a rather unpleasant experience marred for me an otherwise very enjoyable night. The party was massive (located across several neighbouring houses), immensely populated and with a large contingent of gay men. It was late (around 3am), the cops had arrived and the party was in a definite downward spiral. Two friends and myself were standing in an empty hallway in one of the houses chatting to one of the hosts.

I was standing near a door that presumably led to a bedroom; I wasn’t blocking the door, or leaning against it, merely standing nearby. Someone could have easily entered by squeezing past or with a simple ‘excuse me’.

Two fairly wasted guys with their arms around each other came up and stood before me as if waiting, they then stated (in a tone that struck me as odd) that they had to get past. ‘Sorry’, I said and took a step back, as they walked past they gave me odd, smirky looks and as they entered, one reached back and grabbed me hard by the shoulder and tried to forcibly yank me into the room with them.

Instinctively I wrenched my shoulder free and began to move away. While at that point I didn’t understand what had happened, the force of the grab had been enough to provoke my body into a defensive response. Before the door slammed shut one of the guys shouted out at me: “Well fuck you, you fucking something-or-other’.

I didn’t think too much of it at the time other than a general ‘those guys were fuckheads’ sentiment, but now I’ve thought about it this has evolved into ‘No, you know what, fuck you.” I should state that while this pissed me off, it didn’t make me feel unsafe, scared or vulnerable; I was with friends, I was drunk but not shitfaced and I am pretty capable (both physically and mentally) of fending off the aggressive erotic advances of two drunken deadshits.

Nevertheless, what this brought up for me were issues of consent and objectification. If this had occurred in a different context such behaviour would have been intolerable, harmful and potentially criminal i.e. if it had been a woman who was grabbed instead of me. Now while I think the fact that I am a man is certainly not irrelevant, I do not think that it justifies their behaviour toward me.

Of course in the context of a big party, particularly one brimming with young gay men, you do expect a certain level of this stuff; bodily contact on the dance floor, indiscreet advances and last-ditch offers of a blowjob and a bed to sleep in. However, this went beyond all of these things. This was desperate, aggressive and callous.

The logic of these two men seemed to be “We want a threesome but we can’t be bothered doing the legwork, just grab a guy and if he struggles free, it’s a ‘no’”. The concept of consent was reduced to a black and white binary of physical submission as ‘yes’ and physical resistance as ‘no’. Consent should never be reduced to this.

Furthermore, the actions of these men had the effect of reducing me to one of two things depending on the outcome, either a passive object if I submitted or a resistant object if I didn’t. So while I was able to assert consent in regard to the sexual act they wanted to include me in, I was not able to consent to being their desperate, eleventh hour, nothing-to-lose attempt at a threesome.

The assumption on their part that they could just collect me (or anyone) en route to a bedroom and ‘have me’ really pisses me off. And the fact that they told me to ‘get fucked’ because I didn’t submit to being corralled into it pisses me off even more.What these guys did wasn’t illegal but it was certainly unethical and being pissed and horny isn’t an excuse.

Luckily this occurred around the ‘death-rattle’ stage of the party so it didn’t dampen my night overall. I just hope they had really shit sex.