The Christmas Class from Hell

After one particular Christmas Class in NY, Sharon was at our "Impressions Class" where we were all required to stand up and say something transcendent about what we had experienced.

She was talking about the evening and at one point stopped and asked "Who made the guacamole?"

Time stopped. I couldn't breathe. I had made it and I was scared out of my mind to admit it because her serious tone of voice made me believe that she had gotten food poisoning from it or something equally horrendous and I was about to be tarred and feathered. I said nothing. The room was that kind of silent where people say you could hear a pin drop. I was internally freaking out. No one said anything. She said again, more loudly: "I asked who made the guacamole?" I had no choice. Trembling, I got to my feet bracing myself against her wrath. Sharon said: "That was the best guacamole I have ever eaten in my life."

And that was always the problem, you never knew what might happen. You could stand up to say something totally innocuous and all of a sudden fifty people who you though were your dear "essence" friends were turning on you and ripping you to shreds. You could stand up to say something deeply emotional and troubling to you and it would be dismissed with a wave of her hand and you would be told to sit down and shut up. A simple question such as "Who made the guacamole?" could rip your insides to shreds. You could stand up excitedly to say you just got the job of your dreams and Sharon would tell you that it was the wrong profession for you and you should really consider waitressing or house cleaning for awhile.

Yes, at one point I was told to forget about Architecture and become a waitress.

One year, after I had been in Boston for awhile, the topic of the Christmas Class came up and J said that I should lead it. I immediately said that I was not interested in the job, had too many other pressing issues in my life at the moment, I was not qualified, did not want to, etc. I already had one foot out of the door and maybe they sensed this and thought that a major responsibility would draw me closer into the fold.  J listened quietly to all of my objections and then said very simply: "Well, now that you have expressed your "NO", you will now be able to say "YES".  I continued to argue but it didn't get me anywhere. Against all my objections and better instincts, I was leading the Christmas Class.

Leading the Christmas Class was one of the "honors" that people aspired to and vied with each other for. I had absolutely no interest in it. When I had been in NY, I had lead the "cooking" committee for a number of years and also headed up cooking for various "classes outside of class" as well as catering private parties for Sharon. I became adept at planning and cooking a sit down dinner for 100 people without the use of a kitchen. Of course, after I stopped doing it, a friend lead the cooking for a "class outside of class".  The meal was horrible and Sharon loved it so much that my friend got an all-expense paid trip to Italy. You just could never tell what would lead to what; it was continually confusing. (The story of my cooking adventures will come later).

The Christmas Class that I headed in Boston, I have come to fondly refer to as the "Christmas Class from Hell". Since I had been in Boston, I had only helped with decorations and that was really the only area that I knew even slightly well aside from cooking. When I arrived in Boston, I never told anyone that I could cook because I didn't want to go throughout that all again and besides, there was already a dedicated "chef" in Boston and I had no interest in engaging in a competition with anyone. Usually the various areas of responsibility for the CC (Christmas Class) were headed by people with a degree of expertise in each area: Food, Decorations, Clean-up, Serving, Presentations, Teacher's Gifts, etc. One of the principles of school was that you really didn't need to know anything at all about anything to lead a group, you just needed to know the ideas of the work and how to apply them and that could get you through anything.

This CC was different from the very beginning. Previously, the "older" students would be in charge of the preparations and the "younger students" would be invited as quests. This time, the idea was that the "younger students" would be in charge of each of the areas and there would be an "older" student assigned to assist them. Lists were drawn up. I was to supervise the ten or twelve "older" students who were advising and working with a group of "younger students" in each area of the preparations. The work commenced.

As I said in a previous post, I am going to continue to call the man who runs the school in Boston Mr. Manchurian Candidate (Mr. MC for short). For some reason, Mr. MC was visibly absent during this whole preparation time for the Christmas Class. Often, he would vanish completely for a period of several months and people might say that he was ill. I thought sometimes that he was sick - sick of school and all of the pretense. The definition of pretense is "an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true". That has got to be quite difficult to do and it must take an incredible emotional toll on one's psyche. In any case, Mr. MC was not around and the "younger" teachers were in charge.

For the first week or so, I would call some of the younger teachers on a daily basis to keep them abreast of the progress that was being made on the party preparations and ask any questions I might have. It was what I would have been expected to do in NY. After leaving lots of messages and getting absolutely no response from anyone, I stopped trying to stay in touch because they clearly didn't care at all what was happening and I assumed that they just didn't want the responsibility (neither did I but that's beside the point.)

What do I remember about those frenzied weeks between Thanksgiving and the Christmas Class? Not a whole lot. I remember that it snowed a lot that winter. I remember driving through a blizzard up Route 3 because I was expected to be at the "space" at all the times that people would be working there on the preparations. I remember being at work (I was a real estate appraiser at the time - another job that school had "suggested") - driving around in the snow and fielding phone calls from the younger students with all kinds of questions.

There were two lists of all the people in school with their contact information. One list for the younger class and one list for the older class. It was "TOP SECRET" and I was the only one allowed to have this valuable information. So, if a call had to go out to everyone (which happened frequently), I was the only one who could do it because no one else could be trusted with the "list". Hence, I really didn't have a lot of help and I was spending hours and hours on the phone. The older students who were supposed to be in charge of the various areas made themselves very scarce and I wished I could do the same. I did not get a lot of help from anyone.

We got through the decorations with relatively little trouble except for one incident where something on a shelf in one of the bathrooms fell and hit someone on the head. The word then came down that everything had to be nailed securely to the walls so that would not happen again. We nailed everything to the walls. Everyone went about their business and as I did not really "report" to my superiors, no one really reported to me. I went around and asked questions and poked around to make sure everything was on schedule.

One of the younger students had an idea to make some orbs out of rope lights to suspend from the ceiling. I allowed (?) her to work on it for quite awhile because she was very excited about trying to make it work and I felt like an indulgent parent. I really hadn't known any of the younger students at all previous to these preparations and I am notoriously bad at remembering names and faces but I did get to know some of them.

I remember being at the "space" for all the work sessions. I really had experience in Boston only with the decorations and that part of it went fairly smoothly although I do remember having to ask that the bathrooms be redone several times. The people who were doing the "presentations" part of the evening were professional musicians. I felt pretty confident that what they were doing was good. I could hear the rehearsals and it sounded fine to me. I tried to stay away from the food preparations as that was also being run by a professional and I only stuck my nose in once or twice to make sure they were on schedule. We were trying something new - having round cafe tables instead of the huge tables for sit down dinners that we frequently did. Doing something new is always dangerous...

Decorating the "teacher's office" was something I had no experience with at all. There was a painted mural on the wall which had been copied from a fresco at Pompeii. Someone mentioned that K had always done the decorations for the teacher's so I called her up and asked if she could help. I also added some things because I had extensive experience with the various preferences of the teachers from New York. Some people wondered how I possibly knew those things (it was a secret that I was from New York).

The night of the party came and it was all a blur to me. It was the usual. Usually Sharon was outrageously late and a dinner that had been planned for 10 pm might not happen until 2 am. Everything was always at the whim of Sharon: when she arrived, what she did, what she ate and drank, who she brought with her from New York, what time she left, what she said (she frequently addressed the whole group)...

I remember that during the presentations, one of the younger students came over to me and said that she though she had seen Sharon across the room complaining or unhappy about something. I told her that everything was going great and not to worry.

So, the class came and went and then we had the "impressions class" several days later. It started out as usual. Someone got up and talked about the party in glowing terms and spoke about how much they had learned from it and how wonderful it had been. Another person then got up and spoke about their remarkable experience and how moving and meaningful the entire evening and the preparations had been. A third person and then a fourth continued to rave about the magnificent evening and what a deep and profound time they had. Each comment was more lavish than the last.

Then Mr. MC said: "Well, let me tell you what Sharon thought of the evening". He then went on to tell us that she had said that it was very simply one on the most awful evenings she had ever had and that EVERYTHING about it was bad and there was not even one redeeming moment.

Of course, then, the rest of the group, unthinking sheep, just jumping on the bandwagon and going whatever the way the wind was blowing, all started to stand up and say how they had the feeling that everything was "off", that nothing was right, that the music wasn't good and the food and the presentations had been awful, and on and on. They also all said that they had known all along that everything was going wrong. So then, they each had to atone for the fact that they said nothing, remained silent and did noting to help. From that point on, no one had anything good to say about the evening because they all had to appear to agree with Sharon in order to appear to be "good students". 

I was sitting there scared out of my mind. If the whole evening was a miserable failure and I was the one who was overseeing it, I was wholly responsible for everything going wrong. I had no idea how it went wrong and I didn't really understand what had happened and I didn't know what to say. I had to stand up and say something. At the very end I stood up. I had prepared myself to take full responsibility for the whole fiasco - what else could I do under the circumstances? After all, it was entirely my fault and I needed to take the blame for everything. I started to make my little speech and I was stopped by K who said that I had done nothing wrong and as a matter of fact, I was the only person who had done anything correctly because I had asked for help. I was floored. Here I was, standing there trying to take the blame for everything. It was made quite clear to us that everyone was to blame except for me. Such a strange twist. Everyone comes out smelling like shit and I am the only one smelling like a rose. 

The people who took the worst beating of all were the "younger teachers" who had supposed to have been keeping an eye on things and had been totally absent. They were told that they needed to apologize to all of us and to Sharon for their total incompetence and lack of attention to the party. I remember the following class that all the younger teachers stood up and apologized to us for their shortcomings. I was particularly moved by J who was having a hard time and as she was talking to us, was constantly hitting herself. Her fist pounding into her leg over and over again as she spoke, berating herself, flagellating herself in front of all of us. It was quite pathetic because she really had nothing to be sorry about but was she just doing Sharon's bidding as they all were. They were all require to stand up in front of both classes and apologize for their egregious sins. Does this sound a bit twisted?

There was one other thing that I remembered about that night. Something was wrong with Sharon's food. I had been cooking for Sharon for years (after the guacamole incident) and she was always happy with my food. The question was asked about who was specifically responsible for this. I can't remember now exactly what the problem had been but at the time I was uncertain if it had been my fault or not and if I should stand up and take responsibility. I didn't but I worried about it constantly.

A few days later, I went into a store and came back outside and was wondering why there was smoke coming out of the exhaust of my car. I then realized that I had locked my keys in my car with the engine running. I knew it was because I was obsessively trying to figure out if I was responsible for the food problem or not. I couldn't think about anything else. My mind was concentrated on only one thing to the exclusion of everything else. I was horrified that I had so lost control of my mind. I felt so guilty for something that I didn't know if I even had done or not. As I sat in the cold waiting for Triple A to come let me into my car, I decided to forget about the whole thing and put it out of my mind. Easier said than done but that decision lifted some of the fog that I had been in for so long.

I also remember leaving the impressions class that night. The "younger students" were having an impressions class after ours and they were all lined up in the hall watching us leave. What could I say to them about the horror that Mr. MC was about to inflict upon them? Even though I left "smelling like a rose", I felt to horribly guilty for everything that had happened. And what actually had happened? Was the party really that bad or was it just time for Sharon to vent her venom on all of us?

The following year, there was no Christmas Class in Boston. We all went to New York. It was nice to see many of my old friends from New York. That was to be my last Christmas Class. By the following summer, I was gone.