Who are your favorite people to be around?

When my bipolar was flipping me out, I decided to check myself into the psych ward at Methodist Hospital because something just wasn’t right. My mood and behavior were all over the place. The first time I felt better was twofold. The first is that I discovered they had the good ice in the cafeteria, the kind you get at Sonic or Dairy Queen. There was no hour of any day that I didn’t have a 32 oz cup filled with that ice and whatever they were serving that day. Sometimes it was orange juice. If I was lucky, I could find a Diet Coke. Mostly, it was just water because the drink didn’t matter. The second is that once I had a drink in my hand, it was time to go find the best friend I had that week. He was a Viet Nam vet.

Our story starts when I walked up to him and said, “what are you in for?” He said, “murder.” I never left his side after that. 😛 I actually got mad at a nurse over his situation, because he said that the beds were too high for him to get into them (he was in a wheelchair). I talked to a nurse about it, and she said, “that’s not your problem to worry about. That’s ours.” I said, “well then, it looks like you need to do your job.” I give no fucks when it comes to nurses, because they do stupid shit all the time. I was a persona non grata after that, but I could give a shit. They were making my friend’s life harder…. and they are not gods. In fact, I got in really big trouble when he got let out a day before me and I hugged him goodbye. They screamed at me that there was no hugging.

What they didn’t know is that I’d been taking a shower with my roommate all week because she told me she was afraid she was going to cut herself in the shower. She and another person on my ward put everything in perspective for me because my roommate was trying to kill herself in the hospital and wanted support to not; one of the women in my cohort had a big red, angry X on each of her wrists. I did what I always did in that situation- started taking care of everyone else but me, because I was also halfway to “Spongebob Headstone,” but what pulled me out of it was realizing that I was trying to get better and they had a longer road than I did. It made me irrationally angry at the nurses and all they didn’t see. They’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer at times.

For instance, once my stepmother left her umbrella at the nurses’ station and said, “put my name on it so no one else takes it.” In what world does that not mean “put a note on it?” They wrote her name on her umbrella in Sharpie. I could go on, but I won’t. That example is enough to cover A LOT of ground.

The reason I felt so comfortable with the Viet Nam vet is that one of my best friends in Portland worked for the motor pool in the Army. He taught me everything I know about cars, and though I can do some things on my own, my favorite thing is for a mechanic to stand over me and tell me if I’m doing it right. For instance, much easier to bleed brakes with a buddy. When we got to Houston, we put power steering on Dana’s car because it came with rack and pinion. Our next door neighbor was a mechanic, and he said that he was really impressed that we managed to do it all in the driveway instead of in a shop.

My dad bought Dana’s car, and then her parents gave her some money, so he told her that she could be in charge of buying my car to pay him back. She never did, and I don’t remember why. I just remember that my friend and I did probably $2,000 worth of work on her car for free, and even that wasn’t enough to make her realize I needed a car as well.

It worked out okay because Dana didn’t have a job and could take me where I needed to go. But it wasn’t the same. My brother in law ended up giving me his old car instead. It was a Toyota Corolla, and I had more fun with it than the law should have allowed (but I never wrecked it, a miracle with my eye situation).

Now, by Dana buying me a car, my dad was not talking about a brand new one. He knew that I could work on cars, and our mechanic was still here. So, I could buy a beater and add everything I wanted aftermarket. I just don’t want you to think that she got the old car and I was supposed to get “the new one.” I wanted an old Saturn just like hers.

I believe that hearing this story was why my friend laid it out and said, “you need to get away from her, because she steps all over you and you don’t even notice.”

He was right. I let her get away with far too much because she’s a very strong personality and I am an introvert. At first, it was perfect because she could be the person that dragged me out of my house. Over time, her extroversion led her to easily be able to steamroll me because I wasn’t interested in arguing about something. Whatever she wanted to do was fine. I didn’t realize how much of myself I was losing in the process.

When I moved to DC, both in 2001 and in 2015, my number of military friends doubled just because of the neighborhood. For instance, on our street alone we have retired military, retired intelligence, and retired Secret Service.

To be retired from these things does not mean you are old. Zac is going to retire from the military next year. I think that will make him 36 or 37. I say this to prove that our neighborhood is not all old fogies like me. 😛

One of the first dates I had when I got here was with a spy who was on loan to us from MI-6, working on a human trafficking project. Now, I do not have any idea in the slightest why she told me she was MI-6, but I don’t think I was being catfished or anything. Maybe in England it’s not illegal to say you’re part of (at the time), her majesty’s secret service.

It was Thanksgiving night, and I was busy with my family. I was very late, and she rightfully left quickly. I was very happy about that, because I realized that I was about to get on the wrong train. For instance, if I dated her, it would have been harder to date Zac. He does not need me to have anyone on my contact list that works for a foreign intelligence agency….. and I can’t get away from his contact list because I’m one of his partners.

It kind of makes me worried that CIA or any of its derivatives would see my interest in intelligence as threatening, because I don’t want to know anything that’s classified. I’ve sought out retired spies because I want to know history before I start writing fiction. The operations don’t even matter. What does it take to do the job? What kind of personalities are in the room? Who are the people who Get Shit Done, and who are the people who would write your name on your umbrella with a Sharpie?

Though John le Carre has actually taught me more about this than my retired spy friends, because his whole schtick was showing MI-6 as it really is. There are lazy government wonks and amazingly good spies and they all inhabit the same building. I have no doubt that there is a real place like Slough House.

Speaking of which, I just realized why the show is called “Slow Horses.” It’s a play on words for “Slough Housers.” In the US, Langley is sort of “Slough House,” because if you make a mistake at CIA, you have to stay at the head shed and work a desk job. Or maybe you get sent to a country no one really wants as an assignment, and it’s not Chief of Station. It’s akin to starting off as a chaiwala (for my Indian friends).

It reminds me of my friend Stephen Johnson (now deceased) who thought he was going to be assigned to Viet Nam because it was that era (not a spy, a diplomat for State as far as I know). He said he ended up in the wilds of Montreal.

Dana always said that one of her great aunts was a spy. She was right. I went through a thousand interviews with case officers/diplomats, and I found her. I was looking for Stephen, and she also popped up. Very much a part of the whole Viet Nam clusterfuck Stephen wanted to avoid. She was there for some of the most horrific things each country did. I seem to remember that she was there when Dien Ben Phu fell. She was long dead by the time I married Dana,  but she would have been one of the people that I would have wanted to hear everything.

One of the things that I hope The Agency gets if they ever come after my blog is that I’m trying to get enough facts to write a book, not to take down the agency itself. I find myself learning more through conversation/e-mail than I do reading books, though I do a lot of that, too. I just use both modes of learning because books are for plot, retired spies are for characters.

It also makes a difference if you’re talking to someone in a public facing job or a private one. Those are two different stories, always…. and both relevant.

But even if CIA was so interested in my writing that I got put in jail over it, at least I’d know what to say when they asked me what I was in for….. “murder.”