Perfectly Clear

by Michelle LeClair

  I had never heard Charley raise her voice. It seemed to startle Celeste too.

  “Oh! I’m sorry,” she said, fiddling with the camera. “It’s just, you two looked so cute!”

  * * *

  Charley’s family arrived the day before the opening. I hadn’t met them and they didn’t know about me. As far as they knew, Charley and Maria were still together.

  I had heard so much about Charley’s three sisters, and I was excited to meet them. Everyone gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel bar for a combined family reunion and preshow celebration. Charley had given me a heads-up that she’d be introducing me as one of the producers and a personal friend, which she did. The sisters were gracious and polite, asking the usual questions that strangers ask when they don’t know anything about each other.

  Charley’s oldest sister, Katherine, examined me with laserlike eyes. She looked at me so deeply it seemed as if she were peering into my soul. I’d heard a lot about Katherine. She was the beauty queen of the Mississippi Harpers: married, well-off and unapologetic about all of her beautiful and sparkling things. Charley had compared Katherine to Suzanne Sugarbaker, the Delta Burke character in the 1980s television comedy Designing Women. She hadn’t overstated it. Katherine was a clone of the character, movie star stunning, with a long, slow Southern drawl, a bawdy sense of humor and jewelry dripping from every extremity.

  The sisters bantered and reminisced, and eventually Katherine stood up and said she was going to the restroom. She pointed at Charley and said, “You’re coming with me!” Charley responded that she didn’t need to go, but Katherine insisted. “Oh yes, you do!” she said. “Come with me!” I didn’t think much of it, other than sisters being sisters.

  Behind the closed doors of the ladies’ lounge, Katherine confronted Charley. “Oh my God!” she cried. “You are dating that woman!” Charley tried skirting the issue, with little luck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, in that calm, direct way of hers. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Rix!” Katherine warned. (Rix is Charley’s middle name.) “I can see the way that woman looks at you. I have never seen anyone look at you that way. That woman is in love with you!” Charley confessed that Katherine was right. “She’s in love with me and I’m in love with her,” she said. Mustering her best Southern belle dramatics, Katherine tossed her Louis Vuitton handbag to the floor, threw up her perfectly manicured hands and exclaimed: “Thank God! I couldn’t stand that other bitch!”

  The sisters walked back to the bar, smiling like Cheshire cats. I was wondering what had happened when Katherine leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Welcome to the family, you old sneak!” she said.

  I loved feeling like part of Charley’s family. I imagined that one day they would be my family. They were good people with strong values who loved each other, and that really appealed to me.

  I had become a better person since meeting Charley. She taught me about real love. That it wasn’t critical or cruel or abusive, but kind and warm and breathtaking. If love was too human an emotion, well, I wanted to be human.

  Charley was a role model. Watching her live her life, I realized that possessions didn’t matter; people did. Understanding and acceptance prevailed over judgments. Love over ambition. Trust over suspicion. She was who I wanted to be. Kind. Patient. Empathic.

  Someone who was a lot like I was before I was taught not to be.

  * * *

  Twist premiered to a standing ovation and critical praise for Charley’s musical score. I was so proud of her. It felt good to have a partner who outshined me.

  Before Celeste’s flight back to Los Angeles, I asked if she would leave the camera. Celeste said she had accidentally left it at the theater the night before. She would e-mail the stage manager to make sure I got it back, but it was never found.

  Was I being paranoid? I wondered.

  Or was Celeste a spy for the church?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Reality

  The beginning of October brought us all back to California and reality. Sage and Savy went back to school. Charley fought constantly with Maria and stressed about finding a new place to live. I worried that our relationship wouldn’t survive the pressures in our lives.

  We had been back home only a short time when I began hearing rumblings that Mary Mauser had been outing me to church members while I was away. Dror and Virginia had heard it from a mutual friend.

  I struck back with a Knowledge Report on Mary in November:

  Mary knew I had been in a very unhappy marriage for many years. Once my divorce was final I started a new 2D [relationship] with a woman. This was something that stemmed from falling in love with the being. This was not a sexual aberration. It is something I am extremely proud of. She is one of the leading music producers in the world and a huge contributor to mankind. . . .

  Our story is very beautiful and because the relationship was new, I wanted to speak to Mary face-to-face but I’d been traveling so much that I didn’t have the opportunity to do so.

  I went on to explain about the July 4 phone call and the way Mary had handled herself when I’d admitted I was in love with a woman. I said that I had wanted to be the one to tell the church and my friends, but Mary had gossiped to everyone.

  I recently found out that she told Sean, my X2D [ex-husband] . . . She told him I was “off Bridge” and this “aberration” would be handled.

  [Another Scientologist] called my best friend Virginia Pereira-Soref and said she heard from a mutual friend who heard from Mary that I had outed myself as gay and this was not okay.

  The part that is not okay is that my FSM is telling group members confidential data that I shared re: my 2D. It has now become rumor as something that is “wrong.” I am very aware of the groupthink and I will handle in the proper PR [public relations] way.

  As naive as I was, I felt untouchable. That year I had donated $2 million to the church. I convinced myself that as long as I kept writing checks, I would eventually triumph. I could be with Charley, and the church would look the other way and allow us to live in peace. I couldn’t have been more misguided.

  * * *

  Virginia and Dror threw a birthday party for their one-year-old daughter that same month. Virginia warned me that two high-level Scientologists declined the invitation because I would be there and that I had “come out as gay.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  Reluctantly, she divulged the names. One was the Hollywood business mogul who had introduced me to Dror. The other was the wife of a Grammy-winning music producer. I was furious. I wondered how it would go over if word got out that they were homophobic bigots!

  “Fuck ’em,” Virginia said.

  “Yes, screw them!” I added with a wry laugh. “I’m not missing my goddaughter’s first birthday!”

  By then, Charley had found a place of her own in Pasadena and we weren’t hiding our relationship anymore.

  Newly emboldened, I went to the party with my head held high. I immediately felt out of place. Some of the guests gave me the cold shoulder. I went outside and texted Charley. “I don’t belong here anymore,” I wrote. “I belong with you.”

  Just then, a woman I knew casually from our kids’ Scientology school sat down next to me. She was a mother of four who lived in Beverly Hills with her much older wealthy husband.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, putting my phone away.

  The woman had heard about Charley and me. “I just have to say that I’m so impressed with you,” she said. “It takes courage to do what you did and forge the way for others.”

  I thanked her and she took a sip of her wine.

  “I’ve always been in love with a woman,” she whispered. “Don’t get me wrong—I care about my husband. But you have given me such strength that I’ve decided I’m going to divorce him.” She seemed almos
t giddy as she spoke. It was as if she were standing at the precipice of a cliff and had finally found the courage to jump. I was proud to be the conduit for her epiphany, but it didn’t last long.

  A few weeks later, Virginia told me that the woman had retreated to Flag in Clearwater sometime after the birthday party. She’d undergone rigorous “handling” in auditing and ethics and was now working her way back up from Lower Conditions. Part of her penance had been to “strike a blow to the enemy.” She chose me, writing in a report that I had promoted homosexuality at the party. I felt sorry for her in a way. I was certain she’d been “persuaded” to rethink her sexuality and drop her plans for divorce. Part of the process was getting me, a PTS, “off her lines” (out of her life). But I was still angry that she’d thrown me under the bus after I’d been so supportive of her.

  It was no coincidence that I was summoned to the Celebrity Centre for an important meeting with the top ethics officer from Flag. I agreed to go because there was still a part of me that wasn’t ready to sever ties with the church.

  The meeting began friendly enough. I was asked if I planned to get back into session and return to my work on the Bridge. I said I was committed to coming back but had no immediate plans.

  I was then told that others had written reports for my file. A young woman who had turned to me for support after she’d come out to the church, and was later ordered to go to Flag to be “cured,” had filed a report saying I’d persuaded her to experiment with women, which was a total lie.

  A Scientologist I knew only casually claimed to have seen me being “inappropriately affectionate” with a woman in public. I remembered seeing him at a restaurant where Charley and I were having lunch one day. We had been holding hands, but as soon as I’d spotted him I dropped Charley’s hand. This was what he called “inappropriately affectionate,” holding hands? Yes, because, he wrote, “Per the chart of human evaluation, homosexuality is 1.1 on the tone scale and perverted.”

  At that point, things became perfectly clear to me. I would never be free to be me and be a member of the Church of Scientology.

  I left the Celebrity Centre that day, vowing never to return.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Office of Special Affairs

  My friend Ken Wright called and said he needed to see me. Would I meet him for lunch? When I walked into the restaurant, I could see he was not his usual jovial self. It didn’t take long for me to realize that he’d heard about my “confession.” Sure enough, he’d heard from Mary Mauser. He urged me to get back into auditing to “fix the homosexual thing.” Ken was a good person, but I knew the church was pulling his strings and I was tired of them trying to control me.

  “Ken, I love Charley with every part of me,” I said. “I’m not giving her up. I’m not going in session to fix something that isn’t broken and I sure as hell won’t have a group of people who are supposed to be my friends inserting themselves into my relationship.”

  Suddenly, his manner changed. His fear for me was real. I could feel it.

  “You have to listen to me,” Ken said. “This is getting serious and I want to help you. I shouldn’t tell you this, but you are a good person and I care about you. Stop being defensive and listen to me.”

  As I sat quietly across from him, Ken leaned forward, looked around.

  “I received a phone call yesterday from OSA and they were asking me very specific questions about you,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “They wanted to know if I had ever done business with you. They wanted to know if I had invested with you or bought life insurance from you. They wanted to know what I thought about you personally and professionally. I told them all the business we’ve done together has been impeccable. I told them that you were a smart businesswoman. They asked about your integrity and I told them it was first-class, but I did tell them that I felt you needed to be in session more. I asked them why they were calling me. The woman on the phone said they had ‘an unofficial investigation’ going on. They were poking around.”

  Ken was worried. He tried to get across the seriousness of what was happening, but I was sure the “investigation” would go nowhere. This wasn’t about my business, I said. It was all about me being a lesbian. What were they going to do, arrest me? Let them call people, I said. I had nothing to hide.

  He wouldn’t be put off.

  “I asked them if they were talking to anyone else and they said they were,” he said, sounding desperate. “They’ve talked to a lot of people. You have to take this seriously, Michelle. I’ve seen investigations spin out of control in the past, and I don’t want to see that happen to you. Promise me that you will look at going in session? Please.”

  * * *

  Mom was transferred from Los Angeles to Clearwater for a few months, and she frequently called asking me to purchase sets of L. Ron Hubbard books. As the leader of a sales team at Flag, she was responsible for making sure her group made its daily sales quota. Every time she was in a pinch, I bought a set. The leather-bound books retailed for between $3,000 and $4,000 a set, and I’d purchased a storage unit full of them. But what was a few thousand dollars here and there when I was taking in millions—especially if it meant helping my mom?

  Even though Sea Org members were secretive about life inside the organization, I’d gotten a glimpse of what it was like when I’d joined for that brief period in my teens. Since then, I’d heard the same leaked stories that everyone else had. Being in the Sea Org was a tough gig—as rigorous as it was prestigious. Members worked fourteen-plus-hour days with only a few hours off each week, and most were much younger than my mother. I worried about the strain it was putting on her both physically and psychologically. She always claimed she was happy, insisting it was a privilege to serve in the Sea Org. As with everything else, there were consequences when you didn’t meet expectations, she said—for instance, when you didn’t sell enough books. She never offered what those consequences were, and I never asked. I just wrote checks to cover her.

  I was angry, though, when I discovered she’d charged books to the credit card I’d loaned her for the incidentals she couldn’t afford on her meager Sea Org salary of fifty dollars a week. Why would she do that? I wondered. It wasn’t like I’d ever turned her down for anything.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when I confronted her about the credit card bill. She stuttered and stammered and began to cry. She’d been desperate when she charged the books to my card, she said. Her supervisor had forbidden her to leave until she made a sale. She’d done everything she could before using my card, even calling people in different time zones—Australia and Europe—trying to make a sale. Frantic, she had finally used my card.

  What I didn’t know, and what my mother would never tell me, was the abuse she suffered when she didn’t make her quota. Her twenty-five-year-old supervisor berated her by screaming at the top of her lungs that Mom was “a fat pig . . . a shithead . . . a screwup.” She was ordered to do demeaning tasks like scrubbing filthy toilets, cleaning out Dumpsters and cleaning sets of stairs using a rag.

  The worst was the night her supervisor announced that she and her team were “going to the bilges.” In the pitch dark, Mom and the others were marched down to Clearwater Bay. As waves crashed up against the seawall, they were ordered to roll up their pants, take off their shoes and jump into the black water. The supervisor tossed scrub brushes into the bay and commanded them to scour the barnacles off the seawall. This was the consequence, they were told, of caring so little about the souls they weren’t saving by not selling enough books.

  The humiliation was punishment enough for Mom. But when she grumbled about it, she was reported by a team member and subsequently banished for weeks to “Pigs Berthing,” a filthy, run-down efficiency apartment on church property with no electricity or running water.

  It was no wonder she sounded so frightened when faced with losing her best customer.

  * *
*

  Mom had always gotten on me when I strayed from the church. She was insistent now I come back. The Ethics Department had been urging her to do what she could to convince me to return. They hadn’t mentioned my relationship with Charley. They had said only that they were concerned that I’d been away for too long. They’d asked questions, she said. “What is Michelle doing with her life? Is she working? Does she need assistance? She is such a hard worker and she’s done so much for the church. We want to help her. We need to get her in here to talk to her.” I was pretty sure they were missing my money more than they were missing me.

  Mom didn’t know the details about what was going on, just that people in the church were worried about my well-being because I hadn’t been around. She was worried too. I had too many pressures—raising my kids, managing my business, the continuing battle with Sean over alimony and visitation rights, and taking constant calls from Dror about potential movie projects. How could I be expected to cope without the weight of the church behind me? I needed to come back, my mother said, or I would collapse.

  “We need you back so you can handle your life,” she said. “The church is the only solution.”

  At that point, I couldn’t have been dragged back, not even with a tow truck. I did, though, want to escape the cloud of suspicion enveloping me.

  * * *

  On December 29, 2010, I wrote my own “Things That Shouldn’t Be” report, hoping to nip whatever investigation there was in the bud. I sent it to the top ethics officer at Flag in Clearwater and Chairman of the Board David Miscavige in Los Angeles.

  “It is absolutely NOT okay that any rumor is being forwarded about me. I am not being confronted by my accusers, nor am I being backed up or protected by the Ethics Department.”