Hot Seat: It’s Like Heart Circle, But Also a Gangbang May

Hot Seat: It’s Like Heart Circle, But Also a Gangbang By May

Irecently attended an afternoon of auditions on

Broadway, where I watched a dozen aspiring actors pour their hearts out in wrenching monologues they’d obviously spent weeks preparing—only to realize later that I’d actually been at a Heart Circle at Breitenbush.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Heart Circle. Over and over again, it’s shown me that people are always more, more wet and glistening inside, and broken, and alive, than what I can see. It’s a kind of emotional peep show.

But there is, is there not, an aspect of Heart Circle that is, can we say, a touch showbiz? A bit razzmatazz?

I should know. When it comes to telling stories, I’m the ultimate showman.

A year ago I had dinner with some Faerie friends, including Robin Hood and Kirk. Kirk, you should know, speaks with the bluntness of a Vulcan. Most of my relationship with Kirk is me trying to get his begrudging approval. Choose me! Choose me! And since Kirk and I hadn’t seen each other in some time, I pounced on the chance when he asked casually, “So, how are you doing?”

I cleared my throat.

“Well,” I intoned, and told him My Story, which involved me being severely suicidal and psychotic after a series of horrific and surreal events.

When I was finished, trembling with sweat and ready for my Daytime Emmy, Kirk looked at me with an expression that can only be described as unimpressed.

“How many times have you told that story?” he asked finally.

I felt my asshole pucker, as though I’d sat in a vat of lemon juice.

“It just feels,” Kirk said, in that inscrutable Kirk way. “It feels like you’ve told that story a lot.”

“He has,” said Robin Hood from the couch.

“So,” Kirk said. “What are you still getting out of telling that story?”

I had no answer. Since that night, I have never told that story again. In the face of my regurgitated self myth, Kirk had given me the most healing, most loving gift that we can sometimes give each other.

He’d given me his skepticism.

I know, skepticism is pretty much the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in Heart Circle. As a good Faerie, you’re supposed to listen with your heart. Without judgment. Or rolling your eyes. Or sticking a needle repeatedly into your leg to keep from falling asleep.

So here’s a modest proposal. For a new ritual, a new kind of Circle--a game, if you will--to build on the work of Heart Circle.

I call it Hot Seat.

How does it work? Simple. You sit in a Circle, and people can ask you whatever they want. Nothing, and I mean nothing is off limits.

Some of the questions are dumb. “How many testicles have you had in your mouth in the last week? When was the last time you shit your pants?”

But often the questions dig into some place that hurts, or feels confused. “What keeps you up at night? What is the worst thing that your mind tells you?”

And if you’re the one hurling questions, you “win” when you ask a question that the person in the Hot Seat has no ready answer for. This is when we are past the script. When discovery can happen. One of the key questions we ask is, “Are we getting any new information here? Or are we still in the same old story?”

For example? You come in with a story that you were traumatized by childhood events, and this has caused you to become paranoid and anxious in social situations. “What happened when you were a kid?” the Circle will ask. They might then say, “Well, that sounds like a common experience,” or “Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.” Or, “That sounds fuck up. I’m sorry that happened to you. Is there another way to look at this? Does it really merit building a whole life story around?”

It’s a practice in taking risks. It’s a practice in Radical Honesty. Loving Skepticism. Or, as Robin Hood calls it, Loving Ruthlessness.

Then come the hard questions. “What are you

getting out of identifying as a victim?” “What you are getting, or trying to get, by building your life story around trauma?” “What might you gain if you stopped telling that story?”

See, this is the kind of stuff that’s basically heretical these days. It’s the kind of stuff that gets critics of Hot Seat to call it abusive, or uncaring, or un-Faerie. In this current culture of conspicuous trauma, where the identities of whole communities are based on the worst thing that has happened to them, these are questions that can never be reasonably asked.

In Hot Seat, people have space to actually question their stories. Well, they say. If I say I have trauma, then I get to control the environment, to control other people’s behavior. People have to listen to me. If I’m a victim, I get attention, I get sympathy, I get to be right, I get others to care about me.

From my experience with the game, I’ve seen that a dose of consensual ruthless, loving skepticism can free people. From blaming others. Blaming the world. From victimhood. The Gollum-like hoarding of pain. It frees people from the self-righteousness of having been wronged.

If you come into Hot Seat to process a conflict with someone, the Circle will inevitably ask, “So what’s your part? What are you doing that’s so different from you’re accusing them of? Why do you get to be right?”

In Hot Seat, saying “I’m right, and they’re wrong,” is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. The Circle is going to aim its horns right at you.

Here are some of the basic guidelines of Hot Seat:

• First, and most important, consent. That’s the difference between a gangbang being the best experience of your life, or the worse. If you get in the Hot Seat, know what you’re getting into. Be ready. Be open. Say Fuck Yeah. • Take a risk. A main goal of Hot Seat is to improve intimacy among the players, and no intimacy is possible without risk. If you’re feeling like you shouldn’t ask something, or say something, then you definitely should. • The ideal size of a Circle is six. At this size, it’s possible to everyone to get thirty minutes in the Hot Seat. • To create a container strong enough to hold the Circle’s shadow, there has to be strict confidentiality. I can write 2000 words on the importance of confidentiality, but you get it. • Intention. I’ve played rounds where people were absolutely ruthless, but the ruthlessness was given with love, and accepted with gratitude. With proper intention and consent, ruthlessness becomes, strangely, comforting. You care enough to ask the hard questions. In fact, a common complaint after a round is, “Why did you go so easy on me?” They feel let down, as though the Circle underestimated their capacity for truth, or didn’t care. • Everyone who asks questions will also get asked questions. No one just gets to dish out heat. I’ve seen many people think they’re cross examining a Mafia boss suddenly realize they’re next in the witness stand. If you’re an aggressive player, you’ll be honored by getting it thrown right back at you. You get as good as you give. It’s super fun. • Before the Circle starts, we ask everyone to state their conflicts of interest. Is there someone in the Circle that you’re dating? Or fucking? Or used to fuck? Maybe you just don’t like their pants? If you might have an agenda when you ask questions, declare it. But here the thing I realized: conflicts of interest aren’t a barrier to the game--it’s actually a feature. More on this later. • Everyone has to be sober. No alcohol, no weed, and certainly no Viagra. • Get specific. Without specificity, the game dissolves into psychobabble. If someone says, “I feel insecure,” the follow up question is, “Can you name a specific time when you felt that? Where? When? Who with?” • Hot Seat can only be played at night, preferably late. Trust me. It just works better that way. • Mirroring. In addition to questions, the Circle can offer mirroring statements such as, “I noticed your voice changed when you said his name,” or “I noticed you stopped smiling when you said that.” Other mirrorings include, “I notice you don’t say what’s on your mind,” or “I notice that you make a joke about Asians when you’re nervous.” • The person in the Hot Seat can also ask for mirroring. “Do I seem hostile? Do I seem cold? What do you think I want? Is my bra showing? What am I not seeing here?” • Do not offer advice. No one cares what you think is best. Seriously, no one cares. • I just farted. This isn’t really part of the article, but I thought you should know, in case you’re still reading. • What you can do is speak from your own experience. You can say as part of the Circle, “I really relate to that. I also feel insecure/anxious/Asian. This is what helps me.” • Boredom is an important tool. If you’re listening to someone’s answer and you’re bored, chances are

that the person is just recycling a script. The Circle is encouraged to interrupt and say, “Boring! I’m bored!” People will sometimes call out “job interview!” when someone is giving the “right” answer to a question. If you haven’t had someone yell “job interview!” or “boring!” at you, it’s really fucking scary. In softer versions, people will say, “That sounds like a script. It sounds like you’re giving the expected answer. Can you go a little deeper?” • Reality Checks. If someone has a story that others don’t like them, the Circle can call a Reality Check. “Go ahead. Ask if the people here really do find you boring/stupid/Asian. You don’t have to guess.” • The Circle has a facilitator, who keeps the time and keeps the process moving. The facilitator makes process observations such as, “It seems like we’ve hit a dead end,” or “We’re not getting new information. We got ten minutes. Dig!” • I farted again. Are you still reading? • Remember when I said that conflicts of interest are actually a feature of the game? I realized the game is often juiciest between people who have histories. Long simmering issues, old hurts, unasked questions. Many times I’ve seen lovers, old and new, or friends, work out misunderstandings, clarify past events, and ask tender questions, in the safe container of the Circle. “I want to ask you why we broke up.” “I want to know if you lied to me.” “Why did we stop having sex?” The Circle becomes electric at these moments, and it’s incredible to witness. • Finally, at the end of each round, we applaud the gamesmanship with golf claps. Well played, in asking questions, and well played, in answering questions. A round of golf claps, all around.

None of this is set in stone. Hot Seat is still an adolescent technology, and like all adolescents, it’s full of hormones, horny for experience, and doesn’t like to listen to adults. But it’s growing, and growing up. A lot of the brattiness of the first iterations have softened. People no longer yell “job interview!” But always, and this is consistent, is the hushed thrill of entering into a new space together. One in which, as Robin Hood says, you can be anything and still be loved.

Frivolous, who’s been leading Hot Seats in the sauna at Folleterre, says he likes Hot Seat because it’s efficient. You get thirty minutes, and the Circle does not like to waste time. As one Faerie said, “I don’t speak in Heart Circle because I often don’t know what I’m feeling or why. I need something like Hot Seat to help me dig.” If you have trouble digging into your own material, the Circle has shovels. Often, within minutes, the Circle hits something buried deep in the bedrock of the psyche.

Luna, a veteran of Hot Seat, has his doubts. “Is there something we lose by taking a speed highway to intimacy? Maybe we should be more humble and acknowledge that after Hot Seat we are not necessarily more intimate—what we are is more exposed, less masks.”

Another thing that Kirk said to me that night.

“You know, Hot Seat isn’t new. There have been group processes like this for decades. I’d beware,” he told me, “of making it your thing. You might get blamed when people get pissed off.”

We’ve played Hot Seat at Breitenbush, at Folleterre. Alto das Fadas. Robin Hood has been playing it in, of all places, Canada.

One Faerie said he got more out of a round of Hot Seat than thirty years of Heart Circles.

This summer, so many people played Hot Seat at Folleterre that we had to run two groups simultaneously. People played it so late into the night that the facilitators actually asked people to stop playing it. There was even a Hot Seat for French speakers.

Notice that I keep saying we “play” Hot Seat. That’s because, often, it’s fucking fun. When someone asks a killer question, the Circle claps and hoots. “Goddamn!” “Ouch!” Things that used to hurt suddenly feel hilarious. It’s a crooked kind of magic.

And when people accuse Hot Seat of being an exercise in sadism, or masochism, they’re right. I can’t tell you the number of people who crave being intensely probed, who want to be interrogated like a murder suspect. “Is that all you got?” they taunt the Circle. “I haven’t cried once!”

Some girls are just kinky that way.

When I was in the Hot Seat, people asked me why I was so cold. How I could be so impervious to other people’s pain. They mirrored back that I seemed to not be in touch with my own emotions. That I was creepy. One Faerie asked, “Why is other people’s pain different from yours?” It was a fucking difficult round, and I spent the next day separated from the group, shut down. But they were right. I wasn’t in touch with my emotions. My father had just died weeks before and I felt nothing, even for my grieving mother. That isn’t true. I felt annoyed at my father’s funeral. When my mother collapsed in tears at his burial, I rolled my eyes. I did, in fact, see my own pain as different from that of others. Months later, I’m still unpacking my time in the Hot Seat—and these are good discoveries,

discoveries I would’ve missed had everyone just told me what a lovely gorgeous swan I am.

Hot Seat is loving. It’s just not lovey dovey.

Robin Hood calls Hot Seat a ritual. I call it a game. (I also call it a gangbang, or an emotional fisting.) Robin Hood says Hot Seat is a ritual because “in ritual, we are transported from one place to another and back again, with hopefully a new perspective. How we perceive ourselves in the world can be totally transformed.”

I don’t know. I’m a workshop queen, not a ritual queen. But what he says is right: “Hot Seat helps us

break through the pattern to see what else is there.”

Hot Seat is not perfect, and it never will be. It’s messy, it takes risks that go too far, and there will always be people who think it’s dangerous. This is why it works in Faerie space. The Faeries, as Luna says, is an experimental community. We try things.

But don’t take anyone’s word on it. Be skeptical. Try it for yourself. Hot Seat may be coming to a gathering near you. Pull up a chair. Ask something. Get asked something. Take a risk.

Or don’t. You can always go to Heart Circle.