SPIKE ME TENDER

In the past people bought love potions from witch doctors and gave them to the objects of their affections. Often these would be placebos. Occasionally they’d be the equivalent of Mediaeval viagra. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the pansy is used in a love potion that causes all manner of havoc. Recently I discovered a very different pansy trying to make a love potion of his own.

Now, let’s be clear here, everyone’s got a friend who’s claimed to be spiked. Usually it’s code for ‘I can’t handle my drink’. Or else they don’t want to admit to the bouncers carrying them out of the nightclub that they’ve been glugging drain cleaner all night. Whether I’m too gone to notice, or I don’t hang in those kinds of places, I’d never seen it happen firsthand. Until now.

I was in my favourite Mancunian haunt, slagging it up with a pervert named V and a whore called J. It was when ex-shag S popped up, a few stones heavier and now without hair that the commotion occurred. According to V, his drink was spiked by S. Naturally I hate to see good drugs go to waste and took a swig—and lo and behold, it was indeed spiked with ecstasy. I drank the lot anyway and continued on my merry way. It seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do—to make sure no one else drank it by mistake.

But the next day it started to bug me that this had happened in the first place. I knew S. Or I thought I did. V claimed to have seen him drop the pill into his drink while they were talking. There’s sharing the love and there’s date rape—and it seemed S had been planning to have his wicked way regardless of consent. Why else would he bother? Unless it was a new marketing campaign by drug dealers—to get clubbers hooked for free so they come back for more? Only, that wouldn’t make much sense if the clubbers in question didn’t know what they’d taken.

So it had to be about date rape, right? Not exactly the love potion of old, but I guess it was intended to have a similar (although more sordid) effect. Skip the date and hop right into bed.

Sure, nothing had happened. But what if it had?

I told V to ring the police. He said he didn’t think he could without evidence. I said, ‘What if it happens again?’ What if it’s already happened?

Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t the fact you have to drug someone to get them to sleep with you a bit of a turn-off? Isn’t half the fun of pulling a hot guy the feeling of being desired? Perhaps of the chase and the challenge, followed by an eventual payoff?

I never thought of myself as particularly romantic, but I guess I must be if the norm now is to spike each other for a quick non-consensual bum in the toilets and a long stretch in prison.

Next time, leave the drugs and give me the pansies instead.