by Sands Hall
I not only understood her concern, I shared it. Nevertheless, I held on to my intention to marry Jamie as if it were a bucking horse and I the most determined of riders. I would not be unseated in spite of knowing I could—should—let go, fall to the ground, dust myself off, and get the hell out of the corral. As often as I felt this, however, I also felt the opposite: This was destiny. He was the perfect man for me. Finally, the love I’d thought and talked and sung about for so long had arrived. The curve of his capable forearm, the blond hairs glinting there, allowed me to shrug away the incessant smell of cigarettes, the ubiquitous black cloth shoes, the religion that swirled through every aspect of his life.
But we fought, a lot. I obsessively watched other couples, wondering if they argued as much as we did. Did they have issues to “confront”? Did they stay up all night and “handle” (with some piece of Hubbard’s Tech) whatever had cropped up between them?
The pages of my journals during this time vacillate between grave doubts, grateful musings that we’d found each other, and wondering if (as I scribbled on one page) “I’m going to have to look into Scientology.” Yet I continued to have a problem with Jamie’s assertion that it was the “only workable system.”
I asked what he meant by “workable.”
“I’ve told you about the Dynamics, I’ve told you about ethics, I’ve told you about Admin Tech,” he said. “These are just a fraction of the ways Hubbard has ordered life into parts that anyone can understand—and he offers ways to fix things when they go wrong. No other religion does that. They rely on vague things like prayer, meditation. Do those things work? Maybe sometimes, but not always. Scientology is a system. It works. Always.”
Around this we circled and circled, at the kitchen table after breakfast, in his car driving home from a gathering of his friends, on a beach watching happy people (were they really happy?) tossing a ball. I see, now, that I was arguing with the idea that I was going to have to dive in.
“You talk about the chaos, Sands, it ends the chaos.”
I remembered the predawn moment in my New York apartment after I’d heard that my brother had fallen from a bridge and mashed his skull, when I’d put my forehead to the floor, praying to something. Ending the chaos was very appealing.
we set the wedding for October. I wanted to use the Squaw Valley house, as Tracy had when she got married. I wanted to wear Mother’s satin wedding dress, as Tracy had also done.
Why the rush? Mother wanted to know. Why not wait until spring, when the wedding could be held outdoors? Tracy and David’s wedding had been a magnificent party. Why not do the same?
But Jamie and I were both in a strange hurry.
That summer, 1982, we headed to Oregon to visit his family and friends. We spent almost a month on that trip, and sometimes I wondered lazily if all this time away from my own friends and family, and with so much talk about Scientology, was a kind of indoctrination. Perhaps because we did some camping, it reminded me of those eighteen months in Europe so long ago, when it was just family, for months and months, and how it had solidified us as a family.
One afternoon, as Jamie and I pitched our tent near a lake, a terrible headache took hold. It stretched from my lower back, up my spine, and across the crown of my head—ganglia of outrageous pain. Jamie, like all Scientologists, didn’t approve of aspirin or ibuprofen, and I seldom used them either—ancient family injunction—except to relieve cramps when I got my period. But I’d never had such a headache. I knew it had to do with Scientology, the pervasive thing it was becoming as we headed toward marriage. Jamie and I talked about that as well. He was so understanding, so very kind as we (in a journal I refer to it as that fucking Scn phrase) “handled” it.
We also visited his parents, who lived in a double-wide. They’d once had a lovely house, Jamie explained, but when he and his brothers moved out, his parents downsized. I fretted: My in-laws-to-be lived in a trailer? What would my parents say!
One morning, as I was helping with dishes, his mother confided, “Jamie’s been a Scientologist for almost ten years. We so hope you’ll pull him away, but we fear it will be the other way around.”
As Jamie and I drove up the Oregon coast to visit musician friends, I pressed myself against the passenger door, wishing I could slide out and hitchhike back to Los Angeles. But I’d given up my apartment. I’d moved in with Jamie the month before.
“What is it?” Jamie said, several times. “What is going on?”
“Nothing. Stop asking! Nothing!”
He grew quite stern. “You’re acting like you have a withhold, Sands. Your affinity for me is way down. Do you need to tell me something?”
The implication, of course, was that I’d committed an overt, because a withhold is what manifests after you’ve done something wrong. As the sour day went by, I realized what it was: His mother had criticized something he held dear. And I hadn’t defended him!
I didn’t want to have a withhold. I wanted to be good. So I coughed up what she’d said.
“Flunk!” he said, furious. “Major flunk!” He asked for details, “wearing his auditor’s hat,” as he termed it, meaning he did not interrupt or challenge or contradict. I understood this was what happened in an auditing session: getting every little bit of the overt expressed so that nothing was left to fester. It made sense. Kind of like irradiating cancer cells so they could creep no further.
That night our “affinity” was back. We laughed with his friends, crawled happily into the bed they provided, made delicious love.
“You see how getting off that withhold made things okay between us again?” Jamie whispered. “That’s Tech. It works!”
I saw that it “worked.” But soon after, we tangled again. And again. Back at his parents’, I searched for what I might have done this time. All I could come up with was that I was nervous about Scientology. In fact, it terrified me.
“That’s your parents speaking, not you,” Jamie said sternly. “You care too much about what they think. It’s your life!”
I utterly saw his point. And yet. What if I had the same thoughts as my parents, but they were still my thoughts? Wasn’t that possible? That my concerns might be valid even if my concerns were also theirs? It was exhausting to think about.
I allowed as how their life seemed kind of lovely; what might be wrong about emulating it? Books and dinner parties and friends and laughter and wine and music . . .
“That’s all surface stuff,” Jamie said. “There’s a lot more to life, to really living.”
It seems like good surface stuff, I didn’t say. Yet I knew what he meant: it was that Sisyphean, existential nightmarish possibility: Man always is, but never to be, blest.
“But Scientology costs so much. Where’s the money go? What if there’s something, ummm, not so good about that part of it?”
“Those are lies,” he whispered, fiercely (his parents were asleep down the hall). “Your mom and dad are feeding you these rumors, this terrible, evil, black PR. It’s not a greedy, moneymaking enterprise! Hubbard is trying to make this planet a better place for everyone!”
He’d gone on in this vein. I tried not to listen. I’d decided. As soon as we got back to Los Angeles, I was calling off the wedding.
how much electricity?
The next day, our final in Oregon, we visited the Delphian School, where a friend of Jamie’s was the executive director. Still chafing from our fight the night before—we’d gone to sleep without resolving it, which was easy to do, as his parents insisted we sleep in separate rooms—I said, snottily, that I’d heard it was some kind of “Scientology school.”
“Sure, it’s founded on Hubbard’s ideas,” Jamie said. “But it’s not like they study Scientology. They just use the Tech to help them learn.”
I shrugged and stared out at the passing Oregonian green. Unexpectedly, Jamie took a hand off the wheel and twined hi
s fingers into mine. After a long moment in which I wished I was on the deck of my parents’ house, laughing over a glass of wine with them, I squeezed back. I did envy his certainty, and that of his Scientology friends. I couldn’t imagine being that certain about anything.
Delphi’s executive director escorted us around the school’s property, describing its mission and vision. There must have been buildings, as the place was built in 1933 as a Jesuit novitiate, but in my memory it’s a vast acreage of empty fields and ominous-looking wooden outbuildings in disrepair. What existed of the school so far—course rooms, dormitories, kitchen, dining and living areas—appeared to be contained within a single three-story house.
The ED’s office was nestled in a corner room on the ground floor. Its two large windows, shaded by trees, created a space that felt dim and green. Beneath the windows stood a desk, and on the desk was an e-meter.
Jamie had told me about the e-meter, the electrometer, and I knew it had to with auditing.32 It worked like a lie detector, he said, but was “much more precise.” Auditing, Jamie said, involved holding a tin can in each hand, which were connected to the meter by wires. The smallest bit of electricity was passed from the meter through the wire to the can in one hand, and the electricity then sought its way, through the person’s body, to the can in the other hand. En route, the electricity, and therefore the meter, could find and read reactions—“charge”—the person might have about whatever subject was under discussion.33
It sounded fascinating. Still, when Jamie first explained it, I’d asked, a little horrified, “How much electricity?”
He assured me it was infinitesimal. “Just enough to detect where you’ve got ‘charge.’ Usually it’s attached to fear or grief or anger. There’s stored energy there, and the auditor helps you find it—the needle on the meter bumps or jumps. It’s amazing to see it happen!”
So I’d heard about the e-meter, but this was the first time I’d seen one. As Jamie and the E.D. continued to discuss the enterprise the school represented, I squiggled my way slowly to and around the desk to peer at it.
It looked fairly innocuous. An oval of blue plastic, the surface of which was slanted up so as to be visible, held a couple of dials and several oval windows, one of them rather large. That must be the meter. Yes. There was a needle, relaxed completely to the left. A glowing red light indicated that the meter was on. Next to the e-meter were two silver cylindrical objects, which did appear to be nothing more than slim tin cans, including a kind of charming galvanized seam.
I reached for them. My heart thudded. As I wrapped my palms around them, the needle in the meter bumped. And in a test of everything I’d been hearing about auditing, about Scientology, about this thing called “charge,” with conscious intention I pulled up an image of and concentrated my thoughts on Mother. It would have been the visages of both parents I summoned, as I felt they were pretty much in agreement about everything.
The needle didn’t just bump. It slammed to the right.
Oh my! It worked!
I’d heard enough about “charge” to understand that I had some regarding my parents. And the meter could “read” that charge! It was astounding to witness.
As if the leap of the needle had been audible, the ED turned and took me in with a curious smile. I put down the cans. I didn’t know, then, that he was probably examining the fact that he was going to have to report himself. He’d not been diligent, and someone, a non-Scientologist no less, had accessed his e-meter. The next time he was in session, this lapse (overt) would come up. Even if he was solo-auditing, as one learned to do on the upper levels, he’d have to write up what the meter read. His best recourse would be to report it and assign himself an Ethics Handling. This is conjecture, but knowledge of what an auditor may assess from the behavior of the e-meter’s needle, and an understanding of the built-in consequences, teaches one how to think and behave.
Gestapo-ian though it is, it has its positive side: If you know it will come up in session, you tend not to tell even a white lie. You leave the stray dollar where you found it, you do not make eye contact with the attractive man, you are “unreasonable” when someone quibbles with the Tech. As my dad put it, “Guilt is good.”
As Jamie and I bumped our way back down the potholed road, I said nothing. I didn’t want to describe what I’d seen, didn’t want to discuss this forcible proof of what he and his friends had been saying: the e-meter’s ability to recognize areas that might inhibit one from working to one’s full potential. What if an auditor and an e-meter really could help eliminate such blockages, so one could live a fulfilled and happy life? And what of Jamie’s insistence about Hubbard’s altruism? The night before I’d rolled my eyes. But as I held a hand out the open window, palm riding the summer air, I experienced a moment of vast and illuminating possibility. What if it were all true? What if Hubbard did have the best possible intentions? What if rumors to the contrary were nothing but, as Jamie put it, “black PR”?34
That night, I stared out at a moon that hung like a Christmas ornament from a high branch. Okay, maybe the e-meter did help you track down moments of charge and release them, thereby making you a more highly functioning person. But what if that little dose of electricity addicted you to the Church? What if those wires floated some kind of elixir through your corpuscles? What if it wasn’t really a desire for everyone to enjoy the state of Clear that motivated Hubbard to design the e-meter, but a far more insidious purpose?
And yet, that moment with the e-meter indicated that it was possible to explore the “charge” I clearly had where my parents were concerned. What if Scientology was the “only way” to release their hold, to find my own purpose, to live life happily?
I buried my face in the pillow.
the next morning, as Jamie’s mother placed an aromatic breakfast casserole of eggs, ground beef, and cheddar cheese on the sunlit table, Jamie confronted her about what she’d said to me, about hoping I’d get him to leave the Church.
“Don’t you dare try and drive a wedge between us!” he said, his blue eyes stern and cold. “This is our spiritual path.”
I was horrified. Why would he bring this up? Also, it wasn’t my spiritual path!
Even as I was touched by that “our.”
His mother looked at me, her face baffled and hurt, and went back to putting squares of casserole on flowered dishes. I felt awful.
Later, Jamie and I tangled about it in the hallway: “You didn’t have to tell her I told you,” I whispered.
“Of course I had to tell her!” He did not lower his voice. “I will not be reasonable! Our comm lines have to be kept squeaky clean!”
Again I tangled with Hubbard’s reverse engineering of “reasonable,” a word that had always designated (and no matter how hard I tried, always would) a positive attribute. Sometimes, grappling with how it was so good to be unreasonable, I felt like I was being asked to use, Alice in Wonderland–like, a flamingo as a croquet mallet.35
When Jamie’s genial-faced father peered around a doorjamb to ask if we needed anything, Jamie stomped away to finish loading the car. I stayed out of the kitchen, although I wanted to fall to my knees on the linoleum and apologize.
As soon as we’d finished waving goodbye, Jamie and I argued for a dozen miles and sat in silence for fifty more. Arms and legs crossed, I stared out at the undulating grasses through which we were passing, twitching back and forth between the strange certainty I’d reached the day before and all the fighting we did, sure evidence of our unsuitability.
What if—oh my!—I became a Scientologist and didn’t marry Jamie?
I gave a ghost of a laugh.
“What,” Jamie said.
“Nothing,” I said, folding my arms even more tightly.
As we passed from Oregon into California, Jamie spoke. “We have a major ARC Break going on here.”
The letters are said separately�
��not “arc” but “A-R-C.” I understood that the term meant something like “disagreement.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, sulky. “And why all this lingo!”
“Nomenclature,” Jamie said.
This was Hubbard speaking. I’d begun to see that words like “nomenclature,” “gradient,” “obfuscate,” and even “crepuscular”—Jamie’s use of which, early on, had deeply impressed me—were part of his vocabulary because they were part of Hubbard’s.
Jamie put on the blinker and slowed to pull off to the side of the freeway. “Musicians use terms that others might not understand. Actors have a special vocabulary, right? Well, that’s nomenclature. ‘ARC Break’ is Scientology nomenclature. That’s all.”
I thought of gatherings with his friends, how sometimes I could hardly understand what they were talking about, except from context. Often it sounded like a distinct language. Language connects people, of course, binding us into a uniquely shared world, while also serving as a barrier, separating us from others. It would take a long time to realize how Scientology’s vocabulary, its nomenclature, abetted such binding, and how purposeful Hubbard had been in creating it. I knew then only that the orderly aspects of the religion were deeply appealing, helping me sort through a terrible, consuming confusion. It’s difficult, now, to confront how, during this search for meaning, I chose to overlook, even ignore, the larger and very troubling ramifications of this belief system. Flunk.
As Jamie would sometimes say, “Major flunk.”
Jamie cut the engine, opened the glove compartment, and began to pull out various objects. He intended to “demo” the concept for me. No matter how troubled or irritated I might be with him, this always managed to move me. His desire to help, to explain, to “save,” was so earnest. Also, I approved of the “show, don’t tell” aspect of it all.
He held a AAA battery on his open palm. “Here’s Suzie Battery, and she and Joe Pressure Gauge”—he held up the gizmo used to check the air in the tires—“have recently met. There’s a lot of affinity swirling around them, okay? That’s the A.”