There’s only one sexual experience I regret.

It happened in my final year in college. I was drunk. I was upset.
I was hardly capable of making a cup of tea, let alone a wise decision.
The drunkenness was partly Tony’s fault. Okay, I know that’s passing the buck, but he kept plying me with alcohol and I went along with it. Beer, wine, shots of tequila – whatever he gave me I gulped it down with relish, trying to blot out my feelings.
My emotional state had nothing to do with Tony. It was Zach, his best friend, and my ex-boyfriend, who’d thrown me into a spin. And so there I was, sitting on Tony’s couch at three in the morning, downing booze like an alcoholic who’d well and truly fallen off the wagon.
I’d run into Zach earlier that evening. He hadn’t taken our break-up well. Upon seeing me flirting with somebody else Zach proceeded to throw the mother of all tantrums. Outside the pub he screamed at me; he ran into the road and nearly got knocked over; he howled, he cried, he kicked in his car door while I looked helplessly on – embarrassed and unsure how to calm him down.
Tony, having heard the commotion, came outside to assist. He talked to Zach then grabbed my hand. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll take you away from here,” and I gratefully followed him – all the way to his apartment.
Not for a second did I suspect an ulterior motive. After all, Tony had rescued me and he was Zach’s friend. And if that wasn’t enough to make him trustworthy, he lived with his girlfriend.
A few hours and several drinks later Tony told me his girlfriend wasn’t coming home. He leaned over the couch and kissed me. “Let’s take this into the bedroom,” he suggested.
This week I was planning to write about a light-hearted piece about bad sex. Most of us have war stories where the sex is so disappointing that you really wished you hadn’t bothered. But a funny thing happened – almost everyone I asked told me the same kind of anecdote: the worst sex they’d had wasn’t with a useless, selfish or inconsiderate lover; instead it was an experience to which they had consented even though they’d much rather have said no.
That’s certainly true in my case. Truly, my experience with Tony is the only one that I regret and that’s because my heart wasn’t in it.
I didn’t blame Tony then and I don’t now either. Yes, I was drunk, but so was he. Perhaps he hadn’t been a perfect gentleman but he certainly didn’t coerce me. Had I been sober or less upset, I almost certainly would have turned him down, but I wasn’t so inebriated that I didn’t know what I was doing – I just didn’t care. When I woke up the next morning with a blinding headache and a fierce degree of self-loathing I knew there was only one person really to blame – me.
When there is alcohol involved consent can become murky, a topic I’ve discussed before. But alcohol isn’t the only reason why consent can be tricky. Sometimes even perfectly sober people agree to have sex because saying yes is somehow easier than saying no.
A number of my female friends claimed to have sex had without really wanting to on more than one occasion. “I used to do that all the time,” said Sinéad. “I was a real people-pleaser so I found it hard to say no.”
“I had goodbye sex with an ex because I felt sort of obliged,” Maria told me. “It was awful because I really wasn’t into it, but I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.”
Lydia decided to have sex with a man she’d met at a party. “He gave me a lift home and I wasn’t thinking when I invited him in for coffee. It was easier to say yes, because I thought I’d led him on.”
For the most part, though, men are more aware than women that consent needs to be obtained. Women never assume it’s an issue, but men are just as likely to have sex without really desiring it, especially since women don’t take rejection very well.
Humphrey once had sex with a woman because he had no idea how to get out of the situation. “What was I supposed to say?” he asked. “‘Get away from me, you hideous woman?’”
“I was with this girl and she was lying there like a sack of potatoes, so I stopped,” said Andrew. “She got really angry and told me to continue so I did, but I really didn’t want to because it was pretty horrible.”
Jim told me a similar tale. He was at a party and had gone to sleep upstairs when a girl joined him in bed. He didn’t want to have sex her, but he was drunk and it seemed easier than telling her to get lost. “I kept thinking, well it’s sex, and I love sex, so I might as well. But I think I was just trying to make myself feel better, because I felt weird about the whole thing,” he said.
In the late eighties and early nineties, American universities published guidelines for students recommending that at each stage of sexual interaction consent needed to be asked for and obtained.
Of course consent is important – in fact, it’s the most important aspect of any sexual experience – but these guidelines were widely criticised as ridiculous. What they suggested was a series of questions: “Can I kiss you? Can I touch your breasts? Can I remove your skirt? Can I put my hands down your pants?” All of which would probably prompt the average student – in fact the average person – to respond, “Only if you’d shut the fuck up.”
As many critics pointed out, sex just doesn’t happen like that. I’m not suggesting for a moment that either men or women say ‘No’ when they really mean ‘Yes’. On the contrary: it is fundamental that if you get a ‘No’ the only decent – not to mention legal – thing is to respect that and back off. What I am saying also is that it’s quite possible to get a ‘Yes’ that’s actually just a ‘No’ in disguise – and we ought to try to be aware of it.
We blame peer pressure or the media or alcohol for unplanned pregnancies and increasing rates of STIs, but we are, ultimately, responsible for our own sexual choices. You cannot expect someone else to make those choices for you, or blame them if you don’t speak up for yourself. If you’re mature enough to have sex, you ought to be mature enough to say, “Yes, please,” “No, thanks” or “Not without a condom.”
After my experience with Tony I learnt this lesson, and trust me, it’s a whole lot easier than you think. Have a good year!