Dr. H says we will be learning about Racism and he writes “REIFICATION” on the chalkboard and we all take out our notebooks. He says that a theory of Racism needs an actuarial account, that racism is not a logical system but inherently illogical, and it functions socially as a set of simultaneously operating probabilities and likelihoods, a complex of suffering and being-dead-alive. He says the traditions of all dead generations weigh upon the minds of the living like a nightmare. No, wait, I think that last part was Marx. He says love in capitalist society no longer exists as a real concept and instead has become the totality of goods representing love: teddy bears, heart-shaped balloons, those Sweethearts candies. He says this in February, and when I tell my girlfriend about it, she is mad at me for weeks. He says race bifurcates class and he says not a single one of us understands logic. Like a drill sergeant, he slams his hands on the desks and goes around one-by-one shouting our surnames followed by the question “What is the contradiction of ‘all dogs are ugly?’” We are terrified and we are also laughing. When he gets to me, I say “Some dogs are cute?” And he smiles and says he knows where I live. He says he is going to find me and make me wash his car. He says “You think you’re funny, don’t you? I didn’t ask for a contrary. I asked for a contradiction.” He says the contradiction of “All dogs are ugly” is “At least one dog is not ugly”. We are unsure, in this scenario, who the dogs are. Whenever a student suggests that Marx was wrong, Dr. H interrupts them and, in a half-shout between annoyance and pity, explains why the student is wrong and Marx was right. We accept this because he cites his sources, because we are laughing, and again, because we are terrified. On the last day of class, Dr. H says, “And that’s where Marx was wrong. Social contradictions are not logical contradictions. Logical contradictions are impossible! A social contradiction, though? Those can go on in perpetuity”. He then goes on another one of his tangential rants about why the West only disdains arranged marriages because they lay bare the inherent economic component of matrimony that capitalist society has endeavored so hard to obfuscate with the commoditization of romance. I think to myself that I will never tell my girlfriend this. Afterwards, he invites us all to his house to eat hot dogs and listen to jazz. His house has a literal hot tub built into the living room, and I tell him I like his digs. He tells me he likes it too and gives his wife of forty years a kiss on the cheek when she brings him a glass of red wine. He tells us that no one likes the person who stands up in a horror movie and exclaims “This is just a movie! It’s not real!” and once the hot dogs are gone and the records are over he tells us it’s time to go. I don’t have a car, so I ask my classmate, T, to take me home. She agrees, and we head out. As she drops me off, she says “You have a beautiful house”. I tell her “Thanks, it’s my father’s”.