4-Nice Girl Wobbles and Topples

I was getting A’s on my tests in a sociology class and a guy asked if he could study with me because sociology was his major and he had to do well in the class. Rory was not bad looking, sort of cocky, and drove a Vespa scooter.
He was tall and his long legs dominated the vehicle. Owning a Vespa was pretty uncool, but I good-naturedly donned the extra helmet and found that I enjoyed riding on it. Rory seemed like he was in the straight-arrow nice-guy category, and I was immediately impressed that he conscientiously followed the speed limits and all of the driving rules, using hand signals and going the speed limit.

Rory and I studied sociology in the library several times and then he invited me out to his house for dinner. He lived several miles off campus with a good friend of his who was a great guy with a very neat girlfriend. Dick had a round face, a big boyish smile, and a rumbily contagious laugh. Since almost everything Jane said struck his funny bone because he was so in love with her, laughter filled the house.

After dinner and a few beers the others started smoking marijuana—tentatively, not sure how I would react.

All of my traditional morals, which had taken me such a great distance in the dating world, were now referred to as goody-goody and were no longer valued in my college culture. The alcohol weakened what was left of my Nice Girl defenses, peer pressure grabbed me tight, and I joined them. My defenses came tumbling down and that night I went all the way with Rory. I remember thinking “this must be love.”

Recreational drugs and alcohol weaken any resolve to stand strong in a moral conflict and peer pressure is real. When “everyone’s doing it” (whatever it is), it can be hard to stand alone for very long.