Like so many, I watched this week's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. I didn't want to because it seemed that, despite the troubling allegations, the outcome seemed to be predetermined and the deck stacked.
And I watched the coverage on MSNBC, so I understood this as another in a series of epic battles between good and evil with nothing less than the future of the country at stake. Before the opening gavel, I knew that Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony would be moving and that Judge Kavanaugh's would be combative. I knew that the Republican majority had elected to hire a female sex crimes prosecutor to question Dr. Blasey Ford out of concern for the optics--they didn't want to appear in Democratic campaign commercials providing more evidence of their party's apparent hostility to women. And I knew that the nomination was going to get voted out of committee and that Judge Kavanaugh was most likely to be confirmed by the full Senate.
It was as though the battle had been decided and all that remained was the assignment of casualties..
What I was not prepared for was Judge Kavanaugh's affect.
He had already demonstrated earlier in the week a remarkable ability to hew to talking points in a brief but rote interview with Fox News, but in Thursday's hearing he wrapped himself in indignation and claimed the mantle of victim. He was a victim of a "political hit" designed to exact revenge on behalf of the Clintons and re-litigate the 2016 Presidential Election..
Here was an angry middle-aged white man who was too busy with school, athletics, church and scouting to be intimate with a woman who was being accused of sexual assault.
He seemed more angry about the fact that he had done everything that had been expected of him and come through the time-honored farm system of power elites the natural outcome of which was to be a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and that inevitability was in danger of being ripped away from him.
And for what?
Kavanaugh had worked in the W White House for a president who was himself alleged to have been a serious drinker and substance abuser. That had been overlooked, so is it was hard to imagine that he might expect any "blemishes" in his past to be overlooked?
Between the pro forma evasions of his initial testimony where he declined to answer specific questions about his legal opinions out of respect for "judicial independence" to his ham-fisted attempts to deflect questions about his possible experience of drunken blackouts, Judge Kavanaugh came across as defensive and resentful. Despite Senator's Feinstein's characterization of the process as a "job interview," it seemed as though Judge Kavanaugh had been expecting a coronation and not an inquisition.
The allegations surrounding Kavanaugh are serious and need to be investigated and the confirmation process should be paused while this happens. The way that men assert power over women is toxic to our society and should be called out whenever and wherever it happens.
While there is not much that I can contribute to the conversation on sexual assault, I do know that its effects are corrosive and indelible.
Where I believe I can contribute is on the order of succession and the overwhelming sense of dislocation that can result from being just about to win the game when the rules are suspended.
I grew up in a home where children were to be "seen and not heard." I lived in a house where my dad often insisted on "quiet time for adults" to the extent that it was possible to go a whole week without seeing him. I learned early and often that in order to have access, I had to learn how to be quiet and pour a mixed drink. One of the highest compliments ever paid to me by one of my father's friends was that I would be a "good person to get drunk with."
It was in hanging around and mixing those drinks that I learned about my dad's battle to live up to his father's expectations.
He had gone to an all-boys residential school, graduated with an M.B.A. and worked in the investment business all with the expectation of going into my grandmother's family business. He had done all the preparatory work with the understanding that he would get the call to join the company and that call never came. His brother got the call, but my dad's never came.
I think he was still expecting a call right up until the time the company was sold.
And, while he was waiting, he kept working in a business he had no real stomach for and he kept medicating his frustration.
He was often an incoherent, or belligerent, drunk who was verbally aggressive and who might, or might not, remember the specifics of the the things he did or said.
He was a good man, who I believe always tried to do the right thing, but he was also capable of causing great pain.
I know I have a similar sense of waiting for a bus and recognizing that it is never going to come.
I was going to be a writer.
That was very clear to me from high school: I was going to have a tweed jacket with elbow patches and shelves full of dog-eared notebooks overflowing with my deep thoughts. I didn't have a clue what I was going to write about, but I was definitely going to be a writer.
I remember one time my mother invited a filmmaker to the house who worked for the National Film Board of Canada. One of the strongest takeaways from listening to him was the importance of having a point of view, a lens through which to capture and tell the story. I was self-aware enough to know that I didn't have one and went to work trying to figure out how to get one.
I am still looking.
It was for that reason that I gravitated to working in the theatre.
It is a world full of extreme characters, dramatic stories and plays.
One of the earliest lessons you learn in that world is the value of strong opinions; there are two temperatures: hot or cold. Either you "love" something or you "hate" it.
You could love a particular show because you, or someone you knew, was in it or you could hate a show because you weren't, or didn't, or because you just didn't understand it.
From my earliest days in the theatre, one of the shows I hated was Chekov's "Three Sisters."
Part of my animus was due to the fact that Chekhov is always described as being a writer of comedies and "Three Sisters is three-plus hours of the least funny comedy you have ever seen. To my teenage brain it was nothing but incessant whining about how the sisters would rather go to Moscow.
They had been born and raised in the big city and, through circumstances, now find themselves trapped in the country unable to return: that old sit-com trope!
As a teenager raised on television, it was difficult to appreciate that "comedy" could have more than one meaning and that Chekhov was writing about more than the given circumstances of the play. Among other things, the play is not about realizing goals, but about negotiating with others and oneself to get our needs met. Understanding the difference is the product of time.
I have a similar rage-sadness in me recognizing that I will not reach my goals and a resistance to locking the door to my elbow-patch dreams. I waited decades for what I thought was going to be my turn, for a story to tell and a point-of-view from which to tell it, and it's not going to come.
It is only now, at fifty-seven, that I can see it is, as Chekhov writes, possible to accept that and still be resentful and angry about it.
I made choices: big ones, small ones and all sizes in between. I stopped when I should have gone, waited when I should have started and left when I should have stayed. And each of those choices have consequences. They don't get averaged; you don't get to take away the best and the worse and only consider those in between.
I believe Dr. Blasey Ford. I don't think there is enough "up-side" in coming forward with her allegation to balance out lifetime of trauma and the abuse that has come her way.
I also have no empathy for Judge Kavanaugh. Just because you are qualified for a seat on the Court doesn't mean you get one, as Judge Garland can attest.
Recognizing that choices made even in the smallest moments can change the trajectory of your life, no matter how carefully you follow the rules, is a mile marker of maturity. Dr. Blasey Ford had to learn that lesson thirty-six years ago.
My mom always told me that girls mature faster than boys.
