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Articles about our conversation salons
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Steve was a senior year writing student at Northwestern University when he was assigned to ferret out some oddballs and do an article on them. He decided to check the personals for live wires and guess whose ad he found there. The following is Steve’s homework, which he handed in late–our kind of guy! THE GRAND
PLAN STEPHEN BASSMAN PROFESSOR KOTLOWITZ NARRATIVE NONFICTION WINTER 2001 Kathy Hamill and Robin Slater are standing around in their circus-tent kitchen, trying to decide who will be the leader tonight. Soon, their twenty-two guests will arrive, eight of whom are strangers. It's a larger number than normal. Kathy wonders how the newbies will affect the group dynamic, then reaches for a handful of Cheez-it's—“the food of the Gods,” she says—and rests against a wall. To her left hangs a psychedelic poster, full of black blotches and colorful swirls. To her right is a small drawing of prison bars given to her by a convicted murderer she once defended. It says: “Happy New Year.” Robin casually mentions the speech they have to give in about an hour, and Kathy comes to life again, moving about the room as she talks about a theory of happiness that involves Goldie Hawn and a “cheery” child-killer. They have done this all before. They have done this forty or fifty times before, by their own estimate. Once or twice a month since 1998, the unmarried couple has gathered middle-aged men and women to their home in Elgin, IL for a conversation salon. They advertise in Chicago and local papers for a “wild-eyed philosopher's group” looking for intelligent conversation. They get a range of responses, from blue-collar workers to Ph.D.s to artists. They're professionals themselves—Robin is a fifty-six year old computer expert for SEARS, and Kathy is a forty-nine year old criminal defense lawyer, but in the mailing they send out to interested parties, they describe themselves as “vintage hippies who really like hanging out with people who enjoy intelligent face-to-face fun.” They explain how their salon is run, give directions to their home, and introduce the topic of discussion. Tonight's topic is La Dolce Vita: “What is the Good Life?” Also mentioned in the mailing: “Arrive between 6:30 and 7:00—the later you come, the less likely you'll be stuck talking to the two of us in the kitchen alone.” I am sitting at a large corner-table that is covered with food and fluorescent candles as Kathy and Robin recount the tragedies they've faced today, including a flooded basement, a knee Kathy twisted on a futon, and a lava lamp that “croaked” last night. Those setbacks have taken some time out of their day; the dead lava lamp alone had them traveling to three different stores for a new one. They've barely had a chance to discuss how they will introduce the topic. Still, they've come up with two intriguing stories about happiness: one is the example of a child-killer Kathy represents, whose newfound religious faith has allowed her to enjoy her life in prison. The other is a riddle about a well-known celebrity: “What would happen if Goldie Hawn woke up one day and was stuck being you—a middle-class citizen in a middle-sized house on a middle-sized block? Would she still be happy?” Kathy practices the speech on me. She is wearing green leggings without shoes and a thigh-length lightweight ruffled top she describes as “nouveau hippie.” Kathy is nearly fifty, but she tugs at the bottom of her shirt like a child, as if even that loose garment is restrictive. Her small round face is framed with dirty blond bangs and hair that falls over her shoulders. “Would she still be happy?” she asks (pronouncing it “he-yappy”) then emits an elfish giggle that breaks up her smooth face and shakes her small runner's frame. “No way!” she decides. Robin is leaning against the kitchen sink with his hands in the pockets of his black jeans. When he nods in agreement, his long black hair sways in front of him, and it's easy to see why he is often asked if he is Alice Cooper or Iggy Pop (the follow up question is “Then who ARE you?”). Robin isn't worried about the introduction they'll give, claiming that both of them are good on their feet. He says those stories sound good—that Kathy should start off with them—and she agrees. Problem solved: Kathy will lead. Soon, the two are telling me about some of the regulars who will be attending, about some past attendees, and then about the food that the newbies use as a conversation avoidance device. Before long Robin is showing off a small ornament of Pinky and the Brain—a cartoon about a mastermind and his sidekick—which he found on eBay and which now dangles over their kitchen sink, and I watch and listen. Robin and Kathy first got the idea for the salon from The Utne Reader. A special 1991 issue of that magazine defines the salon by its exchange of intellectual ideas, degree of regularity of meetings, and the presence of a moderator or facilitator. The issue also gives a history of the salon, tracing it from the 16th Century French bourgeois affairs at Left Bank to the 20th Century intellectual gatherings in New York, held by Gertrude Stein in the 1920s, Wallace Thurman in the 30s, and Luba Petrova Harrington in the 60s. The magazine goes on to stress the importance of these exchanges—“we come to know our minds only by explaining ourselves to others,” one article says—and then encourages its readers to start their own Neighborhood Salons. Hundreds have since developed across the country—small groups that meet to debate, ask questions, offer explanations, or to simply listen to one another talk. But few, if any, of those conversations take place in the atmosphere that Kathy and Robin have created. They may run the only salon in the country that takes place in a room furnished with wall-to-wall futons and decorative images of Ghandi's shadow. In fact, their house is inspired more by “crash pads” and “psychedelic coffeehouses” than any of the traditionally conservative salon settings, even those from the 60s; Luba Petrova Harrington's Madison Avenue apartment surely lacked a Blacklight Room. Their salon, then, bears only a superficial resemblance to the one outlined in the Utne Reader. Their real ties are to the liberalism of the late '60s and '70s, though they are quick to clarify their intentions in the literature they post on their website (www.left-bank.org): “We aren't trying to recreate the ‘60s. We're up for resurrecting the point at which it peaked.” That movement separately led them to wild experiences—they each went to rock festivals, hitchhiked, practiced yoga, burned patchouli incense in their city apartments, and, by their own accounts, “smoked a lot of grass and popped a lot of pills.” More significantly, they each developed a reverence for the group dynamic and the practice of “getting people together to see what could happen.” Robin facilitated several encounter groups, T groups, and weekend retreats, and spent some time at a nudist colony in Florida. Both were active participants in their community's Unitarian Universalist Church. In the early 70's, Robin studied toward the priesthood, while Kathy—already married with children—pursued a degree in law. They were both drawn to the Neo Pagans, a ritualistic society through which they eventually met. The appeal of the group was “the theater”—their willingness to costume and do “unusual” things, to set aside expectations for a normal social gathering. Kathy occasionally held ceremonies at her current home, with the cooperation of her then husband. She describes the outdoor events in blunt terms: “You know—big fire, bunch of people standing around, some funky chanting, and drums. Stuff like that. It's a riot, it's fun.” It was also a way of achieving an altered state with other people without the use of drugs, which she gave up when she became a lawyer. The gatherings didn't completely satisfy, however, and by the time they were introduced to one another, Robin and Kathy had both grown tired of the Neo Pagans. They were sick of the strict orthodoxy and the fact that “you could get into a major brawl with somebody over putting a blue candle in the south, where some people say it doesn't belong,” as Kathy says. Kathy wanted the group to be more creative, to make its own rules. Robin agreed, and the two quickly formed a relationship that not only distanced them from the Neo Pagan community, it broke up Kathy's marriage and alienated them from many friends. By the time Robin moved into Kathy's home at the end of 1995, they were extremely socially isolated. They knew they needed to create a unique social group, perhaps by hosting a unique event. They didn't think of the salon right away. They first trawled the Pagan and UU communities for unorthodox and experimental members. When that failed, they placed ads in the classifieds “For Madmen and Madwomen Only” but were deluged with calls from “greasy Las Vegas-esque swingers.” (One man described himself on their answering machine as “the landscaper with the libido.”) Kathy and Robin are open to intimacy with other people—they describe a live-in guest from 1997 as “kind of a ménage”—but they are more interested in forming close bonds with extremely interesting people. No one they found had allowed them that opportunity. They decided they needed to “cast a wider net.” “It was my bright idea,” Robin says of the conversation salon. They had each attempted to start one when the Utne Reader article was published, but they had separately failed. Now, Robin was more confident of their joint prospects. “I thought, ‘Maybe that could be our event,'” he says, and they wrote up a new ad on New Year's Eve of 1997. They toned down the language (from “Madmen” to “visionary suburbanites”) and moved from “None of the Above” to “Just Friends” in the classifieds, and got an overwhelming response: nearly 40 people inquired, and 19 people said they would come, including a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. In March, on the night of the salon, everyone showed up, introduced themselves, and then talked for more than three hours on the evening's topic: “What, if anything, desirable can be salvaged from the ‘60s?” They stayed until nearly midnight socializing, then went home. “It went as well as it possibly could,” Kathy told the Tribune. “We're definitely going to do it again.” Since the success of that first night, their salon has lived a healthy life. They've held one—sometimes two—gatherings a month, on topics ranging from “Religion” to “Aphrodisiacs” to “The Ideal Political System,” though they try to avoid discussions of current events. (They say if the Vietnam War was going on, they probably wouldn't do an evening on Vietnam.) Though they were initially popular with classified-reading singles, they've since courted enough local media attention to attract couples, professors, and cops investigating an opium den. They've also found some people willing to participate in other, more adventurous get-togethers. Over the last two years, they've hosted drum circles, a come-as-a-revolutionary party, and one celebration during which—Kathy boasts—they “got a group of staid suburbanites to boogy around a firepot.” Tonight, however, is all about quality conversation. Robin and Kathy are expecting a large number of people, including a married couple who met through the salon, several teachers in the area, and Kathy's ex-husband. There are also quite a few newcomers, which Robin says makes it difficult to project what the night will look like. He can tell you that there will be cars circling the block so as not to arrive too early, that some guests will get nostalgic about the retro décor, and that at least one person will get so comfortable on the futons that they'll blurt out something stupid. But he doesn't try to guess the group dynamic. “We haven't been there yet . . . We'll be able to describe it to you at 10:00,” he says. Kathy agrees. “I just hope this one will live up to what the others have been.” Robin is starting a fire in the blacklight room when the doorbell rings. Kathy whisks through the kitchen and finds a familiar face on her doorstep: her ex-husband, Roger. Roger strolls through the kitchen, wearing a running shirt with a Disney logo on it, and he boasts of a marathon he recently ran. He takes some movies out of a bag and shows them to Kathy: Slackers, The Trip, and Psych-Out—a film about a bad trip on STP—and she is genuinely excited. They are laughing at a MAD cartoon poster of George W. Bush that says “Worry” when the first stranger arrives. Janet is a grade-school teacher in her thirties, with shoulder length blond hair, dressed casually. She steps through a beaded curtain into the kitchen. “This is right out of my high school!” she says, as if on cue. Janet is a member of a large book club, so she is used to gatherings in strangers' homes. She, at least, does not seem as skeptical as some previous attendees, and Kathy is grateful. John and Marilyn seem less enthusiastic, but they make polite conversation with Janet and another woman whom Kathy and Robin first encountered on their answering machine several years ago, pleading in a high-pitched voice for them to join a community of elves in Indiana. She threatens to put a curse on me if I use her real name. Then they all discuss the circus-tent like tarp stapled to the ceiling—the remnant of a previous party—and an American flag which pokes out of the garbage can. “You've got definite atmosphere,” Janet tells the couple. Kathy is still defensive. “It's weird, I know,” she says when she points down the hall to the futons in the living room. No one dares enter that room, though, not even the returning attendees. Kathy thinks it's a sense of sacred space for the salon conversation. Robin thinks it's a joke, evidence that after two years they still haven't properly trained their guests. More of them arrive, and most of them pack tightly into the kitchen. They chat in small groups of three and four, creating enough noise to drown out the Ravi Shankar music Kathy put on. They introduce themselves to one another: Vicki is an aromatherapist, Mark works for Compaq, Dave is a Chicago schoolteacher. Many of them hold plastic cups of wine. There are already a few empty bottles on the corner table, along with the cheese cubes, pretzels, dip, and pepperoni slices the guests have brought. Thankfully only one or two people confine their attention to those snacks, since Kathy and Robin are not running a food kitchen here. Robin eventually gives the signal to the folks in the blacklight room and the back porch, surprised that no one is smoking. He moves through the kitchen to the futon room, holding a can of Pepsi in a beer cozy, and the group slowly follows suit. They noisily file past posters of Jim Morrison and drug facts into a colorful room whose walls and corners are cluttered with artifacts, plants, and old Pagan relics. A sheer fabric drapes from the center of the ceiling. Below that a decidedly Roman bowl of grapes rests on a small table next to the couple's prized ammunition box. Several notice and laugh, while others strain their necks to get a glimpse of everything. Vicki notices the cutout of Ghandi's shadow on the wall as she positions herself against a pillow. “I remember that from the newspaper!” she says amidst the commotion. They are packed tightly on the futons, legs outstretched, creating a circle of colored socks around the room's center. Kathy watches from the doorway, clutching a pillow. She knows they are missing a couple from the city, and she wants to spare them an awkward entrance. “Let's stall for two minutes,” she tells an already seated Robin. “You keep them entertained.” Someone offers to get up and briefly dance for the group, and there is laughter as Kathy disappears into the kitchen. The group continues to talk. Colin, a regular, points out his mismatched socks: one green, one blue, and another guest declares him a rebel. A minute later, Kathy is back, and Robin quips that everyone has to shut up so they can start talking. It's an old line, but it still works. Kathy gives her opening remarks about Goldie Hawn and the optimistic prison mate. She is seated on her pillow in the doorway, for lack of room, with her legs wide apart and her elbows on her knees. She speaks with her hands—turning her palms up to the ceiling, curling her fingers for emphasis. At one point, she touches the pin she has placed by the neck of her blouse. It creates a V neckline that is meant to be exotic without making the other women uncomfortable. The speech works as a starter: Chet runs with the idea, bringing Anna Nicole Smith into the celebrity analogy: “Look how hard it is to be her,” he jokes. Someone else connects happiness with survival: “If I stripped you naked and threw you outside. . . you would need 70 calories a day. . .” They continue to introduce new ideas of happiness, with references to bushmen, overdeveloped technology, and Henry David Thoreau. “He was never in any danger,” Colin says. “He was rich, he had food delivered.” Someone shouts “Pizza!” and everyone laughs loudly. Kathy then hears the faint knocking on the front door and she springs to her feet to greet Lee and Rosa. They are an affluent Evanston couple in their thirties, and the group makes room for them on the futons. When Lee enters the conversation, Kathy responds by placing his comments in context with what had been said prior to his arrival. “Ah. You're talking about happiness as an external thing. We're talking about happiness as a capacity,” she says, then briefly runs through her opening remarks for the third time that evening. The rest of the salon's first half goes as expected, including various personal definitions of happiness—“life is integration, it's the view”—theories of predestination—“I have an image of an unhappy bushman who yearns to be a fireman”—thoughtful questions— “If what we want is finite, why is it that Madison Avenue is able to manipulate us into buying other things?”—and some memorable exchanges—“I just couldn't kill my children”; “You haven't met mine.” Kathy and Robin frequently contribute their own personal dictums, one involving a plan to join the strongest militia of the ghetto should World War III break out. “We'd enjoy trying to get into our house more than we'd enjoy keeping them out,” Kathy explains. At 8:25, when Robin cuts off Dave's long, philosophical musings—“Hey, Dave, can I have some of those drugs?”—the group energy is strong. Robin announces a break, and they all move back into the kitchen for food, drinks, and intimate discussions. More wine is poured and more clusters form, though this time the couples separate themselves, following Robin and Kathy's lead. Robin breaks away from the group to lower the temperature a few degrees, then he seeks out some new guests in the kitchen and talks with them. He knows that his long, black hair shocks many; but there is no way to know how the rest of the salon agrees with them. Robin has accepted that. Meanwhile, Kathy presses the shyer guests for their thoughts on what has and hasn't been said. She and Robin first thought this tactic too manipulative, but now she runs with it. “It just occurs to me now,” she says before introducing a new angle she's been fostering, and her listeners nod in agreement. She eventually moves into the blacklight room to talk with Terri and Tom, a married couple who met through the salon. Dave is standing by one of the fluorescent lights, quietly examining the lint on his clothes as well as the room's psychedelic posters and eclectic instruments. The walls are covered with graffiti from previous parties: “Beware: Inner Child on the loose!”; “Anita Loves Fletch;” “We're all just bozos on this bus.” Dave innocently tells Kathy she has strange tastes, and she giggles, bearing fluorescent yellow eyes and teeth. “Yeah,” she says and proceeds to demonstrate an instrument called a “gourd” before noticing that the group is moving back into the living room. Once everyone is in position on the futons again, Robin calls the salon's second half to order. “We're back. We're either having the good life or we're not,” he says and the group laughs. “Are we?” Kathy asks. Her teeth have returned to their normal shade, and her tone is intellectual now. “That's something we haven't talked about, if we perceive ourselves as having a good life.” Vicki takes the bait first. She says that she's always had the good life. She's had supportive family and friends, great children, a beautiful house, a beautiful property, and always had a roof over her head. She decides that the measure of happiness is connection, comfort, and creativity. “C,C,C,” Kathy points out. Chet hedges the question of the good life, declaring himself a fatalist. “I think that whatever happens to me, there's a meaning to it. I need to look for that meaning, find out what the meaning is and just move on.” Janet says that people have made her happier than material things. Rosa says she's had some tragedies in her life. It's a topic that could get messy, since Robin doesn't want the salon to become a support group. Kathy finds a universal question in Rosa's remarks: “Do we need the foil of misery to even gauge happiness?” Steve announces that he isn't happy, he just decides not to be sad. He goes into a long speech, in which he says he doesn't care whether other people in the room are happy. “As soon as someone takes away my liberty and says I have to care about you, I'm unhappy,” he says, adding, “because I don't give a shit about you.” The group laughs, taking the comments as a sort of performance, as does Kathy. She has enjoyed Steve's outrageously honest comments over the years, including his confession to reading his daughter's diary a few months ago. “Steve says that every salon,” she tells the group. The conversation continues: Ken's definition of happiness has expanded since he's gotten older; Carol thinks that evaluating the quality of one's life is ego-centric; Ben says that no one would ever admit that they're living a rotten life. At close to 10:00 Robin adds what turns out to be his most extensive comments of the evening, and the group is particularly attentive: “Part of [being happy] is how you frame what you're doing. Kathy and I came up with the idea of ‘let's do a salon' because we didn't have many people out here in our social group. We kind of were isolated. We thought ‘what could we do,' so we saw the salon thing—someone else's idea—we copped the idea, we did it, and we couched it in a way [that said] ‘Hey, can we help you out? When was the last time you had a really good conversation? Would you like to come over and have one?' So we're helping everybody in this room, but guess what?—” “You're using us!” somebody says, and there is laughter. Robin continues: “—If no one showed up, we would be sitting here—minus the money for stamps and whatever—and we wouldn't have anybody to talk to. So, by helping out, which—to be really honest, was about ‘I want to be entertained!'—” By now, the group has bonded enough that Robin can blurt out this admission without alienating anyone. The group nods and laughs. “—but, how can I be entertained? I can be entertained by offering something that no one wants to do that I would find interesting, so it's like full circle. And so I'm not being altruistic and helping you guys out . . . If I'm so arrogant that I think I'm helping you tonight, then—you know—‘fuck me,'” Robin says to big laughs. “But if you think that you showed up to help me—guess what? I didn't need you! I have a lot of other people who come to the salon!” More laughs. “But we needed somebody!” Kathy clarifies as Robin continues. “But we have got, and I have to say . . . This is a great crowd!” he adds, and he means it. The group seems to sense his sincerity and they all applaud in agreement. Kathy gets up and heads into the kitchen for a drink to make it clear that anyone can leave now if they want. A few take the hint: Janet excuses herself; Steve bolts as usual. The rest talk for a few more minutes before the conversation breaks into small noisy groups around the living room, where Anita tells me about her relationship with Kathy's son, Fletch, and concedes that the salon makes for an interesting sociological experiment. Meanwhile, Kathy explains tracing and cutting out Ghandi's shadow to a newbie. “It's very nice,” the woman says. “Everyone should have one.” In the kitchen, guests talk and drink more wine. Rosa chats with Robin, at one point asking him if he's okay with Roger's attendance tonight. Robin is stumped by the question: “But Roger's a great guy!” he says. Soon, Anita takes off, a bit earlier than usual. Terry and Tom explain they have kids waiting for them at home; two other couples use the same excuse. The anonymous, curse-threatening woman stays until the end, as usual. Ben finally leaves. One by one, the guests exit, through various beaded curtains and hanging mobiles, past the “Unload weapons and remove ski masks BEFORE entering!” sign, out towards the dead Fiero that lies half buried under snow in the driveway. At midnight, I am once again sitting in the kitchen with Robin and Kathy, and they tell me their thoughts on the night's events. Kathy is glad that Steve didn't scare off the new guests. Robin really likes Rosa and Lee, and he thinks Mark's voice sounded like George Karlin's. Both agree that this might have been their best salon yet, though they admit that they often say that. Both prefer new events to memories. In the weeks following the salon, I kept in touch with Kathy and Robin, primarily through email. Robin sent me a digital photo he took of his new statue of the “Brain”—standing tall on their kitchen table, one hand on hip, the other scratching his chin as he contemplates world domination. Robin had called Warner Bros. stores across the country to find him. “It's an investment,” he says. “Either that, or it's a god awful stupid thing I bought.” Kathy e-mailed me her ideas for “the next Grand Plan,” including a “Bad Music Night,” a “Candy Bar Invention Night,” and a night of original movie-making with special effects like “a volcano or an alien landing or an intergalactic vacation.” The note for me at the top of the e-mail: “Could fit into a where's it all going next paragraph or something.” Kathy and Robin have made it clear that while the salon I attended was a success, they're not completely satisfied. They're still looking for a willing group of experimenters; they still want to find out what a group of imaginative, talented people is capable of creating together. They eventually want to expand into a religion and consequently remove the legal restrictions on their fun. For now, they've written a 300-page book of their experiences, which they hope to market through Amazon.com, and eBay. One chapter from that book gives a fictional account of the salon through the eyes of a skeptical new guest. The female narrator labels Kathy as a “fitness freak,” likens Robin to Charles Manson and Gomez Adams, and wrestles with her opinion of the guests and the conversation until Robin bids her goodbye at the end of the evening: “Thanks for coming,” he calls out . . . “Hope you'll be back.” She smiles and shrugs. “It's interesting,” she says. |
