Up in the Air

by Walter Kirn

to know me you have to fly with me. Sit down. I’m the aisle, you’re the window—trapped.

The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible. Sally will not wear synthetics. That’s who she is. Billy won’t touch eggs. That’s Billy for you. To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.

iknow of no pleasure more reliable than consuming a great American brand against the backdrop featured in its advertising. Driving a Ford pickup down brown dirt roads. Swigging a Coke on the beach in Malibu. Flying Great West over central Colorado. It’s a feeling of restfulness and order akin, I suspect, to how the ancient Egyptians felt watching the planets line up above the Pyramids. You’re in the right place, you’re running with the right forces, and if the wind should howl tomorrow, let it.

I’m scared of billionaires, though not for the same reasons my father was. If their goal was just world domination, we’d all be safer; the problems arise when they tamper with individuals.

“So you’re some millionaire?” “No. Do I have to be rich to give advice?” “For me to listen to it, you do,” he says.

“One of those things where you let yourself fall backwards and everyone catches you?” “Only they don’t catch you. On this one they let you fall. And then they step on you.”

Before my sister could critique my speech, I had to explain CTC to her in depth. This is never easy—with anyone. Most people assume we’re brought in to do the firing or that we find the fired new jobs. It’s neither. Our role is to make limbo tolerable, to ferry wounded souls across the river of dread and humiliation and self-doubt to the point at which hope’s bright shore is dimly visible, and then to stop the boat and make them swim while we row back to the palace of their banishment to present the nobles with our bills. We offer the swimmers no guarantees, no promises, just shouts of encouragement. “Keep it up! That’s great!” We reach our dock before they reach theirs and we don’t look back over our shoulders to check on them, though they look back at us repeatedly.