Straight Man

the next department meeting. The way things stand, I’m afraid I know the way I’d have to vote.”
    Gracie’s wrong about herself, it occurs to me. She’s more real than she knows. But she’s right about what she’s become.
    “Do we understand each other?” Gracie wants to know. Her smile has a suggestion of the lewd about the edges.
    “Better than we understand ourselves,” I tell her, putting the false nose and glasses back on to illustrate my point. “By the way,” I say. “I expect to file a grievance against you as well.”
    A flicker of fear, closely followed by surprise. The latter is probably because I am the only member of our department who’s never filed or even threatened to file a grievance against a colleague.
    “And I should warn you that a charge of sexual harassment is a serious matter,” I tell her, deadpan.
    “
Sexual
harassment?” Gracie knows better than to ask this question. I can tell she senses a trap, but she just can’t help herself. In English departments the most serious competition is for the role of straight man.
    “You weren’t turned on yesterday?” I say, mock incredulous. “I mean,
I
was turned on.”
    When she’s gone, I quickly remove my disguise and, like Clark Kent, hasten to the men’s washroom down the hall, where I stand in front of the unforgiving mirror awaiting my water. While I’m standing there, three students come in, unzip, pee, zip, and leave without washing their hands, and I’m still right where I was, contemplating the things in life that youth takes for granted. I have all the classic symptoms of age, however—sleeplessness, creaking bones, inflexibility (physical and other). I know a great many older men who admit to silent, lonely vigils, sitting like old women on their commodes at three in the morning, waiting, waiting, falling asleep finally with their heads in their hands, only to be startled awake by the sound of their own tinkle. William Henry Devereaux, Sr., I suspect, is one, and though I am still some months shy of fifty, I am apparently to be another.
    Like today’s theoretical physicists, and like William of Occam, my six-centuries-dead spiritual guide, who sought to reconcile Faith with rational inquiry, I’m seeking a unifying theory. Twenty-four hours ago I stood in front of this same mirror filling rough brown paper towels with blood from my punctured nostril. Today, I’m back, dick in hand. Yesterday, my blood flowed more freely than my urine does today. What I’d like to know is whether this is funny or tragic.
    I have my suspicions.
    Here’s the kind of twice-a-week racquetball game Tony Coniglia and I play. Tony, who’s fifty-eight and built like a fire hydrant, stands in the center of the court and serves. It’s what he does best. His thick, compact body generates considerable power, and on the serve he can blister the ball low and hard down either side of the court. His mechanics never vary, which means his opponent can’t go into the point with any preconceived ideas. The rest of his game is similarly sneaky. He can pass, dink, and kill off the same motion, which means he can make you look silly, and there’s nothing he likes more than making you look silly.
    What Tony can’t do is run. He’s had heart trouble on and off for the last five years, and his doctor allows him only mild exercise. This is where the most beguiling feature of our contests comes in. Tony has decided that it’s all right for him to play racquetball if he takes no morethan one step in any direction from center court, which means it’s my job to hit the ball back to him within this radius. Otherwise he deems the ball unplayable and takes the point. I’m allowed to kill the ball directly in front of him if I’m able, but I can’t use angles. Since racquetball is a game of angles, my handicap is so huge that he has to give
me
points, usually six to eight a game, and even then I seldom win. When he gets too far ahead, he turns and glowers at me, his bushy eyebrows knitted, and tells me to bear down.
    “Bear down,” he says now with the score 14–7, his favor. “I’m awfully tough today. You’re going to have to play harder.”
    Tony’s most ironic statements are always delivered deadpan. Either that or he doesn’t consider them ironic. Maybe he really thinks he’s tough today. I suspect there are times when he forgets the handicap that allows him to compete in the first place. He loves to compete and to wager. He’d bet