Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology (10 page)

As a result you start to edit what’s happened to you in your mind, and thus you can fail to address what is bothering you because you know it would end up all coming back to what you did to provoke that situation.

There are also other problems that can get in the way of covering those items that might be bothering you in your life. Scientology auditing follows a precise series of steps. Each addresses one or more conditions that everyone supposedly needs to overcome. Thus, your auditor directs your problems as required for you to move up the Bridge.

For example, the steps on the Bridge predetermine what will be addressed next. The auditor would then say: “In looking at earlier interviews and auditing, I have found that in your life you have a problem with communication.”

Your auditor then proceeds to ask: “From where could you talk to your mother?”

You give various answers, but the auditor continues to come back again and again, looking for more answers. You grow frustrated and exhausted as the auditor comes back to you with the same question dozens of times, trying to unblock you. Then you surrender. You have a realization that gets the required reaction on the E-Meter that signifies this step is complete with a “floating needle.”

You finally say: “I can communicate with my mother from anywhere.”

In the end, the “ability gained” is that you can communicate with anyone on any subject. Through auditing it has been proven, unequivocably, that you did indeed have this problem but just were not aware of it. And now that it’s been proven to you that you did have a problem with communication and that problem has now been eliminated.

At the end of every session, once the needle has floated, the auditor says: “Thank you very much. Your needle is floating, we’re going to end session now.”

You now leave, feeling that you’ve accomplished something.
Didn’t know that was there, but now I’m clear of it.
But the mind fuck lies in the fact that
they
assigned
you
the problem and not the other way around. And afterward, if you realize that you still have a problem with communicating with your mother, you are taught that that person is a wog, or “down tone.” (Being down tone means existing at the lower level of the Scientology Tone Scale, which is a listing of the various emotional states you can be in. The higher you are on the Tone Scale, the happier and healthier you are. So, if you’re down tone, it means you’re unhappy and unhealthy—and potentially dragging higher tone people down with you.)

The process could produce a great sense of cathartic relief. Here was a problem I wasn’t even aware of, that I may have created for myself, and after much back-and-forth, I was able to overcome that problem.

So while in session I would feel the euphoria of self-discovery and growth, back in the real world I was still angry, depressed, and judgmental. Looking at my diaries from that period (journaling was frowned upon by the church, but I did it anyway), I would note that I still wanted more for my life and my family’s life. My Scientology realizations were great in the church building, but I would start cursing when I couldn’t find my car in a parking lot or when I had no money left in my bank account. It just wasn’t there for me in real-life situations, this sense of accomplishment of having solved problems. It really existed only when I was in the presence of other Scientologists, who completely bought into it.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that all the understanding I gained through auditing only related back to my life in the church and helped me be a Scientologist. My “gains” in Scientology were not relating to the real world. I was so entrenched in the church that it had become my everything. I couldn’t question that.

W
HEN IT CAME TO MEN
,
I never really dated Scientologists, even though it was encouraged. I was embarrassed by a lot of people in the church who didn’t pay attention to practical things like how they looked and who talked in a language that was strange to the outside world. Just like I wanted a normal mom as a kid, now I wanted a normal boyfriend.

Dating outside the church also probably meant there was a part of me that was subconsciously trying to keep something for myself that wasn’t connected to Scientology. Most of my family was in the church, as were most of my friends, and I spent much of my free time on course or being audited. My romantic life gave me that tiny bit of freedom away from the weight of saving the planet. My fantasy was that I’d meet a regular, cool, normal guy who
wasn’t
a Scientologist but was open to it. Hopefully fucked-up enough to desperately need it.

Looking back now, I am sure that the way my father acted and the way I perceived him ultimately informed the way I looked at men both when I was growing up and as an adult. I interpreted his yelling and his dominance as strength, and I ultimately adopted the
same behavior and took it on as part of my own persona. I believed that this was the way a man was supposed to be and this was how a woman felt, being charmed by him. He yells, she cowers. To me this all made sense—except that in my relationships, I was usually the one doing the yelling.

I treated men badly and didn’t have much respect for them. I had a list of very specific things that could get a man written off my list pretty fast (including, for example, men who wear sandals—shallow, I know). Always a keen observer since childhood, I also kept a mental list of what I thought a man was:

Men say horrific and hurtful things to their wives and daughters (and are forgiven).

Men are strong, women weaker (or men appear strong, but they are weak).

Men are charming.

Men wear cologne.

Men get manicures.

Men have clean cars.

Men cheat.

Men don’t care about their families.

Men go and start new families.

Men hurt women.

Men do not value anything.

Men break their word and women forgive them.

Men appear to be the dominant species.

Men win.

F
ROM THE AGE OF
EIGHTEEN
through twenty-five, I went through a very promiscuous period, going out with all kinds of guys, from gorgeous soap actors to athletic beach bums. But I was never really attached to anyone in particular. It was mainly sex without any emotional connection.

Now, look, I don’t want to give you the idea that I would sleep with anyone. I wasn’t picking up random men and bringing them home. I just wasn’t faithful. And sex was a substitute for really being there in a relationship.

I would do things that men would normally do to women to “get back at them.” But I was only hurting myself. If I had sex with a guy, afterward I would say things like “Listen, ummmm, I have a very early morning, so you have to go. You can’t sleep here,” or “I have to go now. I haven’t been home all day and my dog has to be let out” (I didn’t have a dog). I would do this to a guy before he could do it to me. If I spent the night or committed to them, I would be made vulnerable. I was convinced that they would eventually either cheat or leave me anyway. Why open myself up to another man breaking my heart?

My mom always wanted me to be with someone in the church, because she thought it would help me with my problems with men and intimacy in general.

“I don’t know, Ma. I just don’t respect men,” I confessed to her. “I have bad intentions toward them. Obviously it comes from Dad and Dennis. I want to break their hearts, like my heart’s been broken,” having been let down by many of the men in my life.

“I never want them to get the upper hand. Even if I feel something for them, I tell them to get the hell out.”

But like any good Scientologist, my mom offered answers that led directly back to the church.

“You’ll handle that in session,” she said, and that was it.

She didn’t judge me (and for that, she is always the person I go to, then and now)—she subscribed to the idea that anything bad I was doing wasn’t really the doing of her daughter; instead it was my reactive mind, which I was on the road to dealing with and getting rid of. The main thing was that I stay on course and move up the Bridge. If I did that, everything would sort itself out.

All of my non-Scientology boyfriends would tell me I was fucked-up and that clearly Scientology was not working for me because I kept cheating or leaving. This made me go in search of
someone even more fucked-up than I was. Someone I could fix, to avoid fixing myself.

In 1996 the universe provided me with Angelo Pagán. A man with a history of cheating, and three kids. Perfect. Now, I’ll preface this by saying this is not a love story. I mean, it’s a story about love—just not the kind that you hope to tell your kids one day.

It all began with a WB sitcom I was on—
First Time Out
—which, naturally, was soon canceled. The show’s star, Jackie Guerra, who became a good friend, invited me out to a Cuban nightclub to “celebrate” getting canceled. I wasn’t exactly feeling celebratory about being on the unemployment line yet again, but when I heard that Scott Baio, who had directed the last episode of our show, was going to be there, I quickly said yes.

Maybe I’d marry Scott. He might make this better. There was no doubt about it; I wanted “Charles in Charge” of me, and “Chachi loves Leah” sounded kinda nice. Now that he was no longer my director in a professional relationship, maybe there was something there.

As soon as I walked into the Cuban club El Floridita, I fell in love with the place. It was the tiniest nightclub I’d ever been to in my life. A small parquet dance floor surrounded by tables, a drop ceiling, red walls, and strung-up Christmas lights were the sum total of El Floridita’s décor.

After Jackie, Scott, and I had dinner, the band started playing salsa music, and soon after that this guy walks in. He’s got thick black hair, caramel skin, and huge dimples. He went right up to the microphone and just started singing without doing any kind of warm-up.

I was intrigued by this Cuban Frank Sinatra, but by now the club had become really crowded and the dance floor was packed with people dancing salsa, so we decided to leave as I’m not good with inhaling other people’s sweat (that’s why I don’t do things like yoga). My fascination with Scott Baio had waned in the hours we were there because he was wearing high-top Reeboks. I told you, I’m very judgmental.

The next day I was still thinking about the singer. I called the
club and found out that he performed every Wednesday night, then told Jackie that we were going back to El Floridita. The following Wednesday we got a table on the floor, right by the band, and had just sat down when Jackie spotted someone at the bar: “Isn’t that Carlos? He was on our show. He had a few lines.”

“I don’t want him over here, Jackie.” I didn’t want to be sitting with some asshole guy when Cuban Frank Sinatra walks in.

“Why are you such a bitch?”

“What kind of guy comes to a club by himself?”

Jackie just rolled her eyes and got up to talk to Carlos. Meanwhile, Cuban Frank Sinatra walked in and started to sing. So I put my purse in the empty chair next to me, because I didn’t want “Carlos, Mr. Few Lines” sitting with us. Jackie had brought him over anyway. I turned my back to him completely, as if I were totally absorbed by the band. That is, until I heard him tell Jackie, “My friend Angelo’s the lead singer here. I came to meet him.” And with that, I turned around and said, “Jesus, Carlos! How rude of me to turn my back to you! Eat something with us!” as I removed my purse from the empty seat.

“Jackie, how rude are you? Carlos! Have some
platanos
.”

Sure enough, when the band took a break, Angelo came right over to say hello to Carlos, who introduced him to Jackie and me.

“Do you dance?” he asked me.

“With you? Yes. But I don’t know how to dance salsa,” I said.

“I’ll teach you.”

On the dance floor, as Angelo’s going one-two-three, I’m doing the check:

Smells good, check.

Dimples, check.

Good teeth, check (although the bottom row are a little fucked-up, but I found that sexy as hell).

Strong arms, check.

Then the last item on the checklist: shoes and socks. I was petrified as I looked down, because if you have white socks on, you’re
dead to me.
Dead to me
. There’s no fixing you. You’re beyond help. As a person, there are certain things you should know, and one of them is black pants, black socks, black shoes.

Please, God, please
.

And he had black socks and good black shoes. Check!

With Angelo it was instant magic. Like what movies are made of, songs are written about. But to be sure this magic was real, I needed to test it out.

With my checklist complete, I decided to break the number one rule of dating, and I asked him, “So, when are we getting married?”

“Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I mimicked him. “It’s going to happen, Angelo. I know you’re uncomfortable in this moment, because you probably just think you’re going to get laid. And that is going to happen. Right away. But here’s what I’m saying to you: We’re going to get married at some point.”

“That’s funny. I mean, I’m already kind of married.”

Suddenly, the rom-com movie I was in came to a complete halt.

“What do you mean, you’re ‘kind of married’?” I asked.

What it meant, according to Angelo and which I believed, was that he and his wife were legally married but separated.

I said, “Why are you married already?”

He said, “Well, where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”

Magic. I am a sucker for cologne and a good line. “What time do you get off?” I asked.

I was head over heels for Angelo with the dimples in a way that I had never felt. I wanted to be with him as much as possible, but it seemed that he could never sleep over. There was always a reason. An early work shift or he needed to take his young son to school. If I had used an ounce of the life smarts I prided myself on, I would have known why Angelo could never stay the night and why we rarely met until late at night. When I look back on it, it’s clear I didn’t want to know.

After I had given Angelo a lecture about going after his dreams,
(he was selling electronics during the day and singing at night, which left no time for him to pursue his dreams of being an actor), he came to me and confessed the truth.

“I have to tell you something,” he said to me one night. “I’m really starting to like you, and I’m starting to feel bad about the person that I’m being. I’m not separated. I’m a cheater—and not just with you. I have been a cheater my whole life.”

This guy is so fucked-up, he’s perfect for me!

I admired Angelo’s honesty and candor, and I think it made me fall even more in love with him. I didn’t want to give him up. So, even though Scientology hadn’t helped me with my infidelities, I decided the church was going to fix his: “I need you to go to this place and make a change in your life.”

Angelo did a small intro course called Personal Values and Integrity, which was about exactly what the title said. It discussed morality in a very simple way, stressing the importance of the participants’ confessing to any and all transgressions with exercises such as writing an essay on the topic “When have you been dishonest?”

God bless him, Angelo threw himself into the course and began to tell me about every woman he had been with in the recent past—and there were a lot. Girls in the club, a dancer he knew from back in San Francisco, an entire bridal party! The more truths he told me, the more he wanted to tell. While most people might hear about these transgressions and be devastated, I had learned from Scientology that this behavior was not representative of the real person Angelo was. He just hadn’t been “cleared” yet. All of this was still his reactive mind. A person could admit to the most heinous things and feel no remorse. But learning to admit to feeling guilt and to take responsibility was a whole other thing, which Angelo was now doing. We’re taught to respect the person who has the balls to do that and admire him for it. Admitting you’ve done something wrong is the first step toward salvation, as defined by Scientology. According to LRH, each of us has something like 800 million overts—meaning transgressions—and you are never going to get them all out in one
lifetime, but it’s being aware that you have them and need to work on them that makes all the difference.