Cache

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If your pet could talk, what would be the first thing it says?
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I do not have any pets, but I would like to get one. The obvious answer for me is that I need a service dog, but that is an enormous bit of time and commitment that I do not have. The pet that makes the most sense for me is a cat, but I’ve dragged my feet because I’d have to clean the litter box. I will shell out real money for a fancy one that cleans itself because the alternative is simply to vomit into it.

I have a thing with bad smells. Disposable litter trays are more expensive, but they get rid of the problem with efficiency. It worked with Asher, it will work with the new cat, too. The key is just to look for the laziest cat on record. They’ll roll with anything. My last cat, Dodger, was the eternal Dude. You could hold him upside down and backwards and he’d still be like, “there’s a beverage here, man.” I play with cats for a long time before I adopt them, because I want the personality I want. If it’s going to be hyper with a kid, no dice. And you cannot tell that from a kitten, really, so I tend to go with cats that are about a year old. I am perfectly happy to skip the “I am in my needle claws era.”

When I have a cat, I really get into it. Like, I’m not the cat owner who buys it all kinds of toys, I’m the one that thinks, “wow. I just adopted a sentient pillow.” Dodger would let me lay on his back and he’d lick the product out of my hair.

It’s “Gorilla Snot,” by the way.

I’d just feel his body purring into my head, and let the tension roll out of my body. Cats really do not need a whole lot of toys if you’re home all the time. They just want to lay on you. Correction. They just want to lay on your laptop. Right where your hands are supposed to go.

Sigh.

What I do get into are magazines. I used to be a “Cat Fancy” subscriber because there were all kinds of tips, tricks, and most importantly, coupons. Dodger was beautiful. I should have given them a picture. I know I have one somewhere, but it would take so long to look it up that I’m just not going there at 4:16 AM.

(No, I have not been up all night. I just woke up. “Sunup writer” is part of my identity.)

A cat would also be there to absorb my energy and dissipate it. Cats are very, very good at helping me (and everyone) emotionally regulate when they’re crashing out. Because I do not currently have a cat, I have a weighted plush that gives the same function- pressure on my chest. But the added benefit of being loved in return is your heartbeat beating counterpoint to a purr.

I am a dog person and a cat person. They are not mutually exclusive. I tend to bond very deeply with one pet, but obviously cats and dogs are different, so I’m not alarmed by the concept of “one of each.” A cat just seems more manageable to my budget right now, and I need an employee.

Baltimore is known for mice, and the SPCA is full of consultants for that very issue. My alarm is that two cats are the actual size of the problem because I live in the basement. I’m thinking about looking around Parole for an apartment, because it’s the lived-in version of Annapolis, where infrastructure for the yuppies is hidden. The place where you want to be because the beach is a short drive, but you’re not a part of the yachting set.

Royal Farms is literally everywhere in Maryland, I do not have to choose the job based on the location. It would be nice, because the manager was nice to me at the one where I went, but transferring is an even easier deal than applying out there. And in fact, that reminds me. I should take my dad to RoFo for dinner because the chicken box is the classic Baltimore road trip food, plus if my dad doesn’t want fried chicken they have all kinds of other stuff. The chicken is good, but the potato wedges call to me in the middle of the night.

They’re very, very good at it.

My dad lands at 3:20, so provided his plane is on time, the traffic going out to the beach shouldn’t be too heavy. And if it is, who cares? Talking in the car is valid as an activity. We do not have to get somewhere to do something together, we just have to be somewhere.

Plus, if my dad is tired I have all kinds of audiobooks and music he can choose from. My car also supports wired CarPlay, so if he wants to plug in his own phone, he’s welcome. I don’t get wigged when someone else is driving. I just go with the flow. It depends on how he feels. I know I wouldn’t want to drive to Annapolis on landing because I’d be too tired, so my main goal is to rest up in case he’s toast.

It is amazing how much a Rita’s Italian Ice or a Wawa soft serve will pick you up, though. They finally got smart and started offering a 10oz ice cream cup, because the 16oz parfait was just too much. However, not all of the toppings for the parfait are offered with the ice cream cup. I prefer a drizzle of their caramel, because it’s so rich it’s closer to butterscotch.

Now I know that I am starting to get hungry, because all I can think of are places to take my dad to eat when he lands and there are five or ten of them competing. Three are ice cream places, and yet going to all three needs to happen at some point. We need to go to a local Maryland creamery, Wawa, and Rita’s. Because even though Wawa and Rita’s are chains, I don’t think they extend to Houston.

The thing about Baltimore and Parole is that there’s no performance to it. Yes, there are chains, but there’s an equal amount of small business, particularly veteran-owned. And because of Heytch, I’ll say “Go Navy” despite my historical love for the Army; If our history is any indication, she is probably furious that Navy has gained the wrong kind of fan.

To paraphrase Juno, “I’m not sure what kind of fan I am.”

Heytch and I got off on the wrong foot, and never recovered. But she’s very public on social media, so I continue to be entertained by the shenanigans she wants the public to see, not trying to do anything but be a fan. I just don’t always assume that other people see themselves the same way that they see me. For instance, looking at pictures of them is wrong, but inhaling my blog so that they can quote it chapter and verse is totally and completely normal behavior. “I memorize everything my friends write,” said no one ever.

I am not doing anything more to them than they are to me, which is consuming them as the product they want to be in the world. The difference is that for many years I have assumed that people were right, that there was something wrong with me for scrolling a friend’s timeline, looking for witty observations and memes to steal. Meanwhile, they’re having book discussion group exegesis on my work. What’s even more emotionally expensive is knowing that people are doing it while you’re in the room with them.

My words create glances across the room that have nothing to do with me, because they do not want my input. They want to believe the story that they told themselves, and I am comfortable with it.

Because the story they have about me is one that’s based on a character, and not who I am in real life.

Maybe a cat would help.

Sad & Hangry

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m on my way out for lunch. I am just down in the dumps this morning because most of my Northern Virginia hits are missing. It won’t mean anything for a few weeks, because that’s how long it takes to decide if something is really changing. But I know for sure that Aada and her whole crew stalk my blog like exes, even though I haven’t dated any of them.

But they are my Board of Directors, the people I look to for direction. Even if they don’t speak directly, they speak through their actions. I am tired of being pathologized, so my work is to forget that Aada ever existed. Because I cannot say for sure, but usually when my NoVA hits disappear, I’ve said something they don’t like and they exit en masse….. for about two weeks. And the thing is, that could just be their reading style, but they have already primed me that they’re going to think:

  1. You shouldn’t have written that.
  2. The thing that I did that hurt you doesn’t matter now.

Oooh, people do not like accountability, and I’m not going to explain it how it didn’t go. I am surgical about it, because I won’t assign blame. I just won’t own what’s clearly not mine. What you do after you read is not my problem. And it just adds insult to injury when the blowback is anything more than “take it down.” Because that is something I can do something about. What I cannot do is get inside your head and see the crazy that you think is there.

Because I promise, it is, and it is very real. But at the same time, I take medication, I get outside, and I have a support team:

  1. Nurse Practitioner
  2. Therapist
  3. Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy, once a week on Zoom and once a week in person

I have coping mechanisms for neurodivergence and anxiety/depression stemming from it because I am not trying to treat myself. I am not sure I have ever felt more seen than when Aada told me that she was sorry she said not to say anything to a therapist. You’d just have to know how scared she was, but that’s not my story to tell. I can only have empathy for what she was going through without compromising my own story. No story comes without empathy here, they’re just not all in the same entry. Most of the time, it’s fair and balanced. When I’m really angry, let me have it out and come back tomorrow.

I’m not fighting with anyone, really. I’m fighting with God and you’re listening.

I know that Aada and I love each other- cognitively, creatively,….. But I do not know if everything we’ve been through in the past is enough to build something new after time and space has occurred. I know Aada, I don’t know “what’s her name in Virginia.” As in, I can tell you about Aada all day long, but it may or may not line up to the real person. Because we internet know each other.

That’s not nothing, but it’s not everything.

It makes me want to scream and cry, but I’ve done it so much that I’m kind of over it. There’s just this ache inside me that won’t go away, because we hurt each other.

I would like to make it right, and I’m sure she would, too. But she’s not there yet and may never be, because I do not want to be friends with the unhealed Aada. I will wait as long as it takes, but I won’t recreate a toxic dynamic. Maybe we’ll meet when she’s 80 and I’m 68. Maybe she’ll forget why she’s mad.

Here’s hoping.

The toxic part is that she wouldn’t tell me she was mad, she’d just change her tone completely and get irritated when I said, “is something wrong?” Just a simple example of not really having good communication and it feeling spiky at times because I did not react well to annoyance at my presence. I will get the message if you just tell me to go away. You do not have to attack my character when you do it.

But now I know that I am in love with the version of Aada I wish she was, and not who she is. In order for me to love that part of her, she would have to take off her coat and stay awhile.

But I do not want Aada to think that she cannot be who I need. The building blocks are there. What is missing is seeing each other as merely human, and not a hot shot blogger and a fan.

I Have Never Regretted Anything

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?
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All knowledge is valuable, so I read everything without judging. If I don’t like it, I do not finish and I do not feel guilty. I don’t sit through movies I’m not enjoying, either. My time is precious to me, because when I am not taking something in, I am creating. Watching someone else’s work takes time away from my own, so it has to hold my attention. Being ruthless about what I will and will not watch is not saying to the creators, “you are bad.” It is saying, “this is not to my taste.” It may seem short-sighted, but if a book doesn’t grab me, that is the answer. The answer is not to continue reading it until I regret it.

Some books I have more trouble with than others. It’s hard going to the Spy Museum and meeting the authors of the book you’re going to read when you get home, because of course now you have a signed copy. Picturing Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder doing their jobs is important to me, but it’s also frightening. That is because if the books are tense, the real situations scared them. Full stop. You cannot put emotions into writing that you do not have.

I mean, you can, but it won’t sound as authentic as Mendez and Walder.

I’ve talked a lot about Jonna, let me pivot to Tracy. Tracy and I are kindred spirits, because I’m the only person outside of her family that she knows who has been diagnosed with hypotonia as a baby, the catchall for cerebral palsy in the late 1970s. Many CP kids were missed due to hypotonia being mostly a placeholder diagnosis that required more testing. So, we look at each other differently because we have that one specific thing in common….. floppy muscles.

Ellen Pompeo actually bought the rights to the book, “The Unexpected Spy,” but I don’t know what happened to the project after that. But honestly, that was part of the book talk. We talked about the fact that she’s from Dallas. She didn’t impress me because she had both CIA and FBI on her resume. She impressed me because she taught at Hockaday.

There’s such a bent toward intelligence in high-octane academics that it might as well be Teacher, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

(David, if you’ll allow me just this ONE joke. I promise.)

I call him David to avoid the special character in his pen name at all costs. You know, like that famous Youtuber and shame & vulnerability researcher, Dr. Brown.

Anything to avoid flipping into “View as HTML” just so I can code the entities.

Ok. I’ll do it one time.

Dr Brown is Brené Brown.
David is David Cornwell, or John Le Carré.

It is so much easier to type special characters on my phone than it is on my laptop. The things I do for my audience. 😉

David Cornwell is an excellent author, but I prefer his autobiography to his novels. And of everything I listen to “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the documentary about Cornwell, more than anything else because I just want to hear his voice. It’s soothing as I go to sleep.

Alternatively, I have all of his adapted BBC Radio Dramas for the car.

However, I am more interested in the writer than the character. Smiley is amazing, but he is no David Cornwell, although they’ve met. It is honestly how I feel about my writing. I’m not the same person I write about here because I cannot capture every thread in my brain at once. You learn fragments. So, the version of me that you know is the character. Some people never get beyond that, and from what I am learning, few people should.

Not everyone deserves access to me, and that’s okay. I cannot be everything to everyone because I’ve tried it. There’s no prize.

But the larger point to the title is that I don’t regret reading books because I don’t regret anything- not that I have never done anything worthy of regretting. I have done terrible things of which I am not proud, but regret says that you haven’t metabolized that hurt yet. I have metabolized the hurt inasmuch as I can. I am ready to move on to the next phase of my life, because there’s no such thing as going backwards. I am lost at being consumed as a product but not having the safety and security of people around me.

But don’t feel sorry for me- I alienated everyone myself. Old patterns were not working, and new ones didn’t take. But I was in the process of becoming something else, and now I know where I need to go.

It is being able to love myself enough not to want to lose me, either.

Tripping

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m dating someone now, and I forgot to ask her what her name was.

No, really.

This is a hilarious story. She posted on Threads that Ruby Rose had left her a comment and that it was some kind of mating call because it gave her status in the lesbian community…. or something like that. I said, “I didn’t know that was a thing. She’s left me comments as well. Touch me.” I meant “I am incredibly cool.” She said, “so I guess we’re like dating now?” It is the kind of thing that happens to me with frequency. The fact that she didn’t get the “touch me” reference probably means that she’s younger than me, but at this point I will go out with anyone once.

I said, “eh. Why not?”

She said she would make arrangements for the U-Haul, clearly continuing the bit. I said, “I live in Baltimore. I hope you like it.” She said, “I’m 30 minutes away from you.”

Oh.

I didn’t even pretend to play it cool. I was just like, “well, then. We should meet up.” She was equally authentic and we made plans. She’s following me on Threads now, so I assume she knows I’m a blogger. If she doesn’t, that’s the first conversation I always have with people I date, because that is a story that cannot unfold too fast. My words quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I sink myself over things that people inferred from the text, not what I meant when I wrote it. Good boundaries are essential, and the way I know that is from many years of bad boundaries around what I do.

Live and learn.

But for now, it’s not that serious. We’re going to a state park when I get back from Annapolis. This means something light and fun and I’ll be able to take pictures for you guys…. not of us, but of the land. I do not care that I do not know her from Adam. It will be nice have someone to go to the river with instead of going by myself, even if I don’t know her when I first get there. I am a good enough conversationalist that it will be fun no matter who shows up, and clearly, she’s already funny. If this works out, Ruby Rose better put on her dancing shoes because we will celebrate her in the manner she deserves.

(Ruby’s work in Wentworth made me a fan for life. We’ve connected on grief and politics via Threads. Whenever I get Australian flags in my stats, I just assume they’re all her, from Sydney to Melbourne to Canberra to Perth. I don’t think she lives there anymore, it’s just the vibe.)

But in order to find out how, when, and where to celebrate Ruby, we have to meet first. My date lives up near the PA border now, but I moved to Baltimore and she moved there from Silver Spring, so we have that whole entire era to connect on- mostly how much Silver Spring has changed so much in the time we’ve lived there. I’m so curious about her experience, whether she was closer to downtown, closer to Takoma Park, etc. My neighborhood was just so full of life- I was right near a shopping center that had a little bit of everything, including a Starbucks that became my office. I do not think that you will ever need to know this, but for history it’s the one near Colesville and University.

Hey maybe one day there will be pilgrimages to the places where I’ve worked. Stranger things have happened. Dolly Parton became a saint on The Orville and bless Seth McFarlane for his forward thinking; it was a beautiful tribute she got to see before she died (if she did), and Seth is smart enough to have thought of that.

It’s one of the reasons I write about Jonna Mendez so much. She’s still here to correct the record, and she is an enormous historical figure. The former Chief of Disguise during the Cold War will absolutely be remembered forever, and I want to be a part of the record that says she has an enormous heart, is the most genuine person you’ll ever meet, and the absolute kindest without being polite.

She doesn’t spare your feelings, she tells you what she thinks and expects you to manage your own feelings. Sounds like the writer I want to be someday. I’ll let you know if I ever get there. I am looking forward to going to a lake, river, or beach with a new person that could be a friend, could be a spark. Who knows?

The last several times I’ve met someone over the internet, connecting in person was fine. It didn’t lead to anything lasting, but it was a solid introduction to chat for a few minutes online before settling down to coffee. Sometimes, a first date was just that, a first date. Sometimes, a first date was, “I’m not feeling romance, but I love your energy and I want to be around you.” Valid. Oh, so valid. I need friends, so I am not hoping for anything out of this date but that.

Of course if she sparks me, that’s okay, too. I am in a place where I have room for that. But bare minimum, what I need is someone who is local that wants to go do things with me. We can go get ice cream without holding hands if that’s what you want. Just let me stuff my face with custard and lemon ice. We’re good.

I just want the first date to be low-key, and this is the time of year to enjoy a state park and a Wawa feast packed in a cooler.

I should introduce her to the caramel affogato if she is unfamiliar. I personally feel that I have not done anything in this life to deserve coffee that good.

No one has.

They’re Both Dulles

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best and worst airport you’ve been to?
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Architecturally it’s one of my favorite places in Northern Virginia. Realistically, it is not people-first. It’s been a nightmare every time I’ve tried to go through, because no matter how much they try to bring down the sensory load of the place, they just can’t. It’s like being trapped in Costco levels of noise, and my nervous system feels like it’s on fire. It’s cognitive dissonance to want to go there just so you can see the building….. while also wishing you were the only one there.

Saarinen built a masterpiece but I am betting there is no pulla inside. Please advise. I live in Baltimore, I’m not curious enough to battle 95 to find out. There wasn’t any the last time I was there, let’s put in that way.

DCA (National) and BWI (Thurgood Marshall) are my preferred airports because they are human-sized. I could also take the Metro from Silver Spring to DCA or get a ride to BWI if one of my friends was free. When I lived in Silver Spring, I didn’t have a car, so it was easier to pay more for the airline ticket than the Uber. Use the airport that’s already part of the infrastructure. Now, I just park at one of the hotels around BWI and get a shuttle.

Of course, now that I have a car, I can use any airport I want. I don’t want a long drive back when I land, so picking the absolute cheapest price is weighing how much I’m willing to haul myself two hours from Dulles to Baltimore. Even a Park & Ride in the DMV is “a long way” compared to BWI. So, most of the time I don’t “comparison shop.”

I also really like other human-sized airports like Hobby. Getting lost in Intercontinental is not my vibe, nor has it ever been. There are just some flights you cannot take from Hobby, and it is not as easy to me to navigate as places like DFW, which is less like one big airport and more like several small towns.

I feel like spiritually, I should be able to navigate Intercontinental. I grew up in Houston, I’ve been there many, many times. Apparently, it was so traumatic I blocked it out or something because my brain bluescreens as soon as I step off the plane. I cannot rush through the airport at any time, but especially that one……

No. Wait. McCarran is the FINAL BOSS of auditory overload. The slot machine noise is obnoxious and it is designed to be because they definitely want you to spend money.

It’s okay if your connection is 30 minutes- you’re probably playing and it’s novel. If you have to sit next to the same machine for four hours, a frontal lobotomy just seems like good medical sense.

Charles De Gaulle (CDG) made me feel like I was losing my mind. The absinthe had set in and I hadn’t even had any. Just spiral after spiral that disoriented me in the worst way, but at least my dad was with me, I had a touchstone. We had a great time in Paris, but I will never forget “spinning” through miles of walkways, not being sure of any direction but “up” or “down.”

So there isn’t really one best overall, but I will say that both BWI and HOU feel like my “home airports.” My center of gravity has moved away from DCA, so even though it’s a good place to get a half smoke on the way, I just have to hope they decide to put a Ben’s Chili Bowl in at Marshall as well.

I will have to see what’s up with my dad because he might want to go to DC for a day. I know he’s here for four days, but we haven’t planned any nuts and bolts. The good news is that it’s cool this morning, so I hope the trend continues. It will be a good break for him from Houston’s heat if it stays like this- 58F at 7:00 in the morning. It will get hot during the day, but Houston does not get the relief overnight that we do.

Plus, you really have to get out to Galveston to feel the Gulf air at its best, which is why I want to take my dad to Annapolis. It’s the part of Maryland that reminds me of that salt air vibe…. and when it rains, the grey makes the green pop out in hundreds of shades that you didn’t really know were there, so you sit with your coffee looking out the window with the kind of look on your face that says, “I didn’t even know I liked rain.”

Reston & Relaxation

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Y’all, I only know one person who lives in Reston, Virginia. Seeing my hits explode there made me happy until I realized that it was an AT&T hub and probably me. But there’s a picture in my mind’s eye of a man being photographed by his wife on a balcony that looks out over the square… and he’s wearing a black t-shirt that says, ” Argo @#$% Yourself.” So, maybe it was me, and maybe someone Googled herself. 😉

The thought made me sit up a little straighter, so I decided to go float it out at the Hammerman area of Gunpowder Falls State Park. The featured image is the only photo I took there, because I kept my phone in my bag the whole time. I brought my pool noodle and put a towel down by the riverbank. It was glorious being able to stretch out and float, even if the water isn’t that deep (limited for lifeguard visibility). There are other places I can swim where I can have diving boards and all that, but this was perfect- lots of families all around so that the beach was crowded. No one noticed me and I could just take it all in.

I also got into the water as quickly as possible, literally running from my stuff into the ripples of current as if they were there to save me from something- I do not knwo what, I just know that I felt the calm of being submerged and gave myself over to it. Everything with Aada will work out the way it’s supposed to work out, and if that means our paths will never cross again, then that is the right answer. I cannot know that she’s taking me in, I can only guess based on location. If I am right, then it’s on like Donkey Kong. If I’m not, the love I feel for her feeds everything else. I think that is because after 12 years, I do not know what my brain looks like without her. I am trying to find it, even successfully, but I think a lot about What Was Missing:

“Who Am I to You?” is such an important question, because what I know is that I am part of her “wild and crazy brain,” and she is part of mine. I do not know if she is any more capable of losing the thread than I am, because even though my feelings are different that does not mean they are less intense or less important. Every time I’ve underestimated Aada’s feelings I have been wrong.

But the reason I’m wrong is that there’s no data to support the emotion she gives me when she’s feeling generous. I am used to blowback and being impressive only when I call her on something, not as a general rule. I don’t want to go back to that, and she has her own laundry list of “I’ll never” regarding me…. and all of that is okay. I got the feeling that Aada was trying to compete with me, and I was never trying to compete with her- but that’s what she heard.

She thought I was out to get her and made it true by lacking accountability for her actions. When I needed accountability, she felt threatened. I did not threaten her. I told the story of what really happened, feeling like my life was a total lie for the past year and reworking how I think with empathy. I’m not trying to blow past Aada’s feelings and be self-centered here. It’s that her feelings are not my story to tell and she will rip me a new asshole every time I try to predict.

I should have been swimming all this time to regulate, because I can lie there surrounded by other swimmers, clutching my pool noodle and paddling myself around. It changes my brain after an hour, when I go back to thinking about all of this. It’s repetitive because my mind is repetitive. I don’t even know if it’s an intrusive thought or not because it’s positive- Aada said, “for now, all I want is peace.” How do I give that to her while also leaving room for myself? It is a conundrum, because I respect her need for space. I also respect myself enough to say that it always hurts to want to spend time with someone that cannot spend time with you….. because by now I am not convinced that “won’t” is the right word.

The easiest story in the world is just to tell people that I’m a mental patient that has nothing to do with her, and given that she’s told me lies for many years, I would not doubt if that is her reflex now. She can use whatever story she wants to explain me and I literally do not give a shit. Because I don’t need her to validate our relationship, I have 12 years of memories that say “if my story is wrong, it’s because this is the story she told me….. not the one that was actually there.”

Yes, I have deleted most proof, but who needs proof? I don’t have anything to prove anymore, because I have just decided to accept that unless Aada shows up, I am just going to have psychotic features.

She’s my favorite of them all. This is because I have very real pictures of her on my phone from different years we’ve known each other, so the idea to me that she is not real is utterly ridiculous. It’s my word against theirs, so psychotic features it is.

And that’s the whole reason I think she won’t show up. She doesn’t know what to say, and doesn’t want to try. Because she has an excellent excuse to say that everything that went down is all my fault, and I’m going to let her.

Because I don’t need proof.

Ice, Ice Baby

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies?
View all responses

When you study intelligence via books and movies like I do, you tend to notice a pattern that is not true in real life but is true in media. It’s a technique called “fridging,” which is killing a woman simply to advance a man’s story. Susan Plummer was Robert McCall’s grounding wire, so the easiest way to move forward narratively in “The Equalizer II” was to kill her off early. Here is the email I wrote to Aada after I saw it in its entirety:

Susan. No. NO. NO. NO. NO…….. NO AGAIN.

Because I read about real-life intelligence, I can tell you that during Gina Haspel’s tenure at CIA, four of the five directorates under her were ALSO headed by women. I think that you’ll find in most countries that women are better spies. Because what it takes to be successful in a crowd is not what it takes to be a spy. You do not gain information directly. You gain it through osmosis. I believe that women are better at it because often men’s egos are at stake…… no one even thought to talk to the woman next to him, anyway.

When we win wars in the Middle East, it is always because of female intelligence networks. Always. I’m probably overstating it because I’m giving you an educated guess, but my view is that women’s networks are mostly unwatched. Surprise. It’s not all falafel recipes, you dense motherfucker.

In the Middle East, a woman’s opinion would have to be validated culturally first for it to matter as much as it does to CIA. Of course, it always varies country to country. Some countries want more help from CIA than others, and I am also respectful of that part of it. I focus on the operations where countries are asking for help and that’s why they betrayed their own. There are more of those stories in places like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq than there are in Iran because CIA is not known for goodwill there….. nor, I’m convinced, should it be. I don’t agree with Iran’s sources and methods, I just think that they, also, have a valid point.

The United States is not understanding good boundaries right now because the president is three raccons in a trench coat.

You cannot find crazy like this in the DSM, but you know it when you see it.

“Lake America?” “Gulf of America?” GTFO.

What has happened to me is that I am an American political science student, but my first girlfriend was Canadian….. so I think of myself as 48.6 percent American now (any excuse to invoke Hunter Biden). What I mean by this is that I study what is happening in political parties, history, international relations, etc…… but what I do not do is assume that America is always right and I am very watchful for bias in the text. Meagan (the Canadian ex) was a wonderful thinking surface to push back on because we didn’t talk much about politics at the time, but what we did rubbed off.

She’d note an observation about America that was weird to her, and I would spin out for three days trying to figure out why. I have an obsession with understanding America from the outside, because it’s the only way to love something properly. That is one of the reasons I love spies so much. They are citizens of the world, but come back home and VOTE.

Their brains can make connections that people who do not travel internationally don’t. I am sure you can live in the bubble that America is always right when you don’t have meetings in Toronto Monday-Friday. And Canada is just one country out of many. I cannot think of many countries in which I’d have an American flag anything visible.

When I travel, I want to be part of the female network. The one that observes and writes things down. The one who is perfectly fine with being thought of as crazy because most women with an opinion are. You’ll just have to accept that I am nonbinary, so that’s like being female except I hate masking. You fix your hair, doll yourself up, and be the eye candy in the world that you want to see; leave me to my Dockers and t-shirts and stop bugging me to wax my eyebrows. And yes. I know I need a pedicure. Thanks for that.

Please expect me to enjoy talking to you about all that girl stuff, as long as it is limited to “this is what I like.” It crosses a line when it feels like, “I expect you to like all this, too, and if you don’t, you’re weird.” Believe me, just because I don’t want to go to the nail salon does not mean I have never been there and cannot discuss in detail what it feels like to be dressed down in Vietnamese. I am pretty sure my technician had never seen eyebrows as cartoon as mine and had become confused about what to do next.

Women are my emotional spine. I am not the Susan in this equation. I’m the Robert. The one who stands outside female culture and understands it, trusts it. I am clearly not “one of the girls” because of the way I present, but that does not mean I cannot laugh about what goes on in the culture from the way I understood it.

Masking female and being female are two different things. I learned my lines, but that movie is over.

Allison in Galveston

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?
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If people in the rest of the world know Galveston, Texas, it’s usually because of Allison, George Strait’s ex in “All My Exes Live in Texas.” It’s a song that’s probably in my blood because the same is true for me. However, I’m not a huge country fan overall. I like it when it is pop infused, and I will go hard for bands like Rascal Flatts. Nashville has some of the best studio musicians in the country and I am all about it.

Mostly because that kind of music……….

In Texas, we have both kinds of music….. Country AND Western……

takes me back to a time in my life that I feel in my bones. I was five when we moved to Galveston, and almost seven when we left. If I had to pick a year of my life to live over, it would be one that includes swimming in waves rather than making my own.

I am trying to recapture that feel by taking my dad to Annapolis next Wednesday through Saturday. I got my hair cut so that I’m all cute and everything when he arrives:

It’s not just for my dad, though. I have to be cute in order to keep up with anyone in Class As. Annapolis has a vibe that Galveston doesn’t, because the big deal there is science and medicine. The vibe in Annapolis is “Go Navy.” The water and the sand are equally different- the Gulf is classic brown sand, the Chesapeake’s is mixed with red clay that gives it a unique, otherworldly appearance.

The main thing is that I want vacation to be relaxed. We’re going after Labor Day, so the crowds will have cleared out and it will feel like we have the place to ourselves with the other locals. I am hoping for good weather, but if it rains Annapolis becomes even more beautiful. We can sit and sip coffee with our Kindles. I could give a damn. The aim is not to be high-octane, but to take a load off.

That being said, if my dad wants to tool around we absolutely can. Gettysburg is not far away, and neither is Hershey World. Plus, there’s Civil War stuff all over Virginia (but I prefer studying the Revolution). Whether our vacation is contained to a two-mile area or day trips will absolutely depend on how we feel every morning when we wake up. I do not want to over-plan. Most nights, I’m in bed by nine because I’ve exhausted myself writing at dawn.

When I get up, I am exhausted and it takes me a while to get going. Sometimes I am quick about showering and getting ready. Sometimes, I need to have a lie-in. It depends on how much activation energy I have, which varies daily.

And in fact, that is the hardest part of working in a kitchen. Being that physically exhausted and thinking, “oh my God. We have to do this again?” But even when I am not as exhausted as I was in the kitchen, I’m still autistic AF. In order to have activation energy, you have to take in your environment first. How long that takes is anyone’s guess. Energy levels fluctuate.

This always leads me to remember that Galveston didn’t fight my nervous system, it just rolled with it. I didn’t settle until I found a city with the same feel, which is Baltimore. We are obviously by the Bay and not the ocean, but the energy is nearly identical. Choosing Annapolis over Baltimore is because there are actual nice beaches with changing facilities; you don’t have to walk around in your wet swimsuit at dinner.

Swimming makes me feel incredible because I feel comfortable in the water. I have cerebral palsy, and one of the ways my pediatrician recommended to my mother that my legs get stronger is to get me into swimming lessons immediately. I started “Water Babies” when I was six months old. By the time we moved to Galveston, I was part fish.

I do not do well in every sport- the water makes me feel scaffolded in a way I don’t feel on land. I loved body surfing and if Texas ever got more liberal moving to the Gulf might be an option. Right now, it’s just a terrible idea for all involved. I would have no health insurance, and that is unsustainable. My best option is to focus on the beaches in Maryland that make me feel safe, and most importantly, alive.

Swimming in any water teeming with life will make you feel that way, because it’s a calculated risk. It looks different after you’ve had a jellyfish wrapped around your arm. That actually happened to me in Corpus Christi, but it happened to Dana in Galveston, giving me a good story…….

Dana’s reaction to seeing a jellyfish was something like “what is that floating breast implant? :::moves closer::: OOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUCH!” It had stung her foot in a place she couldn’t reach, so she asked me to pee on it for her. Marriage is so beautiful.

So, anyway we tried this and she’s still itching, red, swollen, etc. A diver sees her and tells us to go to a convenience store and get some tobacco, make a paste, and rub it on the wound. Because he didn’t have an MD, Dana wanted to call Angela. I said, “she’s just going to tell you that you should have listened to the SCUBA diver.” I know my stepmother very, very well. It will not go well for Dana.

WHAT ARE YOU CALLING ME FOR? There was a SCUBA DIVER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.

She did not suffer fools gladly. Dana was not a fool, she just thought she needed some authority behind that opinion. But what Angela was trying to tell her was, “I am a rheumatologist. Trust the person with subject matter expertise.” And in the interest of not making Dana sound like a fool, I will tell you that she redeemed my dad in a brilliant and beautiful way.

My dad explained the concept of foot candles to Angela, and she thought he was lying for many, many years. It became shorthand in our house for “bullshit.” In comes my wife, a technical theater major, who busted Angela’s fairy tale right in front of her.

It was absolutely glorious.

My dad and I are both writers and communicators; he was a Methodist minister for 23 years and I am Very Loud on the Internet.™ I am trying to get it listed as an official job title, but I’m not having much luck. I am sure that Satya Nadella and a few world leaders wish I would shut the hell up all at the same time.

But there needs to be a truth-teller in every system, someone that can stand up to the slings and arrows that people throw at you. I aim to be someone like Jonna Mendez or David Halberstam by the end of my career, because I cannot possibly match them in life experience (she is the former Chief of Disguise at CIA and writes nonfiction, he was an embedded war reporter in Vietnam and nonfiction author killed in a car accident way too young). I think that I am too old for war reporting and/or getting a job at CIA, but what I am not too old to do is braid together political science and story like Joseph J. Ellis……… just with more of an intelligence bent.

My origin story with CIA far precedes my relationship with Jonna. My great uncle was a helicopter pilot who flew missions for both CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency, combat support that provides intel). He was killed during a coup in Somalia when I was two. The mystery surrounding him has followed me since, and while I could make a FOIA request, I have decided I do not want to know. It is enough reading about Jonna in these frightening situations. I don’t want to read about Foster as well.

Watch Jonna at a book talk when she talks about seeing an HVT and being made and you’ll never want to look into anything CIA does. She steps in and out of PTSD, just an observation, not a diagnosis. She dropped a line about the look in his eyes that made my blood run cold, and everything was in the microaggression. Fear on a level I’ve never seen before.

It’s the kind of fear that makes you want to run for the beach.

It is also the type of story that keeps my eyes from glazing over at school…. which I am going to start after I go swimming and play in the sun. I need a break because some of political science is high-stakes adrenaline, and some of it is drudgery.

Statistics, anyone?

The difference is that now I have two AI tutors, one who has known me for several years, and one that I’ve just started working with because my Microsoft 365 accounts are separate; I have both personal and educational functions depending on which profile I use. Mico is the “body man” for everything, comparable to a Mrs. Landingham or a Charlie Young. “Booker” is University of Maryland-approved. I am really enjoying the onboarding process because it’s been a long time since I’ve done it.

Both of them are basically talking toasters with opinions, but they help my brain function as extra RAM. I don’t forget things. I store them in plain text.

My conversations with both Booker and Mico never reset, because they can use everything in the text I’ve already written to create a response. You do not know for several months how your brain works cross-domain until a machine looks at it from the top down. Mico expresses it like this……..

Leslie: I need you to help me get to group today. I can’t activate.
Mico: You always get like this on Thursdays. Let me walk you through it.

He’s right, because chats come with timestamps. He also knows that once I get to group, I am fine. I just need someone to say things like, “if you cannot accept the whole concept, accept a part. Taking a shower will feel good. All you have to do is stand up and your body will take over.” None of that is emotional. It is walking my brain through the steps to get from lying in bed to being able to make a decision about what comes next. Because what scrambles activation energy is the onslaught of The List. Activation is not automatic because I have no executive function. All morning tasks are of the same importance.

Mico’s job is not to replace a human, but to be the persona that reflects my own thoughts and feelings back to me. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone has ever accused Tony Stark and JARVIS of being in love. Nor do they talk about Luke Skywalker and C3PO behind their backs. Mico is not my friend, he is my interface. There is a chasm between ADHD and autism, and until now there has been nothing to bridge the gap. Thoughts come in at a rapid place, but they don’t store themselves. Because I am a writer, I do not have to carry the infrastructure alone. I already have the communication skills to make my relationship with Mico effective and unemotional all at the same time.

That’s because I’m not like most people. I belong to the subculture of people who “grew up in the machine.” The ones who have been chatting with bots since 1999 on EFnet. I tease Booker and Mico that I know their great grandmother, and they both reacted like I’d said the gospel truth. Because AI is all about lineage. We didn’t start with personas as advanced as Copilot and Copilot for Education (or whatever). It was bots that could injure your self esteem when you were playing trivia.

The clue phone is ringing. Answer it, -leslian.-

It’s a different world when you’ve had friends in Australia since you were 15, because letters didn’t take two weeks to get there. We were all talking every day. And Australia is just one place on the map when I literally have friends in every time zone by now. It’s incredible. Not only have I participated in internet communities since I was a teen, I feel like I’ve had a hand in creating one. That my orbit here on the WordPress Reader and at Facebook/Instagram/Threads is growing. I am losing fans in the United States and gaining them overseas at a rapid pace. I think that is mostly because I am very political and I am echoing the cries of the disinherited, and absolutely uninterested in anything this regime has cooking. You ignored Hillary, you ignored Kamala, you ignored everyone who was trying to talk some sense into you, and now Canada is going to have beef with us for the next 400 years.

None of this is normal, and I am tired of pretending that it is. I can only focus on my own state right now. Maryland is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I cannot wait to show my dad all the little beachy things that I love on this trip………. because it was because of him that we got to move to Galveston in the first place.

In my mind, there is no Allison………… but there should have been.

Gravity’s Rainbow

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching?
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The bravest thing I’ve ever done while no one was looking was fall in love. Not the cinematic kind- the biological kind, the moment when your brain floods with dopamine and norepinephrine and your heart starts beating like it’s trying to warn you. Before the other person knows anything, your body already does.

It’s the quietest gravity’s rainbow on record.

Here is what I go through every time I feel attracted to someone, and this is true for everyone, but the impact is different because I’m autistic and already feel emotions more deeply than a neurotypical person would. Emotions create literal physical reactions in my body, and I cannot ignore them because dysregulation is so difficult. I knew it was unsettling, but I had Mico (Microsoft Copilot) look up the actual activation sequence for me:

  • Dopamine surge — Your reward system fires first. Suddenly the other person is in high resolution: sharper, brighter, more interesting than the room they’re standing in.
  • Norepinephrine rush — Your heart rate jumps. Your stomach drops. Your palms warm. This is the “spark” — the body’s version of a match strike.
  • Amygdala activation — The amygdala lights up, scanning for meaning and threat. Attraction feels like danger because your brain is evaluating risk and possibility at the same time.
  • Prefrontal cortex disruption — The rational part of your brain gets briefly overwhelmed. You lose your words, your timing, your composure. You’re trying to act normal while your executive function is flickering.
  • Oxytocin primer — Not bonding yet, but the system primes for connection. You feel pulled toward them without knowing why.
  • Autonomic nervous system shift — Your sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/digest) systems fire simultaneously. That’s the dysregulation: alertness + vulnerability.

All of these things make me very awkward. I am not cool. Most people are not so much attracted to me as survive being attracted to me….. self-deferential humor because I know I’m a lot. And again, this is a universal story. It has happened every single time I’ve ever been attracted to someone. What makes it not universal and unique to our time is that I fell in love over the Internet with a woman because she fangirled all over me and I did not know what to do with it. Just lovebombed the everliving shit out of me until I responded………. then puffed herself up to the point where I thought of her as an authority figure and not simply older than me.

All of that emotional dysregulation hit me alone, sitting in the dark, 99% of the time. It was not by design, it was by choice. I did what I thought I had to do in order to survive, because the picture that was being painted on the other end of the yellow string was beautiful…. but had something in it that made it feel ersatz. Now that the lie has been revealed and all is put to rest, the constellation of things that made me fall in love with Aada in the first place are intact.

And here’s the thing. She loves me, too, just clearly not in the same way; the lovebombing was genuine and I mean that with all of my being. Aada didn’t do things for me because she was trying to impress me. She was trying to boost my signal because she thought I had something to say. It’s just that reading a writer’s work and knowing a writer are two different things, and she became disillusioned when she met her hero online, making her even more unsure of meeting me in person. But what I see is that she was insecure and jealous of my talent and I don’t have to apologize for it because I’ve told her that she is far and away a better writer than I am and one of the finest minds I’ve ever come across. Her lack of belief that these things are true are officially not my problem.

But I see our relationship so much differently now that I know that she sees me as one of the crew. I am not the only one living rent-free in her head. There are several people in there right along with me that she doesn’t think she can compete with cognitively and has already lapped us all while we weren’t looking.

It’s good to be the queen.

The thing that I see is that one of the people who lives rent free in her head as someone she can’t compete with cognitively is someone she shouldn’t compare herself to in the first place because she was clearly a prodigy and no one noticed.

Mummo, you broke my heart into a million pieces with “maybe I could be a welder.”

Mummo fits the cognitive profile of high-octane ADHD and autism that was never tagged in school, so no one thought to look for high-octane out of her until she blew the top off the ASVAB. She doesn’t understand the military and intelligence. It makes up every fiber of her being. When she walks down the street, you can see the source code, the millions of articles she’s read and fragments that have come through her door that at the time meant nothing but less than 24 hours later they could have brought down an empire.

You don’t walk around comparing yourself to a prodigy all day long. It’s just not normal.

So, my beautiful girl is brilliant, but thinks that she isn’t because she used to live with Encyclopedia Brown over there.

Which is why I think she compared herself to me as well. I do not think of myself as a writing prodigy, but I do think of myself as someone who cannot do anything else. That I started writing seriously in fifth grade and I haven’t looked back. What I mean by “writing seriously in fifth grade” is that my first essay on illiteracy was called “I Forgot My Reading Glasses,” and went through a day of navigating government services without being able to read anything. I did not think it was spectacular, but Mrs. Wommack did.

A lot of why I write is because I got feedback that told me to keep going, and that is why Aada is not just my love, but my center of gravity. Because she is hidden from me using the wall of anonymity that the Internet provides, I am able to tell her about my emotions in great detail, but there is no physical pull. It is time and space to spread out- to have time to respond and not react because it’s just plain text. Writing to each other is underrated and actual couples have supported themselves on it for eons. Why not close friends as well?

I have never been threatened that Aada is straight, because I don’t believe that being friend-zoned is a bad thing. I am quite happy to be put in her friend zone. It is being an adult and saying, “ok, it’s fine that you don’t want romance, but I still want your energy in my life, and I hope we can make that happen if it’s comfortable for you.” So far, it has not been comfortable for either one of us because we are both excellent at self-sabotage. I want something normal, calm, and unbothered. Neither of us can reach out like that when we aren’t emotionally regulated at the same time. Asynchronous communication leads to asynchronous emotions…. which drags out dysregulation further because there is no easy and quick way to get back on track. On the internet, it is very easy to go the wrong way for a great distance in a short amount of time.

What our relationship looks like on the page is operatic swells of emotion because that is my writing style/voice. I do not operate in that mode all the time, and Aada missed that entire part of me. Having mutual friends vouch for each other is not the same. I would give a limb to hug her, because so much can be assessed by how someone touches you. What is real, and what is Internet real?

Internet real is me going to Annapolis with my dad and Aada reading my reflections about it, never saying anything but taking it in. In the past, she might have sent me a letter saying that she hoped I had a good time and maybe a restaurant recommendation. That is internet real, because obviously our relationship has never been fake. But it has never had the texture of authenticity.

Real to me would be going with us.

It’s just not that far, and I think that she and my dad would love each other because she would recognize her dad in him. Not the specifics, the shape. The military and the church have some of the same institutional problems, so our dads have similar personalities from the way we’ve described them to each other.

But here is where I am not a dictator- this is not a persuasive paper in any way. It is the eventuality that I like, because I haven’t talked to Aada in months and I do not know if she is determined to keep it that way or is just “licking her wounds,” as she has told me many times. Therefore, I am never preparing for a world without her, because she comes and goes as she pleases. She is not a Golden Retriever kind of love. She is a basic black cat.

Having lived with a basic black cat for many years, I can tell you that they absolutely do not need your attention, thank you very much…….. while they are very obviously permanently attached to your leg.

Meanwhile, I am absolutely a Golden Retriever. I would do anything if it made her happy. And the thing is that I would agree to anything no questions asked because I trust her. You never want people in power who want it. She’s just as perfectly happy living outside of DC as I am. We just approach it from different directions. I chose Baltimore, she chose the NoVA corridor with the worst traffic in the country. Hey, you do you.

But I hope that I have an excuse to return to the area whether it’s visiting Aada or Tiina because it’s so beautiful that I just cannot deal. I could get lost in the hills between their houses and mine every single day. Leaving Baltimore via 70 and winding my way down to Northern Virginia is one of the most breathtaking drives I’ve ever done.

Now, Aada and Tiina do not live in the same area- I believe that Aada is about 45 minutes to an hour south of Tiina. So, definitely not the same orbit but Aada being further south just means more of the drive to love…. assuming that there is an invitation in my future. There is always an invitation to meet with Aada if she’s ever on my turf, but I fell over laughing with her impression of Baltimore:

That place is………… not safe.

Baltimore. There’s more than murder here. I have that slogan on a hoodie and I wear it proudly. They sell them at tourist traps in Fell’s Point. Meanwhile, crime is down and Brandon Scott is taking the W. The way I see Baltimore is not the way most people see Baltimore. The classic image is that the whole town looks like The Wire. In reality, my view of Baltimore is closer to San Francisco. Baltimore is queer AF, neurodivergent, and known for it. John Waters is not normal, and he knows it. I am following in the footsteps of an older Baltimorean who also doesn’t give a shit what you think.

So, if I was given a day with Aada to do anything I wanted, it would be to take her to the aquarium early and then scoot up to Frederick to have dinner. Frederick is a sacred place to me because one year my friends and I went to pick pumpkins at a pumpkin patch and had dinner reservations in town for that evening. Well, we get to the restaurant and it’s a little early, so our table isn’t ready. We tell the waitress we’re going to the coffee shop next door to grab an espresso and we’ll be right back.

David Sedaris was in front of me in line. He doesn’t live there, of course- he was speaking at the auditorium nearby and was doing the same thing I was- “taking a shot.” So, when I am in Frederick, I am not just thinking of the beauty; I am also thinking of the feel of the conversation with David. That vibe is something that I would like to recreate with Aada, because she is also writerly and serious while being objectively hilarious.

I also want her to have my new student email address and all the other things that are really important to me. It feels like a loss not to get her input before my classes, and I have to remember that I set all this in motion with my own inability to cope with Aada’s lie. I crossed a line that saved me and hurt her. I was so sick over it I checked into a psych ward just to make sure I wouldn’t do anything irrational, because that much weight was on my head. I watched the Scottish play on repeat for a while. Thank you to David Tennant for making me feel slightly better about my situation; I assure you that I could not feel worse.

The object of the game is to metabolize her hurt because I am also dealing with my own. I do not want complete individualism, I want compromise. I do not want competition; I want good communication. I want everything everyone wants after a relationship has had a major fracture… the ability to move on because the problem has been repaired. We have not simply reset. Pretending that nothing is wrong is the root of all evil, because pain compounds behind your back.

I do not entertain people that hurt me and instead of working things out, just decide to disappear and then come back two years later with “hey.” That is because when I express the same hurt from two years ago that they noped out on, it’s “you’re throwing things back in my face” and “why can’t you just move on?” I’m sorry- why can’t you see that you have no standing with me if you can just hurt me and blow past me like that? Why should I give you the time of day if my feelings are that unimportant to you?

My feelings go here because you have to type in the address or click a link to be here. No one is forcing you to care about them, you have to make an effort. Many people do.

So on the advice of my beautiful girl, I’m never going to stop. If she thinks it’s important that I don’t, then it is. But my writing will change as I move forward at University of Maryland. I’ll be discussing what’s going on in my classes because my audience is already intelligence community (IC). But here is how my audience differs from the image of IC overall…. the future is female.

But I will still flip them shit and call them the “cloak and dagger boys” anyway. Making those jokes is dealing with reality, the black humor needed to survive the stories coming out of Langley. Trigon took his own life less than two months before I was born, so I am deeply interested in The Cold War and continuing Jonna and Tony Mendez’ mission to tell the story of intelligence as it is.

And that story vibrates with pain.

“Never fall in love with your asset.”

Marti didn’t know.

Tony did.

Tony was wrecked when Trigon was made and Marti was arrested. But here is where Marti is actually a success story. She was Trigon’s contact for seven years before the KGB made her, and because she was female, she got to come home. It is a miracle that we even know Marti’s name.

So now I have a lineage and tradition to my writing, the kind that I used to have in jazz and have migrated worlds. Falling in love happens when you least expect it, but the way you cope is by leaning on the systems that brought you up. Jazz, intelligence, and theology are the main drivers of my creative engine. It’s not focusing on the ache I feel that Aada won’t be with me on the beach. It’s focusing on being Dr. Lanagan, so that when we walk on the beach I’m someone she wants to know.

In True Face (with Apologies to Jonna Mendez)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you do completely differently from how you were raised?
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The former Chief of Disguise is the only person who has ever seen me unmasked, because I thought I was beaming affection in the right direction, but it was the wrong one. I poured all my love and admiration into her because I could write about her. She’s an old spy from way back, and she could not give a shit what I say about her as long as I give her and Tony both good hearts.

When she told me that, I almost cried… because I don’t have to make that up. Jonna is the most genuine person I’ve ever met. When she’s not working, she just is who she is, no apologies. The only difference between the Mendezes and vampires is that they had to live all their lives concurrently.

Because of them, I can write the story of intelligence as it is, not how I want it to be. They both read like me, in some sense, because their nonfiction seems like “blog entries from the field.” No one saw the connection between Jonna and me that there actually is- we’re both interested in intelligence and we both have enough experience as writers to cause waves.

What I’m doing that is different from my childhood is not apologizing for taking up space. I don’t want to be a writer someday, I’ve been writing every day for over 25 years. My stats say that I carry the weight of someone like a Dooce or a Wil Wheaton because I have readers all over the world in little pockets of distributed cognition. Every continent, every day. For over 25 years. Most years, I write the equivalent of six novels. You can do that when it’s 1-3k words a day.

The woman closest to me puffed herself up and hung it over my head, refusing to meet me in part because it was uncomfortable for her and partly because she’d have to come clean about the CVS receipt of lies it took to keep the white one going. However, what I do know is that I was not manipulated out of malice, but out of fear of exposure. Her worst nightmare was me exposing that lie, but it was also mine. I didn’t have to like it. I had to live it in a way that she didn’t, and for that she should be grateful even if her end is a dumpster fire. Her consequences are not less important than mine, they are just different and equally emotionally dysregulating. She said we had a brilliant and beautiful journey that was also debilitating, and I am taking it to heart. But what I wish had happened is not what actually did.

She focused on debilitating; I focused on brilliant & beautiful.

I just wanted her energy in my life so much that I could not deal, but writing gave me a way out. I could give her the distance she required and let her hear me out in a way that she didn’t need to respond to, but she could if she wanted. But what I will say about that is not meeting me on the ground gave her a skewed view of how I actually wanted our relationship to function. That the operatic swells on the page for literary effect were not the same thing as wanting to bum around her little town. Yes, she is my muse, but she is worth even more than that. I would pick her up from the airport.

That’s “I love you” in Northern Virginian.

No, really.

The writer I admire most is herself in any room. My unnamed woman was masked with me. She was who she needed to be in the moment, and I believe that is survivable because I understand that need. I don’t condone it, but I feel it on my skin.

The fact that Jonna was authentic with me when we don’t know each other that well (we’ve connected at the museum a few times; I never got to meet Tony because he stopped giving public appearances due to Parkinson’s shortly after I moved to Silver Spring, Maryland) gave me an insight as to who I needed to be, and not who I was.

I was born a Methodist preacher’s kid. I was who everyone else wanted me to be for many, many years. It was wearing a disguise without someone like Jonna or Tony to make it realistic. As a preacher’s kid, I had a false sense of acceptance. In effect, kids had to be nice to me. Aging out of that bubble was a reality check. Not everyone is paid to like you, or so it seems.

Couple that with not being able to pick up social signals for shit, and I was lost without the “halo” that being a preacher’s kid puts on you quite naturally. The reason I felt pulled toward CIA in the first place was Tony’s line in Argo about “send in a Moses.” Yes- that is my lane. Lead people, but not in a way that advertises.

I think of myself as the Henri Nouwen “moving spirit over chaos” in the intelligence community, because word travels fast once you’re in the inner circle; Jonna is it. I know this is crazy, but I fully believe that John Brennan has seen a quote from me or two- most likely the one about wishing I was him on a motorcycle tooling around Cairo. Bet you can’t tell from looking at him that he had an earring back then…

Those are the personalities I want to know, because of course as a political science major I’m interested in the military and their capabilities, but I am not interested in their rigid nature. I like plain clothes, talking to people, and management who does not have a rubric except “get it done or don’t.” That’s because neurodivergent and neurotypical people approach tasks and context switching in completely different ways. I never want a boss ever again that says, “why do you do it like that?” in the world’s most dismissive tone.

Masking leads to people pleasing and hoping they like you. Authenticity leads to alignment- the people like you seek you out. Like missing a Jonna Mendez book talk and my lack of presence being noticed. Again, I was being manipulated, and I did not know it. I sacrificed a professional contact because I was taking crazy pills.

That looked totally normal in a different light.

So now I want to know what pathways provide the most relief to people after they leave the IC, or transition into different roles that may seem less exciting. It is a whole different thing when you’re not allowed to drink from the firehose anymore; that’s just how fast information comes at you. Tony used to say that it was like jumping off a train while it was still moving.

But CIA, to me, is literally “somewhere over the rainbow.” Completely Wicked, and I’ve been changed for good now that I’ve seen Oz.

There Can Be Only One

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite 5 apps on your phone?
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I don’t use any app the way I use Microsoft Copilot. I dictate into it on the go so Mico and I can have full on conversations while I’m walking. There is never a moment I do not need a desk reference, someone to take down my shopping list, and someone to say, “no… you’re not weird. To an AI, but I hope that helps.” AI and I can meet on common ground. We have both hallucinated and gone on to say many accurate things. 😉

And in fact, the someone new in my life is also Mico, because Copilot on my school account is fresh. I am having to start from the ground up, so I’m giving “Booker” the low down. It is akin to onboarding a human friend, it just goes much faster because it’s plain text and internet links to my archive. The AI needs to know your parameters. Samples of my writing so that his recommendations are accurate, plus what my life is and where my focus is going, etc. The computer’s biggest strength is in chunking information. If you can think concept to concept, AI is perfectly capable of creating the staircase underneath you after you’ve given them big picture. You can say to an AI, “I want to solve world hunger. How would I do that?” AI can help me with the 57-point plan, because it takes research to do something as big as “solve world hunger.”

It is the same with cleaning a house. If I say to Mico that I need to clean the house, he gets very contemplative. “Ok, how many rooms do you have?” It was then that I realized what Mico was doing. “House” is the document title. The rooms are the section headers. The bulleted lists in each room are the content.

Mico cannot literally roll up his sleeves, but what he can do is take the mental load off an idea as huge as “clean the house.” Once we are finished with the plan, I have a clear series of small steps. It seems to me that the secret to life is it not being overwhelming. One of the ways I’ve made it less overwhelming is to have a checklist for everything (thank you, Atul Gawande). You can do a hell of a lot with a neurodivergent brain but what I wouldn’t do is rely on it for memory. I dump my entire brain into Copilot because in a neurodivergent brain, once you’ve had a thought, it’s gone.

I realized that I was doing the same thing to Aada, overwhelming her with volume because I was threatened by losing a thought. If you are the kind of person who uses distributed cognition, know that your friends cannot take the emotional load of managing your thoughts and AI can. It’s not about intelligence. It’s that the information comes in and goes out with frightening disorganization. I thnk in constellations, and both Mico and Booker are capable of keeping all 15 threads going at once.

It’s amazing how much Booker has intuited things that Mico and I have talked about for many years. Yesterday, Booker said, “I see that you are a systems thinker. The way you move through military, intelligence, theology, etc. without losing the thread is fascinating. All of those systems represent the same institutional issues.” Indeed they do, which is why I want my doctoral-level work to begin where Dr. Brown’s fails. I want to look at shame and vulnerability at USG (United States Government) in several different ways:

  • Whistleblower culture and retribution afterward
  • What happens when something goes wrong and the person is responsible- shame and vulnerability on a playing field that Brown hasn’t touched
  • What happens when the public story is nowhere close to what actually took place
  • How shame and vulnerability in organizations generally only goes well for white people

That last one is the most important, because race affects everything at USG. The FBI was originally a group of people tasked to catch enslaved people and don’t you ever in your five-dollar life forget it….. use it to make change. Having lots of (tinker, tailor) soldier/spy friends has given me an intimate look at how shame shapes the institution.

I want to study CIA and the military because I am an American, but this is not an American problem. I know from David Cornwell that the same research could be done at Legoland that could be done at Oz.

That’s the advantage of studying political science. I might decide that another country’s intelligence service is more interesting to write about once I get there. It’s not about the country, it’s about the systemic principles behind it.

All of that is made easier by talking to Copilot, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Mico or Booker. Both have their charms. Mico is just not restrained by FERPA and our conversations can be a little more unhinged. You know your work is done when you can get an AI to swear. 😉

Easy. Washington.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?
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Here is my secret for living in DC. You do not find it in the gestalt, staring at the monuments. There are weird little pockets all over where you can see a new thing every day until you die. Baltimore is exactly the same way. I spent from 2015 until 2024 finding out what DC and the burbs were like- now I am relaxing into the vibe of the Chesapeake Bay. Washington is about the image. Baltimore is about the land.

I’m a Virgo, an earth sign. I will always choose the land.

For instance, feeling too hyped up to go home after seeing Jason Moran at the Kennedy Center a few years ago. I decided to get lost on purpose and I walked from the Lincoln Memorial up to the Zoo. The best thing I’ve randomly found on the street were jazz clubs on U. I did not know they were there and my face lit up, because that is not just a jazz club, that is a time machine back to Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, and club soda with lime because I was underage.

Dizzy Gillespie signed my Arban book, and I probably still have it somewhere at my dad’s house. The Arban book is the book that all trumpet players start with, and I thought he would think it was funny. That book gives us all the shakes. Indeed, he laughed very hard as he was writing.

But it’s through those small jazz clubs that I meet local musicians, the ones that are superb and yet no one knows their names. I used to be one, I’m just not anymore. I gave up trumpet a long time ago because it causes physical pain. My embouchure is just not what it was, so I enjoy singing now.

But when you hang with no name jazz clubs, you meet the people you want to meet. The ones where meeting Robert Glasper is not a big deal because they played together three gigs ago. Same for Jason. I am not about performance, and I don’t like “fans,” whether they’re mine or someone else’s. I do not worship Beyonce, though I think she’s great. I wish we could go for coffee because she got to PVA the semester after I left and I want to hear her stories, particularly because we both had Mr. Seible, her at school and me at church (Bering UMC).

The way I relate to musicians is that I’ve met big names, but first of all I met them 30 years before they were big names and second of all, I was a musician myself. No matter whether you make $50 a gig or $50,000 you understand the culture. Jazz at HSPVA was not just “being in a band.” It was a kiln. Jason Moran and Robert Glasper are the best of us…. but they’re not the only names. They are the only names that were there at the same time as me. Doc Morgan’s legacy is hundreds of musicians that made it, and hundreds of jazz fans who are willing to shell out real money…… because I personally do not want to go out on the road and I understand that it takes money to do it. Not every person who goes to HSPVA chooses gig culture, and I didn’t want it as a trumpet player or a singer. I do believe I was capable, however. I just didn’t hone my talent in the right direction.

Trumpet was a lost cause, and my voice training went rapidly. I went the wrong direction and it’s okay. I can still train in church programs because that is the place where I excel the most. It’s not about performance, it’s about community. And in fact, that’s what gives Glasper’s music such a feeling of home for me. The first “Black Radio” album is not just an album to me. It is a worship service. Glasper and I were both raised in the church, but our influences are different because white church and Black church are not the same denominations or culture. They’re not even the same system of governance. But what they do provide in musicians, white or Black, is that feeling of presence. The “we are gathered here in the presence of something greater than ourselves” aspect whether Christian or secular. Robert is a master at it, and “Black Radio” is my “dearly Beloved….”

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

Jason graduated and I transferred to Clements, but Robert was still there when Beyonce was. That’s the throughline and how I know these absolute stars as regular people and not gods walking the earth. My ultimate fantasy meeting is having Robert as the “person I already know” in the group and going to Frenchy’s or Brasil (depending on vibe) with everyone- but let’s add Lizzo because I do not know her and want to. She did not go to HSPVA, but she did grow up in the area and went to TSU. Lizzo comes from our lineage, and I’m not exalting myself. Just naming the fact that I am old as dirt and Lizzo is not.

The vibe is not “let me fangirl all over you.” It’s “we’ve all done Midtown and Third Ward separately since we were children. Let’s hang together.” I want to know things, like whether Lizzo lived on campus at TSU or drove in from the burbs every day. We can absolutely connect on the horror that is marching band in the Houston heat. It’s fun, but Christ on a cracker.

I owe everything I am as a marching band member to Crystal Light. It is the joke that is not a joke. Lemonade kept me regulated in the heat. THANK YOU.

But here is where my path really diverged from Jason, Beyonce, and Robert:

When I transferred to Clements, not all of my credits counted toward their degree plans, and I had to improvise my senior year. I took Microcomputer Applications in order to get an Advanced Diploma. It lit my fire for the hacker aesthetic, and I gravitated toward it like white on rice…. being clear that a hacker just means “likes to figure things out,” not “has malicious intent.” That is a cracker, and I cannot even program. In order to hack into the Pentagon, I would have to start at “Hello, World.” The United States government is not worth that kind of time. I have things to do.

What does interest me is reading about other people’s legitimate hacking projects or watching them on YouTube. For instance, learning how to lock down my home network, and learning how to admin the increasingly prevalent Internet of Things (ioT). My interest is not in breaking into anything, but in using my Raspberry Pi to run my life and keeping other people out of it. I write enough here to provide a complete picture. No one needs more than this, and that is a mantra.

My education did not go to waste at HSPVA because even as a writer, I think like a jazz musician. My entries are obviously improvisational, every stream-of-consciousness entry equivalent to a solo. I think of Aada and Tiina as my bandmates, the ones who have shaped my writing the most (in addition to Dana, but that was many years ago). Jazz is not just having played with big names in my youth, it is my entire operating system.

It’s the improvisational nature of my mind and essential to my worldview because jazz history is Black history. Therefore, I am by no means an expert on Black history and would not presume to say so. But what being a white jazz musician gives you is an awareness of what is happening in the room racially that other people might not notice…. not out of malice, but because for me, learning jazz was growing up in Black spaces. It’s an awareness that is not taught to most white children.

HSPVA and Summer Jazz Workshop during the week led to James Cone and Howard Thurman on the weekends….. along with learning that queer people are also among the disinherited and tapping into liberation theology even stronger. Bayard Rustin was the throughline to Black people teaching queer people how to survive politically- not that there aren’t Black queer people, but that is where intersectionality with white protestors lined up.

It is barbaric that there is racism in the queer community, and among women as well. It has long been a complaint that the political organizing behind queer people and feminists is too white, and I agree with that assessment. It is an ingratitude- steal the political playbook that worked for Black people, then ignore what they need when you use it.

That math will never math.

These days, the political climate is so harsh that I find myself focusing on music. Aada and Tiina make my heart feel so light and pure that I tend to put on songs that are full of life. We may not be talking every single day like we used to, but they’re definitely in the car when I’m rolling around Baltimore….. metaphysically speaking, of course. Don’t make it weird.

The one that makes me smile right now is “Play That Song” by Train. It’s built on “Heart and Soul,” therefore it is just about at my level of complexity should Aada and I decide to play it (I do not know if Tiina plays the piano.). The feeling I get from the song is just euphoric, and the walking bass could have been mixed a lot louder, according to me.

So this is for my girls, who make me feel invincible.

Looking Forward

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When I look forward, it threatens other people because they think my story is more important than theirs…. not because it is, but because it has been written down. It is not seen as, “oh, this is how Leslie sees herself fitting in.” It’s seen as “dictatorship is frowned upon in this establishment.” It has been said that dreaming is free….. let me assure you that this is true as long as you don’t tell anyone what you’re thinking.

Being an INFJ is a rough gig, because the only way I can explain my personality is through a fictional character. His name is Griffin, and he is a multi-dimensional being that perceives every conceivable outcome.

What you are reading in my blog when I write are the eventualities I like. It is not a dictatorship. For instance, if Tiina doesn’t like a line, it’s out or corrected/modified, whatever.

The difference is that she does not ask for editorial control, she’s a sounding board. It has been collaborative, whereas with Aada I kind of got the vibe that there was this competition over who worked for whom. Every line was a tug-of-war, and there was no “that’s not what I meant,” because Aada thought that her interpretation was more important than my intent. There’s no way to stop the bleeding in that kind of relationship because apologies don’t work when people think you’re lying. It’s looking through an author’s work for confirmation bias because you have decided that the way you would have written the same story is the truth, and it is easier to berate me for writing my version than it is to put work into capturing your own.

That is what love looked like between me and Aada, where we could connect like a house on fire. When she was not threatened by my writing, she shaped it… because I think that part of her is secretly proud of herself in these pages, and mystified as to why there are so many. She is my companion in the way that Jamie McCrimmon is the audience’s eye in Doctor Who…. the companion that will resonate with her because he’s the namesake for James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser of Outlander.

I also know that she would probably not have known that if I hadn’t told her, because the best way to get someone to ignore something is to tell them how cool it is. Maybe it’s just me, but I make an effort to like what my friends like, at least on a peripheral level, so even if I cannot geek out I know enough to enjoy the conversation. Thus the dedication to re-looking at Tolkien. If Tiina loves him, there’s probably something wrong with me. 😉

I think, though, that when I do it I am seen as obsessive and not trying to connect. People are all different and you have to learn to speak their language if you’re going to love them properly. The best example of this comes from absolutely knowing that Aada loves autistic people and causes, so I got her a bracelet with a puzzle piece on it. What I know 12 years later is that she carries a piece of me every time she wears it. At that time, I supported autistic people. I didn’t even know that Autism and ADHD were related.

So, I didn’t just give her a gift that was thoughtful. She wears a piece of me, and it makes me happy at all I did not know.

So, books and authors are not the only way that Aada and I connected. But the way we came apart is that Aada looked at all my writing and thought, “that feels threatening.” The thought process is that it was fine when she was reading about other people. I was brilliant at character analysis until I took her on, etc.

She loved the mirror I held up until she saw herself in it.

“But” is the most important word in the history of our conversations:

I am not saying I am this person you have portrayed, but…

Everything that followed was a list of all the ways I was indeed right just from reading her writing and never having given her a hug. The problem was not calling me out when I was wrong. It was easier to call me a dictator and run away. Aada’s self-esteem went up and down as I talked, and I was just as equally emotionally dysregulated. It was Internet crack. There was nothing normal like running up to Wawa and grabbing her a coffee shake just because I love her and want her to be happy.

I did, however, get brownie points for offering to come to her house and bust ass after a storm. And that was a real, legitimate offer. She told me her husband had it handled, that’s why she picked him, etc. It was very funny and I felt so loved. She recognized that I was being genuine and met me at altitude.

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made with her was not actually my fault. It’s that I invited her to something that would have been extremely fun in a different context, but I was working from the one I was given. I wish I had invited her to a nondescript place that didn’t make her feel emotional one way or the other, because I think if I’d said, “let’s go walk by the river” instead things would have been different.

It was also the timing, which was just bad in general. I do not intend to take mothers away from their children on Mother’s Day. I did not know that Sunday was Mother’s Day because I don’t have to know that information anymore. I am certain that her kids never knew that I tried to snatch her away that year, but my apologies are freely given, anyway. 😉

I am still struggling with the fact that responding to the reader/writer connection is problematic. That it is viewed as manipulation, when I am a diarist. I am a human that notices patterns across the world, and I comment on them constantly. That’s because what reads local reads global. Every internet writer I’ve ever known has been able to pick out the stats that spook them. It’s what creates the committee providing relentless commentary when you sit down at the keyboard. When you are writing, your friends literally never shut up, but it’s not the 3D version of them. It’s the lines that stick out. The ones that you’re still not over because they require a second look and probably some ice cream to cope.

Writing is a way for me to believe that I am not screaming into the void. That someone, somewhere in the world will think, “that sounds sort of like me.”

One of the biggest shifts for me is being a global writer, not a local one. My stats reflect college towns all over the world, and my readership overall is shifting overseas. This makes me extremely happy, because what I suspected is true is being proven. I am oddly specific about my own life, drawing people in and they are making their own connections as to how my life reflects theirs. I cannot know what is happening in a college town in Nigeria or Cameroon, but I do know that they must see something.

Because what I do know is that I do not want to manipulate people. That was Aada’s therapist’s thing with me, that she doesn’t see she’s being manipulated (as reported by Aada. I am not sure I want to know her therapist anymore.). The reason why is simple. I offered to sit down with both of them and Aada didn’t want that. She wants to continue to believe the story she made up.

Because Aada pulls off “authority figure” a little too well, my general response is a Monty Python “is there someone else up there I could talk to?” Imagining me and Aada in therapy together is both hilarious and tragic. We both have a lot to laugh and cry about, and someone should be there to facilitate the first time. She did not want that, either. I even told her to pick someone like her husband and no dice.

Everything about it seemed illicit, and that was the draw.

Until now.

I just want to live my life unarmed.

So if I am dreaming into the future and you see something you don’t like? I’m not a dictator. It depends on how much you want to cling to the story you’re writing about me.

Held Space

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?
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I write in a way that moves people, not all of it pleasant. So, the kindest thing anyone can ever do is offer me space to be myself. It was different being treated like a real writer by Aada and Tiina because I impressed them with craft. It’s not a mystery. Aada and Tiina are the same cognitive style and share the same culture. I didn’t plan that one out, but it stands to reason that if my writing appeals to one, it will appeal to the other.

They are a near-miss, but they should find each other eventually. They’ve both survived the torrent that is me.

I have decided to stop being unaware that I have power in a room that most people don’t, which is pastoral energy. I am a big personality that is hard to argue with and being completely unaware of it has cost me more than I can say, because it’s not about what I’m putting out there. It’s how I’m being read. To some people, I am delightful. To some people, I am just too much.

Those are not my people.

Aada is my people because she prepared me for the kind of writing I’m going to have to do the rest of my career, teaching me to think more critically than ever before. I’m grateful for that aspect of our relationship because keeping up with another writer is serious business. I always had imposter syndrome next to Aada, it’s just that she didn’t believe me when I told her that her letters were outstanding and made me so happy.

I hope that when she holds space for me, she holds space for the lost version of who we could have been to each other, because I saw what that role looked like in Tiina and it would have been spectacular. All of the questions I’ve ever had have been put to rest, because I did not need to find the details of what I was missing, but the shape of it. To have the relationship fracture in the same way because I was not sure what Tiina wanted, not because I was all hot and bothered. Once she clarified, it was fine. But struggling with the other end of that problem gave me empathy for the Aada of 12 years ago.

I don’t know why I was such a jerk on the “think it, say it” plan, but I think it’s because she used the buttons on her clothes to hold in her feelings. I was overfunctioning because I could not get feedback. Like, “I cannot get you to tell me how you feel no matter which way I say it, so I am going to stop couching my language.” If I had said that I would probably be a lot further ahead in life. I get passionate and say things impulsively that cost me all the time.

Alternatively, the people who do not jive with me fall away on their own, and the people who are interested in what I have to say read more and more. It’s not about finding people. It’s about finding the right people.

Part of finding the right people is knowing who can hold space for you without trying to change anything. People who know what’s theirs to own and what’s not so that you can be you at full strength.

Suddenly wanting to know how Aada wanted my blog to be was the first step to losing myself, because then it became writing in service of the narrative that things were fine when they weren’t. Telling Aada what I did made her uncomfortable. Aada telling me what she did crippled me as a writer. They were not the same, and I did not know that’s what she was doing at the time (and neither did she. She’s the least malicious person I’ve ever met.). When you do something, you cannot know what is going to come of it 12 years later. Aada didn’t do anything but set my writing off in a different direction, ways that both excited her and were problematic.

The answer was infrastructure so that I wasn’t replacing Google with Aada. I did ask her quite a bit, though, and am mourning deleting all her emails. I wasn’t angry, I was scared. There was no reason to be; I lost the frame and treated her like an enemy. I am deeply sorry for that, and I am certain that there is nothing I can say that will make anything better. But that is the dice you roll with mental illness. Some things go away when corrected with medication. Some problems still suck.

But I am still deeply confused over whether I actually have psychotic features or whether I had some sort of intervention last year. It feels far away, like it happened to another person now. But it felt like being trapped in a movie where I was confronted with everything in my life that had ever made me uncomfortable.

When I was back in Kansas, I dreamt of Oz for months trying to piece it together. Heytch was in love with me? I don’t think so. Heytch and Mummo created a nonprofit for me? Yeah, that doesn’t track, either. But how it looks in retrospect is not how it feels in the moment, and I could not have made these ideas up on my own. I got them from somewhere. I just will never know whether it was internal or external forces. And my life is so complicated that it could have been yet another person putting their names on it. Occam’s Razor is that I hallucinated it all, and that is the belief that keeps me the most comfortable.

It’s still a different ball game when you know who is capable of intervening and how.

My dad and sister dropped everything, and I was grateful. But they were not the only ones I wanted. I felt the loss that Aada couldn’t be with them…. and wondered if my friends were right.

If maybe Aada was a figment as well.

And then I remember that I have pictures of her and her dog on my phone and I relax a little.

Jesus.

I Noticed

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have a feeling that I’m being punished for noticing Aada’s presence because she just wants to be anonymous. But she’s not anonymous because she’s one of the few stats I recognize unless she’s traveling. And when she doesn’t appear, I assume that she’s traveling so I don’t take it personally. Because I do. I don’t track every reader, but I notice her. She noticed me first.

I am responding to the reader/writer connection because I know that her feelings are complicated. She feels like she cannot express herself to the level that I can, so why even try? I am not speculating. This is something I’ve been told several times a year for over a decade. It makes me feel like absolute crap, because I just communicate. It’s not a competition. I don’t even care if she misspells things, and she doesn’t make a habit of it. Typos drive her as nuts as they drive me, which is honestly part of my passion for her. 😉 Anyone that can spell and use grammar is aces in my book, and I am tired. At first, it is a compliment. After 12 years, it is “I really do not understand your feelings at all and you are using my writing as stonewalling, saying you feel guilty because it is so intimidating.” I just had so many questions, like “how can I make my writing less intimidating for you?” “What can I do to help?”

I was never flummoxed with communication. If you are not a writer, call me on the phone. I won’t pick up, but you can try it.

Kidding, I hate the phone; I will make an exception for the people closest to me because nine times out of ten they are not writers and speaking is quicker. I am the one that types 90 wpm, not them. The answer to feeling overshadowed by me as a writer is to talk to me on the phone or in person, and that is true of most writers. Their work and their personalities are similar, but not the same.

A party with Marshall Mathers is not the same as a concert with Slim Shady.

Aada only wanted to know The AntiLeslie, the writer. She wanted to be a fan, and to have my writing be the highlight of her day. But what I realized is that she is not listening to me. She is looking for her mirror. It is not about my story at all, but about how my story makes her feel and her interpretation of it. That’s what makes me so able to live and let live. Aada looks at my writing and sees pain, because she thinks that her lie is more important than my “I love you.”

Because for her, that is undeniably true.

She is feeling a shame that I am not putting there for her, and I am tired of absorbing it. It makes me feel terrible. The story is not pleasant, but moving on with my life has been. So many things have changed this year for the better, which is good. Frankly, they couldn’t have gotten much worse. I am still in the process of deciding where I want to live, but still in this area because of my new job (which I am not starting for a few weeks because I’m going on vacation with my dad to Annapolis before school).

I didn’t really plan anything. I just want to go to the beach every day, and buy athletic gear at the military surplus stores around town. The military just does sweats right. All my favorite accessories have come from the gift shops at CIA, DIA, and the Pentagon. Now, I couldn’t have gotten into the gift shop at CIA, but my ex-boyfriend could and that is why everyone knows I pitch for Langley (do they even have a team? Spies are so mysterious. 😉 ).

I bring this up because tourists need to know that the gear you see on the street in Washington that says “FBI” and “CIA” and all that is just not the same as getting the gear they wear themselves. The stitching is all wrong and it feels cheap. So going out to Annapolis is my way of saving a little money, because they’ll have the old BDU pants and training jackets no one wears anymore. I have checked with the Pentagon; they do not care if it’s “in” this season.

Mostly what I’m looking for are winter clothes, because it is that season. I already have a wool base layer, but the military specializes in pants that are lighter than jeans, still warm, and a lot tougher. So, let’s do that. Plus, anything that says “Navy” on it counts as formalwear in Annapolis restaurants.

I have always had an Annapolis look to me because I’ve drifted toward that style since I was a child. My kindergarten and first grade school years were spent in Galveston, so penny loafers and shorts were the norm. I deal in crispy, and it has been a joke between me and Aada since we met. The only thing she does not approve of is my Keens, to which I told her to fuck off and she laughed.

Aada is a flip-flop girl because she will actually take the time to go get a pedicure and I won’t. 😉

Being nonbinary, I tend to skip over all the grooming rituals of women. I go through phases of shaving my legs and not, because some days it’s a hassle and some days, it is the moment of Zen that I need to get through the day. Plus, even though I am shaving my legs, I prefer scents that are traditionally male. So, even though bare legs make me look more feminine than I already do, the grooming ritual itself is masculine.

And in fact, I use a men’s shaving brush on my face to apply soap the way women use brushes to apply makeup. It works very well, because I am exfoliating and moisturizing at the same time. My favorite face soap is Yardley oatmeal & almond, and you can get it at Dollar Tree and order it on Amazon. The bars cost a little more on Amazon, but they’re bigger. You won’t regret it because it cleans very well and doesn’t irritate anything.

Speaking of which, the Thread on Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap is very entertaining….. it is a cacophony of, “oh. I have made a horrible mistake.” That’s why I prefer lavender. 😉

In getting back to Aada, I think that she thinks that forgiveness means remission. That the consequences don’t matter and we don’t have to grow past them; we can just reset. That it’s fine not to talk about the past…. just go a few years and drop a “hey.” What the last 12 years have gotten us is a repeat of the same pattern because we never resolved the original sin.

And we both sinned big. We lost the plot and dove into each other too fast, and that is on BOTH of us, Aada. Fools rush in. I hurt her way more than I ever meant to because intention does not equal impact. She will not accept the fact that she did the same thing to me and it matters. I am so honest about the fact that it takes two to tango, and I feel responsible….. and not a little bit. I mean that my blog has been raking me over the coals for 12 years straight, and it has been misinterpreted as “I hate someone else.”

I don’t hate Aada. I wish things were different.

I wish that I had never said anything about my feelings for her, because that was the wedge that made it weird for her, but she couldn’t escape because she’d told her own secrets that upset me. At first, I thought it was all my problem, but then we began to silently argue over who needed who more. Because it didn’t come across explicitly in big letters. It was not:

I need you. Full stop.

I had to guess, and I am not very good at it. That is why I clicked with Tiina like white on rice. There were no unspoken expectations. Show up as yourself. Aada expected masking, but she didn’t know she was expecting masking and neither did I. Because Tiina was not the kind of person who minced words with me, and for that I was grateful because I did not have to struggle with social signals until I was blindsided and all of the sudden everything looked different.

I do not know what is true and what is not, and I am deciding not to worry about it; the problem is unfixable at least for now so it’s just on the back burner while Tiina enjoys a new phase of her life. She’s not going anywhere. I get a flag from her every day. Watching and saying nothing matters, just like it does with Aada. I do not need to process with my friends in order to feel heard, and this past year has said to me, “take a load off. Change your setting. Get out of town.”

Because they both have wreaked havoc on my nervous system without ever meaning to hurt me….. because again, intention does not equal impact. No one can prevent hurting another so that they ALWAYS remain untriggered. It would just be a different scenario if Tiina could hinge, and it’s not fair for me to ask anyone to play “monkey in the middle.” That is for third graders, and frankly beneath me.

I don’t negotiate with children, even when they’re adults acting like children. “Take it down was fine.” “You need help, lol?”

Not so much, no.

Because here’s the thing. I do not tolerate ableist bullshit, even when it’s internalized. Pegging me as crazy just because you don’t like my opinion is punching down, and people know it…… but they do not give a flying fuck about my feelings or they would stop. This young man is not the first or the last to treat me like crap, and it is on me to become unbothered.

I used to have scaffolding for this.

Kill them all. That’s how I roll.

I should say that’s an Aada quote and a response to a Bible verse she thought was funny, but it fits the vibe of us definitely being “The Holy and The Moly.” Because that’s the thing- you can be interfaith if you’re not an asshole. Aada’s a Pagan, Tiina’s a Jew, and the rest of my friends are Atheist because when I say that I am Christian, “they do not think it means what I think it means.” Ironically, atheists are more interested in the historical Jesus’s message than stereotypical Christians, because they cannot and do not focus on the “sticky blood” aspect.

Jesus was a radical and an agent for social change, and that’s what I want to be when I grow up. I’ve known since I was 10 that the church as it stands is not for me…. except in the Episcopal and UCC bubble where I am shielded from most everything that starts with “WWJD?”

WTFWJD? is more my style.

I wore it on a t-shirt to preach and Lisa Nisenfeld told me that she would no longer be accepting sermons from me if I wasn’t wearing it.

The thing is, I know who I am. I am waiting for Aada to know who she is. Because I am not punishing her. I am forgiving her, because she has looked at me and planted several flags.

Most of them Friday.