The Con-Forumists

BOX TWO: Pique Their Interest

By the second day, we're beginning to break off into little clusters, divided mostly by age. I've made friends with Mary Guzzo, 27, an auburn-haired firecracker with the biceps of a bodybuilder. She says she has a crazy family-they talk about the past obsessively-and she's trying to separate herself from all their drama. When she mentions them, she swats at her hair as if she's trying to shoo them away. A few of the guys in the room have their eye on her, but she's unfazed. "I'm here for me," she says. "I have some things I want to work on"-though, like almost everyone here, she won't say what those things are. We are private among strangers, a little cautious, a little scared.

At lunch time, she and I sit on a small hill in the sun joined by shy Steven Watson, a slight 25-year-old with nothing remarkable about him except enormous, Greek-God-on-a-vase eyes. He lives with his parents. And he hangs on Mary's words, thrilled by her energy. "I take care of everyone but myself," she says, then turns to him.

"What about you?"

"I mostly stay in my room," he says.

Returning to the seminar, we run the gauntlet of smiling course assistants-who bear forms, reminders of courses, warnings about being late- and find our seats. Brian is diagramming three ovals on the green chalkboard. "Huh?" he says, mimicking our curiosity. To disarm us, he imitates. Not what we say, but what he knows we are thinking. He dances around, then writes a few words. Over the first oval: "WHAT HAPPENED. " The second: "INTERPRETATION."

So this is the lesson on stories.

"This is important," he cautions. "You need to find out where what happened became your interpretation, which took over to become your story of what happened. " He waits for a spark.

We fidget. It's all a bit abstract.

We spin single events into epic stories that we cling to, he continues, "because being damaged is a great excuse." He acts it out, dangling one arm. "See?" he says. "I'm damaged. Ten years ago I broke my arm. It was so traumatic! I still can't do anything with it.

"If I can't blame anyone else for my broken arm," he adds, "then I'll blame my broken arm for the rest of my life!"

He invites people to step up to the microphone to share their experiences [see "Cult of Confession"]. A few head to the standing microphones to offer meandering accounts of bad marriages, average childhoods. "My parents always fought," confesses a slender black man in a crisply pressed polo shirt, "so I hate arguing with my wife." "I never had a childhood," a largish, redheaded woman laments. But we're unmoved: It's all so undramatic. Brian sits on his director's chair, tilting his head toward the fluorescent fixtures way above us. "So," he tells the woman, "this stops you from enjoying your life." She cocks her head, looks attentive.

"Because without a childhood, how could you know how to have fun?"

"O.K.," she says from the microphone, "I'm beginning to get it."

Others offer stories, trying to make them stronger, but they're working too hard. A crew-cut younger man looks crestfallen when he finishes his tale of getting fired from his first job, and Brian is straightening a cuff.

Then a large man sitting near the back of the room raises his hand in the air like a thick white flag.

"Please," says Brian, gesturing him to a microphone.

He has a beautiful Italian-opera face. He could be 30, 40. Stooping over the dwarfed mike, he cracks a sob. "I've been living with this," he starts, breaking a sweat.

At this point, you can hear shifting in chairs, people trying to make themselves listen. Then he drops it.

"Years ago, my family was murdered. "

Gasps.

"I was the one who found them, " he continues, breathing in sharply. "I came home. They were all dead."

The room is completely silent.

"I could've been there to stop it," he says, his voice cracking with grief "But I wasn't. I didn't stop it. Now they're dead."

If television cameras swept the room, they'd find a mother lode of emotion, 150 people shaking their heads, bursting into tears. I look across the room to Mary. As our tearing eyes meet, she mouths, "Wow." Even the most resistant of us crumble, all hammered, I imagine, by the same thought: What right do we have to complain about our lives in the face of such tragedy?

So this is it. The breakthrough. The Moment. One man's testimony has plunged everyone into turmoil and grief. And our objections, our nagging private opinions, disappear.

Brian quietly gets off his chair. Unlike the rest of us, he isn't weepy and it's a relief. He walks down to the giant man, who is frozen at the mike. He brings him a box of tissues. He does not reach to clap a fakely reassuring hand on his back. Instead he begins to cast his tale in The Forum's perspective.

"Can you accept this happened?" he gently asks.

The man stares down at the green carpet.

"It happened. No one would argue with that, or forgive who did it.

"Yes," says the man.

"But you didn't make it happen."

The man rolls his head.

"You did lose your family," says Brian.

The man keeps his eyes on the carpet.

Brian perseveres. "Can you accept that it happened? If you can, you can leave it behind."

Between the two of them, there is a cord. Neither one moves, not wanting to break it.

Brian repeats the question.

Around the room, I can almost hear our heavy hearts beating.

The man shifts. He bites his lip and frowns. Perhaps he is turning over the idea of acceptance in his mind, or considering his life so far. Then he squares himself. Stands up straight.

"Well," he says. He looks up, unfocused.

We hold our breaths.

"Stay where you are, full of grief, " says Brian. "Or get on with your life. "

The man shifts. "I can," he says finally, and there's light in his face.

The room breaks into low cheers, laughter, clapping. When the man sits back down, he rubs his eyes and opens them wide, looking straight ahead, as if no one ever gave him a good set of glasses before. We watch Brian walk calmly back to his chair. If he's feeling triumphant, he contains it.

Even Travis looks impressed.

Nine hours later Mary, Steven, and I are at the Crowne Plaza Hotel's cocktail lounge, toasting the rule we're breaking-earlier, assistant Sean told us that drinking was forbidden during The Forum's three days. But we need to shake off the day, its jargon, and the stale smell of that room. We have homework, which, since it's already midnight and we start tomorrow at 9 A.M., we have to think about. The assignment: Write a letter to someone you haven't been straight with, come clean. We procrastinate with jokes, twisting Forum terms into good-time lines.

Mary: "Can you commit yourself to this beer?"

Steven: "I'm enrolled in the possibility."

Buzzed on cognac, I sense this is the last time we'll be acting our old selves, still resisting the shiny new skin Brian's encouraging us to slip into. "Don't go back," my brain clangs, but I can't listen. I'm too far into the roller-coaster ride [see "Mystical Manipulation"]. I've witnessed a man's tragic story, been swept up in the tidal wave of emotion that ran the room; I've even started framing my life in this odd, new context [see "Sacred Science"], unwittingly. For better or worse, I have to see this through. After all, I have a job to do.

Reminding us of the homework, Mary says her letter is to an ex-best friend she used to feel mistreated her, excluding Mary from her wedding. "I ran a racket on her," she says, using correct Forum terminology.

"Who are you writing to?" I ask Steven.

"Not sure," he says, his giant eyes blinking. "You?"

"Not sure," I say. Honestly, I know: "Dear Forum Leader, I haven't been straight with you because I don't believe you, " the letter would start. But how would it end?