Fear and Loathing in Room 14

Two nights before O.J. Simpson threw his black-tie, conscience-easing fund-raiser to end violence, seven men in a small room were trying to end violence their own way, by facing it in themselves.

It wasn’t a lavish reception by an infamous host, but a gathering of guys in jeans and T-shirts who were talking about pain and fear and the lions roaring within them.

They were sitting around a semicircle in Room 14 of the Southern California Counseling Center, an unimposing red brick building on Pico Boulevard. It was 9 o’clock on a cool Tuesday night and they’d already been there for an hour of their two-hour session.

Gone was the edgy self-consciousness of the first hour and they were opening up to explore, sometimes on the verge of tears, the reasons they had committed violence against their wives, girlfriends, employers or just about anyone they came in contact with.

Oddly, the word that emerged most was fear, which I hadn’t expected from a group of men who had pushed, smashed, slapped and battered their way into Room 14 in the first place.

They were afraid of not living up to the expectations of their women, afraid of not being men, afraid of their own rage, afraid of their past.

I had anticipated booming denials from swaggering toughs, but what I got was an overwhelming sense of whispery sadness from guys like Carver, a scowling, ominous giant with an explosive temper who had once threatened to kill his ex-wife and had almost crushed his boss’ hand.

His story of personal triumph this night was singular. He had been slapped eight times in the face by a woman, but instead of responding with clenched fists, he had turned and silently walked away.

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George Thomas, founder and director of the program, leads the sessions with a combination of skill, anger, drama and humor. He cajoles, scolds, encourages and praises with a furious energy rooted in his own violent past.

Raised by a father who beat him, he in turn became a beater, but learned how to deal with his own anger by damping the rage of others on the streets of South-Central L.A. When his ability to handle angry men became known, he ended up at the Counseling Center.

About 2,500 individuals and families a year utilize the center for an average fee of $10 an hour. Most of its support comes from private donations and grants. Some of the clients are sent here, others come on their own.

Thomas’ program is one of many, and I’ve been meaning to drop by ever since publication of photographs of Nicole Brown Simpson’s face, battered into a bruised and swollen mess by the man ultimately accused of killing her. It’s a memory I can’t lose.

There’s a lion in my background too, an angry, brutal stepfather who beat both my mother and me, and I’ve had problems keeping my own rage under control. We are, after all, victims of our childhood, replaying the sins committed upon us by committing them on others.

I have an outlet, an energy funneled into words, but the men in Room 14 could barely articulate their own feelings, which was part of the problem. “You can’t say to your wife or girlfriend ‘I hurt,’ ” Thomas told them. “You can’t say, ‘I’m in pain.’ You can’t say, ‘Help me.’ ”

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What they were able to say in voices muted by grief and guilt was, “It somehow got out of hand,” “She makes me feel like a child,” “I can’t talk to her” and “I keep it all inside until . . .”

Thomas tosses aside their excuses for violence and badgers them to think, to feel and to express; to take “time out” before those inner lions, the stalking predators capable of sudden, brutal passions, break free.

“All I’m trying to do,” he would say later, “is to teach them to handle their own pain without resorting to violence.”

He’s a wise and capable man of 53 who bears the kinds of emotional scars that make him better able to understand what the men in Room 14 are going through. But he’s fighting a losing battle.

We live in an age of violence, a pervasive, strangling, dehumanizing time of self-destruction on a scale so grand and widespread to seem almost beyond control. We celebrate cruelty, glorify war and sanctify vengeance.

The Counseling Center would need a place a billion times the size of Room 14 to hold all of those who have committed, or will commit, violence against themselves or others through means ranging from suicide to mass murder.

I wish Thomas well in his effort to tame the furies of angry men, but he operates in a dark and fearsome jungle. Lions still stalk the shadows of human conduct, and there are more of them out there than ever before.

Al Martinez can be reached through the Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com