Saturday, May 5, 2012 03:00 PM EDT
My Scientology excommunication
I was one of the world's top 50 church members -- then one mistake changed my life
By Kate Bornstein
This article is an adapted excerpt from the new book, "A Queer and Pleasant Danger," from Beacon Press.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/05/my_scientology_excommunication/singleton/I joined the Church of Scientology in 1970, and by the end of the decade, I was at the top of my game. I was a full Lieutenant. Only fifty people in all of Scientology outranked me. I'd been First Mate of the Flagship; and a few years later, I was working directly with the Commodore [Hubbard], planning public relations strategies for Scientology worldwide. I managed an entire ->-bleeped-<-ing continent for them. Then I crashed and burned on Southern Comfort and Coca-Cola, sex, junk food, and ->-bleeped-<- porn. My job performance took a nosedive, and I was summarily removed from my post in middle management and demoted to sales, where, phoenix-like, I rose from my own ashes brighter and stronger than ever.
I was a terrific salesman, a natural. I'd spent my life trying to make people happy with me, and there's nothing more happy-making than selling someone their dreams-come-true. In Scientology sales, we were taught to find a person's "ruin" — whatever it was that was making a person's life miserable and keeping them from achieving their goals. I could find anyone's ruin in minutes — and in less than an hour, I'd have sold them thousands of dollars worth of Scientology services to handle it. I put together a crack staff, and together the six of us pulled in close to a quarter of a million dollars a week. I was a real man in every aspect of my life — and it all came down to money money money. After all, what are your dreams worth to you? How much money would you spend if that's all it took to make your dreams come true? You needed what we had, and we needed your money — most, if not all, of it.
