by Bruce Feiler
“And did you pick the right one?”
“I thought so. We started going out. We were great friends, we were lovers, but then something happened. Last term we were just enjoying each day as it came. There was no pressure. Now there’s so much talk about the future—‘What are you thinking?’; ‘How am I feeling?’; and all those mushy things. I don’t like that stuff. I don’t think in words. I just want to feel. But he wants more. He wants to be in love. I don’t want to be in love—I want to have fun.”
A scuffle broke out at one end of the room, and a pint glass skidded across the floor and ruptured against a pillar.
“So which side is winning, your body or your mind?”
“Well, in the short term my body is winning, but in the future I’ll choose my heart. I do want to have a family, you know. And I want to be a good Christian.”
“So how will you explain what you’re doing now?”
“It’s a struggle. The devil shows you a good time before he tries to take your soul. Listen, I live next door to two leaders of the Christian society at Clare. They’re always trying to convert me, to use certain lines on me, but they don’t realize that I’ve used the same lines on other people. It all seems so shallow now. Being a good person is harder than that. Of course, I want to stop before I go too far, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t know how hard it was to be good until I realized how much fun it is to be bad.”
“Avert your eyes, Mr. Feiler.”
Simon was sitting on the floor of his rooms in orange-striped boxer shorts clenching a Marlboro cigarette in his lips and staring at a square whisky glass on his thigh. He didn’t look up when I stepped through his door a half hour before dinnertime.
“This is not the stiff British upper lip you’re looking at,” he said. “I do not like to be seen in this state.”
“What’s going on?” I said. “What happened to your revision schedule?”
“I’m not used to not getting what I want,” he said. “I’m usually able to control myself, not to mention the people around me. I guess that’s what the next three years is all about. My ego will take a bashing.”
“That could do some good.”
“Watch it!” he said, now looking up at me. His eyes were bloodshot and far away. “Don’t patronize me today, Mr. Feiler. I haven’t slept in two days and I’ve already consumed an inordinate amount of alcohol.”
I grabbed the near-empty glass from his hand and set it on the table. He waved his arm as if batting a fly, then dragged the twisted plaid duvet from his bed and laid it across his body.
“Will you tell me what’s going on?” I said, spreading the curtains, opening the windows, and finally taking a seat. “Why is everyone in Clare in this sudden state of frenzy?”
“It’s the game, don’t you know. The river, the grass, the flowers, the charming students in their B.A. gowns. And, of course, the pressure to perform.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said.
“Listen, I have a question for you,” he snapped. “Is she a Christian, or not? Is she trying to get a First, or what? And then, just once, I want to know: does she love me, or not?”
For a moment neither of us spoke. He took a drag from the bottom of his cigarette and winced at the bitter taste.
“So that’s it?” I said. “You’re having romantic troubles.”
“Troubles, no, we’re not having troubles at all. Not for Lucy at least. She says that apart from several things—which of course she wouldn’t mention—she would be perfectly happy to marry me. She also said that she wouldn’t have to be madly in love with the person she marries. Can you imagine such a life? I can’t. I couldn’t stand that.”
“You sound as if you’re changing your mind,” I said. “What happened to ‘just being human’ and all that?”
“Look,” he said. “I’m not asking for much. I want an intellectual, a physical, and an emotional relationship. I know this thing started out as just a physical relationship. But now I want more. It always happens that way. Usually, it’s the other person—my French teacher at school; Emiko in Japan. This time it happened to me.”
“That sounds sort of encouraging.”
“Encouraging, maybe. But highly embarrassing.”
“Ah, the great British sin: being embarrassed.”
“Stop it,” he said. “Hand me my shirt.” I picked up a short-sleeve checked shirt from his mattress and threw it across the room. “I’m an optimistic person, really,” he said, “but somehow I’m finding it hard to be optimistic this time.”
“Maybe you’re changing,” I said. “It could be worse. Instead of saying ‘I am’ or ‘I’m not’ all the time, maybe you should say ‘I have been’ or ‘I haven’t been until now.’”
“I don’t like talking to you, Mr. Feiler. You’re too precise. I want someone to massage my ego and tell me what to do. I want someone to tell her what to do as well.”
“I stopped doing that long ago.”
“Lucy asked Hillary to give me a lecture. Do you know her, Hillary? I think you’d like her. She talks a lot, like you. But she’s a bit wild. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“Thank you for the lecture. I’ll watch my step. Now where were we?”
“We were in trouble. The problem is she just wants it to be convenient. If she doesn’t see me for three days, that’s fine with her. If she’s busy, there’s always tomorrow. But I want more. I want to be the last person she sees every day and the first person she sees in the morning.”
“You mean you want to sleep with her every night.”
“Not necessarily. I just want to be more important. I want her to act like I’m an important part of her life. Also, I don’t understand this religious thing. Why doesn’t she just think the way I do? I don’t go to chapel. I don’t read the Bible. But I’m religious. It’s not what you do, it’s how you act.”
“Don’t you think that in the long run—”
“I can’t wait that long,” he interrupted. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Give me a call when you want to settle down.’ In the meantime she’s driving me crazy, especially with her work. She talks about it all the time, but she never seems to do it. I’m just the opposite. I realize we’re all under pressure here. But I have become the negative of work for her; I have become a distraction.”
“So what are you going to do?” I said. “You’re not sleeping, you’re not eating, and you’re not even studying.”
“Thank you for that reminder. Throw me my trousers.”
“It sounds like you need some temporary arrangements.”
“But what will everybody think if I suddenly reveal myself to be a sap?” he said. “What about my image? The bar? I have to live with these people for three years, you know?”
“That’s true,” I said. “We wouldn’t want them to think you have a heart or anything, it might ruin your reputation.”
“All right,” he said. “You made your point. You Americans have a strange sense of humour.”
“It’s called sarcasm,” I said.
“It should be called humiliation. Now close your eyes while I slip on my trousers. You really shouldn’t see me like this.”
XVIII
DEBATING
Young, Free, and British
Q: What’s the difference between America and a yoghurt?
A: Give a yoghurt 200 years and it will develop a culture.
—A restroom stall
History Faculty, Cambridge
“So, Bruce, what’s in the package?”
Terry handed me my post on a cold, rainy Thursday afternoon in early May as I came home from a meeting with my supervisor on the progress of my thesis.
“It’s a tie,” I said.
“Your old school tie, I guess.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t go to an old school. It’s a tie with the design of the American flag on it.”
“Aha,” he said. “Old Glory. I know it well. But tell me, why do you need it on a tie?”
“It’s for a debate,” I said. “I’m speaking at the Union tomorrow night and I need to look my best.”
“The Union?” he said. “That’s impressive. But you’d better be mighty careful when you’re out there on that floor. Those debaters like to humiliate upstart Colonists like yourself.”
“I realize that, which is why I need a secret weapon.”
“A secret weapon? What kind of tie do you have there, boy? Not a bow tie is it?”
“Why, of course.”
“For a dress suit?”
“No, a DJ.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. In that case I’m afraid I won’t be able to be of much assistance to you.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was approaching, then leaned across the wooden counter.
“Because there’s something most people think I can do that I can’t,” he said.
“And what’s that?” I whispered.
“Tie a bow tie.”
“What?!” I gasped, nearly blowing his cover. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, sir,” he said, straightening his back. “I don’t kid. I’m afraid you’ve met an Englishman with a frailty.”
“But it’s just like tying a shoe,” I said.
“I know, I know, but I can’t do it. My wife, Jimbo, has to do it for me. And I’ll tell you something else—it’s all the more surprising since I have a fixation about cleanliness. I even clean the soles of my shoes.” He balanced his hand on the countertop and showed me the sole of his shoe, which, as promised, was as clean and spotless as the top of his head. “But still, I can’t tie a bow tie. It always comes out lopsided.”
“Maybe I should teach you,” I said.
He set down his hands on the countertop. “I would rather die.”
I laughed out loud. “If you change your mind,” I said, “just let me know. Perhaps you could learn something from a Colonist after all.”
“Watch it,” he said. “That’s the kind of remark that could get you in trouble at the Union.”
“Not tomorrow,” I said.
“Why not?” he said. “What’s the topic?”
“Resolved: This House Would Rather Be Young, Free, and American.”
“In that case,” he said, “I wish you all the best, and I hope you fall flat on your bum.”
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Yanks and Brits alike…”
The chamber of the Cambridge Union Society was stuffed from its underlying wainscot to its overhanging gallery when I stepped up to the lectern at a little past nine on Friday night and prepared to propose the motion. The lectern for our side—the proposition—stood approximately waist-high, just three feet across an elaborate oak table from an identical lectern for the opposition side. The table, known officially as the dispatch box, sat immediately in front of a three-tiered, double-armed presidential throne, which rested against the back wall of the two-story House. To the right and left of the president’s perch, on either side of the dispatch box, members sat facing one another in long rows of pews like opposing parliamentary parties. As with the House of Commons in London, which served as the Union’s model, the gap where the front benches met one another was wide enough so that if two combative members came to blows and decided to have a duel, their outstretched swords when fully drawn would not touch each other.
The Cambridge Union Society was formed in 1815 by joining existing societies from three colleges: Gonville and Caius, St. Catherine’s, and St. John’s, the last of which had a debating club called the Fustian Society, fustian being an ancient oratorical put-down that meant, in essence, “full of gas.” The university disapproved of the new group, however, and decreed that it was improper for young gentlemen in statu pupillari (of student status) to discuss political matters of the day. After a contentious debate, the vice-chancellor eventually consented to let the students discuss political matters, but only under the condition that the matters discussed relate exclusively to the previous century. The students readily agreed to this provision, and promptly circumvented the problem by prefacing every remark with the saving phrase, “Fifty years ago…” In the end, student ingenuity prevailed over professorial prudence and by century’s end the Union had grown to include some thirteen thousand members, which was widely believed to be the largest affiliation of any club in the world.
The Union today, like the university it embodies, has lost some of its previous luster as well as its claim to hold a central place in the intellectual life of the country. To be sure, hundreds of students still join every year and a dozen or so debates take place every term, such as “This House Believes that Private Schools Are Not in the Public Interest” and “This House Believes that a Man’s Place Is in His Home.” Also, the Union is still considered the best springboard for a career in Parliament. In the year that I was at Cambridge, for example, five members of the Cabinet were former Union presidents.
But for the most part, the Union these days has become a home for back-stabbing, social-climbing party hacks to train themselves in the timeless techniques of political sabotage. In each of my three terms, for example, a political “scandal” graced the front pages of the university tabloid. In Michaelmas Term the crisis involved the Conservative Party on campus, when a group calling itself the Blue Dawn slate accused its rival, the Disraelian slate, of subverting the party’s constitution by reducing the number of meetings that members could attend. In Lent, the crise de term involved the Labour Party, when Mark Scott-Fleming, the bearded, ponytailed medic from Clare, abandoned the party’s traditional boycott against the Union’s alleged conservative bias and actually got himself elected president, to the horror of his party and the disgrace of the opposition. In Easter Term a candidate for the ruling Standing Committee bowed out of the election after an opponent leaked a story to Varsity that he had stolen a cassette tape of a previous term’s debate in order to hide the fact that he had failed to deliver the minimum number of three speeches needed to qualify for election.
All of these internal machinations make the Union mostly inhospitable to foreign intervention, since few outsiders care enough about British inside politics to throw their necks into the ring and few insiders care enough about the outsiders to cultivate their votes or even stab them in the back. Despite these drawbacks, I still enjoyed attending the debates, if only to listen to the flights of rhetoric and wit occasionally on display. Also, I still wanted to participate in a debate, if for no other reason than to match blows in the shrine to Cambridge’s Greatest Wits. At the end of Lent Term I put in an application, and in the beginning of Easter Term the Union president summoned me to his office and told me that I had been selected to propose the motion. Were there any restrictions? I asked. Two, he said. First, I must wear a DJ, and second, I must be funny. What about time? I asked. “Well,” he answered, considering his response. “If you’re funny, you can go on as long as you want. If not, seven minutes.”
I paused to look around the crowded house, then launched into my preamble.
“With all due recognition of the pleasures of speaking before this not youthful society…with all due consideration for traditions established here generations ago and not freely changed…with all due British respect and a touch of American immodesty, please allow me to propose the motion, ‘This House Would Rather Be Young, Free, and American.”
From all corners of the room the five hundred or so members applauded and booed my opening remarks. In the past, members would have sat on the side of the House expressing the position they supported, but these days members sit wherever they wish. At the end of the debate those in attendance vote for the side of their choice by departing the chamber through one of three doors, marked YEA, NAY, or ABSTAIN.
“Now as I see it, our side of the House has a quite simple task ahead of us this evening. We must try and convince you in the course of the next several hours—”
The audience intervened with d
erisive laughter.
“We’ll take as long as we need,” I called above the clamor. This line was met appreciably and I, relieved, went on.
“We must try and convince you that, if given the choice, you would rather be young than old, rather be free than not, and rather be American than out of date, out of luck, and generally out of touch.”
The cheers quickly turned to jeers; the laughter changed to whoops of disapproval. I couldn’t have been more pleased. In Cambridge, where conversation is considered art, debating is considered the highest form of artful dodgery. The winner is not necessarily the one with the better argument, but the one who wields the sharpest wit and best evades the other sword. “[The English] all profess to hate public speaking after dinner,” wrote Leslie Stephen, “in consequence of which we never have a dinner of a semi-official kind without half a dozen speeches.” As a result, he concluded, the real value of the Union is that “it tests a man’s possession of that most inestimable quality in youth, a perfect willingness to make yourself ridiculous in public.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper.
“I must confess to you at the beginning that I feel sorry for the opposition, for they must try and convince you that, if given the choice, instead of being Young, Free, and American, you would rather be over the hill, up the river, and under the weather.”
The audience growled. I picked up the pace. The tussle had begun.
“Let’s take the first of these three choices: This House Would Rather be Young. Now I realize that things change slowly on this side of the Atlantic. The British invented the nineteenth century, after all, so why live in the twentieth? In this country, old is in. Everywhere you go: old buildings, old clothes, old teeth…which reminds me, Mr. President”—I turned to face the throne to my left as I had watched previous debaters do—“is it true that Brits keep a stiff upper lip in order to hide their teeth?” The president laughed. I swung back around. “In Britain, ladies and gentlemen, the only thing new is the potatoes.”