Susie Bright's Journal

My Life with the Tom-Krap Goofballs - Scientology on Sunset Boulevard

Back in the mid-1950s, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had a novel idea: What would happen if he could convince movie stars of the day to convert to his fledgling religion? With this in mind, he sent the following internal memo to his staff: “There are many to whom America and the world listens. On the backs of these are carried most of the enthusiasms on which the society runs. It is obvious what would happen to America if we helped its leaders to help others. Project Celebrity is part of that program.”

—from "The TomKat Split- Is Hollywood Getting a Divorce from Scientology?" by Leah McLaren via www.theglobeandmail.com

 

Most Hollywood gossip is a matter of deflection— the reality of any celebrity scandal is likely to be obscured from the public for decades.

Tom-Krap is no exception, but McLaren's story from the Globe and Mail takes a revealing look at the Scientology empire and how it was built on celebrity insecurity-- brick by brick.

I read these stories with nostalgia, because I was unwitting sex bait in many of the burgeoning cults circulating Los Angeles in the 1970s: Scientology, EST, the Hare Krishna's, Actualization, even Synanon. I casually met and bedded quite a few people who passed through Scientology's funhouse. They attracted actors and struggling Hollywood poets like a Venus Flytrap on Viagra.

Why? Because the theatrical world of movie-making is an illusion-based industry.

If one's company engine is based on making a beautiful lie real— and staking it all on a fiction, then your troops will be a precarious bunch of hothouse flowers. Scientology digs actors because they inhabit the most insecure, self-doubting, profession in the world

I say this with humilty, because I, too, belong to the world of make-believe.

I joined none of them, the then-sidewalk-vending cult competitors. But it was impossible to be a sexually-active young person living in Hollywood or frequenting the SoCal beaches, without getting waylaid at their parties, garage sales,  free food parades... even gas stations (yes, Synanon owned gas stations where I filled up my Chevy).

Back then, Ron Hubbard's biggest problem wasn't being raked by the mainstream media— it was competing with Werner Erhard. You couldn't walk down the street in Venice or on Vine, without three people coming up to ask you if you wanted to take a "quiz," share a joint while taking a personal inventory, or hook up at some killer party that night that had an underground grotto and a wall-size tropical aquarium.

I was just a teenage girl. Not a beauty or a celebrity, but freckled and slender— an instant pass to the goofball-religion social set. I was immune to their "faith," for some reason. But I was curious and horny, I had lots of free time on my hands— and I'd never seen an underground pool grotto.

I said yes to all kinds of things, for one night. I was more interested in smoking real opium than the metaphorical stuff--- but jeez, the Cult Dingdongs had both. On the surface, there was a lot of talk about cleaning out your system from drug and sex problems. But there was so much drugs and sex that it seemed to be a recruiting tool. Do a bunch of blow, then go on a "cleanse." Where's your next audition? Welcome to L.A.

I had a fuck buddy named Trey one summer, one of their drug dealers— he serviced all the goofballs. He was so good in bed, but in the space of two months he went from maintaining a healthy skepticism to parroting their platitudes. I remember one night lying in a round waterbed in Newport Beach, thinking, "Ugh, I can't believe he's naked talking like this." His sense of humor disappeared in a tropical fishie-pie mist, and god knows his cunnilingus technique probably died along with it.

Scientology started recruiting on the street, Sunset Boulevard hustlers— now they're cordoned off from the regular public. I have no idea how you get an invite to smoke their opium anymore, but I get the feeling we're about to read all about it in the National Enquirer. Funny that both Scientology and the Vatican are trembling in their cloisters. As Trey used to say, "What a fucking racket."

America's First "Sexpert" - The Woman Who Stood Up To Anthony Comstock

Dear Mother:

I know you will grieve over me for having taken my life.... My dear, dear mother, oh, how sorry I am to hurt you, as I know this act will do …  I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being. … The world is not yet ready for all the beautiful teachings which I have to give it. Other people will take up my work … some day--will take it up where I laid it down, and will start from where I left off and do better work than they could have done but for me. Some day you'll be proud of me.

Ida C. Craddock

from Leif Nasser's story via www.radiolab.org

 

A new book, Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman-- is a must for anyone who thinks the sex wars are "new." There have always been "sex-positive" heroines who fought for women's sexual self-determination, no matter what the cost. Ida Craddock was saying "clits up!" long before I was. When notorious prude-fixer Anthony Comstock finally got her convicted of obscenity and sentenced to hard labor in prison-- after years of hounding her-- she took her own life, and wrote the heartbreaking letter to her mother that you see above.

From the bookflap:

The nineteenth-century eccentric Ida C. Craddock was by turns a secular freethinker, a religious visionary, a civil-liberties advocate, and a resolute defender of belly-dancing. Arrested and tried repeatedly on obscenity charges, she was deemed a danger to public morality for her candor about sexuality.

By the end of her life Craddock, the nemesis of the notorious vice crusader Anthony Comstock, had become a favorite of free-speech defenders and women’s rights activists. She soon became as well the case-history darling of one of America’s earliest and most determined Freudians.

In Heaven’s Bride, prize-winning historian Leigh Eric Schmidt offers a rich biography of this forgotten mystic, who occupied the seemingly incongruous roles of yoga priestess, suppressed sexologist, and suspected madwoman.

In Schmidt’s evocative telling, Craddock’s story reveals the beginning of the end of Christian America, a harbinger of spiritual variety and sexual revolution.

 

The Horror-Show of Parents Spying on Their Kids... And the Money to Be Made At It

"...Two-thirds of parents check their children’s digital footprints and nearly 40 percent follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

"But the Pew study suggests that this monitoring is also likely to lead to arguments between parent and child.

"What’s more, technology is at least as nimble as adolescents, and neither parents nor the technology they buy can always read a teenager’s mind. Sometimes children deactivate their Facebook accounts except at night, when they know their parents are not likely to be logging on. They roll over to new sites, often using pseudonyms. Very often they speak in code designed to stump parents.

"Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research who studies American youth online, offered the example of a teenage girl who was growing increasingly frustrated with her mother’s leaving comments on everything she posted on Facebook. Once, when she was feeling particularly low, she posted the song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

"Her mother took it literally, which is what the girl had wanted. Her friends, however, read it for what it was: The girl was sad, and her post was meant to be ironic."

From "Big Brother?  No, It's Parents" by Somini Sengupta via www.nytimes.com

 

Maniacal parent-Internet monitoring makes my blood run cold. Talk about ruining family relations! How would these parents like it if someone was spying on their every thought, every private moment, who had absolute control over them? Disgusting.

Internet-spy zealots have small lives and unrelenting bitterness. They find it diverting to focus their sexual deprivation onto their offspring. They are LOOKING for something to seize upon and exploit. Instead of developing their own private lives, they ministrate to Hansel and Gretel in the cage. 

And now we have the software manufacturers to turn it into mindless consumerism, as if this kind of fear and "solution" was something anyone needed.

Do you KNOW what the top mortal dangers to young people are?* None of them are the result of "texting" to friends or masturbating.

I am so glad young people subvert every new prison-guard device. Their instinct to grow up and take charge of their own lives is so strong. If you can't have a "room of your own" in your own mind, you have no mind, and no room, at all.

 

*More than half, car accidents. Duh. No, not from texting! From being inexpert drivers. My first fender-bender at 16, made me so mad, I had to babysit for eight months to pay it off! 

Teenagers Can't Seem to Have ANYTHING At All - The Big Lie Behind the Mommy Wars

I have a radically different take on Anne-Marie Slaughter's sad story. Yes, she's the woman who couldn't have it all, whom Atlantic Magazine spun into the "backlashtastic" non-event of the year.

I don't care whether Ms. Slaughter stays on Air Force One, glued to her Blackberry— or puts on apron 'n' flip-flops and cooks pot roast 'round the clock— she's still fucked.

This PhD superlady, this One-Percenter, has a furious teenage son. She's come to the conclusion that her young lad needs her constant supervision and attention, that she must quit her job to attend to his disarray.

Christ, that's the LAST thing he needs.

Let's listen to her story:

"On a Wednesday evening, President and Mrs. Obama hosted a glamorous reception at the American Museum of Natural History. I sipped champagne, greeted foreign dignitaries, and mingled. But I could not stop thinking about my 14-year-old son, who had started eighth grade three weeks earlier and was already resuming what had become his pattern of skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him. Over the summer, we had barely spoken to each other—or, more accurately, he had barely spoken to me."

Can I give you some advice here, Anne-Marie? Your son, most likely, is a bright, physically-strong male specimen in puberty, full-on. I can feel the acne from here.

His school SUCKS.  

GET HIM OUT OF THERE.

He isn't learning anything; he's a young lion in a cage. He's intellectually aware enough  to know that his school encourages mediocrity, conformity, hypocrisy— all in the name of prestigious appearances. Remember 9th grade? Back then, you knew it too.

Start worrying when you son swallows their crap with a smile on his face.

I hope you and your husband aren't going to wear him down, do endless hours of useless homework with him every night, medicate him, diagnose him with god-knows-what. If you follow that path, you will end up with an adult child who wants nothing to do with you, who hides everything that's important to him. 

Your son's school is one of the multitude of broken institutions that takes lively, precocious, brave kids and tries to turn them into sexless, toothless robots, infantilized idiots. No critical thinking, please! Thank god most of them fight back.

Your son's rebellion is a sign of his strength, his righteous outrage. It reminds me of a friend, who upon hearing a screaming baby in the airport, smiled and said: "STRONG baby. Strong!" A weaker child would be unable to express his pain.

By the time you have teenagers, here's what you need to be doing:

 

Putting tools in their hands

Getting them access to the things they want to know and pursue

Breaking down the barriers they experience as disenfranchised youth

Encouraging intellectual and physical adventures they take the lead on

Being there for them while they break a few dishes getting it right

 

At this moment, in his early teens, your son could learn to drive, to fly, to use money, to build things, compete in anything he pleased, be at ease with his sexuality. He's at the point where he can take higher-consciousness risks, express himself artistically, research anything he wants. I could go on and on!  

Your family has a million bucks, literally, and could make that happen: get the barriers out of the way.

But I would give the same advice to any family— and if they're part of the working or unemployed poor, I wouldn't have to say anything at all. The luxury of coddling and infantilizing is for the privileged; that's what makes these stories so nauseating.

You may wonder if I'm a homeschooler, an un-schooler. I am.

I'm also a former public high school student who ran an underground newspaper with my peers, led a UFW boycott in West LA with a bunch of teenagers, took to the streets for women's liberation, sued the Board of Ed and won, drove cross-country organizing, and tried to do everything we could to radicalize the school system from within. And all of this while I was a "teenage girl."

We were busy little bees. At 54, today, I cry thinking of my late father and mother, who encouraged me to GO FOR IT. 

But by the time I was the mother of an 10-year-old— a full-time, madly-working mom of a 5th grader— my partner and I couldn't watch Aretha be put through "The Stupid Mill" one minute longer. We couldn't watch her be beat down and turned into a "Pringle Girl," as she put it.

We had to strike out into unfamiliar territory. I could hardly believe my family supported our radical decision to take her out of the school system, but they did. The whole group of us was in on it. We took all the ludicrous "make-work" homework Aretha had received every night and put it in a big BONFIRE. Then we started making plans. It was one of the most thrilling times in our family's life.

Do I wish the school system was different? Hell, yes. Every time I see a school that's flourishing with student power and enfranchisement I want to splash their story across the sky.

Guess what? Your son isn't in one of those places.

It's disingenous of Ms. Slaughter to imagine this story is about her. She has had it all. She's done everything she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it— once she escaped HER gilded cage. Was she ever in one of those? I don't know. At her level of adult privilege, she certainly hasn't been held back.

Young people deserve bold chances— all our children deserve that support. Our "work," ultimately, is toward the betterment of the world for our children, and for their children. That's what's upside-down in our world right now— the vanity of the short-sighted, the hubris of elders who destroy the future for youth. You want a movement for "having it all?" Start by giving it back, in spades.

 

Here's the book that got me started: The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get A Real Life and Education.

Photos and More Ranting: 

TOP: by Phillip Toledano for The Atlantic. Great photo, but the editor chose a "baby" as subject when this story is actually about a teenage boy who's frickin' had it.

MIDDLE: This is a poster my high school underground newspaper made, our basic philosophy! This was made by TEENAGERS. Tripping on acid. Having sex. Working for money. Driving cars. Building organizations. Cooking. Cleaning. Running printing presses. Staging shows, playing music. Leading picket lines. We had families and they loved us but thank god they didn't try to cripple us. We thrived.

BOTTOM: This is a shot of our high school walkout at Uni High, in Los Angeles, 1974. You are looking at a bunch of pissed-off teenagers. We wanted undercover LAPD narcs out of our campus. The principal is trying to "calm us down," but it's not going to work. I'm still in touch with about five people I see in this photo— this is still one of the proudest days in our lives. Our parents were not running this. Photo Credit: Joel Levine.

Summertime (Minestrone) and the Living is Easy

I tore open into my veggie scheme box this afternoon and ate all the strawberries. The summer produce smells so good. What else was in there?  Kale, three kinds of summer squash, green beans, baby turnips, basil, lemons, carrots, spring onions and garlic. The whole bounty could be thrown together for Summer Minestrone.

Delicious minestrone with fresh spring or summer vegetables is all about timing with a light touch— you slice the veggies as thin as you can, and barely cook them. Here's my recipe for this afternoon:

Melt butter, olive oil, and maybe a slice of bacon or pancetta in a Dutch Oven.

Saute the onions and garlic until they're soft and translucent. If you want to add finely-diced sweet peppers, or fennel, this is the time.

Slice your kale, or whatever leafy greens you've got into ribbons, and throw them in the pot— let them wilt in the oil.

Add about a tablespoon of either fish sauce (yes, the popular Chinese dish ingredient) OR anchovy paste. Same effect! When everyone is screaming about your secret ingredient at the table, don't tell them this is it... just shrug your shoulders and keep a constant supply in your cupboard.

Add a quart or so of chicken broth and heat to simmer. Let your kale (greens) simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Now for the sneaky part. If you have a Cuisinart, with the "slicing disk" attachment, it allows you to cut veggies as thin as potato chips— in seconds. That's what I did with the squash, turnips, green beans, turnips, and carrots. Bam bam bam. I have an adjustable disk I set at 2mm. (If you are using a mandolin or a knife, set aside about 20 minutes to do all this before you begin anything else).

So, back to the broth. Your kale is getting softer after five minutes. Add all those thinly-sliced veggies and let them simmer for about 10 minutes. Throw in some fresh corn kernels or peas for under 5 minutes. There is no vegetable of this season that doesn't fit in.

Towards the end, add some finely diced basil, just a couple tablespoons, and grate in a teaspoon of lemon zest.

Salt and pepper with flair.

I turned the heat off. You don't want those pretty little slices to lose their color.

I found some leftover cooked pasta in the fridge, orzo, and I added a couple handfuls. The broth warmed it right up. Rice or any other grain would've been fine, too. 

Ladle into bowls and spoon on the Parmesan cheese. Pour a beer.

---Die and go to heaven!

 

Photo of Spring Onions from Mariquita Farms, who grow all the produce in my recipes!

 

Anarcho Panda Loves You, Too, Mr. Riot Policeman

 

The Best Colonics in Life Ain't Free

“Don’t worry. You won’t always be this constipated. I was a victim of prostitution myself and I suffered terribly. But now I poop all the time.”

From "No Such Thing as a Free Colonic," by Andi, at titsandsass.com

 

I cannot believe this shit!

Andi, who works as a stripper (and gloriously writes for TitsandSass) suffers some digestive issues and decides to get a colonic from a local recommended clinic.

Sounds reasonable, right? Goodbye, French Fry tummy-ache! 

The clinic practicioner begins by questioning Andi about her occupation— and decides to give her a FREE treatment because it's the least they can do for a damaged misbegotton lost stripper soul such as herself.

You are not going to believe what happens next...

What To Say To Those Who "Can't Control Their Anger"

 

Most people who say they "can’t control themselves" actually DO control themselves just fine around people who don’t make good victims. 

Has an abusive husband ever been so overcome with lust that he can't help making out with a sleeping adult? No?— just children and girlfriends? Imagine that.

Does he ever lose control and punch out a sober adult he isn’t fucking?

Nope, just his kid and his girlfriend? Gee.

It’s not a problem "controlling himself" so much as a problem imagining reality.

by Tara Burns, EcoWhore.com

Imagine you, hitting me in the face, right now. Most of you can’t. 

But imagine this: you have to get across town to an important meeting that you’re already running late for— and your kid won’t get in the car.

You’re frustrated. You reach out and grab their arm, too hard. They try to pull away, but now that you’ve got them you have to get them in the car.

The more they struggle, the more you have to prove that you’re in control, that you’re getting to that appointment. You can imagine that, right? You can imagine shoving them, lifting them, pushing them too hard into the seat, maybe slapping them. Just once.

Why is it that we can’t imagine hitting someone we don’t care about— but we can easily imagine hitting our precious little ones?

Now, imagine you feel the same way about your girlfriend that you felt about that kid trying to escape the car. You have to prove you’re in control. Maybe you have to push her or slap her or threaten her. It’s no different than a misbehaving three-year-old.

Why is it that some people see all their loved ones as "precious little ones" to control and abuse— and some people don’t?

This has very little to do with self control.

So. Imagine you’re frustrated with your bratty little kid. You’ve had an awful day and you’re about to lose it.

Then I come along and speak soothingly, and take that kid off your hands for a little bit so you can decompress and become yourself again.

Nice of me, right? But imagine that I come along and I’m a judgemental asshole who tries to tell you what to do with your own kid!

Who gets to decide which conversation we’re having?

Imagine your bratty little girlfriend has bratty little friends— and imagine they’re egging her on, encouraging her not to get in the car. You want to slap those smug little smiles off their faces, right?

Just when you’re about to slam that bitch into the car seat, your nice old teacher from the second grade comes along and goes over the problem with you again to make sure you really know how to do your homework.

Who decides if I’m the bratty friend or the nice teacher?

Imagine you’re in a strip club and some greedy stripper is harassing you for cash. You want her to go away but she keeps talking about lap dances. Or... you go to a strip club and you meet a cool sexy girl, and she shows you to the back room where you can have an amazing time for just twenty bucks.

Who decides which one I am?

I do.

Because usually I’m the only one who even realizes that we’re constructing a reality between us.

 

Jessica Valenti — Sad White Babies With Mean Feminist Mommies

In celebration of this backlashtastic event [cover story at Atlantic Monthly], I’ve compiled some of my favorite images that are often the art in these kinds of articles: The mean/frazzled/distracted working white mom (because women of color don’t exist in this narrative) who has been fooled into thinking she can have it all by feminism. Good times.

 

more at jessicavalenti.tumblr.com

Susie, Batman, and Six Other Strange Cases of Fantasy Trademarks!

What exactly does it mean that... two companies own the term "super hero," which is part of our common language and is actually a genre unto itself? It means that you can't market materials using the term "super hero."

 

from "Six Strange Cases of Science Fiction Trademarks," by Lauren Davis via io9.com

 

One of my finest moments in erotic editing was when I published "Je T'Aime, Batman, Je T'adore" -- a homoerotic love story between Robin and You-Know-Who. It was a tour de force written by Kelly McQuain for Best American Erotica 1999.

DC Comix, who owns the "Batman" name, came down like a hammer on myself and S&S Publishers. They threatened all sorts of dire consequences for infringing on their copyright.

I was shocked, because I thought "Batman" has been genericized thoroughly over the years, homosexually and otherwise. Many great writers, like Donald Bartholomew, had seemed to get away with it!

But S&S didn't want to fight it, and pulled the entire first printing. They republished BAE 1999, with the story missing. You're lucky if you have one of the first unexpurgated copies!

Meanwhile, yes, I have been on the other side of the table with copyright protection. My own good name was abused, yes ABUSED, just like poor Boy Robin! Am I being a hypocrite? You judge:

An author (whose name I'll refrain from publicizing) wrote a series fake blurbs attributed to my name for the back cover of her novel.

Her blurbs read, more or less, "This is book and author are amazing!- Susie Bright."

I didn't know her work, nor did I voice that opinion.

The defiant author claimed that there was ANOTHER Susie Bright who liked her work. Right!

I got so mad that I trademarked my name.

Years went by. I never enforced my trademark, never had another occasion. Seemed like a waste of time and money.

One day, in the odyssey of Facebook Follies, I was struck by a social media problem. I wanted to claim the URL, "facebook.com/susiebright," which is a bit of vanity-plating FB encouraged their users to do. (It helps people find your "Fan Page.")

However, a woman named Susie who had recently married a man named "Bright"- had already beaten me to the punch.

I wrote to "Susie 2" to ask if we could switch... she didn't seem like the type who'd want to be mistaken for an erotic writer. She said no, she was keeping it. Why? I sure wouldn't want my facebook name to be "facebook.com/britneyspears."

I wrote to FB and appealed their grant of the Page-name, citing and submitting my trademark grant from the US Patent office.

They ignored me. I wrote twice more. Then they denied me, without explanation.

This made me realize, like so many other situations, that unless you have your own Large Samoan Attorney (love ya, Hunter!) to enforce your legal issues, it doesn't matter a whit WHAT you trademark.

I must say, though, I would love to be expertly satirized, like Batman. —To have one's name become part of common mythology and vocabulary, like "Barbie" or  "Godzilla," is the vernacular compliment that goes down in history!

 

Read the rest of Lauren Davis's excellent story on bizarre S/F trademark legacies, here at  io9.com