MY BEARD IS a wonder. It is the beard of Whitman, of Rasputin, of Darwin, yet it is uniquely mine. It’s a salt-and-pepper, steel-wool, cotton-candy confection, much too long, wispy, and unruly to be fashionable. And it is this, its very unfashionability, that makes the strongest statement. It says, I don’t care a whit (a Whitman!) about fashion. I don’t care about attractiveness. This beard is too big for my narrow face. This beard is too wide. This beard is too bottom-heavy for my bald head. It is off-putting. So if you come to me, you come to me on my terms. As I’ve been bearded thusly for three decades now, I like to think that my beard has contributed to the resurgence of beardedness, but in truth, the beards of today are a different animal, most so fastidious they require more grooming than would a simple clean shave. Or if they are full, they are full on conventionally handsome faces, the faces of faux woodsmen, the faces of home brewers of beer. The ladies like this look, these urban swells, men in masculine drag. Mine is not that. Mine is defiantly heterosexual, unkempt, rabbinical, intellectual, revolutionary. It lets you know I am not interested in fashion, that I am eccentric, that I am serious. It affords me the opportunity to judge you on your judgment of me. Do you shun me? You are shallow. Do you mock me? You are a philistine. Are you repulsed? You are…conventional.

[...] Several framed examples from various small but prestigious film criticism publications (I refuse to be photographed for philosophical, ethical, personal, and scheduling reasons) adorn the wall of my home office. [...]

Anyway, it’s ancient history, to quote every schmo and his brother. There is no way to know. Random speculation after a meager archaeological dig. Where does this anger come from? Why am I crying? Why do I love that woman at Whole Foods? Even after they were acquired by Amazon, I still love her, even though I know Amazon is all that is wrong with this world. Well, not all. Bezos is still working on all. [...]

In a car. I am driving. Me but not me. You know what I mean? Night. Dark. Black, really. An empty black highway lined with black trees. Constellations of moths and hard-shelled insects in my headlights smack the windshield, leave their insides. I fiddle with the radio dial. I’m nervous, jittery. Too much coffee? First Starbucks, then Dunkin’ Donuts. Of course Dunkin’ Donuts makes the better coffee. Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It’s the Christopher Nolan of coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is lowbrow, authentic. It is the simple, real pleasure of a Judd Apatow movie. Not showing off. Actual. Human. Don’t compete with me, Christopher Nolan. You will always lose. I know who you are, and I know I am the smarter of us. [...]

[...] There’s something disquieting about unfamiliar fast-food places. They’re like off-brand canned goods on a supermarket shelf. Neelon’s Genuine Tuna Fish scares me whenever I see it. I never get used to it. I can never bring myself to buy Neelon’s Genuine Tuna Fish, even though it promises it’s line caught, dolphin safe, canned in spring water, new and improved texture. [...]

I want her to like me. I want her to know I’m not some privileged asshole racist Jew northerner. First of all, I have an African American girlfriend. I want her to know that. I don’t know how to bring it up in the context of this conversation, this early in our relationship. But I feel her loathing and want her to know I’m not the enemy. I also want her to know I am not Jewish. There is an historical tension between the African American and Jewish communities. It has been my curse to look Jewish. It’s why I use my credit card whenever I can. I will use it to buy the Slammy’s cola. Maybe then my wallet can accidentally open to the photo of my African American girlfriend. And she’ll see my last name is Rosenberg. Not a Jewish name. Well, not only a Jewish name. Will she even know that it’s not only? It’s wrong for me to assume she’s uneducated. That’s racist. I need to check my privilege at the door, as my African American girlfriend is fond of saying. Still, I have come across many people of various racial and ethnical makeups who have not known that Rosenberg is not a Jewish name, well, not only. I’ve assumed they knew. But later in conversation, they would bring up the Holocaust or dreidels or gefilte fish, trying to be nice, to connect. And I use that opportunity to tell them that Rosenberg is in fact a German—

[...] I suspected I had a chance with her. This would do amazing things for my self-worth, as well as my stature in the academic community. I asked her out to coffee. It’s not that I thought of her as a prop or a thing to obtain or something for my résumé. Well, I did think those things, but I wanted not to think those things. I planned to work on those unappealing thoughts, to make them go away. I knew they were wrong. And I knew they weren’t the entirety of my thoughts. So I would keep them secret and instead focus on the feelings of genuine attraction I felt for this woman. Eventually, the novelty of her African Americanness would recede, and I knew I would be left with a pure love for her, as a woman of any color, of no color: a clear woman. Although I understood that even my feelings for women in general were not pure. Attractiveness was a determining factor, which is wrong. And of course any exotic racial, cultural, or national characteristics were appealing to me. I would be as excited to show off my Cambodian or Maori or French or Icelandic or Mexican or Inuit girlfriend as I would my African American one. Almost. It was something I needed to better understand about myself. I needed to fight my instincts at every turn.

[...] I call her often. Often she cannot pick up. They shoot at all hours. I won’t tell you the subject of the film, but it is a well-known historical event that took place at all hours. For the sake of cinematic verisimilitude, of which I am certainly one of the foremost champions, by the way—just look at my monograph Day for Day: The Lost Art of Verisimilitude in Cinema for evidence of my strong feelings on this issue—they must shoot at all hours. So it is a delightful surprise when she picks up.

I click off my phone, furious. A stew of heartache, jealousy, resentment, loneliness, and impotent zugzwang. I know if I were a handsome, successful, young African American gentleman, everything would be so simple. If only I were her, even. I would be beautiful and everyone would love me and be sympathetic to my plight, impressed with all I’d overcome as an African American woman in this racist society. If only, I think. Think about being able to admire myself in the mirror whenever I want, how confident I would be in social interactions. How the Slammy’s woman would smile at me, give me hundreds of free paper towels because I am a sister. Maybe we’d even sleep together. I feel a tightness in my pants. A horniness has come over me at the thought of this transformation and an affair with the sullen Slammy’s woman. I catch sight of my actual self in the rearview mirror: old, bald, scrawny, long unwieldy gray beard, glasses, hook nose, Jewish-looking. The horniness evaporates, leaving me despondent and alone.

I INHALE ITS velvety smoke deep into my lungs. Wait. I have no recollection of lighting this cigarette. And there are NO SMOKING signs everywhere. Of course there can be no smoking in a film library. I know that. It would be obvious to the smallest of children, even those with no background in filmic studies or oxidation-reduction reactions. I stub the cigarette out, but only after I finish it and another one.