TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 165

[Tobie Shapiro]

February 28, 2000000007


Dear  Yooo,

	This morning my writing class begins 
again.  An eight week course of Creative Non 
Fiction, run by Andy Couturier.  I've talked 
about him before.  This Saturday, ten people from 
his classes are going to give a reading at, 
"Black Oak Books".  They are an independent book 
store, and do work in the community to make books 
accessible to underprivileged people.  Plus they 
have big names come for readings and lectures. 
This Saturday night, ten little students of Andy 
Couturier will stand up there and give five 
minutes each of reading some of the free writes 
we've done in his class, and we're supposed to 
explain the exercize that spawned it.  I found a 
couple, three things to read, but I couldn't, for 
the life of me, figure out what the exercizes 
were.

	He does all kinds of creative things. 
Find a sentence in the writing you've brought in. 
Find one that you know you could revise.  An 
interesting sentence.  Then he told us a few 
different methods of revision: putting more in, 
taking things out, adding detail to what is 
already there, rearranging what is there, 
replacing words with other words, etc.  Then he 
gave us ten minutes to revise the sentence we'd 
chosen as many times as we wanted (or could fit 
in).

	He photocopies pages from an old old 
dictionary, and reads off some of the obscure 
obsolete or anachronistic words on the pages. 
People choose a page to use.  We circle five to 
ten words on the page that interest us because we 
don't know what they mean, or because of the 
sound of it, the hilarity in it, the association 
with it.  We do not look at the definition.  Then 
we use these words in a free write.  That was a 
good exercize.

	Other methods: underline about ten 
phrases or sentences in a piece you've done 
before in the class.  Take those sentences or 
phrases and write one each on three by five 
cards.  Keep them in order of appearance.  Now 
hand the cards to the person on your left who 
will rearrange the order and hand it back.  Do a 
free write on the new order.  He has a whole book 
full of these kinds of exercizes.  They get the 
juices flowing and produce some fascinating 
results.  The book is called: Writing Open the 
Mind, in case any of you wants to buy it from 
Amazon.  I have a copy, but it's in storage.  But 
it's in storage.  But it's in storage.  But it's 
in storage.  That gets tagged on to the end of a 
lot of things these days.  I think I may buy 
another copy this Saturday evening.  No writer 
should be without it.  It's in storage.





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T-groups

	Dweller was involved with T-groups at 
Stiles Hall at the University of California when 
I met him.  I'd never been to a T-group, and in 
fact, didn't know what it meant.  It is a little 
hard to grasp.

	A group of people get together to gather 
in a cluster and be honest with each other.

	Let me say that in another way.

	With the guidance of the T-group leader 
(we call these people facilitators, today) a 
bunch of people, say five to ten, have a series 
of meetings where the purpose is to learn how 
they each relate to other people.

	No, that didn't do it.

	Say eight people get together in a room, 
and the underlying premise is that they will all 
break societal norms by speaking with each other 
honestly, revealing how they really feel about 
one another and how they perceive the 
interactions that are going on in the group.  A 
leader is there to advise and suggest things to 
the group, so that it all doesn't break down into 
a skirmish.  I mean, how would you react if 
someone came up to you and said, "I don't feel 
any warmth from you, and I'm sensing some 
hostility growing in me."?  Likewise, the person 
could come up to you and say, "I find you very 
attractive and what I first thought of when I saw 
you was how much I'd like to get physical with 
you."

	You need a leader for encounters like 
that.  In fact, they were sometimes called, 
"Encounter Groups," or, "Sensitivity Training 
Groups".  Remember, as fitting the premise of the 
meeting, when you hear from someone that he or 
she finds you attractive and would like to get 
physical, you can react to that by saying, "That 
makes me terrifically uncomfortable, and I felt 
no attraction to you.  I'm angry that your first 
reaction to me was purely physical, because 
that's the way a lot of men (or women) view me. 
And there is more to me than that."

	Well, then it's time for the first person to ask flatly, "Such as?"

	And then the leader steps in and defuses 
the situation.  Unless of course, the leader has 
no psychological training and has gotten the job 
of leader by being in three T-groups previously, 
and having one of the leaders recommend him or 
her for a leadership position.  This was the case 
with Dweller.  He was an industrial engineering 
graduate student and took to the T-groups which 
were experimental then, because they made him 
feel good.  He was recommended by one of the 
leaders of a group he'd been in, and he accepted 
the invitation.  Not an inspiring system if what 
you're looking for is competence.

	I'm not saying that nothing profound can 
come out of these groups.  I'm saying that most 
definitely many profound things can come out of 
them.  So why not put someone in charge who can 
prevent something hideous coming out of it, and 
guide the group toward something profound? 
That's not how they did it at Stiles Hall.  It 
was self led, and pretty much anything went. 
Dweller was very convinced that I would benefit 
from being in a T-group and suggested strongly 
that I join one.  They ran in eight week 
sessions.  I was scared to death.  What if 
everyone hated me?

	Here is where your new beloved says 
something like, "What's there to hate?  Everyone 
will love you as I do."  But he didn't.  He said 
the less than thrilling, "If they do, then you 
get to talk about it, and find out why."

	I passed on it for a while, but Dweller 
was pretty insistent.  I had a lot to be afraid 
of in a T-group.  I couldn't articulate it at the 
time, but I think a shrewd, objective evaluation 
would have been that since I came from one of the 
world's most dysfunctional families, I was 
hypersensitive-sensitive, and the leaders pretty 
much didn't know what they were doing but 
gratifying their own egos by leading groups where 
others must be honest, it wouldn't be wise for me 
to expose myself to it.

	Nevertheless, I was in love, so I joined 
a group to make Dweller happy.  I wanted to make 
him happy.  He hadn't said anything provocative 
like, "What're you afraid of, scaredy cat?"  He 
had gone with the safe and less challenging, 
more indirect route of implying that he was more 
well balanced than I was (which was true) and if 
I wanted to join the ranks of the self realized, 
I should follow his advice.

	The first group I was in had ten people 
in it, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty 
two, except the leader who was probably twenty 
four.  I was nervous and that tended to make me 
talk a lot, crack a lot of jokes and step back 
while looking engaging.  This was not perceived 
by the leader.  He thought I was outgoing, maybe 
a little too outgoing, and maybe I needed to soft 
pedal it a bit.

	I was always admirous of shy people. 
They are brave enough to be honest about their 
timidity.  I chose to cover it up with fancy 
dancing, evasive maneuvers, smoke and mirrors.  I 
held back in the group, though, because we had 
all sworn to be honest, forthcoming.  So I was 
honest; I retreated.  When I had something good 
to say, I said it.

	"I like you."  "You're a good person," 
and the ever favourite, "I feel warmly towards 
you."

	At first, the straightforwardness was 
disarming, and people didn't quite know what to 
make of it.  This was when the effectiveness of 
the method was  at its peak.  But after a while, 
people learned how to cloak themselves in the 
same old social hypocrisies, using the new 
language of the T-group.  It was natural, 
seamless and understandable.  We are not meant to 
be forced to go nekked.  It was a sixties thing.

	Then Dweller wanted me to join a T-group 
for couples that was being run by someone who 
had, "graduated," from Stiles Hall.  This was 
going to cost money.  I resisted because I was 
afraid of what it would do to Dweller and me to 
be in the competitive arena of a T-group 
together.  Strange things happen when there are 
alliances, like couples, braving the new 
nekkedness.  I was right.  The leader favoured a 
more confrontational style.  He encouraged 
couples to argue, and members of the group to 
challenge each other.  Surprise!  More people 
cried and more people shouted.  More people left 
the session feeling disturbed and angry, 
unsettled and bitter.  A few couples broke up.  I 
did not look forward to the meetings, which were 
held in the leader's living room.  We were thus 
on his turf, and had to obey his house rules 
which were to take your shoes off and leave them 
by the front door, wear loose, old clothing in 
case we were going to duke it out with someone, 
and sit on the floor in a circle.  No one got to 
feel sorry for him or herself.  Any appeals for 
sympathy were met with derision.

	Dweller didn't like this either, but he 
was dedicated to the cause, so he put up a good 
face.  He insisted it was good for us.  Maybe it 
was and maybe it wasn't.  At one meeting, Dweller 
and another man started to display their 
testosterone levels.  I can't remember what the 
dispute was, but the leader suggested that 
Dweller and this other person wrestle to work it 
out.  The suggestion horrified me.  It sounded 
like things were being planned to get out of 
control.  When are you through wrestling?  When 
someone cries uncle?  When they get too exhausted 
to go on?  When someone is knocked unconscious? 
When one of them is killed? The idea was that in 
this T-group someone was going to win and someone 
was going to lose.

	The leader had us all back away up 
against the walls to give Dweller and the other 
man enough room to struggle.  He proceeded to 
remove breakable objects.  This didn't look good.

	It went rather quickly, actually  They 
started to wrestle.  Everyone got good and 
scared.  Some members of the group nervously 
spoke up and said it should stop.  The leader 
told them to shut up.  The scuffling took on a 
wider stage.  They twisted each other into 
ridiculous holds.  Arms and legs were sticking 
out between armpits and crotches.  I really 
couldn't stand it.  And I didn't like what 
Dweller was doing.  It all frightened me.  I 
finally opened my mouth and said, "I think this 
is unhealthy."

	"Who gives a shit what you think!?" shouted the leader vehemently.

	The shock of it broke my dike.  I leaked 
tears all over.  I just started crying 
uncontrollably and couldn't stop.

	"Oh, poor you," the leader taunted.

	Wasn't this an enlightened playground! 
We were back in elementary school, doing 
fisticuffs in the big boys' yard.  I packed 
myself up, put on my shoes, grabbed my things and 
ran to the car.  A few minutes later, Dweller 
emerged from the den, and the group seemed to be 
disbursing.  The leader was left alone in his kid 
proofed living room to count his money.  Dweller 
was mad that I'd left.

	"Was I supposed to stay and root for you?"

	We had a fight.  It was such a grand 
evening.  We talked about splitting up.  I said I 
wasn't coming back to this group, and if he 
wanted to stay together, he would not go back 
either.  For some reason, he didn't argue.

	Nothing was said about the event after 
that.  We healed by plastering the wound over 
with silence.  Eventually, we suppressed it 
enough that we could act as if we'd forgotten 
about it.  That was the end of T-groups for both 
of us.



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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net