"So you taught them to be crazier?"
"Give them a week, you'll see the difference. They're starting to play with each other in a whole new way. They're starting to relate to each other instead of at each other. Please, B-Jay, don't be so quick to judge."
"Jim, I believe that you believe what you're saying. But, you should have checked with me first. You should have waited until-"
"Goddamn it, B-Jay!" It was my turn to be angry. "I tried to check with you, but you never have the time to listen to anything, and you're always asking people to put off their plans so you can get yours done, and then you have the nerve to wonder why everybody's always pissed off at you and why people are always doing things without your permission. I don't know about everybody else, but I'm sick and tired of waiting for you to have the time to sit and listen. And please don't give me that story about how much you have to do. I've heard it already, ten times over, and I can probably give as good a performance of poor B-Jay as you can.
"These kids were hurting, and I had a tool that I thought would help them. This is only the first step. These kids need to be trained, given the tools to handle their own emotions, their own reactions, so that they can cope with the rest of the bullshit that life is going to throw at them. It all comes down on all of us before we're ready for it. The least we can do for these kids is give them some tools for fighting back. I gave them permission to scream at the universe. Now they have a way to express what they're feeling, where before all they could do was bottle it up. Now they won't be pressure cookers or timebombs. They'll scream it out, and then there'll be a little bit of space for them to try to be rational, or as close to it as they're ever going to get."
"You think this is an improvement?" Betty-John demanded. "Have you even looked at your own kids today? Alec has turned into a babble-box. We can't shut him up. He finds a word he likes and repeats it over and over and over until he gets bored with it, then he finds another word and starts all over again."
"He's playing, B-Jay, in the only way he knows. But notice that he's playing with language now, instead of resisting it. He's interacting with his mental landscape. And I'm so glad to have him babbling anything, I don't care. He's got a lot of energy to discharge."
"He's not a goddamn battery! Christ on a pancake! Where did you pick up this psychobabble?"
"Uh . . . ," I hesitated.
"What are you, Jim? An unreconstructed Modie?"
"I've never done the Mode training," I said, vaguely uncomfortable.
"Well, you sure as hell talk like it! Where have you been, Jim?"
I shook my head. "I don't want . . ."
"Uh-uh. No way. If you want to teach the kids to open up, you'd better start with yourself. Just who the hell are you anyway, mister?"
"You know who I am."
"No, I don't. For all I know, you could be a renegade spy yourself."
I felt my blood turn cold at that. I almost rose from my chair. "I'm not. Not that; I know what renegades are like, B-Jay. Better than you think. I'm not one of them. I don't ever want to be like them again-"
"Again?"
I hesitated. Then I admitted it. "Yes. Again. I was captured. Brainwashed. I lived with a Tribe of Revelationists-"
"Oh, shit!"
". . . for almost a year. I finally escaped. But not before I saw what they were capable of." I had to stop for a moment. I had to wipe my eyes before I could continue; I hadn't realized how much it still hurt. "I learned a lot from them, yes. Okay, I admit it. Not everything they said was totally off the deep end. But I know who they are and how dangerous they are. And I broke their brainwashing on my own."
"You think so? You still look a little glassy-eyed to me. If I'd known . . ."
"You'd have turned me away, right? That's the famous BettyJohn compassion."
She hesitated. "No-but I wouldn't have trusted you near the kids either."
"Oh, come on, B-Jay! You're talking like a goddamned reactionary. The breakthrough exercises work no matter who applies them."
"Don't be stupid, Jim! Do you think this stuff is new to me? Give me a break! Most of the crap you're repeating is leftovers from the Technology of Consciousness Movement of the last century! Shit, you guys are all alike; you think you just invented enlightenment last week."
She pointed a finger at me, jabbing me hard in the chest. "Let me tell you something. Personal enlightenment seminars were the big fad when I was in college. They called them Effectiveness Training and Power Sourcing and Jargon Blasting. And everybody was doing Mode. You weren't alive until you'd done Mode. I had a lot of friends who disappeared into that black hole; some came back, some didn't, but while they were under the influence, it was always the beatific smile and the patronizing 'You have to experience it to understand.' I understood what was going on then, and it hasn't changed any now. Every day, you have to have a new transformation, a new breakthrough in possibility, a new level of bullshit and psychobabble!
"Hell, I didn't even do any of the seminars and I got sucked in for a while. I was one of the ones who was going to prove I could be just as enlightened without doing any seminars; I was too stupid to see that made me just as much a proselytizing evangelist as everybody else. And all of us were redefining our language every day, so we could map out the diverse new landscapes of responsibility. It was rabbit-hole city. Oh, we had conversations about conversation and learned about the possibilities of possibility. We got so good at it, we bludgeoned people to death with our enlightenment. We played caseworker with all of our relationships: parents, teachers, friends-and we couldn't understand why they were so repulsed when all we wanted to do was give them the gift of seeing how impoverished their lives had been. Oh, we were a self-righteous bunch of assholes.
"We handled each other's cases all day long. We scoped each other. We handled rackets and busted numbers. We metered and bench-marked and state-mastered. We did it all. And you know what? Our lives were fucked up even worse, because now we had a new level of bullshit to explain why they didn't work. I finally got wise, when I realized the cost to my soul.
"I didn't trust the Modies then. I trust them even less now that they're taking over the government. But most of all, I don't want Modies or neo-Revelationists or anyone else playing with these kids' heads, because these kids already have enough problems."
She finished with a look of finality, as if there was nothing more to say on the subject. And maybe there wasn't. Her mind was made up and nobody was going to change it. Her expression was tight, as if she was daring me to respond.
I realized something abruptly. Something I should have known all along. Betty-John was just as crazy as the rest of us, in her own charmless way.
Of course, I wanted to believe she had it all together. I wanted to believe that someone somewhere knew exactly what they were doing and why. I wanted to know that it was possible, because if it was possible for anyone else, then maybe it was possible for me too. But maybe it wasn't possible here.
"Well? Don't you have anything else to say?"
I shook my head. "It wouldn't do any good. Your mind is made up. I did what I thought was right. You don't think it was right. We both want what's best for the children. We each have different ideas. But you're the one who's entrusted with the responsibility. Not me. So it's your word that has to count, not mine." I thought for a moment longer, then added, "I wanted to be of service here. I still do. I'm sorry that you don't appreciate some of what I have to offer."
She opened her mouth and closed it just as suddenly. She looked surprised. She hadn't expected me to say what I just did. "Well," she said. "Well, I'm glad you realize it."