Confessions of a part-time girl

I shouldn't have worried
2:31 p.m. -- 2009-01-12

As a follow-up to my entry about my ‘double life’ as a critic of the Cult of $ci€nto£og¥...

I was wrong to have worried about what Victoria might think. One weekend, after she’d been overseas and I’d been to [a UK city] for a protest, we finally had some time together, meeting only in bed. It was late Sunday evening, and - as sometimes happens - our weekend together was virtually non-existent.

Still, we had a nice cuddle, and she told me all about her European trip. Then I took a deep breath and told her about the protest I’d been on.

She was surprised that her normally sardonic, apolitical husband had cared enough about something to go on a protest march. She asked me a few questions, and I think I answered them satisfactorily. The biggest problem wasn’t coming up with evidence about the Cult’s nastiness, but choosing exactly which examples to use without sounding like I was spouting the script for a TV drama. (Hu88ard is a bizarre figure, like a comic-book supervillain in some ways. The hypnotist... the bigamist... the fraudster... the racist... the drug-addict cult leader. Where to begin?) I began with a brief recounting of the life and death of Lisa Mcpherson. I also described ‘auditing’, whereby parishioners are hooked up to the Electrop$¥chometer (a kind of lie detector), and asked about talk about things in their past that have upset them. A great way to obtain blackmail material who might someday wish to leave the Cult.

“So,” I said, “I wanted to do something about it.”

As long as I continue to exercise care in remaining anonymous, my dear wife has no problem with this at all. She might think it’s a bit strange that I feel the need to dress up as a pirate, a Santa or whatever, and go and yell abuse at a building... but the important thing is that she’s not objecting to it, despite our sometimes limited time together.

I should have known she’d be OK about it... but I was worried. If, by contrast, I’d told my parents about the dirty tricks played by a sinister organisation that stalks its critics, I’m sure they would say “Don’t have anything to do with it, then.” Whether that’s a generational thing or a lack of moral fibre on their part, I have no idea. But... meh.

Victoria won’t be buying a mask and joining me on a protest. She’d rather go shopping or something... but that’s fine. I didn’t tell her because I wanted to recruit her. I told her because I was tying myself in knots, making sure I didn’t leave anything ‘incriminating’ in the print queue, or lying around in the house. Most importantly, I had found it necessary to lie to her, to conceal where I was going, and why. That didn’t feel good, even if I was doing it to protect her - to save her from worrying that we might someday find ourselves being ‘fair gamed’ by the Cult.

But she’s cool. Nerves of steel, that one. Too bad she isn’t a secret agent.

As you may know, dear reader, I go to great lengths in order to avoid being identified by the Cult. The funny thing is, you can always be relied upon to fuck up, just when you least expect it...

I was driving home from work one night, a few months ago, and I got a puncture. No problem, of course... just a simple matter of emptying the boot (trunk) to get at the jack and the spare wheel, and then a quick change-over. This was slightly complicated by the fact that the stretch of road I was on was completely dark, and also that I was wearing my best suit. Still, I got on with the job, and swapped the wheel without too much fuss.

(Just because I’m a Tinkerbell, doesn’t mean I’m a fairy.)

The next day, I went in search of a new tyre, and the people in the tyre bay invited me to sit in the customer waiting room. Normally, I’d stay around and make sure things were being done properly, but I had some work to catch up on so I got the laptop out and worked for a quarter of an hour. Meanwhile, the knuckle-draggers in the tyre bay replaced my tyre, and swapped the wheels back. They actually did a very neat job of squaring everything away.

It wasn’t until after I’d paid and left that I remembered the anti-$ci€nto£og¥ material that had been in the boot, normally concealed beneath the false ‘floor’ that provides access to the spare. Including a big placard.

It’s funny how easily you can slip up. I very much doubt that news of my ‘double life’ will get back to the $ci€nto£ogists via that route. In fact, I’m not entirely sure my tyre-changing friend could read and chew gum at the same time. “You can’t get thicker than a Quickfit fitter...”

Still, I must be more careful, from now on.

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