Ensifer

Los Gatos, California 2010 – Summertime

Two days before my 60^th birthday I was sitting in the chapel of the Church of Scientology of Los Gatos. The reason me being there was remarkable is that I walked away from the Church of Scientology almost three decades ago. I hadn’t been in a Scientology building for 28 years until that Sunday earlier this year. The occasion that day was a memorial service for my mother Dolores. She had died earlier in the month. June 6^th, to be exact. Same day as my father’s birthday and the kick-off of the Normandy invasion… D-Day… in 1944.

Dolores Stokes. At Saint Hill around 1966. Just beautiful.

I wasn’t uncomfortable being in a Scientology Church. I’m rarely uncomfortable around people, Scientologist or not. But I was stunned a bit. Not the kind of stunned where you reel back, gasp loudly and lose focus on your surroundings. It was the kind of stunned where you sit there and think – Well, fuck me.

My brother Wally was giving his version of a eulogy for my mother. I call it “his version” not to be snide. It was his version because essentially the eulogy was an abbreviated synopsis about him and our mother. The stunning part was early in the monologue when he told the story about how our mother had helped him as a young boy to overcome asthma by getting him some auditing. Which, of course, eliminated the asthma forever.

The problem with Wally’s memory of that event was that it never happened to him. It happened to me.

That’s why I had a “fuck me” moment. This person was standing there, emotionally, telling a story that was false. And tearing up over it. So, to correct the record – here’s what really happened.

Dallas , Texas 1961 – Summertime

In the summer of 1961, when I was 11 years old, Wally and I were staying in Dallas with my mother. She had been involved in Scientology for a couple of years at that point and was the significant other of a man named Red Shea. He had started a Scientology franchise in Dallas and that was where Wally and I spent a lot of our time during the visit.

Red and my mother took us kids to see “101 Dalmatians”. During the movie I had a severe asthma attack, a regular occurrence for me as long as I could remember. Those who have never experienced asthma simply need to understand one thing to imagine what it’s like – you simply cannot breath. You work your chest and lower abdomen, drawing deeply from inside trying to force oxygen into your lungs. Sitting down is scary and the idea of laying down is beyond frightening. Standing or walking is preferable, often bent over, hands on thighs to help facilitate the intake of air. I got up during the movie and went out to the lobby, gasping and wheezing as I worked to suck in air. The attack made me nauseous and I ended up in the bathroom throwing up.

My mother and Red were solicitous and a bit shaken by the severity of the attack. The other thing I recall from that evening was feeling better when we got to her apartment and she fed me some chicken noodle soup. The next day mother said that if I allowed Red to do some Scientology auditing on me there was a good chance the asthma could be eliminated. What was I going to say? I was 11 years old. Wally and I lived with my father in El Paso and he was married to a supremely evil woman. By supremely evil I mean she put us through a grind that some of you Sea Org members might think of as an RPF for kids, replete with terror, starvation and liberal applications of a leather belt on bare asses. Being asked if I wanted someone to help me was like asking a man dying of thirst if he wanted his water ice cold or room temperature.

I told my mother that I absolutely wanted the auditing.

So Red did a few sessions with me. Sorry auditors, I have no idea what he ran. Probably some Dianetics because one thing I do recall from the sessions involved me as a baby, crawling on a floor sucking in dust and other fine particles off the wood planks. After a couple of sessions I felt different. Not cured different. But intrigued different. Frankly, not many 11 year old kids are introspective about why things are the way they are. And even fewer of them are put in a situation like mine. Red was an imposing man and my mother was the epitome of an urban, cosmopolitan woman of the era. The Dallas Scientology Center was vibrant and populated by types of people that I had never been around. Artists, musicians, svelte women in black, clingy turtleneck sweaters, men who wore desert boots with slacks and worked at mysterious jobs. They laughed, smiled, joked and above all – they did not ignore me. Think back to when you were 11, how would the attention of adults, who sincerely seemed to view you as something other than just a kid, have altered your self-image?

I began the process of actually thinking about “me” and why I was the way I was as opposed to thinking about “me” and what I wanted or didn’t want.

The fact is… I didn’t have any more asthma attacks after the auditing. Not that summer, not the next, not even the next few decades. It was gone. Handled. And you can bet your ass that had a huge effect on me. It’s not like Scientology auditing was all I thought about, more like I wanted to know more about the intoxicating atmosphere, edgy people and excitement that pulsed through the Center. I did read one or two basic books. Not Dianetics, I was 11 and any of you who have actually read Dianetics know it’s slow going and a challenge for most adults.

So how did my brother, a Scientologist for 44 straight years, end up thinking that what happened to me had actually happened to him? I don’t mean for this initial entry to be an indictment of Wally. Not that I really care. After all, he did appropriate my experiences and use them in a public manner to eulogize someone I actually do care about. Instead I view what happened at my mother’s memorial as sort of a super-truncated example of how the Church of Scientology has transformed from the excitment, enthusiasm and honesty of the earlier era to the sort of slick, greedy and image-conscious corporation it has become today.

Mercifully, the memorial service was short. Wally had never once used the word “love”. In fact, I was the one person there who turned around in my seat and told the 20 or 30 people attending that I loved my mother and would miss her. I may have a prejudiced view here, but it seems to me that the personae the contemporary Scientologist is expected to exhibit does not include demonstrations of ‘wog reality’. So missing a recently deceased person might be frowned upon because only their body is dead, they, of course, are immortal and will return soon. Probably as the child of a nearby pregnant Scientologist who isn’t currently receiving PTS handling or being routed to Ethics.

What’s wrong with saying that you love someone who recently passed away? Particularly if that someone is your mother? The absence of the word in a setting where you would most expect it is perhaps one of the more subtle, but telling, aspects of Scientology today that separates it from the usual human experience.

So, there is a little synchronicity to how my first visit back to a Scientology organization tied in to the events that brought me into the fold to begin with. Yes, it’s true that having your brother hijack one of the most significant experiences of your life and then tell people it happened to him is just a little weird. But it’s a unique kind of weird… the kind that makes me want to tell the story as it really happened.

That’s what I’ll do. Over time, of course. Slowly no doubt. And I’ll throw in my interpretation of how I saw things from a time and place that most of you missed. I guess it’s fair that you missed my personal Scientology because I (thankfully) missed the one that happened after 1982. So we’re even. Right?

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