Beyond Belief (44 page)

In part because of the freedom that we had, we began to encounter ideas that ran in the face of Scientology’s teachings. Even though it was against the rules, we started watching TV for an hour or two a day. I especially liked watching
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
, a makeover show featuring five gay experts in home décor, food, culture, fashion, and more. I liked the characters and enjoyed the show, and found myself a bit surprised that what I saw didn’t match what I’d learned in Scientology. We were taught that homosexuals were sexual perverts and covertly hostile, qualities that made them close to SPs. However, when I watched these guys on television, they didn’t strike me as any of those things. It didn’t make sense to me, and I just didn’t see how it could be true.

We also had Internet access, although I didn’t know how to use it very well. One time, Dallas called my attention to a website called “Operation Clambake,” which was highly critical of the Church. When we saw what it was, Dallas and I looked at each other in disbelief, knowing we had stumbled on something we weren’t supposed to, but neither of us could deny it was interesting. We had to exercise self-restraint, but what we did see was pretty revealing. One story in particular on the site said that Uncle Dave had usurped power when he took over the Church. That was the first negative implication about his leadership that I had heard. I was a bit curious about the site but didn’t fully understand how websites worked. I also knew that people got in trouble for looking at stuff like this. I saw that Operation Clambake mentioned OT III materials on its site; I had been warned about what would happen if you accessed information from levels that you had not yet attained; I figured I would stay away, because I didn’t want to go crazy.

Still, I couldn’t fully shake the allegations from the website about my uncle. I knew Scientology had detractors because of the protesters at the Flag Land Base, but I hadn’t known there were whole websites devoted to opposing Scientology, or how much a part of everyday life the Internet was. The fact that Dallas had come across this site so easily surprised me, but it was also somehow satisfying, although I didn’t really know why. It was almost like the moment at the Ranch all those years ago when I’d seen the outside contractors and secretly wished that they would advocate for us. It felt like there was an awareness of what our experiences were in Scientology that was reassuring, even if that awareness wouldn’t necessarily change anything.

When I called my parents that night, I asked them if the story about Uncle Dave could be true. They said they didn’t know much about it, but they were not sure that the Internet was a reliable source of information. Because my parents brushed it off, it sort of left my mind for a bit.

It wasn’t just things that we read and saw that deepened our thinking about the Church; it was the people we met and the vastly different lifestyle we were living. Gone was our incessant regimentation and constant security checks; instead we were actually getting to live our lives, more than before, at least. In Canberra, we became friends with most of the public Scientologists there, especially since they were our only source for our fund-raising. Spending time with them gave me a chance to experience what life would be like if Dallas and I were public Scientologists, living on our own. I had never been around Scientology staff that worked at the Church and moonlighted with normal jobs.

It wasn’t just the lifestyle; it was also the presence of the Church that started to change us. I started to see that places like Flag and Int were the exception, not the rule. I had always heard that there were five hundred Scientology Churches around the world, and I thought they were all on a similar scale to Flag, or at least close to it. Clearly, I hadn’t really thought it through. To see this small, struggling church in Canberra, and then be around this small handful of casual Scientologists, was to become aware that Scientology wasn’t taking over the world in the way we’d always been told.

Of all these experiences, perhaps the most eye-opening wasn’t anything subversive or illicit—it was my friendship with a lady named Janette. When we met her, she had two little girls, and a baby boy on the way. We spent a lot of time with her, coming over for her kids’ birthday parties and just hanging out. Her two-year-old, Eden, was so precious. She was full of quirks and mischief and I spent a lot of time around her. When I went to the Org, I would sometimes carry her with me and play with her there, even though I was supposed to be a Sea Org member on a mission. I was aware of the effect Eden had on me, but it just seemed natural—I couldn’t really help myself. Still, the way I was acting was considered unbecoming of a Sea Org member on a mission.

Janette was pregnant, which was also something that I hadn’t really been around before. She would tell me about it, and it just seemed like such an amazing thing for a so-called meat body to be capable of. I felt as though I could ask Janette about anything. We saw her in the days after her son was born, and it seemed like such an incredible thing.

All this time with Janette and Eden got me thinking, in a way in which I never had before, about what it would be like to have a family. Dallas was also great with her. He loved to pick her up and twirl her around until she burst out giggling. He adored children, and always remarked about how cute and special they were. But knowing kids were not allowed for Sea Org members, the thought of being a mother hadn’t really occurred to me. Yet, for the first time ever, I found myself wondering if I was missing out.

A
YEAR WENT BY, AND THERE WAS STILL NO END IN SIGHT TO OUR
mission. While we enjoyed our time there, we tried hard to follow the rules and not go too far off the rails. Even though we tried some new things, we still were very beholden to the Church and our responsibilities. Looking back, I wish we hadn’t been so afraid and had gone to the beach and other places; however, we weren’t at a place where we were comfortable dismissing the Church’s rules so blatantly.

Overall, though, the year was refreshing. I no longer felt on edge because of my frustrations with the Church. Because the level of monitoring we faced was so much less than what it had been, it made it much easier to put aside the issues with which I’d been struggling. Even though I still disagreed with aspects of the Church, I was more relaxed than I’d been in years, not to mention well fed, well rested, and having a lot of fun.

Christmas 2003 rolled around, and although we got permission to come home for the holidays, Dallas’s parents had to pay for our round-trip flights. My dad then flew us to Virginia, where my grandma Loretta was going to meet us, but at the last minute she canceled her trip, saying she wasn’t feeling well. I was sorry that I hadn’t been able to see her, as she was the person I was most looking forward to spending time with.

On our way back to Australia, Dallas and I stopped by the Landlord Office in L.A. to receive what were supposed to be our revised mission orders. The new Landlord told us, completely unexpectedly, that we were going to be posted at the Sea Org base in Sydney. We were shocked. When we asked when we were supposed to return to California, he said never, that Sydney was to be our new Sea Org post.

It was so out of the ordinary for anything like this to happen. More important, it was against Church policy. We hadn’t even properly terminated our Canberra mission. No one had even worked out posts for us or done transfers for the Sydney job. We expressed complete outrage at this development, but, in the end, we went to Sydney on the promise that we weren’t being posted there, that we were only on a mission and would receive our mission orders shortly. They never came.

We were in Sydney for two weeks, demanding to receive our mission orders. When that failed, we demanded to come home. It was at this time that I learned that my grandmother had passed away. She was found in her car, not breathing, in a mall parking lot. She was in a coma and never woke up. I was told that her death was a result of her emphysema.

I cried uncontrollably that day. It was horrible to think that I would never be able to see, hug, or speak to her again. It made me wish that I had spent more time with her during the time I had had with her. But I tried to reason that at least she was getting another, younger body somewhere without pain, and that she was happier.

We tried to get the Church to book us a flight back to the States for her funeral, but they wouldn’t get us home in time. My parents, however, were permitted to go to Florida to be at her service. I was devastated that I never got to say goodbye to my grandmother. I sometimes talked to her when nobody was around, just to say goodbye. But I don’t think she heard me.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

LOWER CONDITIONS

O
NE WEEK AFTER MY GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL,
D
ALLAS AND
I were told that we could terminate our assignment in Australia. We boarded a flight home, only to find our room at the FLO Base had been given to someone else. We had painted, carpeted, and tiled that room, on our own dime, but it been given away. Our new room on the seventh floor had really old, peeling linoleum floors and smelled like mold. There were little piles of sawdust everywhere, and a tiny dresser to serve both of us. The bathtub had clogged and overflowed, and hadn’t been fixed. The bed must have been at least twenty-five years old, because it creaked when you walked by. In spite of all this, we were happy to be home. As strange and unexpected as our year in Australia had been, it felt good to return to our lives. We knew that it would be difficult to give up some of the freedom that we’d had, but we assumed the adjustment would pass quickly. It didn’t. The adjustment was much harder than we’d expected, not just because of what we’d been through abroad, but also because the base itself was worse than it had been.

The next day, we had to be at the base by eleven in the morning and, from the moment we stepped out there, it was clear that things were tighter than they ever had been. We quickly learned that the base’s schedule had changed. There was no longer time for personal exercising; meal breaks had been reduced to fifteen minutes; Clean Ship Project—the only time during the week when we got to do our laundry and clean our rooms—had been reduced by two hours; and canteen privileges had been canceled, meaning we were not allowed to buy anything from the canteen, including food. The entire base was being punished with lower conditions and had been for three months.

This time, it wasn’t just me who had a problem with all this: Dallas was quite troubled by it as well. More than was the case before Australia, he and I were on the same page about the Church. When we finally got our standard post-mission sec-checks, I was a little surprised when Dallas confessed that we had been watching movies and other programs, which was unfortunate. I had decided to offer as little as I could in confessionals, especially in matters the Church could not possibly know about, but Dallas’s obedience made it futile. During my own sec-check, I was asked to estimate how much org money we had wasted by being unproductive and squandering our funds, so I calculated three months of rent, plus bus fare and the cost of food. That was just how confessionals worked. If I were to say the org wasted its own money and that we had actually made them $75,000, I would have been asked for more withholds.

Bad as things seemed to have gotten on the base, the March 13 annual celebration for L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday offered us a clear look at just how bad things really were. For events like this, we were expected to sell new or updated releases of LRH books or congress lectures to the public using the sales patter, “cash or credit?” During these sales pushes, we
had
to make our sales quota, which was always impossible, and this year, the whole crew of five hundred people stayed up all night at the Shrine calling around the world to get people to buy the lectures. If we weren’t on the phone, we were told to get busy. No food or water was available, and we weren’t allowed to get any. Security guarded the door, making sure we didn’t leave until seven-thirty in the morning.

Some people did manage to leave early, like a seventy-year-old woman with emphysema, who left at three in the morning. However, such people were dealt with harshly at the next day’s muster. They were called to the front of the group and reprimanded, told that they were despicable and that their behavior was disgusting. They were put onto a punishment of scrubbing a Dumpster, inside and out, for an hour. For the next week, we were warned that if any of us walked one step out of line, the whole group would be put on boot camp, cleaning Dumpsters.

After the release of the new congress lecture, each night at eleven, the whole base would assemble in the dining area and listen to audio tapes. Each tape was at least an hour long, and was preceded by a lecture on how unethical we all were and how we had better listen to these lectures, so we could learn what Scientology was all about.

During the lectures, the supervising staff would walk around, noting who was falling asleep. The next day, their names would be published for all to see; they then would be assigned to Dumpster cleaning. It was a constant struggle to keep all my friends and Dallas awake at these tape plays in order to keep out of trouble.

Seeing all these people sleep deprived and exhausted, I found myself thinking of our fund-raising experiences in Australia, and the fact that here—just like there—the emphasis seemed to be much more on making money than caring for people or sharing Scientology. In fact, the welfare of the Sea Org members appeared to be the least important thing. To some extent, I’d noticed this before, but Australia helped me to see just how crucial this search for money had become to our duties in the Sea Org.

Looking around, I saw that the small realizations we’d had in Australia had a big impact. Suddenly, everywhere around us, we could see not the rules we had to obey, but the freedoms they made us give up. Shortly after we arrived, they began asking via written questionnaire if anyone had a cell phone or had spoken to ex–Sea Org people, or had an Internet connection that was able to view anti-Scientology websites. At the base, computers were kept in a locked room and key holders required special clearance from OSA. The computers had been loaded with software that blocked known anti-Scientology websites. We were told very clearly that, if you failed to report anything, penalties would be high.