Before I had an opinion of God, I had an opinion of Ron, and my opinion of Ron Almighty was high. I had grown up in the Org and there was hardly a room I entered that did not have a photograph of him on a desk, or hanging on the wall. There was hardly a room in any Scientology Org, anywhere in the world, without a photograph of him in it. Just as government departments favour photographs of presidents, Scientology departments favoured photographs of Ron Almighty. The two most popular were the pensive pose (hand resting on upturned palm with a faraway look in his eyes) and the nautical pose (foot resting on the railings of his ship, and a different faraway look in his eyes). The first picture reassured me with its serene wisdom, and the second with its kick-assness. In my considered opinion, captaining a ship while saving all of our souls was pretty cool.
As the founder of Scientology, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was referred to in a number of ways. There was just ‘Ron’, used by Scientologists across the world in an affectionate way: ‘I was reading Ron’s policy letter on ethics and he just blew my mind!’ To my young mind, part of the attraction of being a Scientologist was to speak in a language only we could understand. It was like being a member of an exclusive club.
When affection was not appropriate, when something crisper, more authoritative, was required, ‘LRH’ was used: ‘You are out of ethics! Go and read what LRH has to say in his policy letter.’ A translation for a wog would be, ‘You have done something to transgress the ethical or moral code and you are a very bad boy.’
If you were a member of the ‘elite’ Sea Organisation or one of his hand-picked messengers, you could refer to him as ‘The Commodore’ or ‘Commodore’: ‘Commodore says, “Flunk, your ethics are out. Change your condition and apply the tech”.’ A further translation would be, ‘You have transgressed the code, you are at a point somewhere on the Scientology scale that is appropriate to your current state, do something to change that state by applying Ron’s technology – or you’re a very bad boy.’
If the Commodore ever flunked you, you were in deep shit.
Reserved for special occasions – just as ‘him’ becomes ‘Him’ and ‘he’ becomes ‘He’ – were ‘The Source’ or ‘Source’, and the first time I heard one of them used was at the Org by Mother. I looked through an open doorway into the only properly furnished office in the Org and asked her, ‘Mom, why does Ron need an office here? Why is this room reserved for him? He’s not here – he’s overseas. Why is there a packet of Marlboros on the desk with one of the cigarettes poking out as if it’s being offered to someone? Why is nobody allowed in this room? Why is this velvet rope across the door?’
‘It’s so that The Source can appear at any time, in any Org, and start working,’ she replied.
‘Any Org? You mean there is an empty office waiting for Ron in every Org in the world so that he can just walk in, sit down and work?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s awesome!’
I was a Sea Org member. Not only could I wear a blue lanyard but I could say ‘Commodore’. We arrived on the Scientology ship and I was assigned to live in the forecastle with the ship’s engineers. I was going to be an engineer by day and study Scientology courses at night. I was even called an engineer as I mopped floors in the engine room on my twelve-hour shift. My fellow engineers were in their thirties and forties and I was sixteen. They tolerated my unhappiness for three months before kicking me out. With my engineering career over I was transferred to the deck, where I scrubbed, painted and spliced. I hardly ever saw Mother. Even though we lived on the same ship we rarely came into contact. She was an officer, and I was not; she ate in the Officers’ Mess, I didn’t; she worked inside in a room, I didn’t; she audited celebrities, I didn’t.
The ship was a gathering of Scientology’s best auditors, of which Mother was one. If a Scientology celebrity wanted to cross The Bridge slightly faster than normal folk, the ship was the place to do it. With monotonous regularity the celebrities came and went. The bowing, scraping and arse-kissing would begin. Singers, actors and musicians. With enough money to buy the expensive services of the best auditors, they were treated like – well – celebrities. They were assigned to a well-furbished section of the ship with a nice cabin, a restricted lounge, and an exclusive dining room. All the versions of Important Persons arrived. The normal IP, the very IP, the very very IP, and the get-down-on-your-knees-and-kiss-the-ground-I-walk-on IP. I did not have enough hate in my young body for all of them. Every self-important celebrity I saw conjured up images of war memorials where the Admiral is listed at the top and the ordinary sailors at the bottom, as if the death of Admiral Smith was more important than the death of Seaman Smith.
I lasted six months on the deck and was kicked off. I had given up doing Scientology courses at night; I just wanted to go home. The ship was berthed under the local airport’s flight path and, at night when I should have been studying, I watched planes disappear. I yearned, I craved, to be leaving. When the plane disappeared I looked around and was still there. There were still rats running up the hawsers and I was still tying a bowline with the small rope in my hands. My bad attitude was embarrassing Mother and being noticed by everyone. I did not seem to realise how happy I should be. I was living within spitting distance of The Source and yet I was constantly angry. I was a negative influence in the midst of the universe’s most positive people; and it was not OK. I was transferred to the galley to wash dishes.
The ship had four main meals with a few hundred people at each meal. Wearing industrial rubber gloves, and with a huge basin of boiling water in front of me, I had just finished the dishes from one meal when the next meal began. I lasted three days. In the second defiant act of my life, I walked out. ‘I want to go home.’
My revolt reached the Ethics Officer in record time. ‘Get back to your fucking post, you little prick.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Get back now, you fuck, or I’m throwing you overboard!’
‘I want to go home.’
I was picked up and thrown overboard. Oddly enough, I wasn’t scared. I knew I could swim and I knew they would have to give in. While I treaded water and repeated, ‘I want to go home,’ and the Ethics Officer raged down on me, I could see the jellyfish nearby but thought to myself, I wonder if there are sharks?
I was sent home in disgrace but the last version of ‘home’ had already evaporated. Mother was still overseas and I could not stay with Gran because I was not allowed to ‘ever darken the doorway’ of the relative’s house she was lodging in. The last option was Keryn, but she was leaving the country. I slept on the floor of her tiny flat, waved her goodbye, and was officially homeless.
A person adapts and a person survives, but inevitably the lines get blurred. Very wrong becomes partly wrong; partly wrong becomes almost right; almost right becomes necessary; the referee is hunger. I was always, always hungry. A single meal a day was good, every two days was average, every three days was bad; subsistence theft became a means to an end. The only thing thriving in my bitter heart was rage. By night I slept under trees and by day I slept in libraries. Besides starving, I was always tired. It was late when I looked for a place to sleep and very early when I had to start moving. My uncomfortable nights barely eased my fatigue. My first thought was food, and the next was sleep. Libraries became my retreat of choice. A comfortable chair was the perfect place to pretend to read but really to sleep. Often I was thrown out. When I was awake I read whichever book was near. There was no particular trend. The book closest to the most comfortable chair suited me just fine. Yesterday it might have been Pruning Roses, today Magic Tricks, and tomorrow Great Buildings. I actively avoided any books on religion. If I saw the word ‘Church’ my mind filled in ‘Of Scientology’ and I felt physically sick. If someone had explained away my situation by saying it was ‘God’s will’, I would have punched them.
I earned money wherever I could and knew the inside of every employment agency in the city. Even walking in through the privileged door – the one labelled ‘Whites only’ – did not help. What was your highest schooling? Oh, I’m sorry – we do not have a vacancy at this time. How much experience do you have? Oh, I’m sorry – we require someone with experience. In my childish handwriting I wrote aptitude tests: If a man leaves the station at six and travels in an easterly direction, while another man leaves a different station at two and travels in a westerly direction, what colour is the apple in the paper bag? I stared at endless questions and saw either a plate of food or a blank space. I couldn’t write a neat sentence yet I could write a book entitled Theft, Hunger & Lies.
I spent a day in a government-sponsored vocational guidance centre. Several interviews and many tests later I was told by a fat, bored woman that I was stupid. ‘Sorry,’ she said, somewhere between lunch and tea, ‘you do not have the intellectual capacity for further study. Stick to manual work.’
I was neatly filed between all black people and all intelligent people, and sent ‘home’. So sensitive was I to being thought stupid that I convinced myself – and tried to convince everyone else – that I was brilliant. I could quote the entire Ballad of Reading Gaol – and often did. When I finally reached the end, ten minutes after beginning, my victims were numb with boredom. Not only could I quote Oscar Wilde, I was Oscar Wilde. I tried saying clever things but without having anything clever to say.
Occasionally I did get a job but, from the very first day, I wanted to leave. An hour in the HR department for filling in forms, a few minutes in the manager’s cubicle for the welcoming speech: ‘Welcome. We’re a happy little family here; we go the extra mile for each other; we work hard and we play hard,’ and then on into the factory for my career in stacking jam tins. At tea-time – fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the afternoon – everyone would rush into the canteen to talk about sex. The only young, good-looking man, basking in being the centre of attention, would writhe on his back on a cheap plastic table, open his legs, and mock his latest conquest in a silly falsetto voice: ‘Deeper, deeper, give it to me deeper.’ The middle-aged men would laugh too loudly and surreptitiously rearrange their penises to hide the growing symbols of their envy. I would flee. A day, a week, two months. Another lie would slip easily out of my mouth: ‘Something’s come up, urgent family business, so sorry to inconvenience you.’ Lie upon lie stacking up to mask the real truth: If I stay here, I will die here. A hand will reach into me and switch off my soul.
I was trying to look after myself but I was failing in every respect. I was spiralling downwards and doing things a teenager should not need to do. My downward spiral eventually stopped at the worst hour of the worst day of my life. I was lying on the floor of a police station; one man was kicking me in the stomach and another was punching down on my head, while a third was talking on the phone. ‘Prepare a cell.’
The best thing about the worst day of your life is that it is the worst day of your life. The day after the worst day of your life is a slightly better day. My bad wolf was one bite from devouring my good wolf – but it did not bite. The upward spiral was initiated at first by simple compassion from a compassionate man: ‘No, don’t take him; he’s just a child – I will look after him.’
But so what? A teenager did not get the life he wanted – is that so bad? In a world, a country, where nine-year-olds raise families, where three-year-olds cry themselves to sleep on the corpses of their parents, is it a reason to be crippled by bitterness? Yes. Yes, it was.
Everyone was the enemy; everything made me angry. Mother had come home for good and I did not give a shit; she came home without Three and I did not give a shit; she married Four – another Scientologist – and I did not give a shit. All I cared about was nurturing my anger and stoking its flames. On a terrible, disrespectful day, I summoned as much sarcasm into my voice as would fit. ‘Would you have preferred to bypass the nappies, and education, and dreary tedium of raising children? Would you have preferred to give birth to an eighteen-year-old Scientologist with similar interests? Would that have been more convenient for you? Would that have been less work?’
‘Don’t you talk to me like that,’ she shot back.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m your mother,’ was the biting response.
And out it came. The horror, the horror; the rage, the rage; the tsunami of self-loathing; there was simply no stopping it. ‘What? What? You’re my mother? Oh, really! What fucking mother have you ever been? Fuck you! Fuck you! Gran was my mother – you’ve never been my mother – all you’ve been is selfish! Since I was born it’s always been about what you want to do. Fuck what happened to us! Fuck how poor you’ve made Gran! Fuck my schooling! Fuck my future! Where the fuck have you been my whole life! What have you done with my life! Fuck you . . . Mother . . . Fuck you!’
The Bridge to Total Freedom – Progress Report: I didn’t trust my temper around Scientologists. Just as well I did not own a bulldozer.