Dermot asks Rufus a question:
Dermot: Rufus, do you remember the name of the girl who would sit in front of you in Introduction to Postmodern Existentialism?
Rufus: Beatrix?
Dermot: No, no, no; Beatrix was the goth who sat at the back near the door.
Rufus: Candice. I remember a Candice with big—can I say that?
Dermot: You haven’t said anything yet.
Rufus: Are there people nearby who will be offended?
Dermot: By what?
Rufus looks over his shoulder expecting to see a woke mod.
Dermot: As the illustrious and virile Dermot would say, “I apologize if I’m attracted, and I apologize if I’m not attracted.”
Rufus: You say that? When do you say that? That’s great!
Dermot: No; I don’t say that. I just said that I said that because I assumed—which makes an ass of you and me—that you would know to what I was alluding when I said, “I apologize if I’m attracted, and I apologize if I’m not attracted.”
Rufus: What makes an ass of you and me?
Dermot: The word assume, if you break it into smaller pieces makes the word ass, the word u, and the word me. So, one can say, “If you assume, you make an ass of you and me.”
Rufus: Wouldn’t it make two asses? Like, I’m an ass and you are an ass? Why would it make just one ass of two people?
Dermot: Well, um, that’s a question I can honestly say that none of my other students have asked me to answer before.
Rufus: But what does any of that have to do with apologizing for being attracted or not being attracted?
Dermot: Rufus, goddammit.
Rufus: Uh-oh, you only say goddammit when you are really disappointed with me.
Dermot: Postmodern Existentialism. The girl who sat in front of you in class. The name.
Rufus: Oh, oh, oh, I get it about the attraction and the apologizing: postmodern existentialism, yes. You are doing the work of deconstruction with the name of the girl as a sign of the symbolic gesture of antisemitism.
Dermot: Rufus, goddammit.
Rufus: Wait, wait: your gesture is the exorbitant move of the crisis of your own failure to articulate the superlative tone of the subjunctive voice of the puerile gesture—no, I already said gesture. I give up. What was the girl’s name?
Dermot: The class. The girl who sat in front. The name?
Rufus: Oh, you mean Nietzsche! I was way off; I haven’t read enough of Nietzsche to really know how to begin the work of gesturing in any direction coherently.
Dermot: Rufus, goddammit.
Rufus: I give up; what was the girl’s name?
The end.