Beer and Metaphysics

by Brian Schwartz

The shopgirls in Saks have been making fun of me because my hair had got as long and bushy as the coyote who prowls the yard outside our door. Brush it, they screamed, so last night I cut it all off. And then, slick and elegant, I burst into the Crawpappy’s scene. Less crowded than usual, but a lot of my friends were there, and beer burnished the floating barroom world, and after a while it seemed as if the divine effulgence which, if one could only see it, covers the world like plastic laminate, shone on all present.

“You look like a genius,” one girl I’d never seen before called out, “tell me something about metaphysics!”

“Just make other people happy,” I said. “That way, no matter what the metaphysics, at least you’ve done something good in the world.”