We are instructed to cheer those opposing Kavanaugh and to confront the people on his side as well as those in the weasel category, “undecided,” as if Flake, Collins, Manchin et al have been scripted by a Magic 8-Ball to say, “Answer hazy, ask again later.” I will see Cruz, who has the painted-on hair of a ventriloquist’s dummy, surrounded by what look like armed guards. I will not see Flake, who is in hiding, as is Collins.

I remember the smell of fresh ink on stacks of papers at the office and the thrill of lifting one from a red box on the street and seeing my work there. No one changes a word without consulting you. No one urges you to write like them. We’re depicted by others as a Bruegel scene of manic devils roasting each other’s body parts, and it’s kind of true. More keenly I remember late nights with Richard Goldstein, talking about every variant of sex. Is Beauty and the Beast, in which gorgeous Linda Hamilton hooks up with Ron Perlman, who has the face and mane of a lion(!), the first depiction of interspecies sex on TV? Check, yes. I remember receiving a book in the mail containing hundreds of pictures of vaginas and turning the pages, staggered by the array, while leaning against the wall of mail cubbies. I remember Guy Trebay’s expanding collection of snow globes. Some contain autopsy remains dusted with glitter. (Not true.) One day I pass his cubicle with a spiky hair cut and dangly, dart-shaped earrings, and he says, “Laurie Stone, the oldest living punk.”