Lonesome Squirrel
by Steven Fishman
18: We Always Deliver What We Promise
During my marriage, Jaime and I used to celebrate Halloween by turning on the sprinkler system when the trick-or-treaters got just about halfway up the sidewalk to our house with their darling little lantern baskets. It was always so cute to watch them get drenched and soaked, as well as to predict in which direction they would run. You should have seen the shock on their tiny faces when we activated the auxiliary faucets and set the dogs loose on them. Those were the days.
But now that I was sadly alone and living in a sterile condominium, I was thrilled about my invitation to Fred Hare's advanced Halloween lecture at the Mission which he called "Ghosts Are Only Thetans."
The purpose of the speech was to help eliminate any indecision on the part of tottering preclears over the time-worn subject of spending money for auditing. It was absurdly difficult to believe, but there were actually people out there who were more concerned with hanging on to their useless cash than in going up the Bridge!
"We will no longer need money one fine day in the very near future when the planet is Clear", Fred prefaced eloquently. "In the meantime, we are forced to get into bed with wog governments and their artificial currencies backed by nothing more than a lick and a promise, in order to soon be able to set everyone free from the degraded physical universe."
Minister Hare always knew how to saturate my eyes in pathos and tenderness.
Fred also knew how to handle the trick-or-treaters that knocked on the door of the Mission for candy. He would talk them into buying a "Have You Ever Lived Before This Life" button for a quarter, and if he had a real hot prospect of about six or seven years old, he would convince him to buy a "Way To Happiness" booklet for a dollar. No raw meat off the street was too young and innocent to be exposed to the vitality of the Third Dynamic. Kids are nothing more than old thetans in new bodies anyway. Even if the children did not have any money to help push up the stats, Fred was quite good at convincing them to donate their candy to the Mission Parish.
So while Fred and I were joyfully munching on some Gummy Bears, he handed me a communication which had come in the mailpak from Ken Shapiro at the American Saint Hill Organization in Los Angeles.
It was a letter from Gabrielle Kusvitz Johannes!
She wrote, "I am curious about how you are related to my late husband, since I thought all of his family were killed during the war. How did you get my address? Mr. Kusvitz died thirty-eight years ago, and nobody has ever inquired about him until now. Let me know when you are planning to visit French Polynesia and I would be happy to meet with you. With best wishes, Gabrielle K. Johannes."
"Well, I'll be damned!", Fred Hare exclaimed. "How about that!"
I was in such shock that I could not keep my knees from trembling.
"How in God's name did Ken Shapiro ever find her?", I gleamed.
"By postulate!", Fred answered smugly.
I had to sit down and catch my breath, since the flow of excitement was too much for me to tolerate. This wasn't like the kind of crap that I was pulling on Sunsurei. This was real!
After a while, Fred came out with Bookstore Officer Barbara Koster, who was wheeling Fred's wife Dori around the Mission like a psychiatric nurse.
"Barbara has a surprise for you too!", Fred whispered surreptitiously.
"How would you like the L. Ron Hubbard Library of the Freewinds to be named after you?", she asked.
"What? I don't deserve anything as remarkable as that", I chortled.
"There might be a way that you would!", Fred interrupted.
"Yes, you could be the one and only Library Patron of the Freewinds!", Barbara smiled. "You'll have a room named after you."
"Well, I would love that", I theorized, "but Ron produced over five thousand reels of tape, and I have only been able to find seventeen hundred of them. You know, I've been to Flag, to Bridge Publications, to New Era in Copenhagen, and I think that I have every lecture that is currently available for sale! I've got eighty-five thousand dollars sitting in my account just waiting for someone to find more tapes for me to buy, so it's not as if I can't afford it!"
"You've already got the third largest private collection of Ron's books, reels, and cassettes on the planet", Dori observed from her rickety chair, "but being anything less than number one is not good enough, considering your Battle Plan to Clear the planet."
"Fine, but where are the other thirty-three hundred lectures?", I demanded. "Why the hell can't I buy them?"
"Frankly, Steve--- about fifteen hundred reels are confidential", Fred revealed. "Most of them will be unavailable to you until you join the Sea Org."
"Okay, I want to do that too!", I said with raw causation.
"The rest of the lectures contain materials covering the OT levels, and you'll be permitted to buy those when you attest to the upper states of awareness on the Bridge", Fred continued.
"So I'll be allowed to purchase those eventually?", I pleaded in optimistic despair.
"Oh, absolutely!", Fred cheered.
"That still leaves another eighteen hundred reels that should be available to me right now!", I calculated.
"And that's the good news!", Barbara gloated. "I can get them for you right away!"
I became so enthralled that I bit my lip, got an erection and could not breathe, all at the same time.
"From where?", I asked convulsively.
"We are going to make a call to Janell Allbach, the Director of Sales and Orders of Golden Era Productions!", Barbara shouted with glee.
"You're doing very well", Dori coached her.
"Who is this terminal?", I asked with numb curiosity.
"Oh, you're not going to believe our good fortune!", Barbara added. "Janell is one of the top management executives at Golden Era, and has agreed to manufacture the tapes from the original master recordings! She is going to have the lectures recopied just for you! Isn't that wonderful?"
I could hardly believe it. Was I really so important that someone so high up on the Org Board as Janell was would actually take the time out of her busy schedule of Clearing the planet to help me become the owner of the largest collection of Source Data in the entire world? I could hardly contain myself. In fact if you must know, I had an uncontrollable case of diarrhea.
"If this keeps up, I'll have to start depending upon bladder control diapers", I warned myself.
Janell Allbach was absolutely a living doll. I could have kissed her right through the phone, whether she looked like a dog or not. Her voice was full of intention, and her postulates made my spine tingle with theta bops. It was hard to believe, but this dedicated darling was out there helping me to become the Library Patron of the Freewinds, undeserving though I might have been.
"Mock up the gold-plated plaque which reads "The Fishman Library" upon the door of Ron's Source Room on the Freewinds", Janell commanded via long distance.
"Now touch the engraving, but don't get your fingerprints all over the metal", she cautioned like the love of my life.
The excitement of the Ship was so real that I saw myself doing head stands on the gangplank!
"When will these tapes be sent to me?", I inquired of Janell.
Fred, Dori and Barbara all started to laugh boisterously when I foolishly and unnecessarily started worrying about such cockeyed nonsense. I was such an asshole to be concerned with "details."
"Haven't you ever heard of Senior Policy?", Janell giggled.
"Senior Policy?", I repeated. "What's that?"
"We always deliver what we promise"94, she quoted passionately.
Writing out eighty thousand dollars worth of checks to the Church of Scientology was by far the happiest day of my life. I was even now eligible to order some special plastic tape boxes to put the reels in, which was only forty-five hundred dollars more.
"Everything will be perfect for you, Steve!", Dori encouraged. "You don't have to worry about the cardboard boxes that the tapes are shipped in. You will have fresh, shiny plastic boxes which are all the same exact size, texture and weight!"
I went out on a limb and bought a Kroy label maker for sixteen hundred dollars which had an electronic keyboard on it so that I could make my own labels and organize the Library in numerical order according to the Sea Org Tape Inventory List which was made up especially for me by Ken Delderfield, the Commanding Officer of Archives who had replaced the suppressive Gerry Armstrong when he became a squirrel.
Since the Miami Org received twelve and one half percent of the eighty-four thousand five hundred dollars that I spent on the reels and boxes, they agreed to make a big party for me, provided I brought the doughnuts myself. I received a standing ovation for three whole minutes of thunderous applause. Consequently, I was so moved by all of the praise and merriment that I was thoroughly unable to tell whether more water was coming out of my eyes or my ass.
Vicki Kirkland, the Certificates and Awards Officer of Miami, presented me with a "Public Person Of The Week" award for the week ending November 6th, 1986. It was handwritten in gold leaf with an ornate, florid scrawl on black oak tag paper, and it was the most fabulous presentation anyone had ever given me since I saw my daughter's first stool sample. I was eligible for the certificate as a "public person" despite my staff contract, because I did not receive a weekly paycheck. That was a lucky break, wasn't it?
The weekly stat graphs for the Mission were up so dramatically that they had to be drawn all the way along the wall and onto the ceiling. That week was truly the most stupendous interval of my life. All of my valences, or synthetic multiple personalities, began doing different dance steps at once in celebration of my success. Harry Sebakovitch threw me in the middle of a tango, wreaking havoc upon my spleen. I never thought it was possible for me to be so deliriously ecstatic again after that sad day when Ron dropped his body that I loved so well. But as Janell had profoundly pointed out, it was the Admiral's own postulates which made all of my successes come true. Imagine finding the wife of my former identity and ordering the missing tapes of Source, all in the same day? It was unfathomable!
As the Miami Public Person of the Week, I was given the rare privilege of cleaning Ron's office at the Org. Carefully, I took my shoes off and tip-toed quietly in there, armed with Glass Plus and Murphy's Oil Soap. Frank Thompson confided in me later when he said that in the twenty-nine years since the Miami Org was established, no one had ever made the Founder's office sparkle the way I did, which was indeed a feather in my hat. I felt like kissing him on his beard when he said those awesome words, but I didn't want him to get the wrong impression, especially since there were so many gay guys at the Miami Org already. I was simply thankful for his recognition and benevolence, that's all.
I was Fred Hare's hero too. With the Mission's commission on my eighty-four thousand five hundred dollar tape sale, he now had enough money to relocate the parish to bigger but less expensive headquarters on Andrews Avenue, one door away from where it used to be. For the very first time in my life, I felt worthwhile and supremely loved. I wished that I had ten million dollars to give Fred Hare, as I truly never knew just how much admiration wog money could buy!
My sex life improved instantaneously, just as Nancy Witkowski said it would when I made the advanced payment for the tapes. Dusty and Lisa became more readily available to me, now that they were both hopelessly addicted to crack and needed an ongoing flow of extra cash. They even wanted to see me more than I had time to see them!
It was odd to observe Lisa and Dusty smoke that lethal drug. They did it by popping a hole in the side of a soda can and then by burning the crack rocks on the top of it with a match. What kind of pleasure could there be in that? Boy, wogs sure act funny. On one occasion, neither of the girls had any soft drink containers, and I freaked out when Dusty made a move for my E-Meter cans! I swore she would use them for her dope over my dead body! I pacified her by driving to the 7-11 store and buying some Pepsi. It was outrageous watching her spill the beverage out into the sink, just to be able to use the aluminum can as a smoke stack! I thought that I was going out of my mind as I exteriorized and took notice of the sickening way by which these subhuman drones were operating in life.
I learned quickly that it was not advisable to wait until after Dusty and Lisa were high on their rocks in order to sleep with them. Once the cocaine was in their system, they wanted more and more of it, and all of their promises to let me screw them went flying out the window while they were "Jonesing", which was their weird street-term for craving more crack. From that point on, I insisted upon laying them first before giving them the money, since an addict has no sense of ethics whatsoever. I was glad that we at Scientology never admitted compulsive people like Dusty and Lisa to any of our Orgs. It would have been our very ruination to become involved with trash like that.
I rapidly became repulsed by the gruesome drug scene, and I was headed for a collision course with depression when I received a surprise call from Ken Shapiro, my Case Supervisor from Saint Hill.
"Are you still wearing your Briefing Course Officer shirt?", he kidded.
"Even in the shower!", I vowed. "What's up?"
"There's a group of our guys from Scientology Missions International who are doing a Missionaire Survey in Tahiti", he disclosed. "Why don't you meet up with them and while you're down there, you can check out your late wife Gabrielle? We could really use the Success Story."
"She's not my late wife", I corrected. "She's my late body's ex-wife."
"Well, can you get away for a week?"
"Hell, sure!", I affirmed. "There's nothing keeping me here but a couple of dizzy underage floozies who really need to enroll in Narconon and do the Purif!"
Ken subsequently told me that Gabrielle lived in Cottage Number 12 on Rue Haapiti-Papetoai, located two blocks south of Club Bali Hai at Cook's Bay on the Tahitian Island of Moorea, which was entirely different from the address on Gabrielle's letter.
"Did she move from the City of Papeete?", I inquired.
"I guess this must be her summer home", Ken indicated.
"It's almost December!", I reminded him.
"Well sure, but it's always summer there, I guess", he echoed.
"I suppose she can afford two houses after going through a couple of dead husbands", I replied.
"Now, I want you to be nice to her, Steve!", Ken prompted. "No sour grapes after all these years."
"Just plenty of sour milk!", I scowled.
On the Qantas flight to the South Seas, all I could think of was whether I could actually find her, and if I were able to, would she recognize me even though I was in a different body? I knew that I had to release her from her guilt of poisoning me, and at the same time I had to free myself from the anger of being victimized.
Club Bali Hai was a truly exquisite resort, with each suite extending over a floating lagoon. Nevertheless, it was a sad place to be alone, as it was principally frequented by honeymooners and adulterers. I felt like throwing caution to the wind, leaving my body forever, and oozing off into the sunset. Just standing there frozenly morose, I tried to postulate myself into a Body Thetan attached to a Polynesian belly dancer's button when I was suddenly once again distracted with undying Junior High School lust.
I fell in love with a thirteen year old named Judy Loughlin who was walking along the beach in the moonlight, as pure as the driven snow. Her father was a real estate salesman at the development and she had nothing to do all day except to collect shells and grow freckles. From my seaside cabin overlooking a dormant volcano where the Emperor Xenu probably played with himself too, I watched her like a salivating bloodhound, fantasizing about the love of this young damsel which unfortunately was never consummated.
"Why the hell did I waste my teenage years being a nerd and a geek?", I asked myself retrospectively. "I could have seduced pretty little things like her if I had known the ropes back then."
Judy was quite a contrast from the little old lady who opened the door of her second floor walk-up at Cottage 12 down the coastline. Her place looked very clean, almost as if she never actually lived there, despite the fact that she had two itchy alley cats in the bungalow.
"Could I have truly once been married to this old hag?", I asked myself soul-searchingly. Gabrielle didn't look at all like the magnificent young creature that lived within my mock-ups. At first, she was slightly reluctant to talk to me after I informed her that I wasn't exactly a real relative of Mordecai. Laden with more wrinkles than a retired Sea Org galley cook, Gabrielle skeptically invited me to sit down in a tufted wicker trundle divan which was the interesting color of phlegm green. Claustrophobically surrounding me were an abundance of hyper-allergenic vines of bitter vetch, suffocating and clinging to the remnants of an alpaca rug that should have been best left in Holland.
"If you're not a part of Mordecai's family, then who are you?", she asked in a thick Dutch accent that sounded as if it were partially tainted with a fake French drawl.
"I don't think you would believe me if I told you the truth", I mumbled covertly.
"You are American, yes?", she smiled.
"From Florida", I said specifically.
"Oh, yes!", she brightened up. "That's part of California. I have read all about it."
"No, it's a different state with a similar climate to this place", I smiled, trying to build affinity without invalidating her wog education.
"So why are you here to see me, young man?", she inquired with her hands clasped.
"Oh, God!", I whispered. "Where do I begin?"
"Would you like something nice and cool to drink?", she offered.
"No! Nothing!", I screamed as I thought of how she poisoned me during the last time I saw her. My reaction really shook her up, I think.
"So then what do you know about Mordecai?", she pumped with determination.
"Does the number 291427 mean anything to you?", I inquired.
"No, I don't think so", she responded in bewilderment. "Is it from a Swiss bank account?"
"Why, did I have one?", I reacted impulsively.
"How should I know about your business?", Gabrielle replied in a very flustered manner.
"No, 291427 has nothing to do with money", I explained. "It was the number tattooed on your husband's arm by the Germans when he was in the concentration camp."
Gabrielle gave me a strange look, trying to analyze how I came upon that information.
"Yes, that's what it was", she recalled. "It was on his right arm and that was the correct number. How do you know about it?"
"You won't believe me if I told you the truth", I shrugged.
"Ah, so you are making a study of what happened to the prisoners during the war for your degree in sociology. You look like one of those book worms from an American university like Oxford", she snorted.
"No, that's in England", I volunteered.
"You don't sound British at all", she stumbled. "Well, in any case Mordecai didn't ever talk to me about those horrible years under Hitler. The Dutch people suffered too, you know. We both came to Tahiti to forget about it. It was much too painful for him especially, so I'm afraid I can't be of much use to you for your project."
"Can I ask you a personal question?", I continued.
"Why stop now?", she stated with some hint of sarcasm.
"Do you have any reality on who you were before this lifetime?"
Gabrielle shook her head as if I were mad.
"I am nearly seventy-five years old and what worries me is what will be coming after my life is over, not what happened before it began", she said anxiously. "Anyway, what does this have to do with Mr. Kusvitz?"
"Because I am your husband in a new body!", I revealed.
"Oh, you are crazy!", she shrieked, throwing her hands up in the air. "You are a hippie on drugs!"
"No, just hear me out!", I begged. "I can tell you everything that I recall about you. Your maiden name was Von Mierers. I used to call you "Gubby", do you remember that? We had a beautiful little house on Chemin Vicinai Patutoa. Our dog was a beagle named Geldrop. You had a brother named Ruurd from the town of Oosterbeek in the Netherlands. I have an excellent memory, even for a dead person! Your favorite restaurant was "Le Petit Mousse" on the Papara Wharf, and in fact that is where you met Lars-Kristoff for the first time, wasn't it? And you married him after I died, after you poisoned me with---"
"Get out of my house!", she screamed in agonized terror. "You are the Devil, telling me things like this!"
"No, lady, I'm not from hell. I am no illusion. See? Real skin and bones. I came here to forgive you, not to get into a big fight over the past!"
"My husband died from stomach trouble!", she insisted. "He had ulcers from the war. I stood by him until the doctors carried him away."
"I don't doubt that, but can't we just be honest with each other?", I beseeched her. "Nobody is going to prosecute you for what happened in 1948. I'm not here to cause you any trouble."
"No, just to give me a heart attack with your lies!", she stormed. "Why don't you be honest with me? Tell me how you came to know the name of my dog? Well, lots of people knew everything you spoke about. You must have known Lars-Kristoff before he died six years ago. Yes, that's the answer. Ha, I was married to him for thirty-two years. Of course, that was it! He always took me to "Le Petit Mousse" for dinner. So now that you have made a fool out of yourself, please just go away!"
"You let that bum take you out to our favorite restaurant?", I scolded.
"Go before I call the police!", she threatened belligerently.
"Lars-Kristoff was a home wrecker!", I yelled. "But he could never have told me about the first time we made love on the beach at Teahupoo Point, could he? But we both remember that very well, don't we? Nor would he have said anything to strangers about the brownish discoloration on your right thigh, one inch from your pee-pee hole. The birthmark looked like the letter "J", and I know you never forgot the big argument we had on the day I died when you threw your mother's antique vase at my face and hit the wall instead. You were cheating on me! Have you forgotten the words I said which made you angry?"
"Stop it!", she screamed.
"Now you can brag to the whole world that the letter "J" stands for Johannes!", I repeated after thirty-eight years.
"No more!", she begged.
"I'm not finished yet!", I cried. "You were sleeping with Lars-Kristoff while we were married! You smashed that heirloom into a thousand pieces; the only thing you had left from your dead mother! Look at me and deny it to my face! You had a very wicked temper, and that is why you gave me that milk full of strychnine! What was going through your mind as you were watching me die?"
Gabrielle looked at me as if she had seen a ghost. Her knees quivered worse than the benign belching volcano that I could see from her window out on Opunohu Bay.
"Is it really you, Mordie?", she choked as reams of tears flooded her withered cheeks that were badly in need of electrolysis. "You are so different, such a handsome man!"
"I wish some young girl would tell me that instead of an old witch", I thought to myself.
"Can you ever forgive me for what I have done?", she pleaded.
"Hey, it was your loss!", I sighed. "We could have had a good life together. I loved you very, very much. I carried your memory through death and beyond."
"You know, Lars-Kristoff used to beat me once in a while", she admitted.
"What did you expect when you married a chronic alcoholic!", I reprimanded abusively. "He was a damn drunk, wasn't he? He certainly wasn't worth murdering me for, no matter how sexy his muscles looked to you!"
"I was so ashamed of what I did after you died!", she wept in regretful profusion.
"Who's dead?", I laughed. "Do I look like a corpse? I never could stand the sight of milk as a baby, that's all. It's no big deal. I forgive you. We all make mistakes, right?"
I gave Gabrielle a big hug, and we both cried in each other's arms for hours upon hours. Her life with Lars- Kristoff had been no picnic.
Way into the night we talked about Scientology, and Gabrielle was fascinated with my life and how I came to find her. She went to a dresser bureau and showed me an old picture of the two of us taken in 1947.
I was an ugly son of a bitch, with an unsightly wart on my nose. No wonder she did me in. Who the hell could stand to sleep with a guy who looked as fucked up as that?
On the positive side, I know that I definitely added ten years to Gabrielle's frail life. I absolved her from all guilt of having committing the murder, and above all, she now had a good, solid reality on her own immortality as a thetan. She confessed that she had been terribly afraid of dying and going to hell for what she did to me. I assured her that hell did not exist, and therefore going there was not only unnecessary but also impossible.
It should be said that Gabrielle and I became extremely close friends; not as bodies, but as thetans. Together we had conquered the trials and traps of time, and we truly helped each other to become more sane and more able, just as Ron had intended us to do.
Gabrielle promised to dedicate the remaining years of her life to learning more about Scientology. I asked her to write a Success Story and mail it to Ken Shapiro at the American Saint Hill Organization. I was exceedingly open with her, although I never told my ex-wife that I was the father of Jesus, since she had a bible on her table, a Crucifix above her front door, and a picture of my disinherited son on her dining room wall. The last thing I wanted to do was to overwhelm the poor old bag with more truth than she could handle in one day. After all, Nancy Witkowski taught me that an Antichrist always had to remain compassionate whenever it was not vital to the security of Scientology for me to be honest and direct.
On my stopover at Los Angeles on the way back to Florida, I gave Ken lots of glowing reviews from my trip to Tahiti. In my Success Story I happily wrote, "What magic it was for me to meet my wife from a previous existence in my current lifetime! If my plane to Fort Lauderdale were to suddenly crash and if my body were to drop down the emergency chute toward oblivion, my life would have still been very worthwhile due to the priceless awareness I attained by my mission into time. Miracles are the by- products of Scientology on the straight and standard road to creating a Cleared planet of freed thetans."
That was a pretty hot testimonial, huh?
Anyway, when I thought about Gabrielle sitting vacantly on the rocking chair of her front porch overlooking the blue lagoon, I was damn glad that I wasn't still married to her. The idea of having to get naked with a shriveled up, old Dutch droop made barfing a gallon of curdled cream seem like more fun than a whore house full of girl scouts. Nevertheless, the ancient biddy was probably quite nifty when she was a fancy-pants of seventeen.
Now do you see why bodies are so stupid? I came back for a second look at the woman I once loved and before I knew it, time flew by and her face turned to dog shit. What a gyp that all is! There is such a dark side to life, isn't there?
Human emotions can be equally as unpredictable too.
At the New Years Event on the 31st of December, 1986, I brought my Vivitar 35mm camera and innocently tried to take a picture of Fred Hare for my photo album, since he was my idol. As my mentor from the Guardian's Office, I even worshipped the ground he pissed on.
Unexpectedly, he flew into a rage, exposing all of the film to the light, and then smashed my camera to bits against the wall.
"That's a four hundred dollar camera!", I protested.
"You should have thought of that before committing that suppressive act!", he screamed.
Karen Staley, who was the Keeper of Tech of Fort Lauderdale, quietly pulled me over to the side in order to calm me down. I had bitten part of my thumbnail off in horror and it was bleeding down my knuckle without my consent.
"Fred hates to have his picture taken", she whispered with good ARC.
"No shit!", I yelled. "What the hell is he so afraid of?"
"There's a bench warrant for his arrest in California because he didn't show up in court", she explained.
"God damn those criminal wog judges, hounding a poor man like that!", I cried. "No wonder he was angry. He should have killed me for placing him at risk."
"Don't take it too personally", Karen added. "He's been like that ever since the Guardian's Office crashed. You can't take a thetan's post away without a little bitterness hanging in the balance."
Although I apologized to Fred, somehow from that point on he treated me as if I had some hidden evil purpose. In order to make up for my overt act, I donated two hundred dollars to the Mission so that Fred could buy a new addressograph machine. He expressed no emotion at my gesture, and never even thanked me. It was very hard to get back in his good graces. I assumed that his attitude came from holding a grudge against people who crossed him for over trillions of years and so my incident was nothing unusual. I only hoped that I wouldn't have to wait that long for his forgiveness.
In order to get my Ethics in better so that I would not be quite as offensive to people, I became more active in Psychbusting, which is a form of organized protest against psychiatry and psychology at their degraded events and conventions throughout the world.
The American Psychiatric Association held their meeting at the Sheraton Bal Harbor Hotel on Sunday, January 25th, 1987. The Citizens Committee of Human Rights President Dennis Clarke and his small army of Psychbusters from the Org were with me as we all stood in front of the resort with our protest placards, marching and yelling along Collins Avenue across from the yuppie Bal Harbor Shops.
Dennis' poster said "Psychiatry Kills", and I held up one that stated "Psychiatrists Do It With Rats!" It was also a lot of fun to spit at the SP doctors as they exited the building during their agenda break, although we were careful not to do that while the television cameras were running. I caught a lady shrink right in her left leg with one of my puke-bomb projectiles, and she turned around at me in a wrath of steamed anger.
"Come one foot closer, you ugly cunt, and I'll hit you right in your fucking puss with this poster!", I warned as I tried to spit at her again but missed.
"Get over here Steve!", Dennis ordered. "You've got guts and I admire that, but there is something more important that I want you to do than to start a fight with that aberrated bitch."
"Anything you say, Chief", I saluted.
"There is no one here who can speak Spanish!", he observed.
"Yeah, so?"
"Look over there!", he pointed. "It's Channel 23, the Cuban TV station. You're the only one amongst us who they can set up an interview with."
"But I studied Spanish in high school", I objected. "I'm not qualified to go on live television about the purposes of our protest!"
"Nonsense!", he encouraged warmly. "I saw your Preclear Folder.
You were Delfino Garcia, a Catholic Priest who was hung in the town square of Malaga, Spain, for having an affair with the Bishop's mistress. I read that whole report about your not being able to wear a tie."
"But that was way back in 1561!", I explained.
"So what?", he laughed. "Just mock yourself up in that old time valence and knock 'em dead, boy!"
My interview with the Latin news reporters was phenomenal. It made both the six o'clock and the eleven o'clock news, and I was issued an award by Bev Flahan for my "Very Highly Commended" contribution to the Psychbust. It is amazing how much you can recall from a past life when a hot dose of thetan adrenaline starts pumping foreign language pictures into your memory bank!
On the following day, I kept the momentum going by trying to bust my Cousin Sandra out of the crazy house at South Florida State Hospital in order to exploit her insane condition at the Psychbust, as a living example of patient abuse, but her psychologist Dr. Lenares refused to allow me to take her off the grounds under any circumstances. After six years of institutionalization, all Cousin Sandra thought about was how much she missed her mother's cottage cheese.
"Your mother didn't make the cheese", I explained. "It came from the Winn Dixie supermarket." She just didn't understand me and threw a vile temper tantrum. Her tolerance was gone after spending the last two thousand days of her life on Thorazine and other psychiatric crap.
Instead of Cousin Sandra, I brought a twenty-one year old part-time girlfriend named Susan Cohen. She had answered my personal classified ad from her prison cell at the Broward County Women's Detention Center in Pompano Beach. This happened before Steve Goldberg introduced me to Dusty and Lisa, when I was so depressed I felt like being baptized in formaldehyde. When Susan finally came out of the slammer, I was the first one she slept with. Even though she had lied to me about her true age and her gross weight, there was an element of savage desperation about a girl who had not been screwed by a man in six months, and I bravely took up the challenge as a grand sacrifice to hedonism. I felt like I was being bushwhacked by a wild, fat boar. Nevertheless, we stayed friends although we never had sex again. Susan was in and out of mental institutions, and her favorite one was the Hollywood Pavilion because it was coed and she had a steady boyfriend there with an eleven inch penis. At the moment, Susan was living at home with her promiscuously neurotic mother Cheryl, and she therefore jumped at the chance to go with me to the Psychbust so she could say some splendidly rude things about her psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Jones and his red Mercedes 450SL.
Susan was very vocal in her criticism of barbaric mental quackery, and turned out to be an excellent choice for a "victim of the psychs" to show off to the press. She told us scare stories about being in mental hospitals where patients were chained to the bed and spent two or three days stewing in their own bowel movements unattended. She had been committed three times, and every hospital was nothing less than a "zombie factory." Many of the psych ward orderlies were uneducated and very sadistic, deliberately spilling hot coffee on their shrieking straight-jacketed guinea pigs.
"What a rotten way to give someone AIDS!", I thought.
My hat was to document all of Susan's graphic accounts of psychiatric terrorism, and to write up a comprehensive Knowledge Report on her in order to present to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights as evidence. The net result was that we got a lot of good public relations out of that hefty raving lunatic. Just between us, I didn't give a good goddamn about what happened to Susan. She pulled all of that crap into her own universe by going into agreement with her psychiatric slavemasters.
According to Ron, mental patients were usually psychiatrists in their former lifetimes anyway, and they were getting a little payback as they dramatized their previous overt acts by now being the victims of the same evil which they once put there. Since that was the case, what was really important was the publicity, and crazy Susan gave us all plenty of that!
Dennis paraded me before the entire Miami Org, validating my excellent work in the field. The staff called upon me to make a short speech acknowledging the many successes of the Psychbust.
"My beloved Scientologists", I began, "as you may know, through our efforts during the last few days, the whole Cuban-American wog community knows about the evil of electric-shocking and drug-pushing psychiatry. We are finally starting to be at cause over the psych vermin scum! As a reward for my personal upstat, Dennis has offered me a permanent staff position in his Org which I must decline, due to my Battle Plan and specific solemn promises which I had made to Ron. But after my current work is done, I give you my word as a Kha-Khan and as one of Ron's Loyal Officers that psych blood will run rampantly in the streets, and those who are left alive will be hooked up to shock machines and addicted to their own brutal crack cocaine rocks in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Estates Project Force, for which I submitted the confidential plans back in 1984. As Dennis knows, our final solution to their plague upon mental health will be a grass roots response to their Dachau, their Treblinka, and their Auschwitz. The psychs will finally know what it is like to be on the receiving end of a Haldol enema and a Lithium colonic. I invite each one of you to be a part of the greatest push that mankind has ever seen in bringing the suppressives to their knees after seventy-six trillion years of misery and suffering!"
The applause could not be contained within the three minute minimum this time, and even Dennis Clarke came over to give me a giant bear hug. There was not a dry eye in the house.
"You are truly the Malchoot that I know and love", he said affectionately when the commotion was over.
Despite my overwhelming acceptance in Miami, the tension was steadily building between myself and Fred Hare in Fort Lauderdale.
In a surprise move, he and Denise Monce came unannounced to my apartment in their bid for me to contribute a fifteen thousand donation to the Mission. Apparently, Fred had the same nutty idea about establishing a Celebrity Center like Peter did!
"Have we traded a snake for a serpent?", I asked Fred rhetorically. "I was opposed to Peter's nonsensical notion of a Celebrity Center then, and I have not since changed my mind in the slightest degree."
"It was the only good idea that Letterese ever had!", Fred maintained. "All we need is fifteen thousand more dollars to pull it off."
"I can go into the bathroom and pull it off for free", I slurred annoyingly. "Anyway, the tape cycle with Janell took all of my money, but even if I had any left I wouldn't support such a stupid project."
"I can't believe your opposition!", Fred crowed. "You wanted to put together a Briefing Tour all over Europe and yet you won't help your own local Mission?"
"They are two distinctly different goals", I clarified.
"You are not a team player!", Fred said accusatively.
"Oh, God! You know that's not true from our old days in the Guardian's Office!", I argued. "I went to bat for you when everybody else was going down the tubes and selling you down the river!"
"Well why don't you come up to present time, damn it!", he shouted. "You walk around the Mission acting like some aristocratic elitist who thinks he is better than the rest of us because you can create money without working long, eighteen hour days. To hell with you! You'd better start watching yourself real carefully, because you are treading on very thin ice with me right now!"
"You sound like you're jealous!", I remarked.
"Jealous of you?", he laughed. "That's horse shit! I was one of Ron's closest friends. We worked together, ate together and expanded Scientology together. You never even met the Admiral. No, I would not trade my time track with yours for all the cognitions on the Bridge."
"Ron's postulates are with me right now as we speak!", I contested. "You know it and I know it. I represent the future of the Third Dynamic. You are nothing but a shadow of the past."
I felt that it would not be long before Fred Hare was going to get his revenge by throwing me into lower Ethics Conditions.
But how could he? I kept creating upstats!
I was right.
It started with a Repair of Past Ethics.
Fred accused me of violating Policy by maintaining good ARC with Dr. Geertz, in spite of the fact that Fred knew that Geertz was responsible for killing my daughter Rivkalleh.
"You don't give a damn about your dead daughter anymore than you care about this Mission", he insulted, striking a sore spot.
"Now that's a lie on both counts!", I objected. "As a matter of fact, I wanted to disconnect from Dr. Geertz but Dennis Clarke didn't let me!"
"Is Dennis Clarke your auditor now?", Fred barked. "What kind of stupidity is that?"
"No, but I am a Citizens Commission on Human Rights delegate, and Dennis is my Commanding Officer!", I explained. "He ordered me to continue gathering information on that Nazi bastard. I want nothing more to do with him, but my service to Scientology has to come first!"
"Those facts are not in your Preclear Folder!", he screamed.
"Oh, so now you are accusing me of making it all up?", I argued.
"I never told you to get Lavenda pregnant and yet you did that crazy thing, remember?"
"Look, Fred!", I yelled reproachfully. "Go ask Nancy Witkowski if you have any doubts about my integrity."
"I know what the hell is wrong with you!", he diagnosed. "You are in a lower Ethics Condition on nearly every dynamic!"
"What are you implying?", I snapped.
"Paul Laquerre wrote up a whole Situation Report on your dating prostitutes", Fred sneered. "What an ideal scene that is! The real father of Christ hanging around with sluts and whores. That is great public relations for Scientology, isn't it? And look at this entry right here! You had a cousin in Scientology named Lee Lipton, and he became a freeloader because your mother's brother is a psychiatrist who deprogrammed him!"
"Lee Lipton?", I repeated. "I haven't seen him since his Bar Mitzvah twenty-two years ago. I wouldn't even be able to recognize him. Where did you get this crappy data from?"
"Don't you think we know who your relatives are? Come on, you idiot! You were one of my Agents, for God's sake", he scoffed.
"I had no idea that my cousin was a freeloader", I protested. "If someone had told me, I would have handled him just like any other squirrel."
"And what about this uncle of yours, this Dr. Daniel Lipshutz?", he pressed.
"Oh, do you honestly think that I would have anything to do with a psychiatrist? Get real, Fred!", I challenged quasi-respectfully.
"Your uncle is not just an ordinary psychiatrist! He is an enemy agent of the World Federation of Mental Health!", Fred revealed. "The skunk is a Trilateralist and a consultant to the Council on Foreign Relations, and also a member of the Bilderberger Trust of Europe! He stands as a filthy symbol of the very group we are fighting to destroy through the class action lawsuits!"
"So I'll send him lots of junk mail!", I cried. "What does my uncle have to do with me? I'm a thetan, remember? Thetans don't have uncles. He is the uncle of my body--- he's not my uncle. Anyway, I haven't seen him in eight years, and that was before I ever became a Scientologist."
"He is working with the Nazi Geertz to destroy us!", Fred screeched. "Don't you know that? Are you that blind to reality?"
"You are fucking paranoid!", I clamored.
"Paranoid?", he seethed. "Now you're using "their" language. You're a plant! You're in Scientology to undermine us too! You've sold out to those criminal bastards! You've betrayed us!"
"Fred, you are completely crazy", I blitzed, gathering my things as I got ready to walk out of his office.
"No! It is you who are the insane one!", he ranted madly. "I absolutely forbid you to go another step on the Bridge until you have yourself certified sane!"
"You want me to do what?", I shouted in utter disbelief.
"You heard me!", he repeated. "You must get yourself certified sane before you are allowed to do any further auditing actions in Scientology."
"Oh yeah?", I laughed. "Certified sane by who? By some fucking psych shrink? Maybe you want my Uncle Danny to write me a recommendation!"
"There are a handful of psychiatrists who are not entirely hostile toward Scientology. Take Thomas Szasz for example, or my friend Ziggy in Boston", he smirked.
"No! No! No! No! No! No! No!", I roared at the top of my voice. "You are the lunatic and the spy, not me! How dare you send me to a psychiatrist or call them your friends! You might as well order Larry Wollersheim to certify my sanity; you mad, cross-eyed piece of shit! You're a has-been! The Guardian's Office was destroyed by you! Don't you ever blame anyone else! You'll have to kill me before I follow your squirrel order to see a psych for anything! I am going to write Situation Reports on you until I am blue in the face!"
"Steve, you are in deep trouble, do you know that?", he threatened as he lit up his pipe.
"I'm not the one violating L. Ron Hubbard Policy!", I said in self defense. "You are!"
"You'd better create that two million dollars like you promised!", he chuckled. "Because when I get through doing an Ethics Folder Error Summary Report on your file, you are going to need every bit of that money just to get through your Security Checks! No, Fishman; I'm sticking to my guns. I am thoroughly convinced that you are completely insane. Hell, you might even be a suppressive, but there's no doubt in my mind that you're one psychotic son of a bitch. You can kiss your Bridge good-bye, my friend."
"Damn you, you chipped-tooth monkey!", I said flatteringly. "I have a natural right to go up the Bridge, and you have no business suppressing me!"
"A natural right, you say?", he scoffed. "What right is there? The Bridge is earned by postulates, cognitions, flows and prerequisites. There is no right for anyone to go up the Bridge unless they deserve it."
"You are a damned liar!", I hinted.
"A Scientologist demanding a right to go up the Bridge is no better than a criminal who steals from the Church and gives the money to the psychs."
"I can't believe it! That is exactly what you are asking me to do, Fred!", I exclaimed. "You want me to go to Ziggy or Shmiggy or the Third Little Piggy and pay him with my Bridge Fund to get certified sane, when you know as well as I do that Ron clearly stated that sanity is measured by production, and I am a damn good producer of class action lawsuits!"
"It's Dr. Sheldon Zigelbaum at 240 Commercial Street in Boston", Fred continued, ignoring my plea. "He'll take real good care of you. Ziggy knows that Scientology works. He has no hidden standard about the Tech."
"You can take Ziggy and shove him up your greasy thetan ass, together with your fucking pipe and your crippled wife!", I recommended. "When Peter went off the deep end, it was I who promptly got rid of him. You seem to be following in his footsteps rather nicely! I am going to do my OT levels with or without your stupid consent."
"But you've got that all wrong, Stevie", he buffooned. "You have to be invited on to your OT levels. They are not some damn automatic entitlement that falls into your lap! After I finish writing my Ethics Report on your evil purposes, the only place you'll get invited to is an adjoining cell next to your Cousin Sandra in the spin bin."
"Oh, go to hell!", I directed.
"You are in Emergency for insubordination!", he ordered. "Go clean the Mission's kitchen and wash your own mouth out as well!"
"You deserved every word I said to you!", I responded. "Besides, I am a Kha-Khan! You can't throw me into Emergency!"
"Wanna bet?", he snickered.
"Fine!", I challenged. "If the kitchen is dirty then I'll clean it, but not because you ordered me to! You are here to Clear the planet, not to violate Ron's Policy by sending an upstat Scientologist to an enemy psychiatrist!"
"You have twenty-four hours to write a letter to Ziggy, and twenty-four seconds to start washing those pots and pans!", he commanded.
"You're a bully!", I answered back en route to get decked out in the parish apron. "And none of the dishes in the kitchen match! They are as chaotic as you are, Fred!"
There was no use in arguing with Reverend Hare.
"He is just getting senile", I thought.
I wrote the letter to Sheldon Zigelbaum, and gave Fred a copy of it. My request to be certified sane was mailed out on the 5th of February, 1987.
My little tete-a-tete with Fred did not interfere with my duties as the honored delegate and representative from the Fort Lauderdale Mission to the annual Psychbusters Convention at Flag of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. I had earned the respect of too many people for Fred to defy me by sending someone else to the conference. Adamantly, I typed up an Ethics Declaration restoring my Condition from Emergency to Normal, and I threw it in Fred's face.
"Sign this, or you'll have some heavy explaining to do at Flag", I insisted.
"Why should I?", he blurted.
"In the first place, I can't represent the Mission at the Psychbuster's Convention without it. Secondly, you have my damn letter to your puppet shrink in Boston, and thirdly, I went out and bought you a complete new set of dishes for the kitchen at the flea market. I have fulfilled all the requirements of Emergency", I evidenced.
"You are still as mad as a wet hen!", he groaned as he affixed his signature to my reprieve. "This business of your sanity is far from over."
"We shall see", I said, insisting on getting the last word.
At the Flag Psychbust, I asked Dennis Clarke about Dr. Zigelbaum.
"Oh, don't worry", Dennis sighed. "He's one of the good guys out there who is helping us eliminate electric shock treatment and is fighting the dispensing of the drug Ritalin to school children."
"He is still a psych!", I argued.
"Well, weren't there a few Nazis in the Gestapo who tried to kill Hitler?", he analogized.
"I don't know the answer to that", I responded. "I was doing slave labor, shoveling dead Jews into the crematorium of a damn psych concentration camp at the time!"
Freddie Ulan, who was Dennis' Lieutenant Commander, gave us a dose of reality when he briefed his audience on how Larry Wollersheim had managed to sway the sympathy of the jury against the Church through the false testimony of his psych "expert witnesses."
Not being able to stomach such an outrage, I stood up and told the entire group that I would take full responsibility for Wollersheim, even if I had to kill him myself. Everyone began to cheer and applaud my courage.
"Jesus was always a bad seed", I told Freddie Ulan privately after the meeting.
Before going back to the Miami Org, I had a brief visit with Ellie Bolger. There was a problem that I needed her urgent help with. My wog friend Steve Goldberg was shaking me down. He demanded a bigger cut for endorsing the settlement checks of the class action lawsuits.
The Wickes Corporation payment was due in the amount of thirty-nine thousand dollars, and Goldberg insisted on receiving two thousand of it as his fee to endorse the check instead of the one thousand dollars which he had agreed to accept originally.
"Why that ungrateful little crook!", she screamed. "What is his reason?"
"Wog greed", I reported regretfully.
"Let him eat shit and die!", she pronounced.
"Well, what should I do with him?", I asked.
Ellie stormed back and forth like a caged tigress.
"Don't you dare let him sign any new claims!", she warned. "Tell me, how hard do you think it would be to forge his signature?"
"I could practice!", I suggested. "It's just that he writes so damn sloppy."
"Look, it's your fault for not being able to control your wogs!", she groaned. "First it was your ex-wife, then your Cousin Richard the psycho dog, and now your pervert friend? I can't believe how much trouble you are causing all of us!"
"I suppose I could learn how to write like that thief", I shrugged.
"The extra thousand is coming out of your pocket, not ours!", she commanded defiantly. "If you knew the true value of money, you wouldn't dare let a bastard like him get away with it!"
"Why are you so uptight?", I asked her.
"Damn it, I'm broke too!", she disclosed.
Although once an heiress from a very wealthy waspish family, she was now penniless, destitute, and above all quite desperate to complete her OT Level Seven so that she could go to the top of the Bridge on the Freewinds Flag Ship and do New OT Eight. She had to raise money by selling some of her rare properties of Source Data. Ellie had about fifty confidential tapes that L. Ron Hubbard recorded in 1967 on the subject of the Wall of Fire of OT Three, and there was even a special reel of Ron's son Quentin Hubbard auditing a preclear in a Class Twelve session just before he committed suicide in Las Vegas.
I could not believe the great sacrifice that Ellie was making in parting with these priceless recordings, but she had made her choice.
As she needed five thousand dollars more to continue her auditing, Ellie offered all of the tapes to me at the bargain basement price of one hundred dollars apiece.
"Hey!", I objected. "That's more than thirty percent higher than the amount that I would have to pay the Church!"
"Ah, true", she agreed. "But you can't buy them from Flag, because these are confidential and you are not on the OT levels yet."
"That's right!", I concurred. "And you can't sell them to me either, because you are violating Ron's Policy! But I want them so badly! So how do we get around that?"
"Oh, don't be such a dumb bunny", she stated unrealistically. "Just write up a pledge, promising not to listen to the tapes until you do the upper levels", she proposed.
"That would handle the Ethics problem in making the buy, but if I can't listen to the lectures until I get up to OT Three, then why shouldn't I wait to purchase them from Flag later on?", I quizzed.
"By that time the price will have tripled!", she laughed.
"I'll give you sixty-six dollars per tape, the same price I would pay for them at the Org", I offered resolutely.
"Why, you cheap fucking Jew!", she observed. "It's no wonder Steve Goldberg is trying to rip you off. We have no deal!"
"Why the hell not?", I asked. "You need the money, and you don't have any other customer for these tapes."
"You don't understand", she protested. "I have the tapes listed with a broker of Scientology products named Virgil Wilhite. I have to pay him a twenty percent commission even if I sell them to you. If I sold you the tapes for sixty-six dollars each, and I still have to pay Virgil twenty dollars each, that only leaves me forty-six dollars per tape! Stop haggling with me!"
"No, that would be unfair", I admitted. "I'll tell you what, Ellie. I'll pay you eighty dollars if Virgil agrees to cut his commission to twelve and a half percent."
It worked. Scientology is a game where everybody wins, as long as you shave some Body Thetans off your profit margin a tiny bit.
"You are such a shmucky broad for not offering me the tapes in the first place before you listed them with Virgil!", I yelled.
"Why?", she jumped in sheer surprise. "I don't even like you. In fact, I've never liked you! What is there about you to like?"
"Now that you mention it, not a damn thing!", I agreed.
While I was off gallivanting at Flag buying the secret data of L. Ron Hubbard, my father was snooping through my apartment without my permission. When he discovered that I had recently given several checks to the Church of Scientology for nearly eighty-five thousand dollars, he went berserk.
After he had a quaint little huddle with the Suppressive Dr. Geertz, he enlisted the help of my former brokerage client Keith Nassetta, a civil attorney that was, in his own words, anxious to "carve Scientology a new asshole."
Keith saw the prospect of casting himself in the starring role of a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Church for brainwashing and fraud, and wanted to enlist my help in creating a deadly sequel to the Larry Wollersheim disaster! It was a vicious conspiracy at best.
When I found out that my father, Keith and Dr. Geertz were all meeting covertly at the Nazi psychologist's office, I rushed over there to do as much damage control as possible.
"What the fuck are you all trying to do to me?", I cried out in panic.
"You gave that cult eighty-five thousand dollars!", my father stated in a mad rage. "You ought to be put in a straight jacket!"
"I bought a few tapes", I explained meekly.
"I told you he was insane", Keith reminded my dad.
"I can't do a thing with him", Dr. Geertz answered, washing his hands of the whole thing. "For every hour that I have him in therapy, they hypnotise him for at least nine or ten."
"What are these tapes made out of, gold?", Keith inquired snidely.
"No, that's who is producing them", I replied. "Gold is the name of our Org in California. It stands for Golden Era Productions."
"What do you mean, producing them?", Dr. Geertz asked. "Your father saw receipts that you bought the tapes in October. It is now February. Do you mean to say that you haven't received anything yet for your money?"
"It's none of your damn business!", I replied. "You are a Nazi butcher who killed my daughter!"
"Do you know of an inexpensive hospital that can help him?", my father asked the doctor. "Anyone who gives eighty-five thousand dollars to Scientology without getting anything in return for it is crazy. This boy has to be committed!"
"You'll have to kill me before you put me in a nut house!", I warned. "You'll never take me alive! And I'm not a boy anymore!"
"Calm down, you fucked up son of a bitch!", Keith wailed. "How the hell could you give them eighty-five thousand dollars without having an attorney present?"
"I don't need a damn squirrel attorney!", I protested. "Lawyers are for wogs who don't have their Ethics in! I'm not worried about the tapes at all! They're being manufactured for me as we speak!"
"They're still going to be telling you that when you're 102 years old and laying in the Jewish cemetery!", Keith scoffed. "Not even the worms in your coffin will get to listen to L. Ron Hubbard."
"You're so right, Keith", my father acknowledged.
"I don't give a damn about what happens to my body after I die!", I instructed. "None of you know the first thing about death! Dad, if you are worried about my body so much, I'll tell you what. After I go up to the top of the Bridge, I won't need it anymore. You have my permission in front of these two suppressive witnesses to take this body of mine to a taxidermist and have me stuffed. There's a good one in Hallandale named Pfleuger who works with dead fish. Call him up! Have me sprayed with a preservative and deck me out in my Briefing Course Officer shirt and Kha-Khan medal, and then you can put me on display in your living room for the whole wog world to see! Hey, that's ironic, isn't it? A dead corpse in a "living" room? Ha!"
"Now do you see how hopelessly brainwashed he is, Dr. Geertz?", my father commented. "He's not in his right mind."
"Under the Baker Act of Florida, he can be committed if three family members sign the papers", Dr. Geertz said. "There is a wonderful facility in Palm Beach where---"
"Shut the fuck up, you Gestapo murderer!", I reasoned. "You can go straight to hell!"
I could not take it any more. I flew out of Geertz's office and ran over to the Mission. Fred was out, but Dori was busy trying to keep her left hand from falling off her desk. It was some kind of weird palsy that acted up once in a while when her postulates were constipated. Her wheelchair was in second gear but her mind was exteriorizing into overdrive.
"How come I never got my tapes yet?", I yelled.
"Cool your jets!", Dori whistled. "What's wrong with you?"
"It's almost four months now and I haven't gotten any deliveries of my reels yet!", I pleaded. "What is the cause of the stuck flow on my line? Did Janell Allbach just forget about me?""
"Now you know that making fifteen hundred special tapes takes an awfully long time", she nodded in annoyance. "The dissemination lines of Scientology are not going to come to a screeching halt just to please you, silly!"
"But Janell promised to get on top of it right away!", I screamed in exasperation. "She assured me that the Commanding Officer of Golden Era Productions had approved the tape purchase for immediate delivery."
Fred Hare came running in from the street when he heard all of the commotion.
"What the hell is going on here?", he roared.
"You're prized pet is causing trouble again, darling", Dori sneered.
"Where are my damn tapes?", I demanded.
"Didn't I tell you to get certified sane before you come back to this Mission?", he seethed.
"Well that's very funny!", I stammered. "You want me to certify my sanity while my father, a squirrel attorney and the Nazi psych all want to have me put away in an asylum for the rest of my life!"
"You are dangerous!", Fred advised. "You're a Potential Trouble Source if there ever was one!"
"It's not my fault!", I implored. "My dad found the invoices for the eighty-five thousand dollars and now they want to put me in a padded cell and throw away the key. He said, "Anyone who gives eighty-five thousand dollars to Scientology without getting anything in return for it is crazy." My former client from Dean Witter is a lawyer! Keith Nassetta wants to start a civil suit against the Church because the tapes were never delivered. The psych called us a cult and spoke about brainwashing and fraud! Why don't you help me get them all put away in the loony bin instead of letting them attack me?"
"Why the hell did you leave our invoices laying around your house for your father to find? I'll tell you why. You wanted all of this to happen! You are an Enemy of the Church!", Fred declared. "As of right now, 4:47 P.M. on this 21st of February 1987, you are in the Ethics Condition of Enemy! Now march up to my office for a Security Check before I beat the living hell out of you!"
The Johannesburg Security Check was exceedingly tedious and lasted way into the night. We weren't finished until ten minutes after eleven. Instead of defending me, the E-Meter revealed that I had deep- seated feelings of resentment over not receiving the tapes.
"What about Senior Policy which states, "We always deliver what we promise"?", I asked in agitation. "I'm never going to get my tapes, am I?"
"You are downgraded to Treason!", Fred growled in a bitter rage.
I don't remember what happened next.
Nancy Witkowski told me how everyone in the Mission laughed when Fred put me in reverie, which is a light trance, and I was happily crawling on all fours, eating canned food out of a dog dish. Apparently, Alpo Liver Chunks agreed with me. I had the healthiest bowel movement in weeks. I held no grudge against Jasper personally. Fred and Dori's mutt was a beautiful black thetan with some rottweiler and doberman in him, although racial purity had more to do with the Third Reich than the Third Dynamic.
During happier times before Fred went on the rag, I performed a wedding at the Scientology Mission of Fort Lauderdale. I suggested to Michael Hambrick that we use the premises for a couple who did not have their own location, hoping that after the nuptial vows, we could sell the bride and groom a shitload of auditing. It didn't work out though, thanks to Fred's dog. Jasper nestled himself in between the bride's legs and refused to move. Worse yet, he started sniffing up her crotch during the ceremony, which made her a little uncomfortable. Women always smell funny down there, and dogs have a very keen sense of things like that.
"Can't you move the dog?", I asked Fred, hoping that he would save the couple any further embarrassment.
"Hell, no!", Fred grumbled. "Jasper has more right to be here than your damn wogs and their stinking wedding!"
Needless to say, the bride was very ungrateful and turned out to be in no mood for auditing. She wouldn't even buy a Dianetics book.
But as I indicated, conditions weren't always that bad between Jasper and I. Having once saved his life when he tried to cross the busy thoroughfare of Andrews Avenue, I was sure that he didn't object to sharing his dinner with me on the night when I got my nose all snotted up in his gravy train. Now keep in mind that I had nothing against forcing a person in Treason to crawl on his hands and knees and eat dog food. For putting the Church at risk, I deserved to munch on elephant turds, and Fred was being way too kind to me.
Therefore, I had no problem with Fred's order to breeze on over to the supermarket and replace Jasper's supper after I finished it. Dog food was not that expensive anyway. I don't know if Jasper liked Kal-Kan Kidney Chunks as much as he missed his Alpo, because he sort of looked at me funny when I brought him home a new brand.
After that adventure, Fred called me up to his office, and he listened on the extension phone as I dialed Keith Nassetta at home in order to prove conclusively that there was nothing in the world to worry about and that nobody was about to be sued.
Unfortunately, everybody knew that except Keith. He spouted off at the seams about contacting Michael Flynn in Boston, who was the squirrel attorney for both Lavenda Van Schaick and Gerry Armstrong.
"Your going to own the Church of Scientology when I get through ramming a bomb up that cult's ass", he predicted with ferocity.
Keith's noble rhetoric was just too overwhelming for Friendly Fred to take. It was hard to believe that this was the same Fred Hare who recorded the promotional dissemination tape entitled "Can We Ever Be Friends?", which was billed in Golden Era Production's catalogue as "An appeal to restore happiness, friendship and harmony to troubled relationships with family and friends."95 The Fred I knew so well was a heck of a lot better at breaking families up than patching things together. I never understood why Fred recorded the tape without ever announcing his name. He just said he was a "Minister of the Church of Scientology." It must have had something to do with his failure to appear in court while under subpoena in California. Still, I was quite proud of my autographed copy of the cassette. Fred didn't do that for everybody, only those guys he loved like me.
Blowing a whistle was an indication of an Emergency, but I wished to hell that Fred didn't do it in my ear. The staff dropped what they were doing and convened in the Mission's HCO, or Hubbard Communications Office, which was the old parlor next to the kitchen.
Fred had gotten it into his wild head to repaint the Mission the color yellow. Perhaps he was trying to make more effective cowards out of us all, so that we would run faster than a herd of turtles when he blew the police whistle. He ordered an "All Hands Alert."
This time I was the center of attention and I didn't like it one bit.
The wrath of hostility adorned the angry faces of my accusers. An ominous silence sliced through the cutting edge of hatred which by tacit consent was directed against yours truly. All my former friends, including my auditor Nancy Witkowski were there. There were daggers in the eyes of Fran Hardy, Barbara Koster, Dave Dewey, Tom and Karen Staley, and even Paul Dibble, our insignificant Central Files clerk with the rancid body odor. I was doomed. My closest ally, Michael Hambrick, shunned me with a complacent stare. Mike's ugly, pregnant wife Shirley had nothing but bitter contempt for my heinous overt act. If looks could kill, I would have died a thousand deaths. Reggie Monce was upstairs doing case supervision, but I knew that the penetrating noise of his lethal farting was meant for me. Even Colette Atzel, the Courseroom Supervisor, was busy stabbing voodoo dolls of clay in my own shuddering graven image.
"Now you will confront what it's like to crawl into bed with goddamn suppressives!", Fred spoke malevolently. "Get undressed!"
"In front of everyone?", I trembled.
Fred began to undo his belt from his 1950's style trousers which he had bought on sale from the funeral home down the street. It became apparent that he had something entertaining in mind for me. I stripped down to my underwear and leaned on the window sill in order to stop myself from shaking, but there was no use. The Body Thetans had me jumping out of my skin, giving me a royal goose.
"Get your underwear off too!", Fred spewed.
Everyone started bellowing with uproarious raucousness when they saw my shaved testicles. Many of them were not as much of a conduit for sub-atomic degraded beings as I was.
Fred told lanky and chinless Dave Dewey to lock up my clothes in an empty drawer. Dave, who was recently promoted to the Director of Clearing, was eager to oblige.
"Eyeglasses off also, you blind son of a bitch!", Fred mandated.
I was left wearing nothing but my Kha-Khan medallion. Fred yanked the chain from my neck, causing me to flinch as several drops of blood spurted from where the clasp had grazed my skin. Mocking my honorarium as a "stat pusher", he threw my pendant violently on the floor.
"You will never wear this again!", he commanded. "From this moment on, you are no longer a Kha-Khan!"
A terrible grip of fear came over me. Without my protected status, I could be subjected to all sorts of degradation.
"What are you going to do with my things?", I pleaded.
"They'll keep", Dave answered circuitously.
"Why don't you start worrying about your immortality instead of your possessions, you dirty Jew bastard!", Fran Hardy derided with a barrage of contempt.
"Please, Fran! I'm sorry!", I begged. "I never meant to hurt the Mission!"
"Now march through that kitchen, traitor!", Fred cursed.
"Why are you doing this to me?", I cried. "I would never sue the Church! I would rather die!"
"Shut the fuck up!", Fran responded as she stuffed a dirty dish towel in my mouth while four of the others propped me up on the dining room table, skinning my knee. Fred did not want any more of my yelling to be heard, since there were raw meat students and preclears in other parts of the building who might not have understood the necessity of my meritorious punishment.
The lash of the Minister's belt was so painful that it was numbing. There was such force and power in Fred's whipping that I could not tell if I was sexually aroused or not. As I laid on the large old wooden table where the staff had eaten dinner some hours before, I felt as if I were back in the days of the Salem witchcraft trials, waiting to do my False Purpose Rundown.
"Is this really happening to me?", I asked myself as I drifted into slow motion shock.
The Qualifications Secretary of Fort Lauderdale Tom Staley counted to fifty with great glee as Fred pounded on my back with the ferocity of a lion tamer. After I passed thirty-five strikes of the belt I was praying vehemently for death.
"Thirty-six!", Tom shouted. "Thirty-seven!"
"I hope you're out of your body by now, Fishman, so you can take a damn good peek at what you really look like!", Fred muttered as he tried to catch his breath. Paul Dibble and Dave Dewey held my hands down, while Karen Staley and Fran Hardy grabbed hold of my legs. The only one who I didn't see, hear or feel was Michael Hambrick. He was more disappointed with me than angry. Anyway, someone had to mind the store while I was flirting with a coronary at the hands of the Mission Holder.
After Tom reached the number fifty, I thought that I had passed out, although I was still aware of my environment. The room was spinning all around me, and the only thing that I could still feel were parts of my legs that weren't whipped.
"Hey, that was pretty good exercise!", Fred joked to Dave Dewey as he took a big gulp of lemonade. "I ought to do this more often, 'cause I'm not as young as I used to be!"
Fran pulled the rag out of my mouth and dumped a pitcher of ice water over my bruised back, and the impact of the freezing dampness made by body convulse upwards, only to force my chin to slam down onto the table as gravity grabbed me by the nuts. I could not see well without my glasses, and this did not help me stop the walls from turning. The soreness in my muscles throbbed like ten thousand bee stings on a bed of molten lava, and I was far too weak to shake off the few ice cubes that were changing into steam on my raw skin. The only comfort that I had was the taste of the cool water which dripped down the side of my face into my mouth and ears. Although I was basically unconcerned with how I looked, I kept thinking about whether my hair was a mess, and if I had ejaculated on the table or not. The reactive mind was madly in control playing tricks on me, that was for certain.
The ten minutes of sleep that I got was equivalent to ten thousand years. I recall frolicking in the nude, holding Ron's hand in a tulip field somewhere near Gabrielle Johannes' home town. It was a fantastic dream.
"Where am I?", I asked.
Ron blew me a gentle kiss and said, "You're safe with me here on Arcturus. No harm can ever come to you as long as you are nestled in the arms of the Tech."
"I'm not finished with you yet!", Fred harangued as I awakened. "Get him up and move him out!", he shouted to my fellow henchmen.
Still barely proper in my naked buggy-whipped torso, I felt arms and hands tugging at me in all different directions. The basic principles of physics were being violated. Someone should have told Dave and Tom that you can't pull a person off a table by stretching him in opposite directions. Trained Scientologists would never have paid attention to the laws of the physical universe anyway. We were always at cause over it rather than the effect.
"Next time we'll whack you on your back and whip your balls off!", Fran Hardy prophesied with disciplinary discernment. Steve Goldberg would have enjoyed that.
The pain was too intense for me to cry anymore. I just wanted to tell everyone how much I loved them, and how happy I was to be their friend. Somehow the words were lost on the dark side of Marcab, since the vigorous thrashing seemed to play hide-and-go-seek with my vocal chords.
"Well, the worst is over now", I believed. "Maybe they will let me write my Success Story in the morning."
All I could think about was taking a soft, lukewarm bath and falling asleep on my stomach in my soothing water bed.
Fred had more spectacular plans for me, however.
In the back of the Mission was a garbage dumpster which measured about four feet by eight feet by five, and its color was asshole brown. I had never noticed it before, because it's the kind of thing that you don't really see unless your post is to take out the trash. Even then I didn't realize that I was being escorted toward it since I was still nude and walking barefoot, and the pain of stepping on little gravel stones occupied the bulk of my attention. I felt just like Jesus Christ on the way to the Crucifixion.
"Deja vu!", I thought. "Like son, like father."
The alley in back of the Mission was dark. No one lived around there since it was an industrial area, and had I screamed for help, not even a brazen gutter rat would have heard me. I must have led a very sheltered life, since I would have never guessed in two thousand years that Fred was about to throw me into the same dumpster where lied the table scraps and remnants of his last supper.
It was not easy for Dave, Tom and Fred to lift me up and throw me in there. I was writhing in pain and soreness from the whipping, and I did not want them to touch my back where it was tender. Nevertheless, I lacked the stamina and the motivation to climb into the trash can myself. Still, I didn't quite feel entirely like a lump of shit until Michael's hideously pregnant wife Shirley came over to the garbage canister and dumped the balance of her evening meal leftovers all over me.
Even under normal conditions Shirley Hambrick was a lousy cook. The Mission staff all ate together for fifteen minutes every night, and non-contracted Mission personnel such as Field Staff Members and commissioned posts like myself were entitled to join the staff dinner at the nominal cost of four dollars per meal. If Nancy Witkowski did the cooking, I looked forward to eating with the others. Nancy's Swedish meatballs were fabulous. But when Shirley cooked, only her newly-wedded husband Michael would feign words of praise, and at best he strained his limited approval with a large fork. Of all her culinary blunders, by far her tuna casserole was the world's worst. Even Jasper wouldn't sniff it on the way to his Alpo Liver Chunks. And so it was just my luck that I had to spend the night with Shirley's rotten food all over my body that smelled worse than crow's vomit.
Thud!
My heart sank through my rectum as I heard the clank of a lock shut me inside the trash heap for good. Thoughts of paranoia raced through my mind for the first time in my life.
"What if they never let me out of here?", I shivered. "Worse yet, supposing the garbage truck comes during the night and I get crushed between the gnawing steel teeth of its automatic compactor?"
Then I began to confront the world around me. I was in a black hell of mushy waste. The foul stench clung to my lungs like an army of malignant jellyfish sucking the lifeblood right from under me. It was very scary not to be able to see. I tried wiping off the tuna fish casserole from my face and hair, but it turned out that I was using a damp paper towel full of coffee grinds.
"Now I will get AIDS for sure!", I hyperventilated.
I tried to get a grip on myself, but I couldn't stand my own company. Do you think I wanted to spend the night with someone in Treason?
There were more practical problems to contend with. The outside temperature dipped into the upper fifties. Although this was typical for a February night in Fort Lauderdale, I was nevertheless very cold and frightened. I tried to cover myself with sheets of paper which felt like old stat graphs.
"I hope these aren't downstats!", I pondered.
Suddenly, my left ankle was attacked by red ants! Well, to this day I cannot swear whether they were actually red because there was not enough light to see them. I tried pulling them off one by one, and when that failed, I slid over to the other side of the dumpster, which unfortunately was the area that had been bombarded with the most tuna fish.
"I'm glad Lavenda can't see me now", I thought in consolation.
While sloshing in the slop and rummaging through the rubbish, I cognited on the reason why Body Thetans attached themselves to the bodies of thetans in the first place. It was primarily due to their failure to confront their evil acts before they died. I was a vivid example of how my own weakness caused me to lose my status and prestige within Scientology because I didn't have enough courage to take a butcher knife and stab both Dr. Geertz and Keith Nassetta in the heart. When it came right down to the wire, I simply lacked the fortitude to commit murder, even though it was the right thing to do. What a wimp I was!
"How the hell could I run a concentration camp for psychiatrists if I couldn't do a simple thing like kill a couple of suppressives who were trying to sue the Church? Maybe I didn't have what it took to be a Kha-Khan after all", I rationalized sadly. "Fred obviously Made Things Go Right by putting me in here!"
Being in Treason was worse than having anal sex with a cactus plant.
"If I didn't watch my step, I might permanently wind up as a Body Thetan attached to Shirley's tuna casserole", I feared.
There were literally swarms of Body Thetans all around me in the garbage can, fighting for a piece of my action, and believe me, I wasn't hallucinating. If there was anyone with a good grip on reality, it was me.
A trash bin was the most likely of hiding places for Body Thetans to hang out. It is dark and damp inside, just like the female womb.
"So that is why Fred shoved me in here!", I illuminated. "What a genius he is! He wanted to throw me back into the agony of birth! That is one hell of a great fucking punishment!"
I always admired insight and intelligence, even in those rare cases when I turned out to be on the receiving end of it.
The tiny bites on my legs and ankles felt like a random acupuncture treatment by a blind Chinaman without his seeing eye dog, but when my testicles got attacked, I started to get very pissed off.
"Where the devil is the Great God Throgmagog when you really need him?", I called out begrudgingly. Then I realized how stupid I had been to think that He would ever answer someone in Treason.
"How can I prevent these bugs from creeping into my navel or up my ass?", I squirmed. "The human body is so full of holes!"
Unfortunately, I couldn't distinguish the Body Thetans from the maggots or the gnats that were crawling all over me, and I started to get rather itchy about busting out of there.
Not being able to take any more, I zoomed out of my body, madly exteriorizing through the steel roof of the canister, shooting up wildly to the stars. You might think that I fainted, and perhaps my body did, because the next thing I knew, it was six o'clock in the morning, and Michael was in his torn flannel pajamas, helping me out of the trash bin.
"You sure got yourself in deep shit this time, boy", he said in his store-bought, down-home, West Virginia accent.
Michael and Shirley lived in an old abandoned warehouse two doors down from the Mission. He allowed me to use his shower and even let me borrow a peach-colored robe that belonged to his repulsive wife. He must have really liked me, since he also gave me some antiseptic ointment to put on my forty-five ant bites. I would have never helped out anyone in Treason, that's for damn sure. His appropriate action should have been to let me suffer and rot until I was at least in Doubt.
"Those red ants bit the devil out of me", I complained.
"They weren't ants", he chuckled goofily. "That pail is full of mites and chiggers."
He revealed that he did not have the key to the locked drawer where my clothes and eyeglasses were stored, and that I would have to wait in his house until either Fred or Dave opened up the Mission before I could get my things.
"Why didn't you just leave me in there until nine o'clock then?", I asked. "I could report you for taking me out too early."
"Hell, someone would surely spot you at that late hour", he reasoned. "You don't want the wogs to see how we get our ethics in, do you?"
"That odor is still in my throat", I complained.
"Did you expect it to smell like honey after what you did? Get real! You were involved in a conspiracy to sue the Church!"
"But I never sanctioned it!", I argued.
"If they put you into a crazy house, your say-so won't amount to a hill of beans!", he elucidated.
"I can't think about that right now. I am in such pain! My back feels like I've been run over by a Mack truck", I whined.
"Come on and cut the bullshit!", Mike encouraged. "I want your Success Story to be a damn good one that we can both be proud to show old Fred!", he cautioned. "You want to get out of Treason, don't you?"
"If I have to stay in Treason one more day, Fred might as well shoot me", I sighed.
"Well, you'll come up with something", Michael nodded. "You always do."
"I wonder what Dr. Zigelbaum would have thought about all this", I said to myself.
"How long does that stinking squirrel have to stay in our house?", Shirley asked her husband with a voice loud enough to wake the dead. "You get him out of here this minute, Mike!"
"He's working his way up through Ethics", Michael consoled her. "We'll get him out of here as soon as he can get his clothes back."
To pacify his wife, Michael suggested that I sit outside the house on an old picnic table and write up my Success Story with Shirley's robe wrapped tightly around me.
"You might as well get started with it before Fred gets in", he comforted. "Anyhow it's not a good idea for you to be near the baby while you're still in Treason."
"She's only in her fifth month!", I exclaimed.
"That's when the little weasel is the most impressionable", he epitomized nitty-grittingly. "You know I can't allow all the crap going on in your universe to affect my kid before it's even born."
(Continued next section)
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