The old man is staring at me.
“I am unseen,” he says. “In the Enchantment film. It is from my point of view. The director was experimenting with form. I stood under the camera for every shot. I was a smallish boy with a flattish head, so I easily fit. I’m in the credits. Unseen Boy—Ingo Cutbirth.”
“Of course!” I say.
Suddenly the movie makes sense. The boy! Of course! The unseen boy! The narrator! The dreamer of the dream. How this changes everything! How many new questions there now are. Why a boy? Why did the director choose a—
“Wait. How old were you in 1914?”
“Six,” he says.
Why did the director choose a six-year-old, a boy clearly not yet sexually developed, to have this dream, this fantasy, about an adult woman? This seems—
“Wait. You were born in 1908?”
“Nineteen-fourteen was a time of change,” the old man says, ignoring my question. “We knew we had three years left before we would enter the First World War and that the Second World War was scheduled to begin shortly thereafter. The Germans are nothing if not punctual. So—”
“How did you know what the future would bring?” I ask.
“There were prognosticators,” he tells me. “Those who understood the quantized nature of time. Physics was a burgeoning field and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. Painters, writers, even fortune-tellers. Things are not as they seem.”
“I know that,” I say. “I just told you that! Have you read my book on Mustard?”
“I’m not much of a foodie.”
“The film Moutarde.”
“Oh,” he says. “Not yet, but it’s on my night table.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“Why of course?” I ask.
He hesitates, then says a little too quickly: “I have a long-standing interest in film. Anyhoo, my point is that the world was changing. Women were questioning their societal roles. Men were soon to be dying on foreign battlefields. The art of cinema, while not in its infancy, was certainly in its young adolescence, the Hebe period, as it was called, I believe.”
“Hebe? As in a Jewish slur?”
“As in hebephilia,” he says.
“Ah. Yes. Love of Jews? No, that’s not it. But the term is familiar. I simply can’t put my finger on it.”
“And because of that there was all sorts of exploration, growing pains, testing the limits imposed by theater and literature, the mother and father of film, respectively.”
“Are you a cinephile?” I ask, suddenly impressed with this withered, white papery Jew (?) before me.
“If by cinephile you mean someone sexually excited by film or film stock, then yes.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant a lover of the art of film.”
“I am that as—”
“In the platonic sense, I mean.”
“Oh. I am that as well. Some films I love as friends, some in a deeper way.”
Although I had never put it that way for myself, I understand what he means. And I feel a sudden kinship. I should add here that I have always been violently repulsed by the elderly. I know this is not a societally acceptable reaction and therefore I have kept it to myself. So now as I approach my own doddery, I find that repulsion more and more directed inwardly. Rather than discovering empathy for them, I find I hate them and myself all the more and that I look longingly and jealously at the young, at the taut of skin, at the sharp of mind, at the perfect of form, at the cocky of spirit, at the tattooed of arm, at the pierced of wherever. Granted I see them as stupid and shallow, in their baseball caps with factory-flat bills, stickers still adhered, in their ignorance of international affairs, in their inability to see me, to be sexually attracted to me, to admire me. “You, too, will get old and die,” I have on occasion screamed at groups of teens who have called out “baldy” or “beardy” or “baldo” or “beardo” or “baldhead” or “beard face” at me from the safety of the 7-Eleven parking lot. At times I have screamed it at teens who have said nothing to me. Whom I am not repulsed by are the elderly genius directors amongst us. The Godards, the Melvilles, the Renaiseseses. Although I am not homosexual by inclination, I do feel a certain romantic interest in these men. Perhaps because I see them as father figures, as godlike, as paterfamiliases, if you will. Perhaps because I would like them to see me, to love me and admire me the way I love and admire them. How to achieve that? Well, certainly if I could write a monograph elucidating their work in ways never before elucidated in the history of film history that would help. Perhaps if I could even show them things about their work they themselves had never considered. But this has not happened, and as they have died off one by one, the possibility of it happening has diminished greatly. I have often thought it unfair that pulchritudinous young women can gain access to older, successful, brilliant male artists for no reason other than the artist’s wanting to fuck them. Whereas I have sweated and strained to understand their work, to shed light on it. I have, in my highly insightful way, adored them, and yet nothing. This is the height of sexism. Why can’t they love me? Why couldn’t my father love me just for being me? It was always about proving my worth to him. Never because I was cute or sexy. And as a child, I was both, I believe. Imagine a holy synthesis of Brandon Cruz from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Mayim Bialik of Blossom fame and you’re imagining me as a boy. I was the epitome of pulchritudinous. I know it’s impolitic to celebrate Man-Boy love, but the Greeks, the greatest generation (with apologies to those of you who fought the Nazis), with the most geniuses per square foot in the history of the world, seemed