by Sands Hall
He placed a stubby pencil between the battery and the gauge to represent the affinity. “So Suzie and Joe talk about a lot of things. They’re communicating.” He twined a broken rubber band around the two items to indicate all the talking that was going on. “That’s C. And they decide on R, reality: lunch at noon on Friday at the Map of Oregon Restaurant.”
The map was between our seats. He slid it onto the dashboard to represent both the reality and, I gathered, the restaurant. He placed Suzie Battery on the map.
“So what they have, you see, is understanding! They understand that they like each other. They also share an understanding there might be a future there. For understanding, there must be all three things: affinity, and reality, and communication. It’s an equation: A + R + C = U!”
Cars flew past on the freeway, making Jamie’s hatchback rock in the wind of their passing. Around us stretched the late-August, dun-colored fields of northern California. He tapped the battery on the map.
“So Suzie arrives at noon on Friday at the Map of Oregon Restaurant with the reality that Joe will join her. But Joe doesn’t show up at noon. He doesn’t show up at quarter past. Suzie waits until one o’clock! That’s how high her affinity is!”
“But not anymore!”
Jamie was describing us: I was always early; he was always late.
“And why?” he said. “Because Joe didn’t show up when he said he would: reality.” He didn’t communicate, letting her know he was going to be late. So her affinity is way down.”
“She’s furious.”
“That’s because there’s a break in understanding. So here’s the thing. If there’s an upset, no matter how big or small, it always means there’s a problem with at least one of those three things: affinity, reality, or communication. That’s an ARC Break.” Again the car rocked as a semi roared past. “But Hubbard shows us how it can be solved. How do you think that happens?”
I shrugged. “They talk. Duh.”
“Bingo! They communicate! Joe calls and tells her he was stuck on the freeway because there’d been a huge accident and he couldn’t get to a phone for almost three hours!”
“That’s not why you’re always late, Jamie. You’re late because you don’t ever take into account the time it takes to actually get someplace—”
“Beam me up, Scotty!” he crowed. “The world should work like that: leave where I am and bang”—he snapped his fingers—“be where I’m going. That will happen when I’m truly OT.”
Jamie’s description of being an Operating Thetan made me think of Eastern religions: the yogi on a remote mountain pinnacle who knows someone’s going to show up even though there’s no way he could have that information; the woman who has cobras weaving and spitting at her yet doesn’t get bitten; the man in a turban sitting cross-legged on a carpet zipping around above the rest of us. The yogi, the woman, the turbaned man so adept in their spiritual paths that they can “operate” their bodies and the world around them.
“Of course, you can solve the upset by finding other ways to get the affinity back,” Jamie said. “Or other ways to bridge the reality gap. But usually it takes communication.”
He replaced the objects in the glove compartment and lit a cigarette. We sat in silence. As someone who could be mesmerized by the metaphor—the “demo”—of just about anything, I made hay with the ribbon of pavement unspooling ahead, the tired fields on either side stretching into the distance.
“So, as I was saying.” Jamie blew smoke. “What we have here is a major ARC Break. Because my reality is that Scientology works. And that is not a reality for you. And in spite of a lot of communication, it’s affecting our affinity. Do you see?”
“I can’t believe one religion has all the answers! It’s so—right-wing! It’s impossible!”
But for a moment I was back in the ED’s office, sidling toward the e-meter, picking up those cans, watching the needle slam to the right.
“It’s not impossible.” Jamie sighed. “It’s the Bridge to Total Freedom.”
“And what do you mean by ‘freedom,’ Jamie! What do we need to be freed from?”
“Well, you won’t understand all that until you get on the upper levels. When you study the OT materials, you’ll get what a mess we’re in. It’s secret stuff. If you read it before you’re on the upper levels, it’ll make you crazy . . .”
I rolled my eyes, as I did every time I heard the idea that there were materials so upsetting that just reading them before you were properly prepared could make you psychotic.
Scientology’s “confidential materials” did seem to be kept confidential, but little bits got through. For instance, I understood that we’d once had vast powers, now diminished. Early on, I’d even heard the name of the terrible despot who’d done the diminishing, and for a few minutes, even though I knew it was absurd, actually tested my mental waters to see if psychosis was setting in. Something called the Wall of Fire was clearly important. The rest of it? This was pre-Internet, so the Church was largely able keep those bizarre materials in hand. But I truly believe, no matter how intriguing and even useful I found some of the Tech, that if I’d known the weird details—somewhere between sci-fi and a horror movie—that you learned on those upper levels, I’d have fled. There’s a reason these materials are kept confidential. You don’t study them until you’re indoctrinated, or so settled into friendships and community that it’s hard to be the one who questions, who points out that the emperor has no clothes.
“. . . and the only way to regain our full potential is to move up the Bridge so we can escape all this.” Jamie threw his arms wide, taking in the freeway, cars, fields. “MEST—matter and energy and space and time? Scientology provides the way out.”
I touched his arm. “I kind of like MEST,” I said, though I knew what he was trying to articulate. “I like the sun. I like my skirt.” I moved my fingers against his wrist. “I like your skin, which is pretty full of matter and energy and all that.”36
I always surprised myself when I did this sort of thing, and I did it often: hopping back in the suitcase just as the lid opened enough for me to slide out of it. Why did I not seize these clear opportunities to leave? I think part of it, early on, was driven by a misapprehension of how huge a role Scientology played in Jamie’s life. Certainly, at the time, I had no idea of the power wielded by his religion. And I wanted to not have been wrong, to not have made, ignoring the warnings of parents and friends, a mistake. I wanted, desperately, to believe in the happy-ever-after I’d chosen.
He ground out his cigarette and started the car. “Your reality and mine are far apart on this one. Our affinity helps—”
“And we talk a lot.”
He gave me a look, amused but dismissive, and pulled back onto the freeway. “Yes, we communicate. But the reality is a problem. You need to explore Scientology, Sands. Once you start, you’ll understand. It’s the only way.”
I stared out the window. It was true that a lot of it did seem to make sense. That A + R + C = Understanding, for instance.37 That seemed kind of irrefutable. Or the connected notion that a “break” in affinity or reality or communication caused problems.38 The idea of spirits (thetans) activating bodies. That unexplored, reactive parts of your mind make you behave in irrational ways. The Dynamics and the way they ordered a messy universe. Taking responsibility for your overts and “getting off” withholds so affinity could flow back in.
And that meter, those cans, which in my hands had definitely responded to something.
a comb, perhaps a cat
So in spite of blaring, honking, red-light-pulsing signals, Jamie and I continued down the road toward marriage. My parents, aghast at the abyss I was intent on throwing myself into, nevertheless cast a wide guest list, held the reception in our family home, and for the occasion rented Queen of the Snows, a Catholic church whose vast soaring windows framed Squaw Peak.
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A number of Jamie’s friends, in a kind of Merry Prankster endeavor, drove from LA in an old school bus. In the hubbub, Jamie’s family arrived: his parents, his brothers and their wives, and Brooke, his five-year-old niece, who’d be our flower girl, all blinking as the hustle and din of creating a splendid Hall gathering swirled around them.
Was my brother there? I don’t remember. I think he was back in Albany; Capital Rep was producing his Frankenstein. I think I’d remember him at the wedding. I’d remember his mangled, mocking face. It would have been a sweet mocking, the way he answered the phone: How clichéd it is to answer a phone, yet here I am answering it. How clichéd it is it to get married, yet here you are, getting hitched, as I once did. How clichéd it is to be a brilliant writer who dies young, yet here I am—well, not dead, but . . .
The night before the wedding, we all gathered around a long table in the Annex, a house my parents had recently purchased, just down the hill from their own. Cornish game hens were passed, wine poured, toasts offered. I picked at the tiny bones, before slipping away to the upper house, where I sat at the piano and played a few notes.
All this effort was being made on my behalf! No matter my parents’ feelings about the groom, the wedding would be worthy of a Hall. Because they loved me, they were doing everything to support my decision.
It was my decision.
I put my forehead on the piano keys in a smoosh of dissonance. I should call it off. I should go back down to the Annex and tell them all I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please go home. Forgive me.
Sitting there on that piano bench, I wrestled with the huge angel of certainty that told me the marriage was wrong. I walked back to the Annex. All eyes turned to me as I came through the door. How I wish, how I wish, I’d taken that moment to stand firm and say, “Thank you all so much for the love this represents, but I’m calling it off.” But I didn’t.
like tracy, and Brett, too, when she got married, I wore our mother’s wedding dress, a form-fitting fall of white satin with a sweetheart neckline, a hundred covered buttons running down its back to a small, elegant train. By the time my sisters and Aunt Joan were helping me into it, my father had consumed quite a lot of Jim Beam. Fitz, the son of some good friends, offered to drive us to the church. As he opened the car door, I realized he was actually trembling with the honor this to him represented. It brought me up short. These were supposed to be precious final minutes with my father, with my soon-to-be-ended unwedded life. I remember Fitz’s eyes in the rearview mirror, worriedly taking us in—Dad and I didn’t say anything in those five minutes alone in the car.
A few nights before, Dad had told me that when the priest intoned, “If anyone knows why this man and this woman should not be married,” he was going to leap up and shout, “I object!”
But Jamie and I weren’t using traditional vows. We were using ones written by L. Ron Hubbard, and there was no clause that made room for objection.
The pastor was a friend of Jamie’s, Mark, who exuded vast energy and a twinkling sense of humor. An OT IV, Mark was Jamie’s spiritual senior. We’d met with him to talk about marriage, including the “hats” that (according to LRH) husband and wife were to wear. Quite traditional, in many ways they described my parent’s marriage: husband provided house; wife, home. I was dismissive. I knew how to do this! I had the best family in the world! It would take years, and the weddings of many friends, before I understood that such a conversation is not only commonplace, it is important.
Over his robes, Mark wore a Scientology cross, whose eight arms represent the eight Dynamics. When someone asked me, “Why a cross? Was someone crucified?” I had no answer. But it made me wonder: Had Hubbard simply borrowed that icon to make his religion more acceptable? I shook the thought away. But in my memory, as my father walks me down the aisle, that cross hangs glittering from Mark’s neck, a yard long and a foot wide.
Hubbard’s wedding oaths include an admonition to the husband that “girls” need “clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them.” He reassures us girls: “Hear well, sweet, for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him that you have necessities and follies too.”39 Although it makes me gag now, to none of it, at the time, did I allow myself to pay attention.
The assembled group watched with something between horror and amusement as Jamie offered his right hand and I worked hard to push the ring onto that ring finger. No doubt they assumed Scientology purposefully used the opposite hand for its marriage ceremony. As we turned from the altar and began the walk back up the beautifully decorated aisle, I tucked my arm under Jamie’s and pulled him to me in a kind of weird triumph.
Over the years I’ve turned this moment over and over, like a snow globe that might offer up a different image if shaken enough times. Even then, the gesture seemed to embody more than happiness at being married, in a white dress, to the man I loved. The exultation—this is mine!—seems more complex: perhaps to do with bucking expectations, including the books I read, the friends I chose, the shape and size of my body, even the thoughts I had.
In any case, as far as my parents were concerned, by marrying a Scientologist, and, eventually, by becoming one, I did the one, the only thing that could hurt them, an accusation they leveled at me for years. Only recently have I been able to examine the truth of it. Perhaps my attraction to Jamie was, in fact, attraction to something that wasn’t part of the vibrant, bohemian world handed me by my parents: spirituality, even, in fact, religion. Maybe, thinking of my brother and their response to his accident—would they still love me? no matter what?—I was testing their love. Maybe the whole endeavor was a querulous demand: Accept me as I am.
I’m heartily sorry that was the choice I made. But I’m finally able to see why I might have made it.
in yet another act of sweet generosity, considering her view of the marriage, my mother not only booked us a room in a nearby hotel that overlooked the Truckee River but provided a darling nightgown full of ribbons and lace. But Jamie, unused to the amounts of alcohol that flow merrily at any Hall gathering, fell across the bed and straight to sleep. The next morning his back was out. Surly, unshaven, hungover, he evinced no enjoyment of the present-opening brunch. Much earlier than planned, he insisted we leave for our honeymoon so we could stop in Sacramento and track down a chiropractor. It was a Sunday, which made this project both tedious and arduous.
His back was out! The day after our wedding!
I’d pushed the wedding ring onto the wrong hand!
The metaphoric content flashed like brightest neon. Yet even though both my family and Scientology thrive on examination of such obvious connections, Jamie and I didn’t speak of it. As we ordered our first dinner together as a married couple, he said no to a bottle of champagne. Even so, and even as he radiated disapproval, I ordered a glass of wine.
As forks scraped across plates, emphasizing the terrible lack of conversation, I thought of the stories my mother had told me of their wedding night, involving champagne and laughter and, of course, sex. Which only emphasized the bleak nature of our own nuptials.
It struck me that Jamie might not know the meaning of “nuptials.” But I erased that thought as soon as I had it. Overt. Withhold.
The next day, Jamie slept late and woke cross. With his back still out and aching, we lay side by side in the little cabin we’d rented. He was not a reader, but, in an effort to establish ARC with my dad, had asked, if he did have to read a book, which one should it be? After flabbergasted consideration, Dad suggested Huckleberry Finn, which, during our honeymoon, Jamie dutifully attempted to read. Alone, I took long walks through trees dropping late-October black-spotted leaves, trying not to think about my mother’s shocked voice: “How can you marry a man who doesn’t read?”
He does read, I’d wanted to say but didn’t, because the only thing Jamie r
ead was Hubbard.
After two somber nights—we’d booked the cabin for five—we headed to LA so Jamie could get to his chiropractor. As we joined the clog of traffic making its way south, I could think of nothing to say. A horrible truth had dawned: The marriage was an error.
Although we tried for more than a year to pretend otherwise, I think we both knew it.
my mother mailed envelopes stuffed with articles, sent to her by well-meaning friends, describing the outrages attached to Scientology. “How about this horror,” she scrawled in her lovely, slanted handwriting along the columns of newsprint. My father sent typed postcards with ironic phrases about what he’d dubbed the “Evil Empire.” At one point my mother—my yellow-dog Democrat, left-wing, liberal mother—told me: “You could have married a black man. You could have married a Jew!” Her voice rose in pitch and intensity as she outlined the increasing horrors each of these options represented. “You could have married a psychiatrist! But you married a Scientologist!”
I remember holding the phone with both hands as the room around me began to spin. Halls didn’t talk like this! We weren’t racist, we weren’t anti-Semitic! I wanted to laugh—was she joking? But it was clear she was not. I had to sit down and, as that nurse had told me to do outside the ICU after seeing my brother post-accident, put my head to my knees.
One of the reasons I held on so hard through the bucketing difficulty of those eighteen months of marriage (among other things, Jamie, a night owl, worked at his office all night, which meant that he usually climbed into bed about the time I was steeping my morning cup of tea) was that fantasy of us as a songwriting team. I wrote a few lyrics celebrating our love (our souls like sea and shore entwine), and many more expressing doubt (waking up this morning with our love in disarray . . . wonder if they’d lock me up if they could see my heart . . . don’t say the magic’s gone). But it was a fantasy. Jamie had made it clear he no longer wanted to perform. Also, sometimes, when I’d sit with my guitar, working on a song, I was aware of a faint impatience. Once, when I caught a flicker of disdain cross his face, I pressed him.