So what do you make of the Brett Kavanaugh situation?
The question is going around. I've been asked it, and I've been asking it, and I've heard a lot of answers:
She's lying. He's lying.
She's misremembering. He seems to have conveniently forgotten.
It was so long ago, why does it matter? How could he possibly remember? And why did she wait so long to speak out?
But why would she risk the public insult and shame if she weren't telling the truth?
Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's all politics.
I've heard all of the above. So have you. None of it rings as right or as relevant as what I heard from an old friend I can always rely on to clarify my thinking.
When I asked her what she made of the situation, her answer wasn't an easy talking point, though she began her email reply with the simple statement, "I believe the woman."
The woman is Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, who says that one night when she was 15 and Brett Kavanaugh was 17, he pinned her to a bed at a party, tried to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.
In 2012, well before Kavanaugh was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, she told a therapist and her husband about it; the Washington Post has reviewed the therapist's notes.
When Kavanaugh made the short list of nominees, she contacted her congressional representative and the Post. Later, she told U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein but asked that it be kept confidential.
Now her name is in the news, and she and Kavanaugh have been invited to testify at a hearing Monday. He is almost certain to continue to deny her story.
Of course he will, even if he did it. His reputation and a glorious future are at stake. Even a "good" man, a "nice" man, as Kavanaugh is often called, would have trouble making such a sacrifice.
That's the way the world works, which leads me to my friend's answer when I asked for her thoughts:
"I wish we lived in a world where a man could say that he did a terrible thing when he was a kid, and he didn't realize until many years later how truly horrible it was, and that it shaped his life in ways that made him go out of his way to help victims of similar assaults, and that he had often thought of contacting the woman to apologize for his terrible behavior as a drunken youth," she wrote.
"I wish we lived in a world," she went on, "where that sort of reparation was expected of someone who does something horrible and whom we expect to live to regret it, and I wish we could forgive, without taking anything away from the horror of the assault."
Take a moment and re-read that.
No politics. Just a call for responsibility, honesty, repentance, the generosity of forgiveness. It acknowledges that young people and otherwise decent people can do terrible things. It summons courage from everyone.
When I was in high school I went to a party at the house of a boy whose parents were out of town. At one point I realized something was happening in one of the bedrooms. The door was opening and closing, boys going in and out, several obviously drunk.
After a while, I heard that one of the girls was in there, and that the boys -- boys I liked -- were doing something to her. I was so naive I couldn't quite imagine what, but I felt a dread I couldn't name. Later I learned she had been raped.
Before I left that night, one of the boys knelt down next to me, drunk, and began to cry. He apologized, said he didn't want me to think of him that way. I'll never know if his sorrow was for what he'd done or for how it made him look in my eyes. I do know he was a good guy, a nice guy. He was also part of a very bad act.
I tell that story not because it proves anything about Kavanaugh -- it doesn't -- but because it does show that even otherwise nice guys can do terrible things. The shame and trauma of such an assault may prevent the victim from telling the story for a long time, maybe forever.
Christine Blasey Ford has told a story, and while it's not proven, it's credible. She has nothing obvious to gain by exposing herself this way and a lot to lose. It's a story we need to think about.
"Is it possible for us to make really horrible mistakes as teens and change or grow from them?" asked another friend, musing on the situation.
Sure. But we can't grow from what we don't acknowledge.
As a society, we understand sexual violence better today than we did when Kavanaugh was in high school, better even than we did a year ago. The only reason we understand it better is that we've begun to talk about it more openly.
After her initial note, my friend sent a P.S., noting that we don't live in a world that models the behavior that might inspire Kavanaugh, if he's guilty, to regret and atone for his misdeed.
We don’t. But we can keep wishing and working toward it.