A Mensan Convention: Sex Lives and Videotape

ANAHEIM —  Answer: Turning off “Jeopardy!” with game show host Alex Trebek in mid-clue.

Question: What’s a sure-fire way to anger a group of Mensa members?

This was the scene at the Anaheim Marriott for the annual convention of 1,500 members of Mensa from around the country, a group whose only prerequisite for admission is proof of a high IQ and, arguably, a desire to show it off.

When “Jeopardy!” contestant coordinator Kelley Carpenter had the nerve to turn off a tape of the popular game show during a break in contestant screening at the Mensa convention Friday, the response was spontaneous and unified.

“Aaaawwwwhhhh!” came the groan from about 80 would-be contestants, who boasted more degrees among them than a sweltering June day in Southern California.

You see, “Jeopardy!” may be the ultimate test of a true Mensan, for the game seems to embody all that Mensans hold sacred: far-reaching knowledge and curiosity, from medieval philosophy to quantum mechanics and Saturday cartoons; a competitive flare for displaying it, and the wry wit of host Trebek, a must for people who like to show they have brains and a sense of humor.

Mensans like to joke. The problem is, “no one gets our jokes,” complained Jon K. Evans of Sherman Oaks, an unemployed physicist/actor/Ph.D.-holder who was one of six Mensans chosen as possible “Jeopardy!” contestants and who claims: “I never lose in Trivial Pursuit.”

Beryl Gutnick, a 69-year-old retired teacher who lived in Orange until a few years ago, put it somewhat differently.

“In a group like this,” she said after attending a seminar on how smart single people can meet other smart single people, “we can say what we want in whatever way we want without being misunderstood by people whose language perhaps doesn’t have as many subtle nuances in vocabulary.”

For the first time, the 1,200-member Orange County chapter is host for the annual Mensa conference, which started Thursday and runs through Sunday, with a wide range of seminars, speakers and activities that are often anything but cerebral.

Those who think they’ve got the smarts can use any one of a range of standardized test scores for admission to the organization. Two of the most common are Scholastic Aptitude Tests (a combined score of 1,250 is needed) or a standardized IQ test (132 is the cutoff).

Conceived in England in the early 1900s as a way for people with high IQs to band together in social or political action, Mensa--which is taken from the Latin word for table but also is the feminine slang in Spanish for dumb-- has since shifted focus.

Now, the group’s aim is mainly social, a chance for 55,000 dues-paying members around the country to meet their intellectual peers at local, regional and national activities that are often spiced with lively seminars not often associated with the old gray matter.

At one session Friday, Mensa members joked freely with a “sexologist,” armed with paraphernalia, about the intimate and often erotic details of their love lives. At another, a woman who found her husband through a want ad gave tips on “mail-order brides.” And a “sexpert quiz” promised “60 steps to sexual savvy.”

“It’s a way to meet people of the opposite sex,” Henderson Cleaves, a New Jersey physician, said bluntly about the conventions. “I married a Mensa.”

Art Mattison, an Orange financial manager who is organizing the conference, added: “Mensans are just like everybody else--they like sex. They’re probably just more intense about it.”

Of course, the convention does have its intellectual moments.

Seminars on “musical instrument digital interface for musicians,” medicine, air quality and classical music were all on the agenda Friday, along with a keynote talk from Dr. Avi Ben-Abraham, a Palo Alto cryonicist who is in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as the youngest medical doctor ever--18 years old.

Ben-Abraham told Mensans about how they can avoid death and deterioration by freezing their bodies--and brains--at minus 196 degrees Celsius.

But even if the Mensans don’t take the doctor up on his idea, they probably won’t have to worry about ensuring future generations of smart people.

They’ve already got Branden Roberts. The 11-year-old son of Anaheim Mensans is already making plans to become smart-club material himself in a few years, en route to law school. He said he wants to be a Mensan because they’re more fun than a lot of people.

“When you’re around people who aren’t as smart as you,” he said, “you feel uncomfortable. It’s frustrating sometimes. . . . Besides, (the Mensans) have nice parties.”