The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [41]
Philosophy?
Up in front of me and to the right several rows ahead, I saw Aaron looking around sadly. I wondered for a moment if he had seen me “puking” into my bag, and I felt awful suddenly at the possibility that he had—I had deceived him. He looked seriously distressed by the proceedings, which clearly were not working the way he’d wanted.
As for the rest of the crowd, it was obvious that virtually everyone was play-acting to some degree or another. I was reminded of the Tolstoy story Kreutzer Sonata, when the male narrator described marriage as being like the bearded-lady tent in a French circus he’d seen. You pay a few francs to go in, and when you come out, and the carnival barker shouts at you, “Was that not the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, monsieur?”—well, you’re too ashamed to admit that you’ve been had, and so you nod your head and agree: Oui, monsieur, it was really something! That’s how people come to say marriage is a blessing, and that’s how you can get fifty-odd high school graduates puking demons into three-cent paper bags for a Deliverance.
The whole thing—the demonic expulsions, the trading of miraculous wives’ tales, the crazy End Times theology based on dire predictions that come and go uneventfully once a year or so—it’s all a con that is done with the consent of the conned. Which is what gives it strength. If everybody agrees to believe, it is real.
The hooting and howling went on seemingly forever. It was nearly an hour and a half before Fortenberry was done. He had cast out the demons of every ailment, crime, domestic problem, and intellectual discipline on the face of the earth. He cast out horoscopes, false gods, witches, intellectual pride, nearsightedness, everything, it seemed to me, except maybe E. coli and John Updike novels. At least four of the men and about six of the women writhed and screamed and fussed themselves into sheer physical exhaustion, collapsing in chairs by the time it was over. Several of the coaches actually had to bring Wayne Williams and the other young black man behind the chapel to subdue their demons. By then most of us men were just sitting there mute, looking around absentmindedly, waiting for it to end. I was sitting there, clutching my demon vomit bag—perhaps the single greatest souvenir of my journalistic career—when I made the mistake of closing my mouth. A coach rushed over to me.
“Matthew!” he snapped. “Keep your mouth open! Let the demons out!”
“Oh, right!” I said. I straightened up and opened my mouth in the shape of a letter O.
Meanwhile, Fortenberry was tiring.
“I cast out…uh…In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of pornography. I cast out, in the name of Jesus, the demon of disconnect.”
Fortenberry shook his head as though trying to revive himself. He had been at this for a long time. His stamina really was astounding, a testament to his military training.
When it was done, I ran up to Aaron.
“How do you feel?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said sadly. “I actually don’t feel all that different.”
“Well, that’s okay,” I said. “Neither do I.”
“No?”
“No.”
He frowned and walked away, looking more upset than he had when he’d arrived.
Laurie ran over.
“How’d you do, honey?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I only lost about a half-pounder. You?”
“A half-pounder. You’re cute. I feel so relaxed, I feel great,” she said. “But I have to say, I was watching you, and I felt like—I felt like you were holding back a little.”
I gulped hard. “Really? I mean, I coughed into the bag and everything.”
“No, you were holding back. Maybe you’re not ready for this yet,” she said.
“It’s not that,” I protested.
A frightening thought shot through my head. It occurred to me that over the last decades any number of our prominent political leaders (from Jimmy Carter to Chuck Colson to W himself) had boasted publicly of their born-again experiences, broadcasting to Middle America an understanding of their personal relationships with God. But whereas once these conversions were humble things—Billy Graham whispering and putting his hand on W