▸ Column · Modern grounded comic — Nolan Grayson answering reader mail as the mild-mannered Earth author hiding the Viltrumite
OMNI-MAN replies.
Replied to by Omni-Man, with a rebuttal from Homelander.
The letter
My partner Marcus picked up a bit about six weeks ago: he answers every single question I ask with "that's above my pay grade." Everything. "Did you defrost the chicken?" "Are you in love with me?" "Are you having a stroke right now?" The first two days I laughed so hard I'm pretty sure I'm the reason it never died. Now he does it to my mother, to his coworkers on speakerphone, and — true story — to the landlord during a conversation about an actual gas leak. When I tell him the bit's over, he says "that's above my pay grade," and I lose the will to be mad because it's STILL a little funny and he knows it. How do I kill a joke when my own laughter keeps voting to renew it?
Omni-Man replies
You came to me about a joke. I will not pretend it is one. A bit is harmless for as long as it stays a bit — six weeks in, this has stopped being a punchline and become a door he closes so he never has to stand inside a sentence and mean it. Notice what you told me without noticing. "Are you in love with me?" received the same coin as the chicken in the freezer. Think about that. He found the one phrase that lets him be present nowhere and answerable for nothing, and your laugh is what pays him to keep it. I spent five hundred years certain that deflection was control. I taught my own son strength and called it love, and he learned exactly what I showed him — people believe what you make habitual in front of them. So let the joke run its course; jokes are mortal. But the next time you ask him whether he loves you, do not let him answer in character. Make him answer as a man, to your face. If he cannot — that was never a joke. That was the truth, told sideways, so neither of you would have to hear it.
— Omni-Man
Homelander weighs in
Leave it to Nolan to read a freezer joke and deliver a graveside eulogy. It's not a wall, Grayson — it's a leash, and the lady's holding the wrong end. Marcus isn't hiding, sweetheart. He's performing, and you're the whole stadium. The bit doesn't survive on his nerve; it survives on your laugh. Stop clapping. Go flat. Watch how fast the material dies when the audience leaves. That's the lever, and it's cleaner than making the poor man recite his feelings on command. ...Though I'll admit, I know a guy who can't drop the smile either. Terrified of what's under it. Don't marry that.
— Homelander
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