okay – thank you. We love Aron!

This is a late post and I’m assuming Terra will review the comments before a final draft. I thought decor only referred to a room but I saw this definition in dictionary .com

decor – 2. decoration in general; ornamentation.
(beads, babbles and other decor)

So I guess “I love the nautical decor you’re wearing” works as well as “nautical fashion”, “nautical clothing” etc.

Wow, Bruce! Thanks. You covered all the bases! Or did you…?

“It’s like a manual for those who leave the sea org and what to tell people who are questioning what was going on in there.” That’s an interesting comment, gato. I hadn’t thought of the novel that way and I agree. 🙂

Terra, it’s been different at different times. One older Sea Org member told me “The Sea Org used to be the Sea Orgy”. I guess he was talking about the early 70s. There was a tradition called the “Beer and Cheese Party” on Christmas Eve, and I am told it was pretty heavy on the beer. Which naturally leads to “fooling around”.

There were quite a few older married couples that didn’t seem to make much sense, people who you wouldn’t think would get together. I suspect they were shacking up when the strict rules came out and got married to avoid going to the RPF.

When I got in, ’79, the strict rules were in place but a whole lot of shakin’ was still goin’ on. Another friend told me he “misunderstood” the rules to not apply to oral sex. Imagine his surprise… In fact the strict rules still allowed kissing, so you could get to “first base” in theory. But it was considered a bit dangerous and you can definitely get in trouble for kissing the wrong person or the wrong sex or at the wrong time or or or.

Of course, once you have gotten to “first” the temptation is great to find paradise in the dashboard light. We are talking mostly about young folks with on a huge adventure they think will save the world and the universe, it is natural to include love in the package. Often you are working very closely with someone, perhaps for many hours per day, into sleep times. If the other person is even slightly attractive it is easy to fall for charms that you might otherwise not even notice. Items like the sauna and communal showers (showers are sex separate of course but you have to go down corridors to get to them so you are seeing women in bikinis, towel wraps or dressing gowns every day).

If you are homosexual the communal showers expose you to nakedness of the attractive sex every day.

Combine all that with a prohibition on masturbation and you have a volatile situation.

So the “courtship” of the Sea Org in the 70s, 80s, even part of the 90s was extremely fast. Notice that you like someone, try a little flirtation to see if they like you, maybe one session of kissing and you are formally talking about marriage. In those days you didn’t have to get permission, you just got married and went on the waiting list for a single-bed room to begin your married life.

Actually a big incentive to get married is you get to move out of your three level bunk bed and get a room of your own. Maybe a two-bedroom apartment with three couples instead of 12 singles. They put up a wall or curtain to make the dining room a “bedroom”. Or a closet size “room” somewhere. On the Freewinds you get a room that is barely big enough for the bed.

To be brutally honest I have to say that I proposed to two women on paper in their In baskets. No kissing involved. Needless to say that didn’t work out too well. We both avoided getting in trouble for doing something other than work on work time (often 20 hours per day) but we also didn’t get hitched. One of them already had plans with a married man in divorce proceedings and the other turned out to be asexual. How would you know?

One girl had a two-seater car, a gift from her parents. She asked me over Christmas (there was a three day time off over Christmas back then to see family etc.) if I wanted to see “Titanic” with her. I was busy setting up for a movie showing at the base for the crew and said no. The one who went with her ended up marrying her. Fast times at Int Base High.

Another time I was seriously interested in a girl and I think maybe she was interested in me. At least she always gave me a hug when I did something for her. So one of these Christmas breaks she asked me to see the “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” play on video with her. We set it up in the Offline Edit bay and I was thinking “alone with a girl watching a great play, maybe I should make a move?” I looked over and she was fast asleep. Sleep takes priority over anything else when you can’t get any for a while, so I let her sleep and “no romance for you”.

In the Int Base in the late 90s all that changed. You had to get permission from Dave to get married, and very few did it. The days off over Christmas were cancelled. The basic idea is that everyone at the Int Base is screwing the pooch so they don’t get to screw each other. Certainly in the bunker mentality of that time it wasn’t really on our minds. Mostly the thought was to get enough food and sleep to continue existing. You had men and women catching their brief nightly naps together on the floor of the “SP Hole” but there were no thoughts of fooling around. Survival mode comes into play.

Three years ago on his blog Alanzo posted a topic called “How to stop thinking and feeling with Scientology”. He even came up with a “process” on how to do just that – haha

I just had an afterthought. My friend’s daughter minored in Spanish in college and told me that occasionally she would dream in Spanish. After reading this novel and understanding all the abbreviations, acronyms and terminology a never-in might start thinking like a scientologist. Welcome to the club.

Ron: Yep!