“Open to me,” Pie whispered. “Open to me and I will show you such things that will make a penis waggled in your face will seem like dew settling on poisoned wildflowers.”

In the closest thing she’s had to a press briefing in nearly a month, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to discuss the sexual assault allegations against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The White House, Sanders said, would be open to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing testimony from Deborah Ramirez, the second woman to come forward about Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual misconduct.

“I remember when comic books were funny,” Donald groused, dropping the damp trade paperback on the floor next to the Presidential Hot Tub.

“I’ll have the Secret Service pick you the new issue of Richie Rich the next time they go on a McDonald’s run,” the hair said, dangling from a faucet over the roiling stew of self-tanner, Diet Coke drool, greasy McNugget farts, back skin, moisturizer, prostatic fluid, sweet Sildenafil sweat, and the rainbow remains of a glitter bath bomb.

“I like that kid. He’s got class,” Donald said. He groped around the side of the tub until he found the remote control and turned on E!.

Drawn and written by Aminder Dhaliwal, the book asks the question of what happens when all men go extinct. Unlike Y: The Last Man and other similar works, Woman World doesn’t focus on wide conflict or the outbreak of violence; riots and panic did ensue, but readers join the story after all that and jump into a world where women just exist without prior constraints. Characters are shown in small, welcoming communities that are more focused on figuring out what this new version of the world looks like rather than trying to conquer anything or fight for resources. Very few of the characters remember a time when men existed, and as they’ve been going extinct for some time, none of them remember a world dominated by them. This lack of conflict allows the book to focus on humor and characterization instead of overplayed tropes about what happens when the world is made up entirely of women.

This isn’t to say that the book is simple or even easy. Much of the humor is rooted in asking questions about the world as it is today within this new context of a women-only existence. By taking these sometimes deeply troubling things and robbing them of context, it makes them either extraordinarily existential or deeply comical, sometimes both. One character’s annoyance at being unable to find any historical texts that feature female artists, scientists, or great thinkers is funny not because it’s not upsetting, but because in Woman World there are no men to repeat that crime. It’s a perfect demonstration of the tragedy plus time equals comedy equation.

“‘One character’s annoyance at being unable to find any historical texts that feature female artists, scientists, or great thinkers'” What is this shit?” the hat asked. “No books about chicks doing shit? Yeah, right. This is real thing. There’s not a one.”

“Go find me something to tweet about!” Donald roared, clustering his rubber duckies around himself defensively.

“No gang rape? Well, shit, I was finally warming up to little old Brettly Squeakyshoes,” the hat said.

As Washington braces for Thursday’s media frenzy, an even more ominous prospect hangs over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court: a sinister allegation teased by Michael Avenatti that could explode Kavanaugh’s confirmation—or be another dud. Avenatti, after all, has developed something of a dubious reputation in the six months since he first entered (and quickly dominated) the national scene. His bare-knuckle defense of adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, relentless takedown of Michael Cohen, and undeniable talent for media, social and otherwise, have transformed him into a formidable opponent of Donald Trump and an unlikely Democratic presidential hopeful. It was Avenatti who first predicted that Cohen would be indicted, and Avenatti who later dumped records of Cohen’s suspicious bank activity online. But the ubiquitous “porn lawyer,” as Republicans have dubbed him, has also struck out on occasion. A mysterious CD or DVD containing visual evidence related to Trump’s relationship with Daniels was never released. His “three additional female clients” who he said were “paid hush money prior to the 2016 election” have yet to come forward. So it is with some hesitancy that Democrats are tiptoeing around Avenatti’s latest would-be bombshell: that he is representing another woman with “credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh” and what he described as “gang rape.”

“Don’t worry. Once they are finally done decoding his yearbooks, I’m sure they’ll find something you can get off on,” the hair said soothingly.

One of the 65 women who signed a letter in defense of Judge Brett Kavanaugh right after he was accused of sexual assault was the butt of a cruel joke on his 1983 yearbook page, where he used her name and implied she was promiscuous.

The New York Times reports that the name of Renate Schroeder Dolphin, then a student at a Catholic girls’ school, appeared more than a dozen times in the yearbook, including a group photo of football players, including Kavanaugh, under the description “Renate Alumni.” Two classmates of Kavanaugh told the Times that the Renate mentions in the yearbook were part of the athletes’ “unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests.”

Kavanaugh’s lawyer said he and Dolphin shared a kiss while in high school. Dolphin denies it happened, but said she was hurt by the insinuation that she was promiscuous in high school.

“A generation of ugly girls getting their revenge on the boys that wouldn’t date them in high school,” the hat sniffed. “Group therapy thinly disguised as journalism. It would be hilarious if it just wasn’t so fucking pathetic.”

For what it’s worth, and absent evidence or allegations to the contrary, I believe Brett Kavanaugh’s claim that he was a virgin through his teens. I believe it in part because it squares with some of the oddities I’ve had a hard time understanding about his alleged behavior: namely, that both allegations are strikingly different from other high-profile stories the past year, most of which feature a man and a woman alone. And yet both the Kavanaugh accusations share certain features: There is no penetrative sex, there are always male onlookers, and, most importantly, there’s laughter. In each case the other men—not the woman—seem to be Kavanaugh’s true intended audience. In each story, the cruel and bizarre act the woman describes—restraining Christine Blasey Ford and attempting to remove her clothes in her allegation, and in Deborah Ramirez’s, putting his penis in front of her face—seems to have been done in the clumsy and even manic pursuit of male approval. Even Kavanaugh’s now-notorious yearbook page, with its references to the “100 kegs or bust” and the like, seems less like an honest reflection of a fun guy than a representation of a try-hard willing to say or do anything as long as his bros think he’s cool. In other words: The awful things Kavanaugh allegedly did only imperfectly correlate to the familiar frame of sexual desire run amok; they appear to more easily fit into a different category—a toxic homosociality—that involves males wooing other males over the comedy of being cruel to women.

“”Toxic homosociality?”” the hat asked. “This word salad needs better dressing.”