the Harvard joke

Over the course of my life I have told exactly two kinds of jokes:

1. Jokes that shame me years after the telling
2. Jokes I have, thank God, managed to forget

Of the first kind, one has haunted me all week. It was maybe five years ago. I was for some reason at a sushi restaurant with three Harvard graduates: two were unemployed and hungover, and the third was a pornographer who was just beginning to get drunk. The conversation turned to an acquaintance of theirs, who apparently had some kind of a father complex.

"Like Mozart," I said.

"Yes," said the pornographer. "Exactly."