Besides assuming that lxqt-meta would pull in xorg, I don't see what other mistake I made. The wiki certainly doesn't say that if you set your profile late you will be fubar. And no, portage doesn't tell you how how you need to fix make.conf. Been on here hours, and I haven't seen an explanation of profiles.
quoting the wiki:
Ok I'm an ignorant neophyte. I just typed "emerge xorg" instead of googling your wiki to find the setup instructions for a package that I didn't know I needed to configure, which portage installed without xorg's drivers.