There’s an old story that goes like this. A ship sinks in the South Pacific Ocean and two survivors are washed up on the shore of a deserted island: Sigourney Weaver and a fellow named Joe.

A couple of months go by and no rescue is in sight, and the two decide they might be there for a good long time, and they give in to their biological urges and begin living there as husband and wife.

More months go by, and one morning, Joe announces to Sigourney that it is his birthday, and asks for a favor.

“Sure,” the actress says. “What is it?”

“Well,” Joe says, “Just for today, because it’s my birthday, would you mind if I drew a moustache on you?”

Sigourney is puzzled, but she agrees. Joe takes a piece of charcoal out of their fire pit and smudges a moustache on her upper lip. Then he asks for another favor.

“Would it be OK, just for today, if I called you Fred?”

Still puzzled, Sigourney again agrees.

At which point Joe places his hand on Sigourney’s shoulder and says, “Fred, you’re not going to believe who I’ve been sleeping with for the last six months.”

The point of the story is, men just have to TELL someone.

Which brings to mind Roy Moore.

So far, all the telling has been done by women, telling about their awful experiences with Moore when they were just girls.

But you just have to believe there were nights when Moore and his buddies were sitting around watching football and drinking beer that Roy Moore told of his sexual exploits — or attempts at them. You have to believe there were times when a young waitress walked by and Moore said, “Damn, she’s hot, isn’t she? I really like those pretty little girls.”

And you have to believe that he said things like that to different men, more than once. Men just have to TELL.

And you have to believe there were times when Moore got up from the table to go home and one of the guys said, as he went out the door, “I wonder if he’s meeting some young chick out there tonight. You know, that Roy Moore, he likes them young.”

You just know there are men out there who could TELL on Roy Moore.

Sadly, they won’t.

Because right now, Roy Moore has every red-blooded man in America — including me — searching their memories. Did I ever do or say anything that could be construed as sexual harassment? Let he who is without sin …

It started with Trump bragging about grabbing women. He just had to TELL. And then women began complaining about being grabbed by him, about the same time Bill Cosby was in court. Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein and Bill O’Reilly dumped huge loads of coal on the fire, and it is burning out of control right now. Kevin Spacey and Mark Halperin stoked it. And good grief, even old George H.W. Bush tried to set some pants on fire. From his wheelchair! Six times! Six different women! And told them some dirty jokes at the same time. Here’s what one of the women recounted:

“He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo, he asked the group, ‘Do you want to know who my favorite magician is?’ As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, ‘David Cop-a-Feel!’”

Yep, just like Donald J. Trump, George H.W. Bush just had to TELL what he was doing. Because when you’re rich, or powerful, or old, or famous, or an ex-president, in Trump’s words, “you can do anything you want.”

Here’s his excuse, from his PR agent Jim McGrath.

“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.”

Here’s more — read this story.

But back to matters at hand. It’s obvious that Roy Moore is a scumbag. It’s also obvious that he is probably going to be the next U. S. senator from Alabama. That’s Alabama politics.

I remember, though, when Alabama used to elect Democrats. In the fall of 1968, I was in the Navy, stationed in Pensacola, Fla., just across the Alabama border (I remember the local joke — when someone asked us where we were stationed, we’d say, “L.A., man. Yeah, Lower Alabama).

Hubert Humphrey was running for president in 1968 against Richard Nixon, and while I was not overly enchanted with Humphrey, I was really against Nixon, so I volunteered to do some door-to-door literature drops for the local Democrats on a weekend up close to the election.

We all met somewhere in a parking lot, and we rode a bus for half an hour or so to our destination: somewhere in the suburbs of Mobile, Ala.! There we were handed our voter guides and told to drop them inside the doors of houses on the streets we were assigned. Much to my dismay, when I looked down at the cards we were to hand out, Humphrey’s name was nowhere to be found.

Alabama Democrats had endorsed George Wallace for president that year, and the slate of candidates we were to be campaigning for that day listed Wallace as the Democratic candidate for president. (Humphrey’s team did manage to get him on the ballot, but in Alabama, he was running as a third-party candidate. Wallace kicked his ass, and Nixon’s, too. And Humphrey was not on the Democratic guide card I was supposed to hand out.)

Interestingly, in those days, Democrats won in Alabama. I recall the U.S. senator elected that year was also a Democrat, but he had been Wallace’s lieutenant governor. I had no taste for either of them, so I dumped my cards in a trash can and went back and waited for the bus back to Pensacola.

At some point, the 1980s, I think, Alabama became a Republican state and remains so today. It’s been a long time since Alabama had a Democrat U. S. senator. Maybe that will change this year. Maybe, if a couple of Roy Moore’s old drinking buddies would just come out and TELL. … Maybe that would help Alabama voters would come to their senses. They sure don’t seem to be believing those women.