Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (12 page)

“Does it matter which one we get on?” I asked.

“Yeah, they all go to different places,” he said. “If you get on the wrong one, you won’t end up at your berthing.”

“How can you tell which one is which?” I said, noticing that there wasn’t signage on any of the buses.

“Well, all the people getting on this bus live where we live, so this is our bus,” he said as we jumped on the bus.

The bus looked even worse on the inside, it really was a school bus and the seats were very close together. It seated around forty people but there were at least sixty people jammed in. Tom and I were standing because most of the other people had bars and tags that said they were from Commodore’s Messenger Organization International. Since I was a newbie, I figured that standing was probably my best bet and most of the guys standing up were from Golden Era Productions. At least 30 guys were standing in the aisle. I could see the other buses were just as packed. When I saw this, I remembered how the buses in LA were packed out the same way. Then I remembered a joke that we used to tell when we were kids before I ever joined the Sea Org.

It went something like this – “How many Sea Org members can you fit on a bus?”

“All of them!” Cue howls of laughter. I always thought that joke was hilarious since it was totally true. If a Sea Org bus pulled up, it did not matter how many Sea Org members were standing there, when it pulled away, they would all be gone. Sea Org buses were like magic portals that swallowed them up and it seemed that it could fit any number of them in any configuration no matter what size it was.

It was definitely the end of the day, and most of the people on the bus smelled like they had put in a full day’s work. The bus was ripe and every window was opened.

As we were getting ready to pull out the gate off the property, a list was being passed back through the bus and each person had to write their name on the list and pass it along. A security guard also got onto the bus and walked through looking at each person. When he got to me, he asked if I was the new guy. I told him I was and he walked past.

“What’s up with that?” I asked Tom.

“Everybody has to be accounted for. There is a record of every person that comes and goes from the base,” he told me as the bus made its way to the gates.

All the gates were remotely operated from the main security booth Tom told me as we saw it open and the bus drive out.

“Where are we going?” I asked Tom as we turned left out of the gate.

“We are going to a place called Devonshire in Hemet. There are a bunch of apartments where a lot of base staff live,” he said.

We drove down mostly one road for the entire 15 minutes on the way to the Devonshire. At one point during the drive, the most noxious smell filled the bus and I appeared to be the only person reacting to it. As I looked around the bus, my eyes met with Tom and he smiled and simply said, “Turkey farm.”

“Where do the other buses go?” I asked Tom. I noticed a bus in front of us as we drove down the road.

“Well, there is Devonshire, the one we are on, then there is Kirby, Hillside or ’Hill Slide’ as we call it, then you have the Religious Technology Center berthing. Then there are a bunch of places that are next to the Base where people live. Oh, and there is the Ranch, or Happy Valley, as it is sometimes called. And some people live on the base itself and don’t ever leave. That covers where the buses go. Most of the bus drivers live at the places they drive to, so if you get on the wrong bus, you will have to walk to your proper berthing from wherever the bus stops. That is usually a good one-hour walk depending on which wrong bus you get on. You could talk the driver into dropping you off, but it will cost you. They are not going to do it for free. Just don’t get on the wrong bus!” he explained to me, chuckling at the end.

We rolled up to Devonshire and the bus stopped in the middle of the parking lot. Everyone piled out and scattered like roaches. I walked with Tom to my new apartment.

We walked in and there were two guys already in the apartment, Paul and another guy. It was a two-bedroom place and there were four guys in each bedroom and two more guys who stayed in the living room. The place was not that great. It was almost identical to the place I had been at in LA, in terms of size and roommates. The outside grounds were a bit nicer, but any apartment you cram 10 guys into is going to suck about the same.

As I got acquainted with the guys already there, a few more walked in. Jesse was one of them.

We talked for a bit and then he showed me where I was supposed to sleep. It’s 1:00
 a.m.
I really should have gotten to bed. I brushed my teeth and had a quick shower. When I got out of the bathroom, the place was dark and everybody was out cold.

I climbed into my bunk and as I lay there staring at the ceiling, I wondered to myself if I was going to last very long at this place.

At 7
 a.m.
, Tom shook my bed and said, “Get up, dude. You don’t have much time before the bus leaves.”

I shaved and dressed quickly and we were out waiting for the bus at 7:40. Tom told me that it would come any minute.

Now that it was light outside, I could see the smelly turkey farm as we drove by. It was located on Sanderson Street. I could see that the entire area surrounding the Devonshire apartments was a mix between new tract houses and spread out farming community. Most houses had at least two or three cars or trucks parked in the yard and at least one looked like it had not been driven in years.

 As we got near the base, the list was passed around; Tom wrote his and my names on the list and gave it to the people seated behind us.

We pulled into the base, the list was handed off to the guard in the booth and we pulled up along a pathway that led to a large building with people streaming in both entrances from the buses being unloaded.

“This is the dining hall – or Massacre Canyon Inn,” Tom told me as we walked through the double doors that led into the huge hall.

The dining hall was huge. There were buffet style lines on both sides of the dining hall. Tom and I headed over to the “crew side.” As we waited in line for eggs and toast, Tom explained to me that there were two sides of the dining hall. One was the crew side and the other was the officer side. The officer side had a few stewards that served the executives. For the head honcho tables, there is a dedicated steward just for them.

“What do we have on the crew side?” I asked him looking around.

“We have ourselves, if you want something, go get it,” he said.

On the officer side, everybody was sitting down eating, while on the crew side, most people were dashing around trying to get some food and crawling over each other as the “hot boxes” came out with trays of eggs and toast inside.

By the time we got to the table and set it up with plates and silverware and started eating, it was time to clean up and line up for roll call. I was not a big breakfast person anyway, so I was not that concerned with the 10 minute eating slot. I grabbed a few things off the table under direction from Tom and headed towards the trash bins and dish racks. The dining hall was a mix between a cattle drive and an assembly line. It was a science to unload the dishes into the trash, quickly file your dirty silverware into their respective bins, neatly stack your plates on the piles of dishes on the racks and then file your drinking glass back into the glass racks sitting there. Being the new guy, the line was jammed up behind me and I could sense the frustration of the people behind.

Tom was waiting at the other end smiling. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “You know, you can also do two trips so you don’t have your hands so full while going through.”

Now he tells me.

When we got outside, Tom immediately lit up a cigarette. Camel non-filter. I myself had just started smoking a few months before and preferred Camel Lights. The Camel non-filters seemed to be the cigarette of choice around here. I noticed the night before that Jesse had also smoked those.

Tom told me to follow him to where we would have muster.

Muster is where everybody from any given Sea Organization is rounded up, lined up and accounted for. Every single person must attend all scheduled musters throughout the day. Usually there are at least four musters each day. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and mid evening. Additional musters could be held at any point during the day and penalties for not attending musters were never fun.

“What’s with your uniform?” Tom asked.

“I was at the Association for Better Living and Education. We wore civvies every day of the week. I was never issued any other uniform parts,” I told him, noticing that no one else was wearing civvies and that I stuck out like a sore thumb again.

“This is Building 36,” Tom told me as we arrived to the muster location. As we walked towards the huge building, Renee Norton, the Supercargo, came up and told me that she would tell me where to stand. Tom walked over with us and told me to just stand behind him. He said that he was in the Hubbard Communications Office as well and I could just stand in the same line. Until I got posted, I was an Expeditor and I would stand in line with him.

As 8:30
 a.m.
drew closer, more and more people showed up for the muster. I had never seen this many Sea Org members in one place at one time. There must have been at least 300 people lining up. The individual lines of 10 or 15 people went down the road at least 100 yards.

At 8:29:55, a tall guy with bars on came out of the big building and stood in front of the muster lines, there were about 5 or 6 other people standing there in a line on either side of him. As he came to a stop, somebody yelled “Aten-Hut!” and everybody stood at attention.

Each division was called out, and the person in front of the line for that division yelled out who was present or accounted for. This went on division after division. It seemed to go on forever. After the last Division was called out, the tall guy said, “At ease.” And everybody put one foot apart and clasped their hands behind their backs. Damn these guys were really formal! At ABLE Int, we stood around in lines and muster took about one minute start to finish. We had been here for what seemed to be at least 10 minutes and that was just roll call!

The tall guy asked if there were any announcements. Renee, the Supercargo, raised her hand, stepped forward and motioned for me to come forward as well.

“We have a new arrival, Marc Headley. He is the first arrival from the mission that went down to the Hollywood Guaranty Building!” she said. Everybody clapped.

“Thanks,” I said and went back in line, mortified that I had to go up in front of everybody.

“Well, since it is Thursday, we will make this quick. Dismissed!” the tall guy belted out before I even get back into line.

“This is Ray McKay,” Renee said, introducing me to an older guy who had a bit of a haggard look on his face. “He is going to do your routing form with you and get you grooved in.”

“Hi,” I said as people scattered around us in all directions.

“What’s with the uniform?” Ray asked me as we headed into the building.

I told him, and thought I would need to get a white uniform before I was asked that another 300 times.

“Yeah, we might want to see the Uniforms Officer right off, so she can get your sizes and see what we can get for you right away,” Ray said.

We went into the reception area and everything was done up in bright yellow laminate. The desks, the walls, everything. The place looked like it was designed by someone who REALLY liked that late ‘80s laminate look.

As Ray was explaining to me what we were going to do on the New Arrival Routing Form, we walked down the hall to see the uniforms officer. As we knocked on the door, we could hear someone screaming loudly in the office next door. The door opened and it was the tall guy with officer bars from the muster.

He was at least six foot-something tall. His hair was slicked back perfectly and not one hair was out of place. His uniform shirt was perfect. There was not one crease in the wrong place. I could have sworn it had been ironed while he was wearing it because just putting the shirt on would have caused a wrinkle somewhere. There must have been a full can of starch on his sleeves alone.

“Hello, Sir,” Ray McKay said instantly as the tall guy appeared.

“Both of you get in here now!” he barked at us. “This is Ray Reiser; he will show you what to do. When all the films are out, you can go back to your routing form.”

“Yes, Sir,” McKay and I said in unison as the tall guy walked out of the office.

Ray Reiser was a small, frazzled, slightly crooked thin man with salt and pepper hair. He was running around stacking boxes and trying to figure out what we were going to do. In the background, he had a funky contraption of several film projectors that were simultaneously playing films on a giant white screen on the wall. All around us there were stacks of film reels, boxes, rolls of sticky labels and shelves that had projectors, empty reels, trash and anything else you could think of crammed onto them. The room also had a peculiar smell to it. It was a mix of chemicals with a bit of a funky twist to it.

“Okay, these have all been checked,” Reiser pointed out. “Match the film reel up with the right film binder and then put them into a cardboard box.”

“Who is the tall guy?” I asked McKay.

“That is the Commanding Officer Gold, Wendell Reynolds,” McKay said. “We would be smart to hang out here until 2:00
 p.m.
It would not be smart to piss him off on your first day.”

Ray and I looked around and tried to make sense of what Reiser had told us. There were piles of junk all over the office and after 30 minutes or so, we figured out what we needed to do and started making a pile of the boxed up films. As we did this, Reiser sat watching the films on the wall and switched the audio between them that was playing out of the 4 foot tall speaker in the corner of the room.  

When I did Scientology training at Flag, I had seen a few of these films made by Golden Era Productions. I had never imagined that some tiny guy in a room full of junk was the one cranking them out.