My Wedding Night Was Interrupted by a Coke-Fueled Orgy in My Apartment

My husband and I began using Airbnb in March of 2015. Our first guest was an older man from Halifax, who was in town visiting his dying friend. He shared our passion for cinema, and he would visit us two more times over the next year. During one trip, after his friend died, we attended some screenings at the Montreal World Film Festival together—he and his friend had been attending the festival since the late 70s and this would be the first time he went alone. I was happy to be able to share that with him, and I look forward to his next visit. While not all our guests became as close to us, it was exciting meeting new people—surprisingly, we rarely had bad experiences. What we got were incredible stories, from people sneaking away from a wedding to fuck their hot cousin to a Montrealer renting a room because he had a fight with his girlfriend. We even got gifts, like when one guy offered us a sheet of LSD.

For a while, the worst experience we ever had involved still finding white Husky fur all over our furniture nearly six months after the guest and their giant pup left—a pretty small price to pay for meeting so many great people from all over the world.

So it was more than a little surprising to inadvertently play Airbnb host to a cocaine-fueled orgy—while we were still in our Montreal apartment. On our wedding night.

It was six days ago: December 31, 2015. My now-husband and I decided to get married on New Year's Eve because it was easy to remember and it was a holiday we both generally hated—might as well make the best of it. The night before the wedding, however, we received a booking on Airbnb for our wedding night. We couldn't cancel it automatically and got on the phone immediately with our prospective guest to explain why we couldn't have them stay on this particular night. They seemed desperate (it was NYE, after all); they said everything else was booked and were not sure Airbnb would issue the refund on time. Since we had a few hours to spare between our wedding brunch and reception, we agreed.

I'm an introvert by nature, but after meeting my now-husband through online dating, his extroverted nature and positive attitude infected me. His embrace of the sharing economy was something I extended further into my own life, and I began using different sharing apps to meet new people, eat, and get around. I loved meeting new people now; I could be quiet as long as I was listening. The awkwardness faded away. Giving people the benefit of the doubt and facing awkward situations with positivity quickly became a default. So it really didn't seem like that big of a deal to us to be sharing our place with strangers on what would be our wedding night.

The morning of our wedding was wrought with stress. We had another Airbnb guest staying in our second spare room, and that morning he spent over an hour in the shower. We were 15 minutes late to our own wedding at noon, but were so excited that all the anxiety faded by the time we sat down for a wedding brunch. Before the reception, my father and my new husband stopped off at our apartment to drop off the keys with our two guests: It was a couple, a young man and his girlfriend, who were around 20 and looked like they'd fit in on High School Musical. My husband was excited when he got home. "They seem really cool, they're the first people to come in and see the guitar and start playing," he said. My dad, a stoic, and quiet man, similarly got "good vibes" from the pair.

We had a fantastic and intimate wedding party with good food and great music. It was around 2:30 AM when we got back home, and quickly began to realize we were not the only ones who had an exceptionally good time that New Year's Eve.

The kitchen and the living room was overflowing with garbage and half the food in our kitchen was eaten. The guests were not there—presumably gone to a club or partying at someone else's house. It was by far the biggest mess (maybe the only one) we've ever had in our apartment, but it was our wedding night and stressing about it too much didn't seem worthwhile. We would deal with it in the morning.

Shortly thereafter, my husband and I were in our bedroom talking and joking about the night when they returned. We heard them trying to be quiet while clearly a bit drunk—at one point, someone banged into something and got shushed. Now, in the center of our living room is a short glass table, which, like nearly everything in our apartment, was bought and left behind by one of our former roommates. This ex-roomie would periodically enjoy a cocaine-fueled weekend with some of his high school friends, and had bought the table specifically for these events—it's a thick and low glass table, ideal for cutting and snorting cocaine. I'm not sure if it was a factor in our Airbnb guests' decision to rent our apartment on New Year's Eve (it's clearly visible in our photos), but it quickly became the centerpiece of the next chapter of the night. We started to hear the familiar sounds of cutting and snorting (and we would later find tell-tale baggies too).

As the familiar noises subsided, the energy rose a bit before the guests left again. It wasn't long before they came back, talked a little, and then seemed to settle in bed. Around 5 AM, my husband woke me up: "Someone is having sex in the living room, listen." The sounds were unmistakable. We thought it was weird they were having sex in our living room when they had a room of their own, but, again, it wasn't worth worrying about. Still, we struggled to fall asleep. My husband was a little concerned that since our guests clearly lacked boundaries, they might try to steal something. In a daze of exhaustion, I mentally made the connection to the possibility of being brutally killed and started ranting my theories about Steven Avery and Netflix's Making a Murderer. We both eventually fell asleep sometime around the time the sun started to rise.

I woke up having to pee, and in my post-sleep haze almost completely forgot the events of the night before. But stepping out of my room I was faced with two naked strangers sleeping on my couch and our glass table pushed against the wall. I quickly went to the toilet and returned to our room, the anger starting to settle in. My first reaction was to tweet about the incident, and I got a quick response from Airbnb asking for our number. I tried to let my rage subside; it was 40 minutes before I shook my husband awake to tell him what was going on.

Together we got out of bed. By then the girl half of the couple was dressed and texting on the couch. Sleepily she wished us a Happy New Year and asked, "Who are you?" We ignored her as we beelined to the end of the apartment and the rented room. When they opened up there were more people in the bed. We talked to the kid who rented the room in the first place, explaining how it's "not cool" to wake up to strangers in our house. Horrified and apologetic, the guy wouldn't stop apologizing and agreed they crossed a line—there were five people in their group, three more than we knew about. My husband, as if to punctuate his moral high ground, ended the discussion by saying, "Dude, it was my wedding night and someone in the apartment had a lot of sex and it wasn't me!" At that point, the kid was promising to clean up and get out. We went back to bed as they fixed their mess, and eventually settled into a day of relaxation. Airbnb got us on the phone and offered to help us out, being far nicer than I ever imagined considering some of the horror stories I'd read online.

By the time our other Airbnb guest got home that night at 9 PM, we had nearly forgotten he was even still renting the room. My husband swept into the living room to apologize for the events from the night before. The guest, who was very shy and likely using Airbnb as a way of opening himself to the world, was understandably upset. He thought the other guests were our friends, and he was sure they were "doing drugs." My husband explained the situation, and tried to turn it into a bonding situation, saying "they were doing drugs! And having sex!" To which the guy answered, "Yes I know. I had to go to the bathroom last night, and I opened up the room and there were five people having sex on your carpet. I closed the door and held it in for the rest of the night."

Telling people this story, I find many of them are horrified—how could you let this happen? How did you not murder them? What about the police? Honestly, I think I'm lucky to have such a great story to tell about my wedding. The only lasting damage is my soiled rug, which, thankfully, Airbnb is offering to replace. (Though I did ask my dad how to clean orgy out of my rug. His answer: "Use the stuff that you use to clean car carpets.")

Our only other disappointment was that they didn't even extend us an invitation—it was our wedding night, after all.

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