Duck#403 · @ssbDuck
3rd Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
My story
I hesitated to post this because my story is old and it honestly wasn't very impactful on my life (I know this is privileged) and I didn't want to take away from people coming out with their stories. However, I think it's useful to serve as an example of what being an ally means and what effective intervention can look like.
At Apex 2015 after the end of day 2 I had exhausted all friendlies options and I wanted to return to my room. Due to the venue/hotel collapsing debacle and switching hotels I ended up without a keycard and needed to get one from my roommate who was at a hotel room party. A lot of my friends were there so I thought I would drop by, say hi, grab the keycard, and then go to sleep.
When I got to the room a girl who I’ll label as “G”, who was an acquaintance and incredibly drunk at the time, used her body to block me against a wall in the corridor that leads into the room. She grabbed my hand, held it against her thigh, and told me "you know I’m a pro hoe”. I distinctly remember freezing up and awkwardly responding “Oh don’t say that”. After being frozen in this position and not knowing what to do for what seemed like whole minutes I was saved by @JCDotface.
He introduced himself to me and kept on talking to me until “G” backed up and let me away from the wall. She stood next to me and said a couple words but after a few minutes she walked away. The party was broken up by hotel staff soon after due to noise complaints and I grabbed my roommate to go to our hotel room to sleep. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever thanked JC for this or if he remembers but I’m truly grateful. He’s a real one.
Do I think she would’ve escalated the situation without JC’s intervention? I have absolutely no idea. Would I have forced her off me given more time to think about the situation? I'm not sure. Would any of my friends in the room have noticed and helped me out given more time? I don’t know that either but I'd like to assume they would have.
What does matter, and the entire reason why I’m posting this, is that he was there and he reached a hand out to make sure everything was okay when he saw I was uncomfortable. If you are reading this wondering what you can do to help or what you could have done to prevent some of the stories that are coming out right now, I hope you remember that reaching out a little bit is something everyone can do. This is what real and effective intervention can look like.
I’m not looking for sympathy or anything to be done from my side because like I stated above it didn’t really affect me that much, she’s not really a community member anymore, and I do believe she’s changed since then. I just hope that anybody reading this really takes it to heart that there are little things you can do to be an ally and make our community a better place.