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.
Stories That Are All True 