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Show Acting Alone Page 255 conference" with Sam. It was a bottomless source of fascination to Sam, the dilemma that these out-of-the-closet gays put themselves and everybody around them in. It was eggshell-walking time in the office when the sun was up, a reversion to pre-sixties prudery: no faggot jokes allowed; no asshole jokes; even no dick jokes - (there goes about 89% of any fullblooded American's joke repertoire, right down the same drain it goes when somebody's maiden aunt appears on the scene). But in the nighttime, a sort of mutual spiritual boner arose between Colleague Y and everybody else, and people looked to him for stylish ways of enjoying themselves, of expressing and bedecking themselves carelessly but piquantly. Colleague Y was simultaneously the happiest and saddest GTA in the whole office. He was constantly humming the latest Village People tune, expertly imitating the horn section and the rhythm section at the same time with his lips and throat, and it sounded like that baby who practices its glottal stops endlessly in every restaurant or movie theater you care to enter anywhere in America. Maybe this overabundance of simulated babyishness is what people are referring to when they say that English departments are not part of "the real world." "I haven't seen Dr. Abraham anyplace, Sam," said Colleague Y. "What on earth did you do to your nose?" But, enough of sympathy and compassion. Now for the preternaturally unattractive former amphetamine addict promised earlier. . . This guy had been trying to get an MFA in creative writing since the |