Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [43]
“Is it always like this around here?” I asked McKay.
“It depends.”
“No, usually worse,” Bruce piped in.
Two o’clock rolled around and most of the films were already upstairs in the delivery area. Ray and I made our way back to the reception area to get going on my routing form.
I had to see nearly 20 different people on the routing form and McKay took me around to a bunch of them. Turned out that I had to do an Int Base Orientation Course, and a bunch of the people on the routing form I would see while doing the course, so we skipped over those for now. As we walked around, I couldn’t help but notice that people were not friendly towards McKay. Each and every person seemed happy enough to meet me, but they talked down to McKay like he was a dog or something.
“What’s your deal?” I asked Ray.
“I just got busted off post as General Manager,” McKay said, seemingly in disagreement with what he was saying.
“What is the General Manager?” I asked, never having heard of this post on any previous organizing boards I was familiar with.
“The General Manager is over all of the production divisions of Gold,” he said. “Cine, Audio and Manufacturing.”
“What happened that you got taken off post?”
“A whole bunch of overt products were sent out from Manufacturing, and a Committee of Evidence recommended that I be removed,” he answered.
“Is that why everybody is giving you the cold shoulder?” I asked.
“Yeah, probably.” We headed back to reception.
Once there, I filled out some paperwork about where my cleaning station would be and tried to find out when I would be getting the rest of my clothes and belongings from Los Angeles.
We went to dinner and after muster went back to completing the last of the routing form steps.
By the end of the night, we had completed most of the routing form, with the exception of the items that I would do on course the next day.
McKay and I parted ways and I made my way over to the bus.
I was exhausted and I smelled like a mix of MEK and PERC that had worked its way into my hands. It was 11:00 p.m. and my first day was brutal. Between the crazy morning and walking all over the grounds, I was wiped out.
I passed out on the bus ride home and woke up as we arrived at Devonshire.
I walked into the room and passed out on the bed.
“Get up, Marc!” Tom was standing next to my bed. I looked at my watch. It was 1:00 a.m. “You’re smelling up the whole apartment! You smell like gas or something!”
“It’s chemical stuff from Ray Reiser’s office,” I said as I rolled over in the bed.
“I don’t give a crap what it’s from, open a window and wash that stuff off. You’re going to gag us to death with that smell!”
By 2:00 a.m., I was out of the shower and had removed most of the smell from my hands.
By the time my head hit the pillow, I was back asleep.
Chapter Seven – Stories of Old
The next day I started the Base Security/Public Relations Course.
The course gave the history of the International Base and what the staff were supposed to tell anyone they ran into that was NOT from the base. This was called the “shore story.”
There were a ton of rules of what could and couldn’t be done. There were several issues in the pack that laid out the rules and explained what was acceptable at the Int Base:
No one could know that the base was located in Hemet. No family, no friends, no other staff from other organizations within the Sea Org, no one.
No one could know that International Management of Scientology was here. As far as anyone in Hemet or San Jacinto was concerned, all staff at the Int Base were involved with the production of the Audio Visual materials for Scientology internationally.
When in town for any reason, any name tags had to be removed and placed in a pocket.
All mail was to be sent through the internal mail system. No U.S. mailboxes in town were allowed to be used for any reason whatsoever.
No outside calls were to be made from pay phones off the property.
All personal mail was to be mailed in unsealed envelopes. When Security received the mail, they would read it, and