I consider myself a friendly, outgoing person. I like to meet new people. I like to go out on occasion and have a few drinks with the people I meet. Sometimes, I’m a bad judge of character.

I went out on Thursday with a girl I met recently, a nice enough girl – or so I thought. For the purposes of this piece we’ll call her The Vile Bitch From Hell, or BITCH for short. We went to a bar to listen to the local band and to gossip over drinks.

Two drinks led to three, and three to four, and at some point shots were added to the mix. Never a great idea, and as I found out the hard way, a very poor idea indeed when in the presence of a casual aquaintance.

I called her the next morning to touch base, and to make sure she made it home safely. To be honest, I DROVE home, and while there were no indications of accidents or foul play, I felt like a real jackass. I correctly assumed she made the same mistake. I asked if I did anything else embarrassing and or stupid, and she assured me that I was fine – except for somehow accidently grabbing the crotch of an innocent female bystander.

I actually remembered that, and OH the mortification. When you go to point to someone’s belt with the intent of delivering a compliment and MISS it isn’t any fun. I apologized a thousand times and bought her a drink and tried to forget the entire thing. YIKES.

We laughed about the horror of that particular moment, and she mentioned that I was very, very out of it and that I hugged her goodnight and smooched her cheek, which I ALSO remembered. I’m an affectionate drunk, what can I say.

A co-worker came in today and informed me that the same individual (the one who assured me I was just dandy, and we had fun, etc. etc.) spent the entire night last night at another bar, telling everyone who would listen that I GROPED her and KISSED her and violated several personal space boundaries, as well as my accidental grabbing of the other lady’s private area – except she didn’t bother to mention it was an accident.

Joy and glee, now the whole town thinks I’m a LESBIAN. Which is maybe a step up from the rumor that I slept with a married man (also false) but JESUS H. CHRIST. (Not that any of this is his fault).

What really bothers me is that she didn’t indicate any sort of problem when we spoke on the phone. She assured me we had a great time and everything was kosher. Hours later, she told an entirely different story to a room full of people. My feelings are pretty badly hurt right now.

The only reasonable conclusion that I can draw is that she must’ve experienced a bit of homophobia when she saw my moment of drunken stupidity earlier in the evening, and perhaps she took it the wrong way when I hugged and kissed her goodnight?

I would love nothing more than to confront her about the whole mess, because there’s nothing quite like watching a liar stutter and backtrack and try to explain themselves, but I’m stuck at work, and just this minute I’m choosing professionalism over violence.

People have said not-so-nice things about me before. In a town of approximately eight hundred people, someone is always getting picked on. I can handle it. It just grates on my nerves that I brought this on myself by getting so drunk to begin with.

Thus begins my personal prohibition for 2010.