Five A.M.

Hi there, perhaps you remember me?
We met at the Royal Academy

Do you ever have one of those dreams where you wake up afflicted with a deep sense of dread, so convinced that you have committed some terrible act in your past – generally a murder, in my case – that it can take some very long half-awake minutes to persuade yourself that this is not the case? And sometimes even a bit longer to convince yourself that you have not so thoroughly buried, concealed, and covered up all evidence of the ghastly event so deep in your consciousness that you had, somehow, actually forgotten all about it? Well, I suspect the recent wave of outings of prominent men for past acts of sexual harassment and assault will have given many senior sirs similar cause for close self-examination. Did I? Didn't I?

As far as what may be regarded as sexual assault is concerned, the situation has changed rather a lot since I was a young man, and with retrospective effect, too, which might seem unfair to some, and which will, as I suggest, have provoked panicky self-interrogation among ambitious men who had hoped and expected whatever bad stuff might be in their past would stay safely buried there. But, in a "post-Savile" world [1], the plea that "things were different back then" counts for very little. The point is, they weren't different, not really, and on an exculpatory scale, this objection has about the same weight as "I was only following orders". Ditto "it was just a bit of fun", "we didn't mean it", "she didn't complain at the time", and all the rest of the complacent litany of masculine entitlement.

So, despite my lack of eminence or ambition, I have carefully audited my internal files, and – unless, as in the dream, I have totally suppressed, shredded, and burned all the evidence, and served a non-disclosure order on my conscience – I can report that I have found little or nothing in there to trouble my sleep. As a monogamously-inclined guy with the same partner for forty years, I suppose this was likely to be the case. Even rummaging through the grubby files of adolescence, all I can turn up are one unwisely pinched bottom, for which I received instant and unforgettably sharp retribution, and a few snogging sessions that might have gone – but didn't go – too far. Looked at from the 1970s end of the telescope, it may look a bit dull – is that all there is? Yep, sorry, young 'un! – but, from this end, it's reassuring. I may not actually have collected signed consent forms for any of my more significant adventures, but my conscience is clear. Although quite how I could prove this many decades later is a very good question.

However. Teenage boys are, generally speaking, more interested in impressing other teenage boys than in impressing teenage girls; they are "homosocial". Boys grow up in a constant, bullying tussle over pecking orders. A classroom can be like a volatile mediaeval court: friends change, alliances shift, and he who is now Up, will later be Down, and get the kicking, real or metaphorical, he has so richly earned for himself while in favour. Girls have their own version of this, I know (something men only discover when raising daughters), but – and I may be utterly mistaken when I say this – I doubt if it thrives in quite the same salty brew of outrageously competitive, but largely imaginary salaciousness.

Again, things have changed since my younger days. Sex, back then, was an almost entirely imaginary, not to say solitary activity, even for that minority of us fortunate enough to attract girlfriends. Real pornography was also extremely hard to come by, so imagination counted for a lot. A certain respect could be earned among your peers by retailing a constant supply of dirty jokes or by the exercise of some vivid fantasy on the subject, usually with grotesque results not unlike those exotic monsters in faraway lands conjured up in early travellers' tales. It could take years for mannish boys to wade out of the swamp of their feverish imaginings, and finally meet women on equal terms on the common ground of consent. Sadly, this has probably only got worse, not better, with the free availability of pornography, which – by definition – is essentially the acting out for the camera of those same feverish, one-sided imaginings.

But the truth is that girls can still be harmed by boys without any physical contact at all. I was very struck by the savage irony of what happened to Renate Dolphin, one of the women caught up in the Brett Kavanaugh case in the USA. Having testified to the good character of the would-be Supreme Court judge, she then made the shocking discovery that she had unknowingly been "slut-shamed" by him and his crew of preppy chums in their high school yearbook, all describing themselves as "Renate Alumni". Which they probably found hilarious. And, let's be honest, at that age I would probably have found it hilarious, too. Especially so if not actually true. Things were different back then; it was only a bit of fun; we didn't mean it; she didn't complain at the time. Hmm.

This did make me wonder. Might our own group of not-so-preppy chums have said or shared or invented things – long forgotten by us and intended solely for the private amusement of a circle of friends – that caused unintended but lasting pain to some of the girls we knew back then? It's not impossible, though unlikely: the girls we knew gave as good as they got. Rather better, in certain cases. As a young lad I had a quick-witted brain and a fast mouth, and I was tormented by the usual longings and frustrations. Might I have reached into the sulphurous depths for some stinging response to fling in the face of some girl's indifference, rejection, or mockery, some corrosive riposte that left scars for longer than it should? I sincerely hope not, but I can never be sure, not least because, self-evidently, it was not important enough at the time – for me, that is – to remember now. Which, in all these historic "he says, she says" confrontations, is perhaps the core indictment to be laid before Kavanaugh and his like: they may well not remember their actions, as they claim, carried out decades ago in the pursuit of laddish laughs and what would now be called "bantz", but their victims have never forgotten. A lapse of memory is one thing, but to accuse your accuser of lying when the asymmetry of memory has itself become the issue is surely to compound the offence.

I suppose it comes down to what is at stake. No-one is going to rake up ancient accusations against anyone I knew in my youth: what would be the point? But criminal behaviour is still, largely, a barrier to high office, and I suppose truly ambitious, alpha-male types with a lot to lose are still vulnerable to their own past behaviour, and so will simply deny any accusations and take their chances in the courts, especially if rich and lawyered up. Also, although some offences are not crimes, or were not crimes at the time they were committed, they are still shameful in the eyes of mature, responsible citizens. Shame is no longer the informal regulatory force in society it once was, however, and, besides, one measure of maturity is the awareness that we, too, have been immature and irresponsible in our time. Forgiveness and repentance are essential social and moral virtues; they're the civilised way of dealing with minor transgressions. But, confronted with bald-faced denial of serious wrongdoing, and with sufficient evidence to the contrary, a fair legal hearing is the only recourse. Get it all out in the open and, if anybody has been lying or conveniently forgetting, on either side, string 'em up. That is, assuming non-disclosure settlements, bribes, intimidation, perjury, and establishment cover-ups don't get in the way of due process, of course. As if!

But at least I am as certain as I can be that I have never actually committed and covered up a murder, despite what my subconscious mind would like me to believe, when it wakes me up at 5 a.m. And if you think you know different, you're wrong, and I'll see you in court.

Things
There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.
Fleur Adcock

Whoah, dude, you've pulled off that chicken's head!

Sure, but history will absolve me...

1. "post-Savile" is probably an exclusively British expression, relating to the fall of sex-predator, paedophile, disk jockey, and TV personality Jimmy Savile, and the "turn a blind eye" policies of the establishment, in its various guises, towards his activities. The whole sordid affair is described here.