Brett Kavanaugh invented Bro Country music.
That alone should disqualify him from any part of polite society.
Speaking of Bro Country, I’ve heard a new Knight Errant Bro Country song in heavy rotation as I mow my lawn. Chris Janson’s “Take A Drunk Girl Home”:
What a spectacularly bad idea given the uncertainty of memory even in its unimpaired state and the current climate.
You know, I’ve spent last week, erm, making light of these accusations from thirty-five years ago not just because I’m callous, but because I’m afraid.
Because memory is a funny thing.
Have you ever had this conversation?
“Remember that time when ….?”
“No, that was a different time. That time…..”
“Are you sure? Didn’t we….”
“No, we…. The time you’re thinking about we….”
I have those conversations all the time with my beautiful wife about things that have that took place less than twenty years ago. Some of them took place less than a month ago. So I’m not certain of my memory or anyone else’s.
In my younger days, when I was courting, such as it was, I was pretty careful in my interactions with women. How careful? Neurotic. I didn’t take liberties. As a matter of fact, I didn’t date that often.
Even so, what if a woman I interacted with conflated memories or interpreted (or re-interpreted) events later?
I remember a night in my friend’s apartment in Wisconsin. A friend, a girl who took a sort of pride (or did she?) in her sexual exploits had come along with me to Milwaukee to visit (Was it the time we went to attend my nephew’s baptism? Or did I bring her another time?). A few of us gathered and had a few drinks, and after my friend went to bed, the girl and I were to sleep on the floor, and we spent some time talking. I wondered if something would happen between us, but it didn’t, and we went to sleep.
But what if she remembered differently now? What if she blended some memories of other nights after another party and thought that I did something that now seems untoward? If she came forward with some half-memories and an allegation, she could ruin my life easily even though I remember the night clearly because, face it, I didn’t find myself in that situation very often in my youth.
Or what about the one girlfriend that I broke up with uncleanly and reconciled with briefly a year later? What if she no longer wants our intimate encounters during those times? All she would have to do is say, “Brian assaulted me,” and the damage would be done.
It really makes this Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet less melancholy and more sinister:
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
I mean, I can feel a little tremor of fear that what is happening to Brett Kavanaugh could happen to me except I’m not a high-ranking Republican of any sort.
I saw a meme on Facebook the other day from an Internet friend, a woman, who said that many women have been sexually assaulted, and if you joke about Brett Kavanaugh’s situation, your woman / woman friends will lose faith in you.
If you follow the above advice of Chris Janson to the letter, you can be as chivalrous as you can, but what happened and your word and reputation matter less than what the drunk girl remembers. That is crazy and dangerous.
So pardon my my gallows humor about it. Or don’t.
