So You've Been Publicly Shamed (PSY8)

by Jon Ronson

  And then I stopped. I couldn’t do it. I turned, went back downstairs, and I put on my male clothes.

  A week had passed and our relationship remained frosty. She felt I’d prevaricated unprofessionally and was acting too sensitive. ‘Don’t overthink it, Jon,’ she’d emailed me. ‘It’s just a fun feature. Shouldn’t be the cause of some sort of a midlife crisis.’ I felt that the story’s original premise had fallen to pieces and the reason why they were happy to send me out into the world looking nothing like a woman was because in our line of work the more humiliated a person is the more viral the story tends to go. Shame can factor large in the life of a journalist - the personal avoidance of it and the professional bestowing of it upon others.

  ‘Nobody must ever see those test pictures,’ I’d been thinking all week. ‘Never.’

  Now as I lay in my hotel room I understood the truth of it. My terror of humiliation had closed a door. Great adventures that might have unfolded involving me dressed as a woman would never now unfold. I’d been constrained by the terror. It had blown me off course. Which, actually, meant that I was just like the vast majority of people. I knew this from studying the work of David Buss, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

  One day in the early 2000s Buss had been at a cocktail party when the wife of a friend began flirting with another man in front of everyone: ‘She was a striking woman,’ Buss later wrote. ‘She looked at her husband derisively and made a derogatory remark about the way he looked, then turned right back to her flirtatious conversation.’

  Buss’s friend stomped outside, where Buss found him fuming, saying he felt humiliated and wanted to kill his wife: ‘I had no doubt that he would do it. In fact he was so wild with rage, such a transformed man, he seemed capable of killing any living thing within an arm’s reach. I became frightened for my own life.’

  Buss’s friend didn’t kill his wife. He calmed down. But the incident shook Buss up. Which was why he decided to carry out an experiment. He asked 5,000 people a question: Had they ever fantasized about killing someone?

  ‘Nothing,’ as Buss later wrote in his book The Murderer Next Door, ‘prepared me for the outpouring of murderous thoughts.’

  It turned out from his survey that 91 per cent of men and 84 per cent of women had experienced ‘at least one vivid fantasy of killing someone’. There was the man who imagined ‘hiring an explosives specialist’ to blow his boss up in his car, the woman who wanted to ‘break every bone’ in her partner’s body, ‘starting with his fingers and toes, then slowly making my way to larger ones’. There was a bludgeoning with a baseball bat, a strangling followed by a beheading, a stabbing during sex. Some people were set on fire. One man was exposed to killer bees.

  ‘Murderers are waiting,’ Buss’s book bleakly concluded. ‘They are watching. They are all around us.’

  Buss’s findings deeply distressed him. But I saw them as good news. Surely fantasizing about killing someone and then not doing it is a way we teach ourselves to be moral. So Buss’s conclusions seemed silly to me. But there was something different about his study that I found extraordinary. It was something that - as Buss’s research assistant Joshua Duntley emailed me - ‘we did not code for specifically’. It was the part where Buss asked them what had stimulated their murderous thoughts.

  There was the boy who daydreamed about kidnapping his schoolmate, ‘breaking both his legs so he couldn’t run, beating him until his insides were a bloody pulp, then I’d tie him to a table and drip acid onto his forehead’. What had the schoolmate done to him? ‘He “accidentally” dropped his books on my head and all his friends had a good laugh.’ There was the office worker who imagined ‘tampering with my boss’s car brakes so he’d have a braking failure on the motorway’. Why? ‘He had given me the impression that I was a real loser. He would mock me in front of other people. I felt humiliated.’

  And on it went. Almost none of the murderous fantasies were dreamed up in response to actual danger - stalker ex-boyfriends, etc. They were all about the horror of humiliation. Brad Blanton was right. Shame internalized can lead to agony. It can lead to Jonah Lehrer. Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least to a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too.

  And so there in my room I decided that on day two of Brad’s course I would go for it. I would let the shame out. I would be Max Mosley. I would be radically honest.

  *

  On day two Brad asked me in front of the group if I’d like to take the Hot Seat, given that I’d been so quiet on day one.

  I cleared my throat. Everyone was smiling expectantly at me like I was the start of a good television programme.

  I hesitated.

  ‘Actually, I won’t,’ I said.

  The expectant smiles turned quizzical.

  ‘The truth is,’ I explained, ‘I don’t think my problems are as bad as everyone else’s problems in the room. Plus I don’t like conflict.’

  I clarified that I wasn’t against conflict in a weird way: I quite enjoy watching other people being in conflict. If I notice two people yelling at each other on the street I often stop at a distance and have a look. But it just wasn’t my thing to participate in conflict.

  ‘So I don’t want people to think I’m anti-Hot Seat,’ I concluded. ‘They’ve been my favourite parts of the course so far. I find the lectures in between them quite boring but the Hot Seats are great.’

  ‘So you want there to be a Hot Seat but you don’t want to be the one to get in it?’ said Brad’s friend Thelma.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I say do a Hot Seat right now, go ahead and get in it,’ Thelma said.

  ‘No, no,’ I said again. ‘I’m honestly more comfortable watching other people do it.’

  ‘CHICKEN SHIT!’ Thelma yelled. ‘I call CHICKEN SHIT!’

  ‘If you get a chance to jump on Jon, do,’ said Brad.

  ‘Ha ha,’ I said. ‘But seriously, I’ve got nothing that’s so pressing for me to be in the Hot Seat. I don’t want an awkward silence and I don’t want to dredge something up. I’d be faking it. I just think other people here have got more issues than I do.’

  ‘BULLSHIT!’ yelled Thelma.

  ‘YOU’RE AN ARROGANT CONDESCENDING BASTARD!’ said Brad.

  ‘I don’t think I said anything condescending,’ I said, surprised.

  ’”You people need it and I don’t,”’ said Brad, impersonating me.

  ‘I actually really resent you for saying that,’ said Jack, the veterinarian with the sex addiction. ‘It was FUCKING condescending. I also resent that you’re sitting there fiddling with that fucking phone constantly which I find extremely distracting. I RESENT YOU FOR HOLDING THE PHONE!’

  ‘Can I say something about the phone … ?’ I said.

  ‘We don’t give a fuck what your reason is,’ said Brad. ‘We’re going to resent you whether you explain it or not.’

  ‘That’s not how conversations work,’ I said.

  ‘HA HA HA HA!’ shrieked Thelma.

  ‘Jon, do you have a resentment you want to share about anyone in this room?’ said Melissa hopefully.

  I paused. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE A BULLSHIT ARTIST AND EVERYTHING YOU’RE SAYING IS BULLSHIT,’ yelled Brad.

  ‘RIGHT,’ I screeched. ‘I resent YOU …’ I glared at Jack, ‘… for saying I’m condescending. I’m NOT condescending. I was basing my opinion that your problems are worse than mine ENTIRELY on the things you’ve all SAID IN THIS ROOM. And I resent YOU …’ I looked at Thelma, ‘… for acting like Brad’s stooge, like his gang member. There is nothing I dislike more in the world than people who care more about ideology than they do about people. You swamped me with a tidal wave of Brad’s ideology.’

  ‘THAT’S A STORY YOU’VE MADE UP ABOUT ME!’ shouted Thelma. ‘Yeah? He wants to tell me, “FUCKING BACK OFF” but he’s afraid of the conflict! So his mind kicks in!’

  ‘I
resent you for repeatedly yelling chicken shit and bullshit at me because …’ I said.

  ‘Not “because”,’ said Thelma. ‘That’s interpretive.’

  I stared open-mouthed at Thelma. She was COACHING me? In fact - it dawned on me - none of the yelling was a break from their therapeutic milieu. It was Radical Honesty. It works wonders for some of Brad’s clients. But it wasn’t working wonders for me. I was beginning to feel intensely rageful.

  ‘Do you resent me for telling you what to say?’ said Thelma.

  ‘Yes, I fucking do,’ I yelled. ‘I massively fucking resent you for telling me what to say.’

  ‘Poor little thing,’ said Brad. ‘We’re so sorry we hurt your tender little feelings. OK!’ Brad clapped his hands together. ‘Lunch! I hate to abandon you, Jon, but I’m going to leave you cooking.’

  The group stood up and began drifting away.

  They were breaking for lunch? ‘But I’m still very resentful,’ I said.

  ‘Good!’ said Brad. ‘I hope you remain incomplete all lunch.’

  ‘I don’t see any value in that at all,’ I muttered as I put on my jacket.

  Out in the hotel corridor Mario the marijuana dealer smiled and said, ‘I don’t think Brad’s finished with you yet!’ I understood why Mario said that. Brad seemed to have just broken his own golden rule. He hadn’t ensured that everyone stayed together while my anger played itself out. No love had been given the chance to grow. I had been cast out into Chicago at an apex of resentfulness.

  I spent the lunch hour stomping around the streets. After lunch I only had a few hours before I needed to catch my plane back to New York, so I laid out my complaint for Brad.

  ‘You broke for lunch right in the middle of it,’ I said. ‘You left me seething.’

  Melissa leaned over and removed my baseball cap from my head. I flinched.

  ‘I could have been suicidally unhappy about it,’ I said.

  ‘We were running ten minutes late for lunch so I made the decision to leave you cooking,’ Brad said.

  After that, things moved on. Jack the veterinarian sex addict who hated me fiddling with my phone took the Hot Seat. He recounted a time his father physically attacked his mother in front of him. It was a heartbreaking story. He tightly closed his eyes as he told it and so I took the opportunity to quickly check Twitter. I hate not knowing what’s happening on Twitter. Soon after that I caught my plane home.

  We all kept in touch for a while. Mary emailed me to let me know how things had gone with Amanda: ‘I tried the Rad. Hon. approach and she was super-resistant and defensive and pretty much closed to what I wanted to express. I could feel the waves of anger coming off her while talking to her. Since then I have had to still see her at the gym and at times I’ve “ignored” her. Other times we’ve had civil, pleasant chats (not that many).’

  Another member of the group emailed us all to report that he attempted Radical Honesty on his wife but she responded by trying to physically push him away and so he told her that he would ‘“get the axe and defend myself by killing you”. Rightfully, she was scared, as she knows that often I confuse truth with fantasy. We all do. So the police came by. I am under consideration for a job that involves a security clearance, so any ARREST will result in no offer there … I love you all, especially Thelma, who I find extremely attractive, and I want to have sex with her (you). Perhaps I could even treat her (you) as my wife.’

  Brad wrote back, copying everyone in: ‘What you say is completely insane. Your best bet is to seek out a psychiatrist who can prescribe you a mild tranquilizer.’

  My Radical Honesty weekend had not been a success for me. But I continued to believe that Max Mosley’s own version of it - ‘as soon as the victim steps out of the pact by refusing to feel ashamed, the whole thing crumbles’ - had indeed been his magic formula, the reason why he’d soared above his shaming. And I continued to believe it right up until a new public shaming unfolded, this time up in Kennebunk, Maine, that forced me to rethink the whole thing. This new shaming made me realize that Max had survived his for a completely different reason - one I hadn’t put my finger on.

  9

  A TOWN ABUZZ OVER PROSTITUTION AND A CLIENT LIST

  KENNEBUNK, Me. — The summer people who clog the roads here are long gone and the leaves have turned crimson and orange, but the prevailing sentiment in this postcard-perfect coastal town these days is one of dread.

  For more than a year, the police have been investigating reports that the local Zumba instructor [Alexis Wright] was using her exercise studio on a quaint downtown street for more than fitness training. In fact, the police say, she was running a one-woman brothel with up to 150 clients and secretly videotaping them as they engaged in intimate acts … The list is rumored to be replete with the names of prominent people.

  - Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, 16 October 2012

  President George H. W. Bush has his seaside compound, Walker’s Point, four miles away from Kennebunk, up in Kennebunkport. Sometimes blacked-out cars zoom through town on their way up there, carrying Vladimir Putin or Bill Clinton or Nicolas Sarkozy, but besides that not much happens in Kennebunk. Or not much did.

  Who might be on the list? A member of the Bush family? Someone from the Secret Service? General Petraeus?

  - Bethany McLean, ‘Town of Whispers’, Vanity Fair, 1 February 2013

  A defence attorney, Stephen Schwartz, petitioned the Maine Supreme Court to have the names on the list remain secret (he was representing two of the unnamed men). This was still Puritan country, he argued: ‘Once they’re released they’re all going to have the mark of a scarlet letter.’ But the judge ruled against him, and the Kennebunk newspaper, the York County Coast Star, started to publish.

  There were sixty-nine people on the list in all - sixty-eight men and one woman. Sadly no Bush was among them, not even a member of the family’s security detail. But there were Kennebunk society people - a pastor from the South Portland Church of the Nazarene, a lawyer, a high-school hockey coach, a former town mayor, a retired schoolteacher and his wife.

  This was a unique event in the public shaming world. Mass disgrace scenarios like this never happen. Given that my job had become to try and match personality nuances with public shaming survival levels, it was a dream come true for me. When do you get a sample size like that? Surely amongst the people on the list there’d be those so eager to please they’d allow strangers’ negative opinions of them to meld with their own, creating some corrosive amalgamate. There’d be those so desperate not to lose their status it would need to be prised from their clenched fingers. There’d be serious people like Jonah, hitherto smart-alecky people like Justine. And there’d be Max Mosleys. Kennebunk was like a well-stocked laboratory for me. Who would incur the crowd’s wrath, who its mercy? Who’d be shattered? Who’d emerge unscathed? I drove up there.

  Inside Court One of the Biddeford District Courthouse half a dozen of the men from the Zumba list sat on the benches, staring grimly ahead while news crews pointed their cameras at them. We in the press area were allowed to stare at them and they weren’t able to look away. It reminded me of how Nathaniel Hawthorne had described the pillory in The Scarlet Letter: ‘an instrument of discipline so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks … more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame.’

  Everyone was silent and a little awkward, as if we were all standing around in some strange pre-consensus limbo. This story was new. There hadn’t been time for Kennebunk society to start shunning the men. However brutally or subtly the shunning might manifest itself, nothing had happened yet. I was in on the ground floor.

  The judge entered, and it began. The court proceedings were nothing much. The men were, in turn, told to stand up and plead guilty or not guilty. Each man pleaded guilty. Fines were impos
ed - $300 for each visit to Alexis Wright. The maximum fine today was $900. And then it was over. They were allowed to leave. And they did, hurriedly. I followed the last one out. All the others had vanished except for him. I introduced myself to him.

  ‘You can interview me,’ he said. ‘But I want something in return.’

  ‘OK?’ I said.

  ‘Money,’ he said. ‘I’m not talking about much. Just enough to buy my kid a present from Walmart. Just a voucher from Walmart. And then I’ll tell you all the details. I’ll tell you EVERYTHING. What me and Alexis got up to.’

  He was a heavy man. He gave me a look of desperate, sad faux-lasciviousness, like he was offering me the best erotic novel. ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ he said.

  I said I couldn’t pay someone to talk about his or her crime, so he shrugged and walked away. I drove back to New York and the next day I wrote to all the sixty-eight men and one woman on the list, requesting interviews. Then I waited.

  A few days later an email arrived.

  OK, we can talk. I am the former Church of the Nazarene pastor that unfortunately became involved in this whole mess.

  Sincerely yours,

  James (Andrew) Ferreira

  *

  ‘Hello, Jon.’ Andrew Ferreira’s voice was kind and tired and lost-sounding - a formerly chipper community leader trying to adapt to a world that might no longer have any interest in his leadership. This was the first time he’d agreed to talk to a journalist. He said the last few days had been hard. His wife had left him and he’d been fired from his job. All that had been inevitable, he said, but the rest was unknown. The extent to which the community would cast him out, and how he’d deal with it: unknown.

  I asked him why he visited Alexis Wright.

  ‘Maybe my marriage wasn’t great,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t horrible. It was just sort of drifting. Cohabiting, to a point. Anyway. I was reading a story in the Boston Globe on the Craigslist Killer. You remember that story? He murdered a twenty-something call girl. And the Boston Globe said that most of the ads for escorts have migrated away from Craigslist and onto backpage.com. If someone wants an escort or a happy-ending massage or something - backpage.com. And I just remembered it. I wish I hadn’t. Unfortunately some things just stick in your mind. I become tainted with the information.’