There is something wrong with the Professor of Immunology. He has taken to delivering his thrice-weekly lectures whilst wearing face paint: Kabuki, mime, stereotyped Native American. It varies. Also, his lectures are not always lectures—last Wednesday, it was an aria; the Monday a week prior, interpretive dance.

The counselor has his theories about this behavior. He blames it on the Professor of Immunology’s stifled artistic growth in his youth. I can sympathize; I myself hoped to be a professional quilt-maker, but openings in that field are in short supply. Now I represent the interests of the Coca-Cola Corporation on campus, while studying to be an architect. Architecture is, in its way, a bit like quilting.

The Professor of Immunology disapproves of my Major. I know this because he has confided in me, one drunken evening after a friendly game of backgammon, that he thinks that buildings are the tool of the Devil.

“I wouldn’t work in one if it wasn’t required,” he told me halfway through his seventh scotch.

I was not terribly offended. I had selected my Major through the application of darts to a dartboard. One centimeter lower and I might have been studying Kierkegaard with the well-shaped women of the Philosophy Department.

Since that night of confidence, the Professor of Immunology has refused to speak to me, or even meet my eyes. This has made holidays most awkward, as I must go through the intermediary of my mother to ask him to pass the gravy.

The Professor is my father.

Some interesting facts about the Professor of Immunology include:

He prefers dark to light meat when eating chicken.

He has a distaste for kittens.

We are not related by blood. He is my mother’s second husband, unless you count the landlord.

His given name is the same as the surname of two separate Presidents of the United States.

He stands 5'6" in running shoes.

When the Dean of the University confronted the Professor of Immunology about his eccentric behavior, the Professor boxed him squarely on the ears. The Dean lost twenty-five percent of his hearing. The Professor of Immunology was granted tenure.

Later, I saw the Professor at a professional wrestling show. He was tagging with the Treasurer of the Student Association, and struck Gorgeous George with a metal folding chair three times in the back, earning a disqualification. Afterward, I interviewed him for the alumni magazine.

Q: Do you feel you performed to your best tonight?

A: Of course. My performance has never been in question. It is merely the context that has sometimes had to change.

Q: What is your stance on the issue of Quebec sovereignty?

A: I oppose sovereignty in all forms, Quebec or otherwise.

Q: What is the greatest tool at the disposal of the novelist today?

A: Rubber cement.

The interview was cut at the last moment due to time constraints. Tomorrow is the final class of the term, and everyone is eager to see what the Professor of Immunology has planned. A water fight? An exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings reproduced as postage stamps? The Spanish Civil War?

I alone, due to my unique relationship with the Professor, have been granted an advanced look at the day's lesson: It is a piece of plywood measuring three feet by seventeen inches, and on its face he has painted, in big white letters, Is This Enough?

Of course it isn’t.