I ask you, dear readers: Should Oilboat Olga’s beautiful daughter have been arrested upon arrival for corrupting me? I was not a virgin—no male returned a virgin from the Riviera back then except for types such as Cecil Beaton and Harold Nicholson—but she sure taught me a trick or two. That we overdid things cannot be denied. We only appeared for lunch and dinner and never made it to the swimming pool or various bars. Perhaps even a transatlantic record was set; at fifteen, anything is possible. When I got back to Blair Academy and told my schoolmates about it, they laughed to my face and said these things take place only in the movies. Some movie! I never saw or heard from her again, but the trip will stay in my mind as the greatest, most dizzying ocean crossing ever, and that includes Magellan, Columbus, and even Vasco de Gama. Sex is to a teenager what lying is to Tony Blair or Bill Clinton—ever-present and all-consuming. A normal 15-year-old male is a walking boner, no ifs or buts about it. I’d see an ankle, and my tennis game went down the tubes. My wrestling coach used to look at me while addressing the team before an important meet and say that I will need all my strength tomorrow, so stop thinking of girls and think how to beat your opponent. As the opponents were boys, I could have sued him for encouraging homosexuality, but that wouldn’t get me anywhere in 2010. In fact, it could land me in the pokey now. As the great choreographer George Balanchine wrote to Jackie Kennedy, “Woman is the world and man lives in it.” Jackie wanted to know why he was so obsessed with ballerinas—old George landed them all, at least the beauties—and he answered her truthfully. For good measure he also wrote that “men take care of material things, women take care of the soul.” You can say that again.

So back to ballet teacher Sarah Pirie. I only know what I read in the tabloids, but I think it’s funny that the teenager—AKA the “victim”—was reluctant to testify. Again, you can say that again. Why testify against your benefactor? Five charges of unlawful sexual activity that took place between March and June last year have been dropped. Without knowing the details, I’ll bet the farm that March, April, May, and June are the teenager’s favorite months, and a few cheap Manchester hotels are palaces in his imagination. Fifty-seven years later, I still remember my cabin on the SS Constitution. If there was such a thing as justice, Russia and Qatar would not have been chosen to host the next two World Cups, nor would Sarah Pirie have been prosecuted. Thirty-seven thousand violent thugs escape justice yearly in Britain, and the system goes after her.

Older women of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but a few good screws while they cart you off to jail.