this is where the cowboy rides away. Love that George Strait song.
Guys and gals, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. To have shared some experiences was cathartic.
I have never been prouder than when the old man placed his hand on my shoulder and validated me for a complicated project which I took care of for him. I've also never been more devastated than when I was berated for some real or imagined transgression, my hand shaking as I struck a lighter and reached across to light the old man's cigarette. The other messengers would visibly pull back from me, knowing that being associated with me would perhaps make them also the subject or his ire.
I've never been more emotional than when I would witness people's lives ripped asunder. I've been ordered to mete out punishments which I knew the receiving party didn't deserve. I've seen well intentioned staff members, pale with lack of sleep, waiting for words of approval, only to be chastised, or, in some cases, even worse.
So many images flash through my mind as I consider again what i went through in Scn. The sight of the ship at dock as I flew overhead in a commercial plane, arriving for the first time. The reality of my bunk, the smell of stale sweat in the humid air, people off duty scouring the under-decks looking for cockroach nests, in order to earn the few extra dollars the extermination of the cockroach nests would bring in bounty.
The first time I saw Hubbard, the emperor, surrounded by his entourage.... and I realized that.... he looked like a person. His face was pitted and craggy, his hair not the golden mane I'd expected but thinning and shot with gray and vestiges of the famous red from his photos, his corpulence, was not what I'd expected.
And the first time I saw him scream at a messenger, this physically intimidating (to a child) adult shouting so loud at a cringing messenger that spittle was flying, the messenger whiter than her clothing, shaking under the intensity of his wrath.
Was this the God-like entity who had opened the door to my spiritual salvation?
Then, a moment watching Hubbard walking the decks beside HRH, seeing him as, of all things, a son, wanting approval from his father. What must Harry Ross have thought of his boy with his own ship, dressed as a Commodore and surrounded by scantily clad young girls?
Long lines of crew in the airport as we left Curacao, Quentin smiling and being Quentin as we waited, only to arrive a few hours later in a land of milk and honey; endless hot water and the beautiful beaches of Daytona... the relief and the smiles obvious on everyone's faces at the change in lifestyle.
Mindless orders to RPF those I thought Hubbard considered his friends, meter readings convincing him that his estimate of them was incorrect, and that they harbored some ill will, to see the RS/RPF craze strike like a plague, decimating the ranks of those around him, the circle growing closer and closer....only to eventually find out that these people's servitude, months or years in the RPF, were pointless, the people had been judged and convicted without a jury to a life in many ways worse than a prison... for only imagined infractions.
My deepest secret, that I once didn't report an RS, because I knew what it would have meant to the person....
The coldness I saw in Hubbard toward others, including his family, the distance he kept... the absence of the qualities I would have envisioned most in a spiritual leader.... qualities one might have imagined in Christ, or Ghandi, but Hubbard was bereft of such qualities. I was ordered to barge into someone's room at three in the morning and threaten to assign the man to the RPF if he didn't get his ass up and work more on a project, despite the fact that he'd been up for 24 hours, to find him in his wife's arms, stunned as I delivered the message... then his asking me how he could possibly satisfy Hubbard.... He wanted desperately to please the old man, but couldn't imagine how. I think he would have taken his own life if Hubbard wanted him to. The agony of trying his best but his best (which was good) not coming close to satisfying Hubbard. The vile and derisive names Hubbard called him by, the snide remarks to the messengers about this man...
Steve Irwin's acknowledgement that he must be damned to the darkest of all Hells because he'd been slapped by Hubbard... Irwin had always been a corker, light hearted, jokingly calling Quentin, before his death, by his nick name, "Son of Source".
Sleepless days spent vetting secrets from documents in fear that the FBI would raid any moment, afraid I'd fall asleep and miss blacking out, or cutting out some secret which the FBI would find and destroy Scn with, and it would be my fault because after two days with no sleep I fell asleep....
Phil Valinsky dying in session at SU and the contortions to hide the truth... and then seeing a copy of his official granting of 21 years of leave, with orders to report back to duty in his new body... I remember thinking how come he got 21 years to live childhood in his new body before reporting back to duty, yet I started working at about 12. He get's a childhood and I don't? BTW, did Phil ever report back in his new body?
Bribes, threats, manipulations, reaching out across the country to bend people to Hubbard's will.
A man steadily losing more and more of his mind... Finally enfeebled, his hands shaking, gaunt, lucid only part of the time, confined to bed for most of the day for weeks on end... Human. Undivine. Unmiraculous.
The bonding of my friends, my fellow messengers, our gazes at one another voicing what we could not speak of.... I don't mean to speak demeaningly of any military sacrifices made by our armed forces, but we messengers, in many ways, became a Band of Brothers. To be in your teens and living on a few hours sleep a night for weeks or months, the pressures placed upon us, the yelling... but, at the same time, craving approval... the feeling of being on top of the world when some deed one had performed was acknowledged with a "Well Done".
Even as I left, my heart ached for Hubbard, for the conversations neither I nor anyone could ever have with him, remembering the lives he'd ruined... that I had sometimes ruined in his name, but still feeling a bond with him, though my candid assessment of the truth of Scn was forcing me to depart. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe.
In the decades since I left, when I've occasionally met up with a former comrade and heard of the tragedies befalling those who stayed behind, my heart ached for them. Of the legal manipulation to avoid the truth. Can the world not understand the pressures that a dedicated staff member would answer to that would make them give false testimony in a heart beat, gladly, to impeach detractors of the church, or to protect leaders of the church from prosecution?
Shelly Miscavige, a girl I called my friend, what sort of life are you suffering through now?
I'm deluged still with thoughts and sorrows and regrets, acceptance of the harm I directly caused others through following orders. Hitler's orders to his staff were not enough to free them from consequences for their War Crimes. I can make excuses, but, in many ways I caused harm. I remember convincing someone to join the SO, to bring her family and young children in, to see her a year later in the RPF, her kids being worked like adults, being haunted by the unspoken accusation in her glance, "Why did you take me and my family away from the world we knew, for this?" her gaze said to me. Whatever happened to her, I wonder. Did she and her children leave, or did I rob them of their childhood like mine was robbed from me?
Yes, the cowboy rides away. I'll be back, perhaps. Thanks for your words of encouragement. The gratitude that many of you have expressed has been touching. I hope that for some, my musings have helped put things in perspective, and maybe, somewhere, some time, I will find that my words helped someone to make their life their own again. To perhaps look a little deeper at Scn, to question, to use their mind, to perhaps value their children and family a little bit more, and reflect on my experiences and realize that the time has come to use the stark light of reason to make decisions.
If anything, I hoped I've shown that Hubbard, and the experiences of those around him, can not be summarily explained. Now, as I reflect, I pity him, what he must have internalized at the end, as his body wilted away....