Robert and Alain, Part 2: Circles and Lines

Eyes wide shut: Alain at my family table in San Francisco, circa 1979. 

Part 1 is here

1972-1980, San Francisco

The modest claim Alain staked during San Francisco’s post-‘60s spiritual boom did not yield much return. Auditorium-scale interest never materialized, nor did the sort of flush and fervent supporters who could sponsor retreats, underwrite publications and enable a guy to be a full-time guru-type. But on Wednesday evenings, a small group of young people would arrive at Alain's apartment on Twin Peaks. We'd remove our shoes, turn our backs on the city shimmering beyond the terrace and arrange ourselves cross-legged on the floor facing a blank wall, against which stood the Danish modern armchair from which Alain delivered his lectures.
I can personally attest that one attendee truly tried his best to bring in the sheaves: Robert hectored old chums from the swami circuit about showing up, and a curious few did. None returned. When the weekly lectures fell away, circa 1974-75, what remained was a tiny, tight cadre of fiercely loyal followers who were in rapt attendance upon Alain's opinions about matters great —"What is the meaning of life?”— and small —“Should I wash my hair every day?"  Robert was deeply vested in moving to the forefront of this group, advancing his cause by ducking out out of work to spend afternoons taking and transcribing dictation at Alain's place before inviting him to our house for his dinner.

As his own mentor, Jiddu Krishnamurti, did before him, Alain declined to identify as "guru" the role he played in the lives of those whose fealty he commanded. But he did issue, and display withering disapproval if one did not adhere to, an astonishing array of instructions and strictures covering virtually every aspect of life: what one should eat, drink, and read; what kind of music to listen to, employment to seek, socks to wear; how to interpret one's astrological chart and groom one's hair. Who one could socialize with, of course. And sleep with: no one. Alain maintained that even married couples should be celibate, except for purposes of procreation. He declared homeopathic medicine the only acceptable response to all ailments. After finding all Bay Area practitioners wanting, Alain himself, an excellent pianist, started dispensing homeopathic doses to the inner circle.

No one surrendered the right to choose his or her own socks at gunpoint, of course. It wasn't a commune or a compound. Most of us had jobs, some of us were in school, and Robert and I had a family. But together, a handful of self-identified spiritual seekers in their 20s and one fifty-ish man with a constantly-invoked connection to a spiritual superstar created an exclusive, inbred cult of personality. Coalesced around a father figure, the collective endowed him with superhuman powers and was pleased to be at his beck and call.
Being married to Alain's most devoted acolyte presented some daunting challenges, not the least of which was a chronically bitten tongue. Unlikely to be mistaken for a true believer, I did try to mind my manners, and got a pass on obeisance because of the complex bond between Robert and Alain. Subservience fosters dependency in its recipient, and Robert's keen deference to Alain might have been blunted by alienating the wife. So Alain, who could be quite charming, was often so to me, despite my being what he called "naughty," which seemed to mean maintaining a private interior life. He played the culture card hard, and I folded every time. I was wowed by his exquisite musicianship, his years in Europe, and the names he dropped from his time with Krishnamurti. A conversational tidbit like, "As Michaelangelo Antonioni said during dinner at Signora Scaravelli's villa..." could make me literally turn the other cheek (Alain was in the habit of pinching mine, and those of other putative adults).

Another possible explanation why my polite apostasy was tolerated while others who questioned, however obliquely, Alain's absolute authority within the inner circle were expelled from it is that I provided a domestic center of gravity. By the late 1970s, Alain, a never-partnered man in his 50s, was under my roof 4-5 evenings a week, enjoying not only regular home-cooked dinners and a place at the head of the table for holiday celebrations, but also laundry, tailoring, secretarial and airport limo services—in short, all the comforts of a family hearth that traditionally accrued to the paterfamilias, only free of responsibility.

This family's hearth included an adorable, intelligent, and impressionable young boy. As my son grew, so did Alain's expressed interest in him—much less so in the new baby girl. He took to dispensing, through Robert, edicts on child rearing that clearly reflected key facts about his life: childless, lived alone, had no adult experience living in a family, had never spent 24 hours alone with a child.

There was no way to view this incursion into amateur parenting as anything other than what it was. Surveying the wreckage of this and countless other boundaries violated over the years, I had to consider what could motivate a grown man to demand that a child's new toy be taken away because he did not like the look of it, or to hand his hostess a basket of laundry before sitting down to Christmas dinner. I also had to acknowledge my complicity—and moral cowardice—in enabling an increasingly bizarre social dynamic: sitting silently at my own table while someone wearing a $15,000 Patek Phillipe watch held forth on the evils of consumerism; actually washing those dirty clothes before serving the Bûche de Noël. Turning the other cheek.  I was pushing 30, sound of mind and body, the mother of two children. What was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that third-party opinions about 18th-Century medical theories and Edwardian child-rearing practices were irrelevant. I was thinking that it was my responsibility to raise my kids and live my life according to my own principles, despite my partner's devotion to the dispenser of those opinions. This thinking was terribly naive. My children were paying the price for their parents' failure to insist upon appropriate personal and social boundaries, or even a reasonable family dinner hour (Alain liked to eat late, and simply refused to show up before 8 o'clock).

I finally snapped to when Alain dosed my happy, very healthy 9-year-old with something that caused the skin on his face to peel off in sheets and crust over into huge scabs. He did not seek, or have, my permission to provide health care for my child. My son's teachers and parents of his friends called me, alarmed. My own alarm was, literally, laughed at—within the micro-cult, this disfigurement was declared a terrific success, a homeopathic "proving," or something.

It was all the proof I needed. I took the kid out for a café au lait—coffee is said to neutralize homeopathic substances—and then to be checked by a real physician. Trained in homeopathy, this doctor, too, was horrified. Reporting this to Robert precipitated a hideous row. I drew a new, hard line around the children and stepped inside it to join them. Robert and I bellowed at each other from either side, both of us aware that this line, this boundary—any boundary—would be viewed by his guru not as merely naughty, but truly seditious: evidence of independent intent, which was known to be an unforgivable offense.

 

"I had to consider what could motivate a grown man to demand that a child's new toy be taken away because he did not like the look of it..."

Next: A tent gets pitched on the outskirts of Crazytown; a javelin pierces the air. Part 3: Under The Big Top is here

Comments

[21stCenturyMom]

My first thought when I glanced at this post was that you could put straight, blond hair on the woman in that photo and label it with either of your daughter's names - it would work.

My second was - yum! What a lovely dinner.

Then I read the text and thought, "oh yeah - that." What a remarkable story.

[karenna]

I knew Alain in Texas in the 90's when he was practicing as a homeopath. What you write is so true. He was hypercontrolling and vicious when crossed. Never saw the charm, tho.