Monica Kenyon, Sonia Ulrich and Marla Saltzer helped save a woman from being drugged by her date at a Santa Monica restaurant. 
 
 Three Los Angeles-area women are being credited with saving a young woman they didn't know from being drugged by a date at a Santa Monica restaurant.Sonia Ulrich, Marla Saltzer and Monica Kenyon detailed their story on Facebook on Friday - with a meme in "Charlie's Angels" style poses, declaring "Don't roofie someone on our watch!" The post has already been shared more than 70,000 times.The three were at the Fig restaurant at the Fairmont Miramar hotel for happy hour on Thursday.As they were eating, drinking and having a good time, Kenyon's attention was drawn to a nearby table where two people appeared to be on a date. The young woman had excused herself to go to the bathroom.Kenyon said she could see the man fumbling with his date's glass at the table and reaching for something."I just stared at him and watched something fall from his hand into the glass below," she recalled in an interview with ABC7 Eyewitness News.The other women noticed Kenyon get a funny look on her face as she watched the apparent drugging unfold in front of her eyes."I said, I just saw that guy put something in her drink. We're all like, what do we do?" Kenyon said.Ulrich went to the bathroom to find the girl and warn her."I found her in there and I just said 'Hey I know this is weird, but we saw that guy you're with put something in your drink'."Ulrich asked her how well she knew the man."She said 'Oh my God. .... He's one of my best friends'."The two had worked together for more than a year, the woman told Ulrich.The woman on the date returned to the table and tried to act as if nothing had happened.In the meantime, the three women alerted the restaurant manager, who talked to security. They checked the video and confirmed the women's story.Soon, Santa Monica police had arrived and took the man away.The Santa Monica Police Department later confirmed that the man had been arrested with multiple vials of a clear substance on him that has not yet been identified.For the three women, besides being able to save the young woman, they said the reaction from people online, as well as that night at the restaurant, has been gratifying."The crazy thing, though, afterwards, is people from all over the dining room were coming over and thanking us," Ulrich said. "And they all had stories of it happened to them or their sister or their roommate.""That was the really amazing thing - how many people sincerely thanked us because they had a personal experience with this type of thing." ||||| An epic tale of three women who happened to witness a stranger attempt to drug another stranger begins with, “GUESS WHO STOPPED A RAPE LAST NIGHT?! THESE GALS!” 
 
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 The incident allegedly took place at Santa Monica’s FIG restaurant on Thursday. When I called FIG to corroborate a viral Facebook post, the woman who answered said firmly that yes, it was all true, before putting me on hold. When she came back on she said she was not at liberty to discuss what I assume is still a pending investigation. So let’s take the story as it is told on social media by a woman named Sonia Ulrich. 
 
 Monica, Marla, and I were at Fig at the Fairmont for their delicious happy hour (“Fig at 5.” Treat yourself). I was going on about something and saw Monica staring behind and making a funny face. I stopped. “What’s going on?” After a few second she said “That guy just put something in her drink.” 
 
 The ladies discussed the best course of action and decided to warn this strange woman that not all was as it should be with her date. Sonia lingered in the bathroom waiting for her until she left her stall: 
 
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 “Hey! Um, this is kind of weird, but, uh, we saw the guy you were with put something in your drink.” “Oh My God.” She said. Shocked, kind of numb, so I babbled “Yeah, my girlfriend said she saw him put something in your drink and we had to say something. Woman to woman...you know. We had to say something. How well do you know that guy?” I was expecting to hear “We just met,” but I got: “He’s one of my best friends.” 
 
 The girl returned to her table, which is a measure of steeliness I don’t think I’d be capable of. My impulse would be to rush back and insist he drink my glass of wine and basically reenact the final scene of Hamlet. Meanwhile, Marla was speaking with a server, who notified the manager. Monica described more about what she’d seen to her friends: 
 
 “He pulled her glass toward him, kind of awkwardly, then he took out a little black vial. He opened it up and dropped something in. Then he tried to play it cool, like checking his phone and hiding the vial in his hand and then trying to bring it back down slyly.” He apparently saw Monica looking. Marla said she was just going to lean over to Monica and say “that guy is acting really creepy” when she saw Monica already looking. Witnessing. 
 
 It only took a minute for the manager to walk to their table, see if everything was ok, allowed the girl to order a sparkling water. All super cool. He stopped by our table and said he couldn’t do much because he didn’t see it. But he did let security know. The poor woman had to sit through 40 more minutes, sitting across from “one of her best friends” knowing that he was trying to drug her. Marla noticed him several times chinking his glass to hers to get her to drink. She played it cool. Mostly, I believed, just stunned. The staff wanted to jump in and dump the glass, dump him, do something! I was going through fantasies of walking up and demanding he drink the tainted glass of wine. Eventually, they finished up dinner. There was a delay getting their bill “The computer is down” is what the waiter kept saying to him. Then, in walks Santa Monica PD. They say “Come with us” and he doesn’t protest. Doesn’t ask why. Doesn’t seem surprised. 
 
 Because of the ladies’ quick response and the restaurant’s belief and support, they were able to immediately review the tapes and catch the man putting an unknown substance in his “friend’s” wine glass. It turned out her car was parked in his apartment building and they’d driven in his vehicle to the restaurant, adding an even more chilling detail to this premeditated attack. 
 
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 Sonia Ulrich winds up her long post with gratitude to the FIG, and by saying that after the man was led away by police, other customers approached the women to tell their own stories of similar incidents where no one was there to look out: 
 
 “It happened to my sister...I’m glad I was there to take her home.” “It happened to my roommate at a producer’s party. He’s still messed up from it.” “It happened to me. At a backyard barbecue.” “It happened to me. At a bar I worked at.” “Some Heroes don’t wear capes. Thank you. It happened to me. Thank you.” So thank you, everyone at Fig and Fairmont in Santa Monica for keeping this guy from harming someone. And thank you in advance to everyone who sees this and shares this and reminds each other that yes, you SHOULD say something. Even if it’s awkward or weird or just uncertain if anything can be done. Know that YOU did something. And that it helped. 
 
 I could also tell a story like this. Thanks for saying something, gals. 
 
 
 
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 Image via Facebook. ||||| About 10 years ago, at the after-party for a wine auction in New Orleans, a woman in her 20s walked up to Mario Batali to introduce herself. As a chef, she was excited to meet one of the most revered figures in the restaurant industry. When they started talking, she recalls, she realized that he’d been drinking and he became what she characterized as “creepy” — “just giving me this provocative, icky feeling.” 
 
 Minutes into their conversation, she recalls, he told her, “Come work for me, I’ll pay you double what you’re making.” Moments later, someone bumped her glass, spilling wine all over her chest and down her scooped-neck shirt. She alleges that Batali began rubbing her breasts with his bare hands while saying something like, “Let me help you with that,” as he groped her chest. “He just went to town, and I was so shocked,” the chef says. “Jaw on the ground, I just stepped back from him in utter disgust and walked away.” 
 
 The chef is one of four women who allege that Batali touched them inappropriately in a pattern of behavior that appears to span at least two decades. Three of the women worked for Batali in some capacity during their careers. One former employee alleges that over the course of two years, he repeatedly grabbed her from behind and held her tightly against his body. Another former employee alleges that he groped her and that, in a separate incident, he compelled her to straddle him; another alleges that he grabbed her breasts at a party, though she no longer worked for him at the time. The woman whose allegations are described above has never worked for Batali, though she works in the restaurant industry. 
 
 Batali was reprimanded for inappropriate behavior in the workplace as recently as two months ago. According to a spokesperson for Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group — the restaurant-management services company that provides support to around 24 restaurants owned by, among others, Batali and Joe Bastianich — in October 2017, a B&B restaurant employee officially reported inappropriate behavior by Batali to the company. It was the first formal complaint about Batali, who was reprimanded and required to undergo training, according to the company. 
 
 In a statement to Eater, Batali said that he is stepping away from the day-to-day operations of his businesses for an unspecified period of time. ABC, where Batali has co-hosted the daytime show The Chew since 2011, has also asked the chef to step away from the show “while we review the allegations that have just recently come to our attention,” a spokesperson said. 
 
 Batali did not deny all the allegations, saying that they “match up” with ways he has behaved. 
 
 “I apologize to the people I have mistreated and hurt. Although the identities of most of the individuals mentioned in these stories have not been revealed to me, much of the behavior described does, in fact, match up with ways I have acted. That behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility and am deeply sorry for any pain, humiliation or discomfort I have caused to my peers, employees, customers, friends and family. 
 
 “I have work to do to try to regain the trust of those I have hurt and disappointed. For this reason, I am going to step away from day-to-day operations of my businesses. We built these restaurants so that our guests could have fun and indulge, but I took that too far in my own behavior. I won’t make that mistake again. I want any place I am associated with to feel comfortable and safe for the people who work or dine there. 
 
 "I know my actions have disappointed many people. The successes I have enjoyed are owned by everyone on my team. The failures are mine alone. To the people who have been at my side during this time — my family, my partners, my employees, my friends, my fans — I am grateful for your support and hopeful that I can regain your respect and trust. I will spend the next period of time trying to do that.” 
 
 Batali remains an owner of his individual restaurants, according to the B&B spokesperson. In a statement to Eater, B&B said that while the company has had sexual harassment training and policies for more than 10 years, it will now also enlist an independent, outside corporate investigations firm for any staffers wishing to make claims against owners of the restaurants. 
 
 “We take these allegations very seriously. We pride ourselves on being a workplace for our employees where they can grow and deliver great service with equal opportunity and free from any discrimination. We have strong policies and practices in place that address sexual harassment. We train employees in these policies and we enforce them, up to and including termination,” B&B’s statement reads in part. “Mr. Batali and we have agreed that he will step away from the company’s operations, including the restaurants, and has already done so.” 
 
 Joe Bastianich said in a statement, “Right now, I’m just focused on ensuring that our more than 1,000 employees continue to have a safe and positive work environment.” An ABC spokesperson said in a statement, “ABC takes matters like this very seriously as we are committed to a safe work environment. While we are unaware of any type of inappropriate behavior involving him and anyone affiliated with the show, we will swiftly address any alleged violations of our standards of conduct.” 
 
 Although B&B has been sued for sexual harassment before, Batali’s own alleged inappropriate sexual misconduct has not previously been the subject of a lawsuit. Each of the women who spoke to Eater asked to remain anonymous in part for fear of retaliation — Batali, a celebrated and powerful chef, holds enormous sway in the restaurant world and beyond. Eater is granting them anonymity but has corroborated their stories with friends, family members, or colleagues who were informed of the incidents, as well as with publicly available information. 
 
 Many of the people who spoke with Eater said they were afraid of retribution for speaking out. A woman who claims she was inappropriately touched while she worked for Batali in the late ’90s told Eater, “He has clear intent on being threatening when he is wronged. And the level of vindictiveness is very chilling. So, it never occurred to me to share tales out of school.” 
 
 The multiple accusations of inappropriate touching and other misconduct emerged from an Eater investigation that included interviews with dozens of industry professionals who have had interactions with the chef, including nearly three dozen current and former Batali employees. 
 
 Batali, who became a star as the host of one of Food Network’s first hit TV shows, Molto Mario, has risen to the very top of the restaurant industry since starting out in a New Jersey sandwich shop in the early ’80s as a college student. Along with Joe Bastianich and Lidia Bastianich, he is the force behind Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group, which notably includes the New York City restaurants Del Posto and Babbo, each of which holds one Michelin star. Five years ago, B&B reported more than $250 million in annual revenue. Batali is also a minority shareholder in the Italian-market chain Eataly USA, which has six locations across the country. 
 
 Outside of his restaurants, Batali is the author of numerous cookbooks, the face of nationally distributed jarred pasta sauces and other kitchen products, and the jolly, orange-Crocs-wearing co-host of ABC’s daytime talk and cooking show The Chew. He also founded a child education and empowerment nonprofit and is active in (RED), the nonprofit founded by celebrities Bono and Bobby Shriver. Additionally, Batali owns a small percentage of Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield’s landmark gastropub, The Spotted Pig. People Eater spoke to within the industry often describe him as a friendly, charming, professional, supportive, and frequently generous person. 
 
 But his affable persona belies another, more crude reputation, according to dozens of interviews. Batali’s lewdness, his crass way of speaking about women, and his focus on women’s bodies have been well known within certain circles in the restaurant world, according to people who spoke with Eater. 
 
 A former server at Pó, the now-shuttered West Village restaurant where Batali built his reputation throughout the ’90s, alleges that repeated physical harassment took place while Batali was the chef. 
 
 Steve Crane, who co-owned Pó with Batali until the chef decamped to start his future empire, confirmed that he was told by multiple staff members of ongoing inappropriate behavior by Batali. Though Crane does not recall any specific details, and was not in the kitchen to personally witness the incidents, he said that he was told by several female staffers that Batali had grabbed them from behind, consistently made a variety of sexual comments, and engaged in behavior like snapping bra straps. “I made it very clear to him that he needed to stop, but I feel ashamed that this happened at Pó, and my staff endured this behavior,” he said. Crane said that because they were partners in the restaurant, he ultimately did not have the power to fire Batali. (Batali, through a spokesperson, denied that Crane ever confronted him.) 
 
 The former server alleges that on multiple occasions Batali grabbed her from behind “like a linebacker, like a disgusting bear hug,” and pressed her body against his. In hours of interviews with Eater, she described nearly two years of inappropriate behavior. The grabbing would often occur while they were alone in a cramped passageway between the dining room and the kitchen, she alleged. “He would breathe on me — and sometimes take a deep inhale, like he was smelling me,” she recalled. 
 
 When Crane asked Batali to stop, Batali would become more aggressive, the server alleged; some female staff eventually started asking Crane to not confront Batali with their complaints, she added. (Crane confirmed that after some women would complain, they would ask him not to confront Batali because he would only be more aggressive toward them.) 
 
 Restaurant culture in the ’90s was generally known for being “bawdy,” and sexual relationships between staff weren’t uncommon, the former server said, but Batali’s behavior was more about degradation than good humor, she alleges: "This wasn't just some dirty jokes, this was mean, this was about asserting power. He is awful." 
 
 Lee McGrath, a chef who joined Pó a few years after Batali left as chef, told Eater that when he was hired, Crane warned him, “Don’t even think about messing with the waitresses — they’ve been through hell with Mario.” 
 
 A different woman, who worked for Batali in the late ’90s, alleges that he touched her inappropriately on two different occasions. The first incident allegedly took place soon after she started her job. One day, while she was in the dining room of the restaurant, she said, Batali came up behind her, catching her unaware, and “put his hand on half of my butt and he squeezed it.” She recalled later gently confronting Batali, who responded, “What are you, a lesbian?” 
 
 In a second incident that took place about three years later, she alleges that while working next to Batali in a small, boxed-in space, he was seated in such a way that he blocked her exit. When she had to get up, he refused to move — leaving her no choice but to straddle him in order to leave the space. According to the woman, she told Batali that she needed to go to the bathroom. Batali, who was reclining with his legs propped up, allegedly told her, “If you want to get up, you’re going to have to climb over me.” When she returned, he was still seated with his legs propped up, again refusing to move; she had to straddle him a second time, she alleges. “It was disappointing, again, to have that happen. And, again, humiliating,” she said. 
 
 Yet another woman who worked for Batali for about a year in the late aughts alleges that he lunged at her and grabbed her breasts during an industry party in 2011, a few years after she stopped working for him. At the party, she recalled that Batali appeared drunk, and she became concerned for his safety when she spotted him on a balcony standing slumped over. “When I noticed that he looked wobbly, my instinct was concern,” she said. When she walked over and tapped him on the shoulder, “he sprung up, like he was startled,” and with his eyes wide open. Then, immediately, “he lifted his arms straight up and grabbed both of my breasts,” she said. “I took a step back and I pushed him away, and when I did that, I remember he said, ‘Oh, come on.’” 
 
 “In that moment I realized, ‘I’m just a body [to him],’” she said of the experience. Though at the time, she no longer worked for Batali, she had worked for him a few years prior and said she believed they shared some mutual respect. “When I’ve seen him over the years, I don’t have a sense that he even remembers,” she said, though she added, “I haven’t spoken to him about it.” 
 
 The chef who alleged being groped at an industry party in New Orleans about 10 years ago, as described earlier, said she remains appalled by his behavior. “He gets wasted, he’s arrogant, and he acts like he’s God’s gift to women,” she said. “This is still your industry, you’re a leader in this industry — if you behave this way, what kind of example are you setting?” 
 
 In addition to the allegations of improper physical contact, several sources said that Batali has a reputation for inappropriately using sexual innuendo in workplace conversation. Multiple people who work at or have worked at Batali restaurants from the early ’90s to now described behavior that ranges from mild creepiness to more severe misconduct, both in interviews with Eater and in publicly available documents. 
 
 The woman who was allegedly groped by Batali on the balcony told Eater, “I remember not being fully surprised that it happened because I’d seen him drunk and flirtatious with women. And that flirting came in the form of talking and sitting really close. I’d never witnessed anything during work hours; it was always post-work.” 
 
 But according to other interviews, his inappropriate behavior happened at work, too. McGrath, the Pó chef who started about a year after Batali left, said that he eventually understood why he was given the warning to not harass the female waitstaff, as two servers, including one who spoke with Eater, began to relay accounts of Batali’s misconduct. “It’s like they had PTSD,” he said. McGrath remembers being told that there was a lot of “hugging from behind” and that Batali would ask about their sex lives, what color underwear they wore, and other inappropriate questions. 
 
 Another former female Pó staffer, who worked at the restaurant earlier than the woman mentioned above, said that Batali could be generally “nasty” and a “bully” to both men and women. He was “constantly making overtly sexual and inappropriate” comments, she alleges. Though she doesn’t remember physical touching, she said that she’s never worked for someone more inappropriate than Batali. At one point, she wanted to take out an ad in the paper to say what “an awful person he was” because she thought it was unfair that he was getting so many accolades considering how terribly he treated people, she said. “Mario is smart and he’s talented, but I don’t think that gives you the right to be disgusting,” she said. 
 
 The employee who Batali allegedly groped shortly after she was hired said that she has witnessed “a lot of gray-area affection with women,” like “a lot of subliminal dissection of women’s bodies, telling women their asses looked good, remarking on boobs.” 
 
 The chef’s boorish side has also been previously documented in the media. In the 2006 book Heat, the writer Bill Buford provides a glimpse at the earlier years of Babbo and Batali’s tenure on the Food Network, noting crass behavior with two female prep chefs, as well as an assistant and a set manager. In one incident detailed in the book, during a food- and wine-filled evening at Batali’s Greenwich Village trattoria Lupa Osteria Romana, Buford writes that Batali said to a female server: “It’s not fair I have this view all to myself when you bend over. For dessert, would you take off your blouse for the others?” 
 
 A manager at a B&B restaurant said that while he loves working for Batali — who has been good to the kitchen staff and very professional with both male and female chefs, in his experience — he has seen Batali treat women outside of the kitchen crudely, especially while intoxicated. Eater granted him anonymity, as he is still employed by the company and fears losing his job. “I really like the guy, and every sober interaction has been very professional, but, yeah, he’s gross,” the manager said. 
 
 “He was always friendly, but it was in this ‘Oh, you’re a pretty little girl’ kind of way,” Gabriela Acero, a former maitre d’ and floor manager who worked at Batali’s Greenwich Village restaurant Otto from 2012 to 2014, said. “I remember him complimenting my dress, saying something like ‘Oh, don’t you look like the blossoming bosom of spring.’ Even then I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus.’” 
 
 Batali’s reputation has left some of the women who’d benefited from his power and influence with mixed feelings about their relationship with him. He’s championed the careers of numerous women; his kitchen at Del Posto is led by a female executive chef and executive pastry chef. (“It’s not because they have a vagina,” he said of the crew while at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in October. “It’s because they’re the smartest people for the job.”) 
 
 “I feel very complicated feelings toward him,” the former employee who described two encounters with Batali said. “In some ways, he was very supportive and he used his power and influence to connect me.” 
 
 The former employee who alleged having her breasts grabbed described working for Batali as frequently professional. “I definitely felt way more reverential about him then than I do now,” she said. 
 
 These allegations come as dozens of prominent and powerful men have been toppled by accusations of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct. In the restaurant industry — notorious for its boys-club culture — chef John Besh was brought down by allegations of rampant sexual harassment in his restaurants, and former Jean-Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini has been accused of sexual harassment by four women. 
 
 “I think it says so much about how we just accept and move on, and I think for a long time, I just thought, ‘Well, he didn’t rape me,’” said the woman who alleged being grabbed at an industry party in 2011. “But I remember it vividly, it impacted me, and I feel uneasy recalling it. I just feel this major sense that I’m not the only one. I feel really grateful for the cultural reckoning that’s happening.” 
 
 Anyone with information about alleged misconduct in the restaurant world can contact Eater at tips@eater.com or via these secure methods. ||||| I’m newly sober and dog-paddling through the booze all around me. It’s summer, and Whole Foods has planted rosé throughout the store. Rosé is great with fish! And strawberries! And vegan protein powder! (Okay, I made that last one up.) At the office, every desk near mine has a bottle of wine or liquor on it in case people are too lazy to walk the 50 feet to one of the well-stocked communal bars we’ve built on our floor. Driving home from work, I pass billboard ads for Fluffed Marshmallow Smirnoff and Iced Cake Smirnoff and not just Cinnamon, but Cinnamon Churros Smirnoff. A local pharmacy, the same one that fucks up my prescription three months in a row, installs self-service beer taps and young men line up with their empty growlers all the way back to Eye & Ear Care. 
 
 Traveling for work, I steel myself for the company-sponsored wine tasting. Skipping it is not an option. My plan is to work the room with my soda and lime, make sure I’m seen by the five people who care about these things, and leave before things get sloppy (which they always do). Six wines and four beers are on display at the catering stand. I ask for club soda and get a blank look. Just water, then? The bartender grimaces apologetically. “I think there’s a water fountain in the lobby?” she says. 
 
 There is. But it’s broken. I mingle empty-handed for 15 minutes, fending off well-meaning offers to get me something from the bar. After the fifth, I realize I’m going to cry if one more person offers me alcohol. I leave and cry anyway. Later I order vanilla ice cream from room service to cheer myself up. 
 
 “People love this with a shot of bourbon poured over it,” the person taking my order says. “Any interest in treating yourself?” 
 
 *** 
 
 That’s the summer I realize that everyone around me is tanked. But it also dawns on me that the women are super double tanked — that to be a modern, urbane woman means to be a serious drinker. This isn’t a new idea — just ask the Sex and the City girls (or the flappers). A woman with a single malt scotch is bold and discerning and might fire you from her life if you fuck with her. A woman with a PBR is a Cool Girl who will not be shamed for belching. A woman drinking MommyJuice wine is saying she’s more than the unpaid labor she gave birth to. The things women drink are signifiers for free time and self-care and conversation — you know, luxuries we can’t afford. How did you not see this before? I ask myself. You were too hammered, I answer back. That summer I see, though. I see that booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise. 
 
 *** 
 
 One day that summer I’m wearing unwise (but cute, so cute) shoes and trip at the farmer’s market, cracking my phone, blood-staining the knees of my favorite jeans, and scraping both my palms. Naturally, I post about it on Facebook as soon as I’ve dusted myself off. Three women who don’t know I’m sober comment quickly: 
 
 “Wine. Immediately.” 
 
 “Do they sell wine there?” 
 
 “Definitely wine. And maybe new shoes.” 
 
 Have I mentioned that it’s morning when this happens? On a weekday? This isn’t one of those nightclub farmer’s markets. And the women aren’t the kind of beleaguered, downtrodden creatures you imagine drinking to get through the day. They’re pretty cool chicks, the kind people ridicule for having First World Problems. Why do they need to drink? 
 
 Well, maybe because even cool chicks are still women. And there’s no easy way to be a woman, because, as you may have noticed, there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe you drink a little. Or a lot. 
 
 *** 
 
 The year before I get sober, I’m asked to be The Woman on a panel at the company where I work. (That was literally the pitch: “We need one woman.”) Three guys and me, talking to summer interns about company culture. There are two female interns in the audience, and when it’s time for questions, one says: 
 
 “I’ve heard this can be a tough place for women to succeed. Can you talk about what it’s been like for you?” 
 
 As The Woman, I assume for some reason that the question is directed at me. “If you’re tough and persistent and thick-skinned, you’ll find your way,” I say. “I have.” 
 
 I don’t say she’ll have to work around interruptions and invisibility and micro-aggressions and a scarcity of role models and a lifetime of her own conditioning. My job on this panel is to make this place sound good, so I leave some stuff out. Particularly the fact that I’m drinking at least one bottle of wine a night to dissolve the day off of me. 
 
 But she’s a woman. She probably learned to read between the lines before she could read the lines themselves. She thanks me and sits down. 
 
 “I disagree,” says the guy sitting next to me. “I think this is a great company for women.” 
 
 My jaw gently opens on its own. 
 
 The guy next to him nods. “Absolutely,” he said. “I have two women on my team and they get along great with everyone.” 
 
 Of course they do, I think but don’t say. It’s called camouflage. 
 
 Guy #1 continues. “There’s a woman on my team who had a baby last year. She went on maternity leave and came back, and she’s doing fine. We’re very supportive of moms.” 
 
 Guy #3 jumps in just to make sure we have 100% male coverage on the topic. “The thing about this place,” he says, “is it’s a meritocracy. And merit is gender-blind.” He smiles at me and I stare back. Silent balefulness is all I have to offer, but his smile wavers so I know I’ve pierced some level of smug. 
 
 The panel organizer and I fume afterward. “Those fucking fucks,” she says. “Ratfucks.” 
 
 What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? 
 
 What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? I could talk to them, one by one, and tell them how it felt. I could tell the panel organizers this is why you never have just one of us up there. I could buy myself a superhero costume and devote the rest of my life to vengeance on mansplainers everywhere. 
 
 Instead, I round up some girlfriends and we spend hundreds of dollars in a hipster bar, drinking rye Manhattans and eating tapas and talking about the latest crappy, non-gender-blind things that have happened to us in meetings and on business trips and at performance review time. They toast me for taking one for the team. And when we are good and numb we Uber home, thinking Look at all we’ve earned! That bar with the twinkly lights. That miniature food. This chauffeured black car. We are tough enough to put up with being ignored and interrupted and underestimated every day and laugh it off together. We’ve made it. This is the good life. Nothing needs to change. 
 
 *** 
 
 Do you remember the Enjoli perfume commercial from the 1970s? The chick who could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man? 
 
 I blame that bitch for a lot. For spreading the notion that women should have a career, keep house, and fuck their husbands, when the only sane thing to do is pick two and outsource the third. For making it seem glamorous. For suggesting it was going to be fun. And for the tagline she dragged around: “The 8-Hour Perfume for the 24-Hour Woman.” Just in case you thought you could get one fucking hour off the clock. 
 
 More tales of my first sober summer: I go to an afternoon showing of Magic Mike at one of those fancy theaters that serves cocktails to blunt the terrible stress of watching a movie in air-conditioned comfort. A few rows ahead of me, a group of women are drinking champagne through straws. They whoop and holler at the screen as though at an actual Chippendale’s. In the parking lot afterward, one of them says to the others: “Girl time! We have to claim our girl time.” “We’ve earned this,” another replies. And then they drive off in separate directions. 
 
 There’s always one person who can’t deal if someone isn’t drinking. 
 
 A baby shower is in progress at the nail parlor. Except for the guest of honor, everyone is drinking wine, lots of it. I wonder if the mom-to-be minds, if it feels like they’re rubbing it in. “Thank God there are places like this where we can have lady time,” a woman in a yellow dress says. She tells the mom-to-be she’s far enough along to have some wine. It seems important to her that the mom-to-be drink with them. I catch myself nodding. You, I think. Yeah, I know you. There’s always one person who can’t deal if someone isn’t drinking. 
 
 “I’m going to feel hungover by dinner,” a different woman says. “But it’s so worth it. How often do you get a chance to get away from your kids for an afternoon?” 
 
 I personally think this is an insensitive thing to say at a baby shower. 
 
 Is it really that hard, being a First World woman? Is it really so tough to have the career and the spouse and the pets and the herb garden and the core strengthening and the oh-I-just-woke-up-like-this makeup and the face injections and the Uber driver who might possibly be a rapist? Is it so hard to work ten hours for your rightful 77% of a salary, walk home past a drunk who invites you to suck his cock, and turn on the TV to hear the men who run this country talk about protecting you from abortion regret by forcing you to grow children inside your body? 
 
 I mean, what’s the big deal? Why would anyone want to soften the edges of this glorious reality? 
 
 *** 
 
 I run a women’s half-marathon on a day in August when temperatures are fifteen degrees above normal. It’s a — what do you call it — a horror show. But I finish and someone puts a finisher’s medal on me. I’m soaked, chafed, limping, and still triumphant. Until they say: “The margarita tent is right over there!” 
 
 A yoga studio where I sometimes practice starts a monthly “Vinyasa & Vino” event: an hour of fast-paced yoga in a hundred-degree room, followed by a glass of an addictive, dehydrating substance (made locally!). Oh, but it’s about mindful savoring, I’m told. Well, then. Apologies for thinking it was about mindful reciprocal advertising to an overwhelmingly female audience, and om shanti. 
 
 A local kitchen shop offers a combination knife-skills and wine-tasting class — yes, wine for people who have already self-identified as being so clumsy with sharp objects that they need professional instruction. 
 
 At the waxing salon, a cut-glass decanter of tequila is at the ready for first-time Brazilian customers, which — okay, you know what, that tequila was actually pretty helpful back in the day, and far be it from me to deprive other first-timers. 
 
 Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? 
 
 But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What’s next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.) Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? Maybe women are so busy faking it — to be more like a man at work, more like a porn star in bed, more like 30 at 50 — that we don’t trust our natural responses anymore. Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become. 
 
 Toward the end of summer I take a trip to Sedona and post a photo to Facebook that captures the red rocks, a stack of books, a giant cocoa smoothie, and my glossy azure toenails in one frame. It is scientifically the most vacation-y photo ever taken. 
 
 “Uh, where’s the wine?” someone wants to know. 
 
 “Yeah, this vacation seems to be missing wine,” someone else chimes in. 
 
 I go to a stationery store to buy a card for a girlfriend. I couldn’t keep it together enough to track greeting card occasions when I was drinking, so it’s been a while since I’ve visited a card shop. There are three themes in female-to-female cards: 1) being old as fuck, 2) men are from Mars, and 3) wine. 
 
 “Wine is to women as duct tape is to men…it fixes everything!” 
 
 “I make wine disappear. What’s your superpower?” 
 
 “Lord, give me coffee to change the things I can…and wine to accept the things I cannot.” 
 
 Newly sober women have a lot of wonderful qualities, but lack of judginess not one of them. I don’t just stand there mentally tsk-tsking at the cards. I actually physically shake my head at them like Mrs. Grundy. Are you sure you can’t change those things? I think. And have you stopped to think that if you need ethanol — yes, at this point in my sobriety I called wine ethanol, don’t you wish you could have hung out with me then? — to accept them, maybe it’s because they’re unacceptable? 
 
 *** 
 
 The longer I am sober, the less patience I have with being a 24-hour woman. The stranger who tells me to smile. The janitor who stares at my legs. The men on TV who want to annex my uterus. Even the other TV men, who say that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” What the fuck business is it of yours whether it’s rare or not? I think. 
 
 The magazines telling me strong is the new sexy and smart is the new beautiful, as though strong and smart are just paths to hot. The Facebook memes: muscles are beautiful. No, wait: fat is beautiful. No, wait: thin is beautiful, too, as long as you don’t work for it. No, wait: All women are beautiful! As though we are toddlers who must be given exactly equal shares of princess dust, or we’ll lose our shit. 
 
 And then I start to get angry at women, too. Not for being born wrong, or for failing to dismantle a thousand years of patriarchy on my personal timetable. But for being so easily mollified by a bottle. For thinking that the right to get as trashed as a man means anything but the right to be as useless. 
 
 “What,” says a woman I enjoy arguing with, “so they can get fucked up and we have to look after them?” 
 
 No, I tell her. We have to look after ourselves. 
 
 “That still doesn’t seem fair,” she says, not unreasonably. 
 
 We can’t afford to live lives we have to fool our own central nervous systems into tolerating. 
 
 But who said anything about fairness? This isn’t about what’s fair. It’s about what we can afford. And we can’t afford this. We can’t afford to pretend it’s fine that everything we do or think or wear or say yes or no to is somehow wrong. We can’t afford to act like it’s okay that “Girls can do anything!” got translated somewhere along the line into “Women must do everything.” We can’t afford to live lives we have to fool our own central nervous systems into tolerating. 
 
 We can’t afford to be 24-hour women. 
 
 I couldn’t afford to be a 24-hour woman. But it didn’t stop me from trying till it shattered me. 
 
 I am very angry with women that summer and then I’m very, very angry with myself. And I stay that way for months, trudging through my first sober Christmas and job change and flu and birthday and using that anger at every turn as a reminder to pay attention and go slow and choose things I actually want to happen. By the time summer comes back around I realize I no longer smell like eight-hour perfume. 
 
 *** 
 
 That second summer, I meet my friend Mindy outside San Diego, where her adopted son is days from being born. Mindy’s dark alleys were different from mine, but she walked them all the same and walked herself out of them, too. Sometimes, talking about the recent past, we blink at each other like people struggling to readjust to sunlight after a long, bad movie. More and more it’s the new that gets our attention: my new job, her newish and happy marriage, the book I’m writing and the classes she’s taking. The things we are making happen, step by step. 
 
 We spend the weekend moving slowly and sleeping late and — hypocritically — wishing the lazy baby would hurry up already. On Sunday morning we’re reading by the deep end of the hotel pool when the shallow end starts to fill with women, a bridal party to judge by what we overhear. And we overhear a lot, because they arrive already tipsy and the pomegranate mimosas — pomegranate is a superfood! one woman keeps telling the others — just keep coming until that side of the pool seems like a Greek chorus of women who have major grievances with their bodies, faces, children, homes, jobs, and husbands but aren’t going to do anything about any of it but get loaded and sunburned in the desert heat. 
 
 I give Mindy the look that women use to say do you believe this shit? with only a slight tightening of the eyeballs. The woman on the other side of her catches the look and gives it back to me over her laptop, and then woman next to her joins in too. We engage in a silent four-way exchange of dismay, irritation, and bitchiness, and it is wonderful. 
 
 Then Mindy slides her Tom Ford sunglasses back over her eyes and says, “All I can say is it’s really nice on this side of the pool.” I laugh and my heart swells against my swimsuit and I pull my shades down too, to keep my suddenly watery eyes to myself. Because it is. It is so nice on this side of the pool, where the book I’m reading is a letdown and my legs look too white and the ice has long since melted in my glass and work is hard and there’s still no good way to be a girl and I don’t know what to do with my life and I have to actually deal with all of that. I never expected to make it to this side of the pool. I can’t believe I get to be here. 
 
 This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.
– Three women dining out in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday night apparently spotted a guy slip his table-mate a "roofie"-style drug—and rushed to prevent the woman from being raped, Jezebel reports. As Sonia Ulrich writes on Facebook, she and her friends Monica Kenyon and Marla Saltzer were enjoying happy hour at FIG restaurant when Kenyon saw the guy pull out a small black vial, hide it under his cell phone, and put something in his female companion's wine while she was in the restroom. "After a few 'Oh god. What do we do's,'" writes Ulrich, she went to the restroom and informed the woman. "Oh my god," the woman said, adding that "he's one of my best friends." As she explained, they worked together and had known each other for a year and a half. The woman returned to her table as Ulrich's pal Marla notified the manager, which led to a server walking over and the woman ordering sparkling water. "Marla noticed him several times chinking his glass to hers to get her to drink [the wine]," per Ulrich. "She played it cool." With the pair about to leave, Santa Monica PD showed up and arrested Michael Hsu, 24, on charges involving rape and drugging to commit rape, the Huffington Post reports. Restaurant video backed Ulrich's accusation, ABC News reports, and other women dining at FIG walked over to share their own horror stories. "It happened to my roommate," said one, while another said that "it happened to my sister." As one woman put it, "Some heroes don't wear capes. Thank you. It happened to me. Thank you."