Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

things they were doing in China and thought they were pretty good. I think he modified Chinese
ideas.'
When he was not lecturing in the evenings, Hubbard spent his time with Barbara, who soon found
herself hopelessly in love. She was thrilled when he rented a 'love nest' apartment for them at the
Chateau Marmont Hotel, a fake castle on a hill overlooking Sunset Strip which was a favourite
haunt of movie stars. The first night they spent there together, Ron seemed to want to reassure her
of the permanence of their relationship. He put his arm round her shoulders and took her through
the apartment. 'This is your closet,' he said, 'this is your dressing-table, this is your toothbrush . . .'
Barbara was deeply touched.
Two days later, Sara and the baby arrived in town from the East Coast and moved into the love nest.
When Barbara turned up for work at the Foundation next morning, she found her toothbrush on her
desk, along with the few personal possessions she had left at the apartment. While she stood
staring at the pathetic little bundle with tears welling in her eyes, Hubbard came over and hissed
his apologies, whispered that his wife was a 'bitch' and that there was nothing he could do. 'I miss
you,' he croaked. Then, to Barbara's amazement, he asked her if she would like to have dinner with
him and Sara that evening. Speechless, she could do no more than shake her head.
Despite the hurt, Barbara could not bring herself to break off the affair. 'I was completely infatuated. I
remember I said to my room-mate - we had a small apartment in Beverly Hills - "If I ever tell you I
am marrying this guy I want you to tie me up and not let me out of the door because he's a lunatic."
But I didn't trust myself not to do it because I was so enchanted by him. Being with him was like
watching a fascinating character playing a role on a stage. I was never bored with him. He was a
magical, delightful man, a great raconteur, very bright and amusing and a very gentle, patient and
sweet lover.
'At the same time I recognized early on that he was also deeply disturbed. Some of the things he
told me were really bizarre, but I never knew what to believe. He said his mother was a lesbian and
that he had found her in bed with another woman and that he had been born as the result of an
attempted abortion. He talked a lot about his grandfather who could really hold his liquor and
played a fiddle with the head of a negro carved on the end, but he never talked about his father and
never once mentioned he had children. I did not know he had a son until I read it in the newspapers
years later.'
Towards the end of September, Barbara accompanied Hubbard on a lecture tour in the San
Francisco area in her capacity as public relations officer of the Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation. To her acute embarrassment, Sara came to see them off at Union Station and
ostentatiously kissed her husband goodbye, at the same time sweeping her eyes up and down
Barbara's figure. Hubbard, too, was discomforted and drank a great deal in the club car of the train
as it rattled north.
His spirits improved greatly when they arrived in San Francisco and he discovered that a
welcoming barbecue party had been arranged at the home of a local Dianeticist. Barbara, however,
had an unhappy time - during the course of the evening she wandered into the kitchen and found
Hubbard kissing his host's wife. Later that evening when she refused to sleep with him he lost his
temper and bellowed, 'They're all against me!' That night, Barbara wrote in her diary: 'I see him now
as vain, arrogant, self-centred and unable to tolerate any frustration.'
They soon made it up, as a subsequent passage in her diary recorded: 'Things were better in
Oakland. He took a penthouse apartment, I was with him constantly and he fell in love with me a