The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi Read Free Book Online Page B

it, and his words helped me to dispel the doubts that had arisen when my first partner was banished to the void. He was very quick, and had me twitching and giggling all over the place. I got the flunk grade a few dozen times before the session ended. The one aspect of the experience which made the most impression was that he was able to put my mind through hoops, and although it was his turf, I had to respect whatever it was that had given him that ability. Scientology began to intrigue me in more complex ways.
    The third day, I met Lana. Lana! Tall, fair, Scandinavian mouth like one of the blow queens used for Norwegian cigar commercials. Her breasts rose like hot loaves out of her low-cut bra. She was introduced to me, smiled deep into my libido, took me by the hand, and led me to a private room upstairs for my first auditing session. She explained the rules of the game very quickly, and soon we were sitting facing one another, her with a black pad and a black box, me holding two tin cans attached to a meter which measures electrical conductivity, a primitive form of “lie detector.” She was going to repeat certain phrases, and she would write down my responses, all the while noting the movement of the needle on the meter.
    The phrases were noncommittal, having to do with childhood memories, and I realized that I was being given the dianetic processing, whereby one relives the experiences of early traumas again and again until they are erased, and one becomes “clear,” the Scientological equivalent of enlightenment. It has always amused me that Hubbard took his central metaphor from adding machines. The mixture of the vulgar and the sublime, was, as always, grotesquely enchanting.
    As the session progressed, the process took hold. I went into immediate psychoanalytic overdrive. I started hyperventilating. The associations came hot and heavy. Lana looked at me with warm, devoted eyes; she was cheering me on. I began to spill out my soul, not caring any longer about the context or the ideology, but simply swimming with the wondrous relief which comes when the dam of repression bursts and the heart can sing out its total joy and pain. I was completely infatuated with the moment, and at the height of my confessions, the doubt struck. I looked up at her and knew that I couldn’t withhold the slightest thing. She won from me the instant idiot loyalty that my poor Gurdjieff guru had tried to beat out of me. Once again, cunt proved superior to cunning.
    My lips trembled. I spoke. “Lana,” I said, “I have been in so many organizations, and always I have been disappointed. I hope Scientology won’t let me down.” She looked back, breathing hard. “In Scientology,” she said, “you can have anything you want.” The sexual tension reached the bursting point. “Anything?” I said, peering between her swelling breasts. She returned my gaze, acknowledged. “Anything,” she sighed.
    My last reserve was gone. I brought forth my deepest sin. “Lana,” I said, “in some ways Scientology seems to be a kind of fascism of the mind.” Immediately, she froze. “Who told you that?” she said. The bond between us was broken and I was suddenly out in the cold, cast out of what I had hoped might at last be a family for me. I cast about in my mind for a scapegoat. I remembered one night, sitting stoned with Francis amid his paintings of coagulated inspiration and the dada artifacts of his ironic mind; we had been discussing Heraclitus in relation to Long Island. He had suddenly flourished a Scientology poster and said, “Look, the thought patrol.”
    The words dribbled out of my mouth. “My friend . . . my friend . . . Francis . . . he said it . . . “ I was horrified. I had betrayed one of my closest friends and to a plastic Mata Hari. She immediately closed her pad and said, “Wait here, I have to find out about this.” I sat for fifteen minutes like a character in a Koestler novel, pondering the ambivalences of the