Read Online Lost in the Meritocracy (v5) by Walter Kirn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Walter Kirn
Tags: United States, Literary, General, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, 20th Century, Authors, American, Biography, Education, 21st Century, Higher, Walter - Childhood and youth, American - 20th century, Students, Students - United States, Students & Student Life, Kirn, American - 21st century
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lyrics.
“Brother Kirn, you had the Holy Spirit. I saw it. I heard it. And I thank you for it.”
It wasn’t good form to take such compliments personally; I always made sure to credit the Mormon deities. My real muses dwelt on a lower plane, however, in the seventh row of pews, stage right, where the church’s trio of teenage beauties sat: Eliza, pristine and unattainable; Celia, restless and impressionable; and Kelly, whose nature blended the other girls’, making her a favorite with the boys.
“You were perfect last week,” she told me at a youth dance as “Nights in White Satin” heaved out of the speakers, simulating medievalism through overdubbing. “Want to smoke something illegal in my Dodge?”
“You liked my talk on backbiting that much?”
“It’s your delivery, your energy. I loved how you barely stopped for breath except for that wonderful pause after ‘incarnate.’ Give me a minute’s head start so no one catches us.”
That’s how my eloquence at church was graded: in parking-lot petting sessions, in wet French kisses. My school performance improved as a nice side effect and I was invited to join the declamation team by its chubby, mannish coach, Miss Normandy, who seemed to intuitively understand that speech and sex were linked for me. She let it be known that my teammates were all girls and that the regional tourney in Duluth involved an overnight stay in a motel. Of course I’d have to win district first, she said.
I did win, but not as handily as I’d hoped. My event, Small-Group Discussion, took place around an oval conference table that didn’t suit the soaring speaking style I’d perfected at the altar. Here the trick was directness and flexibility as I jousted with my tablemates over the less-than-galvanizing issue of government funding for the arts. It alarmed me that two of my rivals wore three-piece suits and toted brown accordion file folders stuffed with documentation for their points. It occurred to me then for the first time that I was vying for the world’s good things with a more cunning peer group than I’d realized, inside a broader, taller stadium.
“Subsidies, by removing risk,” I said, “promote stagnation and suppress unorthodoxy.” I’d emptied my clip in one big burst, an error. On my next turn to speak, I fired more slowly, with lower-caliber rounds. The judges scribbled on their clipboards, seeming to ratify my shift in tactics. It relaxed me to see this and boosted my confidence, which seemed to rattle the boys in suits. They clung to their note cards, spoke stiffly, forgot to gesture, and guaranteed me passage to the regionals.
I harmed myself the night before the match by staying up till dawn trying to walk off and bathe away the phosphorescent curlicues of dread loosed in my brain by a drugged cupcake I’d eaten with a teammate in her motel room. I hadn’t fully recovered when I found myself battling a girl with close-set eyes and the excessively brushed straight hair of a virginal prodigy. Here was a force I’d never faced before: the supercharged purity of postponed puberty augmented by early viola training.
It rolled me over. “You’re absolutely right, Kim. There’s nothing I can add to what you’ve said.”
Girl wonder seemed miffed at me. “You’re conceding?”
“Yes.”
I consoled myself for the loss with sacred oratory and carnal tussles in Kelly’s Dodge, whose interior she’d regaled with cultic bric-a-brac: a pentagram medal on a silver chain, a black rabbit’s foot dangling from the rearview mirror, Led Zeppelin decals in the corners of the windows. Such teeny-bopper occultism was rare with Mormon teens. The church gave the devil short shrift in its theology, diminishing his allure among young misfits.
“Why all the Lucifer?” I asked.
“Intelligence. He’s the viceroy of intelligence.”
I’d never heard this. “That’s God, I thought.”
“God created us to be obedient. Thought was the contribution of
“Brother Kirn, you had the Holy Spirit. I saw it. I heard it. And I thank you for it.”
It wasn’t good form to take such compliments personally; I always made sure to credit the Mormon deities. My real muses dwelt on a lower plane, however, in the seventh row of pews, stage right, where the church’s trio of teenage beauties sat: Eliza, pristine and unattainable; Celia, restless and impressionable; and Kelly, whose nature blended the other girls’, making her a favorite with the boys.
“You were perfect last week,” she told me at a youth dance as “Nights in White Satin” heaved out of the speakers, simulating medievalism through overdubbing. “Want to smoke something illegal in my Dodge?”
“You liked my talk on backbiting that much?”
“It’s your delivery, your energy. I loved how you barely stopped for breath except for that wonderful pause after ‘incarnate.’ Give me a minute’s head start so no one catches us.”
That’s how my eloquence at church was graded: in parking-lot petting sessions, in wet French kisses. My school performance improved as a nice side effect and I was invited to join the declamation team by its chubby, mannish coach, Miss Normandy, who seemed to intuitively understand that speech and sex were linked for me. She let it be known that my teammates were all girls and that the regional tourney in Duluth involved an overnight stay in a motel. Of course I’d have to win district first, she said.
I did win, but not as handily as I’d hoped. My event, Small-Group Discussion, took place around an oval conference table that didn’t suit the soaring speaking style I’d perfected at the altar. Here the trick was directness and flexibility as I jousted with my tablemates over the less-than-galvanizing issue of government funding for the arts. It alarmed me that two of my rivals wore three-piece suits and toted brown accordion file folders stuffed with documentation for their points. It occurred to me then for the first time that I was vying for the world’s good things with a more cunning peer group than I’d realized, inside a broader, taller stadium.
“Subsidies, by removing risk,” I said, “promote stagnation and suppress unorthodoxy.” I’d emptied my clip in one big burst, an error. On my next turn to speak, I fired more slowly, with lower-caliber rounds. The judges scribbled on their clipboards, seeming to ratify my shift in tactics. It relaxed me to see this and boosted my confidence, which seemed to rattle the boys in suits. They clung to their note cards, spoke stiffly, forgot to gesture, and guaranteed me passage to the regionals.
I harmed myself the night before the match by staying up till dawn trying to walk off and bathe away the phosphorescent curlicues of dread loosed in my brain by a drugged cupcake I’d eaten with a teammate in her motel room. I hadn’t fully recovered when I found myself battling a girl with close-set eyes and the excessively brushed straight hair of a virginal prodigy. Here was a force I’d never faced before: the supercharged purity of postponed puberty augmented by early viola training.
It rolled me over. “You’re absolutely right, Kim. There’s nothing I can add to what you’ve said.”
Girl wonder seemed miffed at me. “You’re conceding?”
“Yes.”
I consoled myself for the loss with sacred oratory and carnal tussles in Kelly’s Dodge, whose interior she’d regaled with cultic bric-a-brac: a pentagram medal on a silver chain, a black rabbit’s foot dangling from the rearview mirror, Led Zeppelin decals in the corners of the windows. Such teeny-bopper occultism was rare with Mormon teens. The church gave the devil short shrift in its theology, diminishing his allure among young misfits.
“Why all the Lucifer?” I asked.
“Intelligence. He’s the viceroy of intelligence.”
I’d never heard this. “That’s God, I thought.”
“God created us to be obedient. Thought was the contribution of
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