A drunk guy peed in my oven

What a holiday party and an expensive cleaning bill can teach us about consent in 2025

Happy New Year! To kick off 2025, I'd like to share a holiday story.

In my early twenties, a college friend invited me to a Christmas party, hoping to set me up with a guy who we’ll call Zach. Upon meeting Zach, I knew it wasn’t a match, but since he lived nearby, we agreed to share a cab home. The problem was, when we got in the cab, Zach was too inebriated to tell me his address. So my roommate and I brought Zach up to our apartment, set him up on our couch with a pillow and a blanket, left a big glass of water and two Advil on the coffee table, and went to sleep.

A few hours later, a loud crash jolted me awake, and when I opened my bedroom door, I was horrified to find Zach urinating in my oven. I cried, cleaned up what I could, and helped him get back to sleep, and then in the morning, I asked him for money to cover a deep cleaning service to sanitize my kitchen. Zach went home looking totally mortified, and we never spoke again.

I’m telling you this story for two reasons: one, because, fifteen years later, it still cracks me up, and, two, because I want to point out that at no point during this episode did I consider having sex with Zach. If that seems obvious, imagine how the story might have turned out differently had the roles been reversed and I, a twenty-two-year-old woman, was the very-drunk one going home with two men that I only sort of knew. Suffice it to say that I don’t think I’d be laughing about it on Substack.

In the decade or so since #metoo, we have all grappled with legally and morally murky stories of young men having sex with intoxicated women who later express deep regret about the encounters. We have litigated, both in the court of law and in the court of public opinion, issues of consent and definitions of assault. We've even mocked the concept of written consent as unsexy. But what seems to be missing from the conversation is any critical examination of what sexual behaviors we consider appropriate for young men. Why do we accept—even normalize—their pursuit of intimate encounters with women in vulnerable, semi-conscious states? It’s really disturbing.

Unfortunately, I don’t think much has changed in the years since the oven incident. Boys and young men still think it’s fun to hook up with really drunk girls and women. I worry about today's Gen Z women at parties, and increasingly about the Gen Alpha girls who will soon face similar situations. Some conversations have shifted, but the fundamental dangers persist.

We need to make it clear to boys that it isn’t acceptable to exploit the vulnerability of girls and women. Having sex with very drunk people is creepy and gross. We need to say that, if they find themselves alone at the end of the night with a girl who is really intoxicated, the only acceptable thing to do is to set her up on the couch with a pillow and a blanket, leave a big glass of water and two Advil on the coffee table, and ensure her safety. And, boys, you don’t have to worry: the girls almost certainly won’t pee in your oven.

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She is really good, but am I the only one wondering why Sex Lives of College Girls waited for Renee Rapp’s replacement to have a musical theater storyline?