Will Self - Walking to Hollywood

As did a burly man, who said that while he had managed to make the break, his parents — despite everything that had happened to him — continued to believe that they were Thetans who had been exiled to earth 75 million years ago, and that after arriving at an implant station housed in an extinct volcano, they had clung to genetic entity after genetic entity, piggybacking their way through evolution, until they ended up passing out leaflets on Hollywood Boulevard. He himself had had a breakdown after leaving, and when his parents ‘They still love me…’ — had the temerity to meet with him, they too had been labelled ‘suppressive persons’.

‘You guys know what that’s like,’ he sobbed. ‘Nobody can talk to them, sit with them, hand them a friggin’ cup of coffee — and you know the awfulest thing, I kinda feel that way too. I feel like I’m a suppressive person even out here in the real world — I just can’t connect.’

The testimonies were getting to me. I’d known in general terms the secret arcana that Scientologists became privy to only when they attained the grade of Level 3 Operating Thetans, but still: to hear how this hokum had corrupted minds and distorted lives was… salutary. I looked at the slack skin on the backs of my hands. True, it would’ve been a reassurance to be admitted to the religion — neither of the actors playing me was getting any younger, and while I was confident they’d still be having offers for years to come, what kind of parts would they be? I didn’t want to end up in soaps — or sitcoms. Whereas if I were a Thetan, I’d effectively become an actor with a billion-year contract and there’d be no resting at all: as soon as one part (or ‘life’) ended, another would begin—

‘Are you going to join us on the demo?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Are you coming with — on the demo?’

I had been romping in my reverie of full and eternal employment, with its personations flowing seamlessly, each into the next, never the dull requirement to just be myself , when suddenly there were the braces and the tongue stud and the petty earnestness of it all.

‘Well, uh, where?’

‘We’re going to picket the centre up on Hollywood — you don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable, I mean, we’d understand.’

‘Sure we would,’ said the burly man, coming up behind her with an ursine undulation of his sloping shoulders. ‘I mean, you could be recognized by someone — and that can cause problems in this town, you could end up as fair game .’

I knew what he was talking about: to be branded ‘fair game’ was the Scientological equivalent of being forced to wear a yellow star in Germany after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws. Persons designated ‘fair game’ could be ‘deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist’, and this included being ‘tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed’.

‘I gotta tellya,’ said the burly son of Xenu, leaning down to me conspiratorially, ‘I had no idea you had any involvement with the Church.’

‘Um, well, not formally ,’ I stressed, ‘but I did go to Saint Hill a few times — y’know, in England.’

‘Sure, sure, I understand — loved you in Dinotopia by the way. Lissen.’ He held up a swatch of black cloth and a white mask. *‘You could always wear these if you don’t want to be recognized, and we’d be grateful, we could use the numbers.’

I stood up and took the robe and mask from him. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘I’ll come along — I could use a walk.’

They couldn’t — the children of Xenu piled into a minibus and several cars, leaving me to plod the couple of miles to where the demo was assembling at Hollywood and Vine. They said they’d try to wait — but, as Busner often used to say, ‘Trying is lying.’ I’d been thinking of him on the walk over, and what he’d make of these odd polarities — here was I, joining the anti-Scientology march, while over there, on Sunset, was the office of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the anti-psychiatric pressure group szupported by Szasz and the Scientologists.

From the corner I could see the Scientology kids wending their way through the crowds along the boulevard, all of them in their V masks, and carrying placards with slogans such as ‘They Want Your Money and Your Sanity’, ‘Scientology Disconnects Families’ and ‘Tax-Exempt Pyramid Scheme’. This last seemed the most problematic — after all, just about all of late capitalism was founded on a tax-exempt pyramid scheme; or so it seemed to me, on Saturday, 14 June 2008.

I shrugged on my own black robe, donned my V mask, then hustled through the tourists and the cruisers and the movie star impersonators — but the demo kept on marching, while I was only floundering: walking to Hollywood was one thing; running quite another. In a way, it was relief when a van slewed into the kerb beside me, its side door slammed open, and two Mormonesque heavies leapt out, grabbed me and hustled me inside. ‘C’mon,’ said one of them. ‘You’ve done enough walking for a lifetime — why not take a ride.’

The last thing I saw before the door was slammed shut was Margaret Atwood slumped by a storefront, a pathetic styrofoam begging cup on the sidewalk in front of her. I’d had no idea dystopic novels were selling that badly. Then, as the van pulled away, through the tinted rear windows, I spotted Kazuo Ishiguro, the British novelist — another writer who’d had many of his works adapted for screen; but, while to be down and out in Hollywood was one thing, why was he wearing that curious robe, which looked like a couple of camping mats and an election placard strapped round his torso? And what was he wearing on his head? Was it a hat — or a house? And if it was a house — which one? Darlington Hall, as featured in The Remains of the Day , or Netherfield Park?

But I had no time to reflect any further on these mysteries, for the van’s driver — who was hidden from me in a sealed compartment — must have seen a break in the traffic and accelerated, and I was thrust backwards on to the point of a hypo. I felt the drug ooze into me — then my consciousness, tissue-thin to begin with, was balled up, wadded and thrown away.

I get it back standing stark naked in what appears initially to be a featureless room: plain white walls, a high ceiling with recessed lighting diodes. Then I see, lying on the smooth white floor, the silky pool of a Spandex bodysuit. Next, I notice a single prop: a stop light, such as you might see at any LA intersection. It’s working, and as I look it changes from the red DON’T WALK to the green stick-figure with its legs parted. There’s no smell at all, except the stray whiffs of my own sweaty armpits — yet I sense altitude and aridity, and wonder if the room might be in a desert, say, the Mojave.

‘Put on the bodysuit,’ a voice crackles through a hidden speaker. I’m a little miffed — at forty-six I’m proud of my toned appearance, and, despite the kidnapping and the drugging, the idea of displaying myself naked to unseen voyeurs is the most arousing experience I’ve had since the girl in the CGI riot involuntarily came on to me.

The speaker crackles again, ‘Put on the bodysuit — or we will send someone in to put it on you.’ This time I reluctantly obey. It fits me like bespoke and, as delighted by my new clothing as I’d been with my nakedness, I swing my arms this way and that, then flex my legs. ‘Be still!’ the disembodied voice orders me. A door whines open and a huddle of white lab coats come bustling in, one of them pushing a shopping cart full of small balls covered in Velcro. They’re all wearing V masks and as they cluster round me I ask — I think entirely reasonably — ‘What’s going on, guys, is this part of the demo?’