I am a little older than Brett Kavanaugh and not quite as Irish (according to The Irish Times, he clocks in at 87.5%, out-Irishing me by 25%). We share an alma mater as well as boarding-school college preparatory experience. My guess is that we also share the Irish curse, so between these three items, I think I can offer some conscionable speculation and anecdotal observations on the Kavanaugh controversy.
Alcohol affects Judge Kavanaugh in extreme ways. Old school Irish alcoholism management seems to be his method of handling it, though he could possibly be involved with a self-help organization that respects and preserves his anonymity. While he was figuring all of this out in high school and in college, he was simultaneously reckoning with his emerging sexuality, perhaps perturbed with his choir-boy impishness, which seemed to be dooming him to a lifetime of being cute rather than handsome.
Having been groomed for greatness and raised for an open-arms welcome into the American elite, when cherchez la femme came to him far less naturally than writing history papers, the dissonance between these two realities infuriated him and belied the sense of privilege he had always presumed to be his birthright. That frustration manifest itself in developing a methodology for sexual conquest with the handicap due him over his button nose and being less than six feet tall. That handicap turned out to be booze, both for him and his targets; he was a creature of his nature, and also of his nurture.
I played in a rock band that made a little hay on the university circuit in the 1980s. It was common for the available free beverage, especially at fraternies, to be a crippling grain alcohol punch, often self-served from a 30-gallon Rubbermaid trash barrel. The sight of drunken, staggering teenagers was a common one at these gigs. In my late teens and early twenties, I eschewed alcohol entirely, so these recollections are clear and vivid.
I have also been aware of drunken gang rapes or “trains” that had taken place in other areas of the dormitories and frat houses where we played. It struck me as disgusting, and in retrospect, I wish I had taken it upon myself to find one and put an end to it with round-base straight microphone stand (still the finest on-the-gig weapon available to musicians). I had heard of this custom in more than one fraternity at the University of New Hampshire. My sense is that this was a common practice across many universities all across the country. That it made its way to Georgetown Prep makes perfect sense.
I know how it feels to be addicted to alcohol, I know how it feels to strike out with girls at an elite American prep school, and I’ve seen this kind of presumptive king-of-the-universe behavior in the Ivy environment. There’s your armchair psychiatry for the day, but I believe I have enough anecdotal exposure to parallel or identical environments to be able to offer a perspective born of familiarity with knowing the type, knowing the environment, and knowing the disease of alcoholism. In terms of a smell test, there’s a turd around here somewhere.
