There's a reliable genre of story that comes out after about the second round of drinks, usually when everybody at the table is married, in their forties, and feeling nostalgic. It's the next-morning twist — the story that was a perfectly reasonable Tuesday night out, until it wasn't. We collected eleven of the best ones, anonymized them thoroughly, and arranged them in roughly ascending order of oh, no.
The HR orientation.
A man — newly transferred to a division in a new city — flew in a few days early and went out with friends. He met someone at a nightclub, hit it off, went back to her place. They did not exchange names. The next morning, at 1 p.m., he reported to his new company's orientation. An hour in, the HR lead walked into the room. It was her. Neither of them fully regained their composure for a week. She was the person giving the presentation on why you shouldn't sleep with your coworkers. She called in sick the next three days.
The family reunion.
A young man met a woman at a bar, hit it off immediately, went back to his place. Pleasant evening. She left in the morning. Two days later, his mother called: "I hear you met Becky." It turned out Becky was his first cousin. His father, estranged from his own side of the family, had never bothered to introduce his son to any of them. "She was very sweet," he added, gamely, in his telling.
The 50-yard line.
A twenty-seven-year-old at a concert in Dallas, next to where the Cowboys used to play, talked a woman into scaling the stadium fence with him. They made it to the field. They made it to the star at center field. They made it approximately fifteen minutes into their "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" — at which point the overhead stadium lights abruptly turned on, and three security guards walked slowly across the field toward them. They were escorted out. She never spoke to him again. He remembers only one of the guards saying, dryly, "Touchdown."
"I remember only one thing the guard said, with zero amusement in his voice: 'Touchdown.'"
The toddler.
He met her online. They texted for a few weeks. He finally went to stay the night at her place. He woke up in the morning being slowly, methodically, painfully climbed by a small child using his back as a jungle gym. He had not been informed, at any point, that she had a toddler. He got up, got dressed, and made it halfway to the front door before discovering that it was also her parents' place, and that her parents were already up and had laid out breakfast in the kitchen. He is still, by his own admission, "not entirely sure how I got out of there."
The sugar mama.
He met an older woman in a bar — mid-60s, hospital executive, gracious, easy to talk to. She invited her daughter and her daughter's fiancé for a drink, which he later realized had been a sort of vetting process. They went back to her apartment. It went well, until she started outlining the terms of his "monthly allowance" and discussing the brunch reservation she'd made for the next morning. He stopped. Politely. Explained he'd thought this was just a fun night. She flew into a rage, demanded he leave, and then — because he needed a fob to access her parking garage — immediately called him back to help him get to his car. She texted the next morning to apologize and ask if he'd like to try again. He went. The same conversation, the same outcome. "I figured fool me once," he said. "But also — fool me twice, genuinely."
The "open" relationship.
A woman met, through an app, a man visiting town for a conference. He told her he was married but in an open relationship, with his wife's full blessing. They had a great night. Weeks later, she mentioned in passing that she'd be in his city for a work trip and would love to see him again. Within an hour, she was receiving a series of lengthy messages from his wife, who — it turned out — had not been consulted at any point about anything.
The barn.
She was twenty-one. Tinder had just launched. He was a firefighter, a decade older, and lived somewhere remote. When she arrived at his house, the lights were off. He met her outside and led her, she said, "up a ladder, into a loft, above an actual barn." He explained that his grandmother was asleep in the house and he didn't want to wake her. The loft had a blanket. "It was so dimly lit I didn't notice, at the time, that there were also goats down below."
The ultimate frisbee ride.
A woman texted her crush — her friend's roommate, so she'd see him regularly going forward — a late-night "you up?" She went over. The encounter was brief, mostly because of him. He then spent ten unprompted minutes showing her a dress he had personally knit for his ex-girlfriend, and asked if she would like to keep it. She fell asleep mid-conversation. In the morning, he asked her for a ride to his ultimate frisbee game. She gave it to him. They did not speak of the dress again.
The sister-in-law's sister.
He was at his best friend's girlfriend's apartment. Her sister came over. The four of them drank; the girlfriend and the best friend disappeared into the bedroom; he and the sister hooked up on the couch. The next morning, over coffee, the sister casually handed him the TV guide from that day's newspaper. On it, she had written in ballpoint pen: "That was fun, we should get married, huh?" He assumed she was joking. She was not. He never saw her again. Two months later, he heard she had married someone else she'd met the same way.
Two pumps and a confession.
The whole encounter, she said, lasted maybe five seconds the first time. He apologized profusely, claimed it never happened, and tried again. Twenty seconds. Then — instead of any normal post-sex conversation — he pulled out his phone and began showing her photos of his ex-girlfriend, sometimes in tears. She fell asleep, partly out of exhaustion and partly out of self-defense. The next morning he asked her for a ride to his ultimate frisbee game. (Editor's note: this is a different man from Story 8. We are increasingly concerned about ultimate frisbee.)
The husband.
1974. He had just taken his bar exam and was out drinking with a law school friend. The friend suggested they visit his girlfriend, who lived with a roommate. They drew straws for the bedroom; he won. It was going well until, from the living room, everyone heard a key in the front door. A very short, very angry man came in. He was the girlfriend's husband. Nobody had been told about this part. Our narrator got dressed, in his own telling, "in about three seconds flat," grabbed his shoes, and the two friends ran out the back. They laughed about it for a week. He did not go back. He did, he added, pass the bar exam.
