Once I made my pronouncement to the ethics officer, my penance came in four parts. First, I had to promise Sean that I would be a good, faithful heterosexual wife.
Next, I was to make a list of policies for myself to prevent me from committing the same transgression again. Third, I would avoid all association with homosexuals.
The final step was seeking forgiveness from the “group” I was seeking to rejoin: heterosexual Scientologists. My assignment was to write up a “liability” report, a painfully intimate and vividly detailed accounting of what I’d done, followed by an explanation of what I did to atone for my actions. Once the ethics officer approved it, I was ordered to walk the halls of the Celebrity Centre asking random members—most of whom would be complete strangers—to read and sign my confession. They were allowed to ask questions before they agreed to sign.
I needed twenty-five signatures in order to be allowed to get out of Lower Conditions and rejoin the church. Imagine my complete and utter shame, standing before my Scientology peers while they pored over the details of my sexual encounters, and then asking each for forgiveness and the opportunity to dig out of the hole I’d dug for myself. If that didn’t deter me from my evil ways, nothing would, and that was the idea.
I braced myself as I left the Ethics Department, my confession in hand. My first encounter happened as I walked out the door into the hallway, with a man I’d never seen. “Excuse me,” I said, handing him my confession with all its raw particulars. “I am in liability. I would love to ask you if I could rejoin the group.” The man took my statement and read it over quickly. I think he took pity on me, because he signed and walked off without a word.
Another man glanced at my declaration, then asked, “When was your last donation to the church?”
“I just wrote a check for $5,000 this morning,” I answered. He signed too.
I came upon a middle-aged woman with a kind face.
“I am in liability,” I said. She took my confession and read it carefully.
“What is your blow to the enemy?” she asked. I was armed and ready for that one.
“I know homosexuality is wrong and I will never be around that person or any homosexual again,” I said. Satisfied with my answer, she scrawled her signature on my confession, smiled condescendingly and walked on.
With each request I felt smaller and smaller. Most of the people I approached were kind enough. They’d scan my declaration of guilt and sign off with an expression that seemed to say: Hey, I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through.
But there’s a jerk in every bunch and this bunch was no exception. I came across a familiar face, a man I recognized from the Celebrity Centre, and explained my situation.
“Aren’t you married, Michelle?” he asked smugly.
“Yes, I am,” I responded sheepishly.
He glared at me. “How did this happen exactly?”
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” I stammered. He asked for details, which I was required to give him.
“Well, you won’t do that again, will you?” he asked, aghast. “My God! That’s disgusting!”
I assured him I wouldn’t, and it was. “I know what I did was wrong,” I said. “Yes, it was disgusting, and I’m over it. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’ve made a blow to the enemy.”
The man stared at me for a moment, signed my confession, turned on his heel and marched away.
I felt like throwing up. I was so mortified by the experience that, after ten or fifteen requests, I ran to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall and sobbed. I was a terrible, repulsive person who’d committed treason against the church and I deserved everything I got. It didn’t matter that Sean had cheated on me and then gotten away scot-free. I accepted the fact that you don’t second-guess the church. If the church said I was wrong, I had to make it right. I decided to start by making an appointment with my doctor to check my estrogen levels again. Maybe something had changed and that was contributing to my sexual dysfunction?
That evening, I went home and asked for Sean’s forgiveness. I had been broken down during auditing and gotten “honest and straight,” I said. I finally understood that any homosexual tendencies I thought I had were made up in my reactive mind. I had no choice but to believe I was over it, and committed to a future as Mrs. Sean Seward. Part of my penance was that I had to work harder at being a good wife and commit to sex at least two or three times a week.
Sean was satisfied with that and we vowed to put the past behind us and give our marriage another chance. He promised to try harder to find a job and contribute more to the household. I complied with my commitment to regular sex, but I usually had to drink two or three cocktails beforehand to make it tolerable. The act itself was physically painful for me, but when I told Sean he brushed it off. “Your body is made for this,” he said. “It can’t hurt that bad.” Sometimes, afterward, I felt like throwing up. Often my mind wandered and I’d find myself thinking about how repulsed I was by the look of his manhood and how much I hated the way he smelled. Why? I asked myself. Why am I this way?
I suggested to Sean that we see a sex therapist. He refused, saying it was me who had a problem. I tortured myself with guilt over not wanting him. I wondered if I would feel differently if he pulled his weight at home. I told Sean he wanted more than I had to give; surely there was someone who could love him better than I could. When I tried to talk things out, he shut me down. He went weeks without speaking to me. And when his frustration boiled over into anger, he had his way with me.
Crying and pleading got me nowhere, so I just succumbed. Eventually, I figured out a way to avoid sex without blatantly rejecting him. If I booked client meetings in the evening and got home late enough, he was usually already asleep. Not my fault! If he groused about the lack of sex, I told him there had been many times that I’d been ready but he was already asleep. I asked if he wanted me to curtail my schedule, knowing the answer. If I cut back on work, he would have to step up and contribute more or we wouldn’t be able to afford our lifestyle. That would usually stop his complaining, at least for a little while.
After a few short weeks, our fresh start withered on the vine. I never showed the outside world my unhappiness. As Scientologists, we were taught to present a positive image to the public because we were, first and foremost, representatives of the church. Our problems were to be “handled” in the church with an auditor or ethics officer. Wallowing was for Wogs.
My work was my coping mechanism. When the opportunity arose for me to advance my insurance territory to the northern part of the state, Sean and I decided to sell our home in Los Angeles and move three hundred miles north to the San Francisco suburb of Danville. The move would be good for us, I told myself. A new place would mean a new beginning. We agreed that once we were settled into our new life, we could think about starting a family.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clear
People often asked when Sean and I planned on having kids. My standard answer was “two years.” Two years turned into six. We were in the new house for a year when we decided to start trying. Getting pregnant was more of a scientific project for me than an act of love. I kept track of my ovulation cycle and informed Sean when it was time for sex. I knew the moment I conceived, in February 2000. I was elated not just to be expecting but because it meant nine months of prescribed celibacy; the church’s view was that sex in the presence of a developing thetan (being) was both inappropriate and dangerous. According to L. Ron Hubbard, intercourse caused the fetus pain that lingered after birth in the “reactive mind,” which he claimed was responsible for most mental, emotional and psychosomatic ailments. Whenever Sean pushed for sex, I pulled out Hubbard and reminded him that the well-being of our child was at stake.
Church policy called for a silent, or at least quiet, delivery: “labor done in a calm and loving environment with no spoken words by anyone attending.” A
ccording to Hubbard, his own research showed that commotion surrounding a normal birth often caused psychic scars that presented as aberrations later in a child’s life. “Chatty doctors and nurses, shouts to ‘PUSH, PUSH’ and loud or laughing remarks to ‘encourage’ are the types of things that are meant to be avoided.”
Sean and I agreed that a silent birth was the way to go. Finally, we had something in common, something we could look forward to together: our first child.
I interviewed a few doctors before I found one who agreed to do things my way. The pregnancy was relatively easy and I went into labor in early October, right on schedule. Sean called my mother to let her know the baby was on the way. Five years earlier, my forty-five-year-old mother had given up her job, her apartment, her car and all of her belongings and signed a billion-year contract with the Sea Org, thus trading her independence for a life of servitude to the church. In exchange, she was promised a bunk bed, three meals a day and a fifty-dollar weekly stipend for the rest of her life.
I was proud of Mom. She had accomplished what I couldn’t. She had given herself over to the church. She was always on the move, helping to fix this church or open that church. At the moment she was helping to oversee the reorganization of churches in Canada, which were mismanaged and in a state of disarray. The assignment was supposed to last a few months, but she’d been in Toronto for nearly four years, and I rarely saw her.
I admired my mother’s altruistic spirit and her commitment to the church’s mission, but even as a grown woman, I found myself wishing I were her priority. Unfortunately for me, she was first and foremost a Sea Org foot soldier and needed permission to do anything outside of the church, including visiting her children. So I was shocked that she convinced the leaders that I needed her, and she managed to make it to California in time to be in the delivery room with me.
My labor was long and arduous, but I refused anything for the pain. The church had convinced me that medication was of no value; its only purpose was to enrich the greedy pharmaceutical industry. The medical team was briefed about my preference for a silent birth. Of course, I didn’t speak during labor, but used hand signals to communicate with Sean and Mom. After twenty-five hours of contractions my blood pressure skyrocketed. The baby was in danger. I had two options: an epidural to help relax me or a C-section. I chose the epidural and slept for the next five hours. When I awakened, the doctor whispered and a nurse tapped me on the shoulder when it was time to push. Finally I gave birth to a boy we named Sage. Scientologists have a special way of welcoming their babies into the world, a way even newborns understood: “You tell a little baby, ‘It’s okay. We’re going to keep you.’ And you always get a sigh! They’re so happy. It’s such a relief to them.” When my baby looked up into my eyes for the first time, I assured him that he was a keeper. I had never felt such love for anyone.
When we brought the baby home, I slept on the living room couch with Sage in the bassinet beside me. I had the perfect excuse for not staying with Sean in our second-floor bedroom. My delivery had been painful and I couldn’t easily walk up the flight of stairs. Mom slept on an air mattress nearby and helped with the baby, but Sean made himself scarce, which was fine with me. On most days, he disappeared with his computer until bedtime. I knew my mother sensed the tension in the house. But she didn’t ask about it. I didn’t offer anything, except to say that I was lonely being so far away from Los Angeles and everything I knew there. I hadn’t had time to make friends because I was always working, and the closest church was forty-five minutes away, so I hadn’t been active since we’d moved. I worked twelve-hour days and most evenings. Who had time for weekend auditing marathons?
I assured my mother that I was still a believer. Scientology was who we were, after all. I applied it every day in my personal life and in my business, just as she did. I blamed the friction between Sean and me on everyday stressors. I knew that going into any detail would have forced her to write me up in a Knowledge Report to the church. As a Scientologist, she was obligated to report others for “nattering,” or “negative chatter,” even if the offender was her daughter.
Mom blamed whatever differences Sean and I had on what she called our lavish lifestyle. We were living in a big house, driving luxury cars and making a lot of money—hardly extravagant by Hollywood standards, but to a woman making fifty dollars a week and living in a dorm room in an old converted hospital, it must have looked like a life of extreme excess. She accused me of “going PTS [Potential Trouble Source] to the middle class.” In other words, I was feeling the consequences of living the shallow existence of a Wog, which she defined as “money, materialism and keeping up with the Joneses.” This is what caused my loneliness and unhappiness, and the solution was to get back to Los Angeles and the church, my mother said. I needed to be with the people who shared my values and ideals. If I wouldn’t do it for myself, I had to do it for the sake of the baby, “who will have to be raised in Scientology,” she said.
My mother’s words resonated with me. She believed that Scientology solved everything and I agreed. Before she left, she had almost convinced me to move back to Southern California, but Sean and I owned a house. I’d built a significant client list in San Francisco. Now we had a new baby. Could we just pick up and leave?
When she returned to Toronto, my mother called Larry to enlist his help in getting me to return. She told him about the conversations we’d had while she was visiting and her thoughts about why I was resistant to coming home.
Sean was the problem, she said. He was stingy and didn’t want to move back because he didn’t want me putting as much money into the church as I did when I was active at the Celebrity Centre. She’d heard Sean say things to make me feel guilty about uprooting the family again. She had done all she could do to convince me to come back. Now she needed someone in higher authority to intervene.
Larry promised to get his wife on the case. I’d lost touch with Larry and Julianne after moving away from LA. But before that, Julianne had become my advisor once Larry became too busy with other church responsibilities to continue counseling me. A chain-smoker with a raspy voice, she was strong-willed and bossy, and had always been able to talk me into almost anything. As a field staff member (FSM), she, like Larry, was responsible for keeping members coming to church and moving along on the Bridge. For every course, or book, or block of auditing time she sold, she earned a 10 or 15 percent commission.
Julianne began calling me every day, sometimes more than once, telling me all the reasons I needed to come home. She knew from Mom that I was now earning somewhere in the six figures. My potential to be even more successful was staggering, Julianne said, if only I’d get back on the Bridge.
“Come back, Michelle, and we’ll get Sean moving again too,” she implored me. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Talking to Julianne, I realized how much I missed daily involvement in the church. I used to spend at least some time there every day. The auditing and courses had been such a large part of my life, and I missed the social events and the support of my Scientology friends. I’d grown tired of being the breadwinner while Sean contributed nothing to our household. His temper tantrums were getting worse and he was increasingly angry and abusive. I had no one to turn to in Northern California. If we returned home, I could ask the church to intervene. Sean could work for his parents again. I could still make regular trips back up north to stay in touch with my clients. I knew Sean’s mother would help with the baby when I traveled. Going back home made sense. A call from the Chaplain of the Celebrity Centre sealed the deal. “Michelle,” he said, “we really think you need to get back here.”
It wasn’t every day a parishioner received a personal call from a church leader, and I was duly impressed. But even more than the call from the Chaplain, I sensed that the tension in my marriage was building to a climax again. The baby was growing and I was running out of excuses for refusing Sean sex. It was only a m
atter of time before his frustration exploded in violence again, and I didn’t want to be far away and isolated when it did.
I finally convinced Sean that going home was the right move. We would be close to his family again and his mother could help with the baby when I was working. We packed up our house in Danville and returned to Los Angeles in the spring of 2001. It felt good to be back home and close to Sean’s family again. My mom was thrilled we were back in Scientology territory. The news of our return traveled quickly. Within a week, the Chaplain called again. “Welcome back, Michelle,” he said, his voice warm and welcoming. “I understand you’re anxious to get back on the Bridge. When will we see you?”
I returned to the church that week, signed up for a block of auditing time and resumed my walk up the Bridge to Total Freedom. Everyone was so welcoming and so happy to have me back. Like them, I had been trained to believe that anyone outside the church was to be pitied. Wogs weren’t necessarily bad people; they just weren’t “enlightened” the way we were. Because of their inferior standing, they could only play peripheral roles in our lives. I was cordial to my Wog acquaintances. I could share a meal with them. They could work for me. But they were never going to be business partners or best friends because they weren’t on my spiritual level. It felt good to be back with “my people,” the spiritually enlightened masters of the universe.
Before Sage, Scientology was more about taking courses and attending events. It was also about having someone to run to when Sean’s abuse got to be too much to take. It was a safety net of sorts. Auditing was very expensive, and the significant levels on the Bridge were gained through auditing, not through courses. Even though I was making good money—around $200,000 a year—there was rarely enough left over to plop down $10,000 for a couple of auditing intensives.
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