To be fair, I don't often put Scientology in sexual context. The closest I've ever gotten is triangle formations and encounters in saunas and it's clear those are dumb jokes nobody but me gets. Instead the religion is used as a barrier the characters must overcome. A stupid barrier, but there nonetheless.
The Scientology is in the stories because it's inescapeable for me. I researched the celebrities about whom I wanted to write on the net and everywhere I went I saw people calling them "cult shills" and things like that. I found that I did not want to see them that way, yet I could no longer see them as just the good-looking actors I had viewed them as before. Somehow I had to reconcile the two. I had to take John Travolta and remake him into an aging hippie who swings in bars and drinks to get over his problems. Said problems include the film he made when he got too sure of himself and his own image that ended up bombing royally (Battlefield Earth), the false rumors of being gay people stick him with, the shadow people hang over his head and won't take down.
I had to cast his wife as someone understanding with her own issues. She soothes John and he soothes her. I had to remake all my other favorite stars in similar ways. The damn tabloids and celebrity hate trolls so twisted my image of the people I loved. Only with my imagination was I able to reconcile it. I could not go and meet them, and explain to them what I was feeling, and reconcile that way my fear they were bad people. I did not want to be a stalker. I had to invent a world where the tabloids and hate were confused lies for sure in order to accept them as that in the real world. These were people I admired, and jerks were making it their business to drag them through the muck. Other jerks were using them to sell harmful products, be they disgusting tabloid stories or false dogmas that lead to abuse stories like you hear about on anti-CoS websites every day. I somehow had to get myself back to loving these people again.
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)
It was not easy, but I think I did it. I hope so anyway. Nothing wrong with putting the way I got over my feelings out there as fictional stories for people to enjoy.
And no, before you ask, none of these feelings came about as a result of drug use on my part. I have known drugs were bad all my life. The first actress I ever really loved was Rachael Leigh Cook, the girl who showed me putting your brain on drugs makes you smash up your life with a frying pan. When I was a teen I made a promise to Rachael I would never use, and I have kept that promise. Erika Christensen reinforced that promise when I saw her in "Traffic". I have kept my promise to her too. I hope she can understand me having to get over her being a Scientologist the way I have- if she ever hears about it. I'm not about to directly tell her. I'm no John Hinckley and I wouldn't want her to think I am.
No chemical inducement behind these words. They are just the ramblings of a sad emotional lonely man who does not want to feel what people are making him feel. He wants to love and respect, not hate and fear. He wants the bad guys punished also, and the victims saved, but more than anything he wants there to stop being victims and victimizers. He wants to stop seeing his heroes, his friends, and himself like that.