Walking Through Walls (23 page)

After a few weeks, I dropped Betty's father. No matter how many times I tried to steer the session toward discussing my father and his healings, the doctor would start screaming at me about my disgusting sexual perversion. Since I was already getting shocked for my disgusting sexual perversion, I figured I didn't need to spend more money to hear it in stereo. The aversion shocks were a sufficiently bizarre therapy that I convinced myself that it was somehow reorienting the circuits in my brain and making me immune to the supernatural influence.

I stayed with Dr. Edwin for another two months until I realized that the whole exercise was pointless, just as my father and Arthur had warned me. I was tired of the welts on my arm, the nausea, and feeling like a trained dog. The magic cure-all for an undiagnosed illness was not forthcoming. Drugs, sex, and shocks had all failed to create a desired state of blissful unenlightenment. I was running out of ideas as to how to self-medicate or self-analyze myself into a nonsupernatural existence.

While buying a pack of cigarettes in Super X Drugs, I noticed a small pile of tickets left on the windowsill by the door for a free lecture offering “a release from all problems through the science of Dianetics.”

“Wow,” I thought, “I could certainly use a release from all problems through anything available, especially something legal.” Hopefully it didn't involve jolts of electricity.

Whatever Dianetics was, it seemed to be what I was looking for to set me free. I put the ticket in my pocket and knew with absolute certainty that I was ready to convert to Scientology. Just the name, Scientology, sounded like the future to me. I imagined high priests guarded by men in black rubber space suits with ray guns. Somehow I sensed that the premise of Scientology was instant erasure of who you are, followed by an instant creation of who you would like to be. My father's spirits seemed so ancient and creaky compared to the futuristic appeal of Scientology. Yep, this was it. I was going to become a Scientologist. Good-bye hocus-pocus, good-bye séances, and good-bye nosy spirits. Hello futurama.

When I got to the church, a run-down storefront operation conveniently located around the corner from my father's design studio, I took one look around and had to quickly recalculate my expectations. There were no futuristic sentries guarding the holy laser beam that contained all universal truths. Instead there were a few pieces of abandoned office furniture, a rickety pine bookshelf loaded with paperback copies of
Dianetics
featuring an exploding volcano on the cover, and a massively overweight woman wearing an Indian block-print muumuu sitting behind a gray metal desk. To my surprise, style was not a huge consideration in this religion of the future. The woman automatically smiled at me with one of those big and insincere stewardess smiles that discourage any real interaction. It was just me and her smile one-on-one in the holy church. There were no masses of worshippers engaged in scientifically induced religious ecstasy. No one was storming the gates of Scientology looking for the next great thing—except me.

I wasn't quite sure what to do as I stood there in my paisley print shirt, square-toed boots, and hip-hugger bell-bottoms made out of mattress ticking, so I picked up a pamphlet describing the philosophy of Scientology. I then walked over to the desk and handed the woman my ticket. “Um, hi. I'm here for the free lecture on Dianetics.”

“Great!!!!”

“This is kinda my first time here.”

“Great!!!!”

“Okay.”

“Great!!!!”

“Uh…”

“Hi, I'm Toni!!!! Who are you?”

“Philip.”

“Great!!!!! Well, Philip, we don't have any clears in the Org today, and none of the auditors showed up, so…”

“Huh?” I was used to space talk and speaking in tongues, but this Scientologyspeak was something new. The truth was, I kind of liked it. It all sounded so “yes sir, right away, sir.” I would eventually learn this new vocabulary, in which “clears” were enlightened individuals and “auditors” disseminated Scientology.
“Maybe you could come back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I guess tomorrow is okay.” But I was more than a little disappointed. I wanted my new life to start right then and there. I didn't want to leave until I had some real idea of how I was going to fit into Scientology's grand scheme of advanced global human evolution. The least Toni could have done was give me a tour of the church. But that offer was not forthcoming. I turned to go.

“Hey, Philip, I have a great idea. Why don't you hand out some tickets for our free daily lecture? Brian would really like that.”

“Who's Brian?”

“Oh, Brian is our best auditor. He's from England and knows Ron.”

“Ron?” This place seemed like one big, happy family. Maybe Scientology would become my new home after all.

“Ron.” Toni just kept smiling as she said the name. She was so dazzled by saying his name that she seemed incapable of explaining to me that Ron was L. Ron Hubbard, a former science-fiction author and founder of the church. L. Ron, or just plain Ron, was revered by devoted Scientologists throughout the universe. He had taken a few tenets of basic psychology, added “e-meters” (which function as a kind of lie detector to psych out sensitive emotional problems), mixed in a bit of his own science-fiction language, and
presto!
—a religion that enjoyed tax-free status from the IRS.

“Um, okay, I'll do the ticket thing,” I decided. Toni handed me a stack of about two hundred tickets—just like the one that I had brought in. “Where should I go?”

“Anywhere…everywhere…” She spoke these two words with a smile and a far-off look. Her tone seemed to imply that by this humble act of handing out free Dianetics lecture tickets, I would be taking my first step to becoming a Scientologist extraordinaire.

Miami was just not the kind of place where you saw people walking on the sidewalk, so handing out tickets was not going to be an easy job. Everyone, except the extreme poor, drove everywhere or stayed home. However, in my quest for enlightenment I was willing to give it a try, so I left the church, turned right, and walked down Biscayne Boulevard. After three blocks, I finally saw a guy coming toward me. “Hi, free ticket for lecture at Scientology…” He passed right by me without even looking up. “Please join us at the Church of Scientology for an important lecture…Hi, here's a free ticket for a lecture!” I shouted after him, giving it my best.

Another block later was the bus stop in front of Denny's on Thirty-sixth Street. A group of about six black women was waiting. As I approached, half of them feigned a strong disinterest while checking me out with careful sideward glances, and the other half stared at me with outright hostility.

“Um, free tickets.”

They didn't even look at what I was offering. As I turned to go, I noticed an elderly Bahamian woman wearing thick black-framed glasses and a straw hat with a wilted rose sticking out of the side holding up two copies of
The Watchtower.
A Jehovah's Witness. She looked at me over the rims of her glasses with passing interest. I don't know if she thought I was competition or just some nutty white boy in the wrong part of town.

This wasn't working. I turned around, and as I walked by the church's large picture windows, I quickly stuffed my stack of undistributed tickets under my shirt so Toni would not see my failure. She was sitting behind her desk, staring out the window, and didn't seem to recognize me as I walked toward my car in the parking lot. I needed to try some other part of town.

Perhaps Coconut Grove, with its large bohemian population, would be a good location. I certainly felt a lot more at home there. After I parked the car behind the 7-Eleven, I walked up and down Main Highway, circling through Commodore Plaza and ending up on Oak Avenue. My free tickets were a hit with every stoned hippie I encountered. “Hi, free ticket to Scientology lecture” was consistently met with either an understated “wow” or a tepid “far out.” I quickly unloaded about half my tickets. The rest I left on a ledge in front of the Oak Feed Store, the only health food store in Miami that sold bulk foods. The place had that “Ye Olde Country Store” feel and was one of the few locations where you could see a large group of unwashed people all wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and harem pants breast-feeding their natural children while they occupied the stools at the juice bar for the entire day.

Having done such a good job, I was looking forward to reporting to duty the next day at the church, or as Toni had called it, the “Org.” When I walked in on Sunday morning, she was still wearing the same Indian print muumuu and sitting behind the desk, smiling. I didn't know if Toni spent the night behind the desk or if she had gone home and not changed her clothes. I was betting on the former. She smiled but did not seem to recognize me.

“Hi!!! Welcome to Scientology!!! I'm Toni.”

“Uh, Toni. I was here yesterday.”

“Great!!!”

“I'm Philip. Remember?”

“Great!!!”

“I handed out all the tickets.”

“Great!!!”

“Is Brian here?”

“Brian?”

“Yeah. To give the lecture.”

“Lecture?”

“Yeah. Free Dianetics lecture.”

“Oh!!! Free Dianetics Lecture!!!”

“Yeah. Free Dianetics lecture.”

“There's no lecture today. Brian is busy auditing.”

“I thought the ticket said free Dianetics lecture seven days a week at one o'clock.”

“Hey, I have a great idea. Our communications class starts in half an hour. Why don't you take that?”

“Communications class?”

“Yeah. It's great. You need to take it anyway.”

“I do?”

“Yeah!!! You want to communicate, don't you? Clear communication between beings is the first step in practicing Scientology. It helps reduce the power of the reactive mind. Fifteen dollars.”

“Huh?”

“Fifteen dollars. For the communications class.”

It never occurred to me that Scientology actually cost money or that there was a detailed price list attached to the different levels of enlightenment. All I had was $3 and change in my pocket. I asked Toni if I could owe her the rest.

“Great!!! Hey, I have a better idea. Why don't you come work at the Org? This way you would be around a lot of clears, and it would help pay for your auditing. So why don't you come in around ten tomorrow morning?”

“Um, I go to school.”

“Why? That's a real waste. You should come here. We'll teach you everything you need to know. I dropped out of school, moved to San Francisco, and became a Scientologist. Now my life is great!!! I used to live with this black guy, and we sold drugs and balled all the time, and then he got busted, so now I'm here, and, wow, it's really great. Just great!!!”

“Oh.”

“So come after school; say, four to ten? Weekends are good too. Okay? See you tomorrow.”

At this point, my knowledge of Scientology was limited to what I had read in the pamphlet I'd picked up the day before, but now that I would be working at the Org, I guess I was a Scientologist. When I walked into the house, I announced, “Hey, Mom, I got a job.”

“Oh really?” She was totally surprised; suddenly her layabout hippie son was appearing to be responsible.

“Yeah. I'm working at the Org.”

“What exactly is your job?”

“I forgot to ask.”

“Well, then, how do you know you have a job?”

“They asked me to come in and work.” I hated when my mother asked realistic questions like this. She was the opposite of my father; she had too much reality, he had none. What did she know? Of course I had a job.

“Who's they?”

“The Scientology lady, Toni. It will pay for my auditing.”

“Who's Toni?”

“The Scientology lady.”

“Scientology? Is this like a medical place?”

“No. Forget it. I'm going next door to talk to Pop.” It was too hard to explain to my mother about my spectacular new future at the Org. I went next door to see my father. He was sitting at his desk, holding a pendulum over a map of Canada.

“Hi, Pop. What are you doing?”

“I'm looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“I think his name is Mark…”

“So how can you look for him if you don't know his name?”

“Oh, that's easy. I just tune in to his vibration. He's lost somewhere around here in the mountains. His wife called me today and asked me to find him. She called the Canadian Mounties, but they haven't turned up anything. It's been over a week.”

“He may not be alive. That's a long time to be lost in the mountains.”

“He's definitely alive. The pendulum told me. I've tuned in to him now. I'll find him in a few minutes. He'll be okay. What's up?”

“I just got a job.”

“Hey, that's great, congratulations.” Pop continued to dowse the map as he spoke to me. “So where are you working?”

“Over at the Org on Biscayne Boulevard.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“I don't know.”

All of a sudden the pendulum began spinning rapidly. “Got him.”

“Huh?”

“Here. He's right here.” My father was tapping on the map with the straightened paper clip that he used as a pointer. “Okay. I'll be right with you. I have to call Margaret.”

“Who's Margaret?”

“The wife.”

My father dialed the phone. While he waited for Margaret to answer, he wrote down in a notebook the longitude and latitude where he found the missing man. “Hello. Is this Margaret? Yes, this is Lew Smith. Lew Smith. Yes, you called me about ten minutes ago about your missing husband. I understand. Of course. Well, let me give you the exact location. It's a place called Castle Mountain in Alberta, and on a map the coordinates are approximately 51 degrees north and 115 degrees west. Uh-huh. No, I have no idea how he got there, but he's there. Yes, I'm sure. He's okay. He seems to be in a state of shock and really dehydrated, but he'll be okay after a couple days at home. Sure, yes, I think you should call and tell them where to look. They may not see him from a helicopter; there are a lot of trees. I don't know, tell them whatever you want. They may hang up on you if you tell them a psychic in Miami found him. Why don't you tell them that it came to you in a dream? You're right—they're not going to believe that either. But they're certainly not going to believe you if you tell them that a stranger in Florida found him. Look, just call them now, don't waste any more time. Just tell them that's where he is, and they need to go get him right away. That's it, don't answer any more questions. Once he's settled in, would you please give me a call and let me know that everything's okay? I'll manage his care from here. No, nothing's broken. It seems that night came, and he lost his way. He's very scared and needs to be kept wrapped in blankets for a few days. What's his name? Something with an
M
? Mark? Michael? Mark. Okay. Good. Okay. No, you don't owe me any money. I'm happy to help. You're welcome. Bye.” My father turned to me and asked, “So who are these people you are working for?”