Interestingly enough, I cannot tell you the exact date that the last time this prompt appeared. I can only tell you that it was the day I got together with Lindsay to discuss ideas for Matt’s Christmas present. She didn’t know what the hell to tell me, because our men are hard to buy for- Dad, Zac, and Matt- because when they like things, they just get them. So, I bought Matt two things I knew he probably wouldn’t think to buy for himself….. they were on his Wish List, but I can’t imagine that these were necessary purchases….. just cool. Because of my history with the sport, I got him the soccer ball he wanted (I figured a soccer ball is a gift that should come from me, frankly. Matt knows more about the sport, but I know more about the players (I’m guessing). Oh, and I didn’t even know he was a Weezer fan, but I got him “The Blue Album” on vinyl. That’s a gift that should come from me as well, because they’re my favorite band of all time.
There’s no better feeling than a nice stretch of highway and “Dope Nose” blaring like “Peter Gunn” at 70mph.
But the reason I bring up Lindsay and Matt is that today is the same writing prompt, and Lindsay and I are going out for dinner….. again. This prompt is now an omen, so I’m going to keep praying for it. 😉
I said, “it seems to me that you’re in DC a lot more often now. Is that true?” She said “yes,” so I’m looking forward to seeing more of her as time allows. She’s not always free enough to get together, but when she is, it’s a blast.
When I first moved here, this was all a projection on my part and I was right. Lindsay and Matt are involved in politics on many levels, so it was not inconceivable that they’d both end up here. In the 2016 election, if Pete Buttigieg had won, Lindsay would have gotten a job in his administration because it pays to have old, old friends/bosses who are also behind the scenes. Lindsay basically ran Annise Parker’s campaign after Peter Brown lost (we love you, Pete…. rest in peace). When she won, Annise put her in Constituent Services and later “body man,” like Charlie in “The West Wing.” Then, Annise ran Pete’s campaign; I’ve never been more sorry that anyone didn’t get the nomination, because it affected me so personally and to me, Pete was “the guy,” like they talk about with Bartlett. He has it, man. But, of course, I am incredibly biased. He’s military intelligence, so I was literally obsessed with him on multiple levels.
What I have to say about Lindsay ending up here is………. sort of. I know for sure that I see Lindsay more now than I ever did in Houston, because her whole life is there. When she’s here, she’s not balancing a million different friends and their needs as well. After work, she’s all mine. Jill would be proud to know that we’ve been very responsible and no communities have been built…. and she’s an e-mail subscriber so I know this will immediately go to her desk. 😉 But, in all of this, there are drawbacks for me because Lindsay and I have a different form of ADHD. Mine is combined with Autism, hers isn’t.
Therefore, her brain is designed to think about and manage a million thoughts at once, because her brain is bursting with creativity and she can retain that information. My autism makes it where I cannot handle a million details nor remember them; I get so frustrated because I want to drill down into policy just as bad. I just don’t understand as fast when Lindsay is doing it by talking.
I have to transcribe a conversation to understand it, because I take in most everything through sight. It’s why I don’t get clarity on a subject until I’ve witnessed something and written it down. It makes me know that I am accurate in guessing what neurotypical people would do, but struggle to imitate it and make it feel natural. That’s what makes autistic people feel like aliens, and why “Resident Alien” is one of my favorite TV shows, because Alan Tudyk’s character, whether it’s his alien tendencies or human, is coded as autistic and really funny about it. But because I due process information through reading, it makes me shy when Lindsay takes me along to events where other important people are also there.
I am not a fan of the rarefied air in which she walks, and not because I don’t want to meet people like Kamala. It’s because I don’t pick up social cues well and I don’t want to make a mistake that Lindsay can’t recover from, like me getting on my high horse about something (politics is part of my intelligence special interest…….. love, love, love Karl Rove and not because I agree with any of his bullshit. He’s just the anti-Carville and I admire his “strategery.” Democrats could learn MUCH, but they won’t.). Her career is so important to both of us. It shouldn’t be about me and my behavior, but it comes with the territory.
Here’s a recent conversation (Lindsay and Kamala have known each other since the campaign trail. They’ve met…..):
Lindsay: I have a meeting with Kamala.
Leslie: I will give you five dollars if you walk up to her and say, “my sister lives in DC and she wants to know if you want to hang out.”
Lindsay: She’s a politician. Of course she’ll say yes.
Dead.
This is what comes up for me when I think about the last entry that I wrote about Kevin, the giraffe I loved at the National Zoo and who does not live here anymore.
But what comes up for me now is that with all the things I struggle with in my daily life, the only being I’ve ever told is Oliver.
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
Twice or three times I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Bipolar disorder is a bitch. But thankfully, all the med checks I’ve had over the years have gone very well. I’m more relaxed in my body…… I can also feel time starting to drain away. I am lost, confused, and afraid. But everything will work out in the end because it always does.
Up and to a point.
I cannot imagine my daily grind until I’m 92, the age at which my grandfather died. However, I have so much in my life that’s feeding me, I tend to tap into my own resources, which is a polite way of saying I’m my own best company. I want friendships/relationships/whatever, but I am not dependent on them to provide anything I lack.
I didn’t get here until I’d lived alone for quite a while. Yes, I have housemates, but I do not interact with them much. For the most part, I am locked up in my room, and there are lots of reasons why, absolutely none of them having to do with me.
Here’s the bottom line:
Guy goes to the doctor and the results are really bad. Doc says, “you have six months to live.” Patient says, “six months? What am I going to do?” Doc says, “buy a pig farm. Move to Oklahoma. Marry the meanest woman you can find. You won’t live longer, but it’ll be the longest six months of your life.”
If you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, it’s that a year can seem like 10 minutes, and one moment can last 10 years. Time is relative. I do not need to live a long time to live a lot. I keep this in mind every day because though my grandfather died at 92, my mother died at 65. I’m only 20 years younger than that, and I think I have more than 20 years left in me…. but I can’t be sure. Not only due to the nature of my mental and physical health, but also because if you learn anything from the sudden death of a parent (embolism- it blew, she was dead 30 minutes later from a broken foot), it’s that a long life isn’t guaranteed.
So, whether I get to finish out my life like my grandfather, or whether it’s going to be cut short by some unknown force, I will be ecstatic either way, because I’m not saving up writing my passions until I don’t have anything else to do. It’s what I do instead of going out, because I feel more driven to get all of this down than I do to interact.
That’s because when you’re not interacting with people, there’s less chance to make a mistake. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to live a long time. I have communication issues and it is relentless. Because I’m neurodivergent, I process information differently than a good bit of the world. Therefore, I am the problem child, not of my parents, but of my employers. Neurotypical people cannot hear neurodivergent people without training, and vice versa. Even the way things are written, when they’re written, are sketchy because we don’t all have our neurotypical decoder rings on us.
A hundred percent of the time, it’s not that I’m not listening. It’s that I don’t understand…… but you do. “Everyone does.” I am not stupid or slow because I read the directions differently than you did. It’s because of the way the instructions were written, and again, no neurotypical in my pocket to check…… because you can go to a boss occasionally to manage priorities, but if they feel like they’re doing your work, then you’re out. And it takes surprisingly little to get you out if they’re convinced you don’t listen and can’t learn.
80% of autistic people are unemployed, and none of us have job security. I am trying not only to manage money well, but also to create something that will last long after I do. These are not just empty pages. This is not for me after I’m finished using it. People, again (from another entry, I can’t remember which), are going to want to know about the way we lived. I’m going to be a part of that, and so will my friends.
So, even though I wasn’t nice to Sam, I think I’ll still come out all right in the end……. because after I processed all the feelings from said breakup, I let go of the anger and was indeed nice to her.
I can quote the first line from memory….. “Wilhousky, you had me at hello.” The Wilhousky arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever done with a brass quintet. I’ve sung it a hundred times, too, but there’s big brass energy when you’re the lead trumpet player for the clarion calls. So, when Sam told me that she was a soprano in the Army choir, the first question I ever asked her was “how many times have you sung the Wilhousky arrangement?” A nanosecond later…. “a million, conservatively.”
Now, the first trumpet part is actually not that difficult, it’s just very, very exposed. You are hanging out on a ledge with barely any accompaniment, so any flaw is going to show. Any impurity in the sound. So, when I pulled it off, I was right proud of myself.
But I suppose if you’ve performed it a million times and not just a hundred, you might not feel so great about it. I hate “Amazing Grace” for the same reason Sam and Peter Wilhousky are never ever ever getting back together. Well, two reasons. The first is that I’ve sung it into the ground. It just feels like an old war horse to me. The second is that organists tend to drag……….. I don’t know what it is, but a good chunk of piano/organ accompanists slow down “Amazing Grace” and “Happy Birthday” to “funeral procession.” I’m not just picking on those two things. I already know that if I end up in hell, my penance will be singing the soprano part to the hallelujah Chorus on repeat. Hold it till you turn purple. In that instance, I would wish for a short life, but it’s hell. I could end up singing The Hallelujah Chorus, anyway, without Lucifer Morningstar on baritone. You know he knows it.
If I was going to live a long life, like, vampire long, I would have time to go back and get the training I need to actually do something with voice. It’s not that I’m so great, it’s that I love being in a group. I will do a solo if someone asks me to, but I will not offer.
I am not a stereotypical soprano. I only compete with myself over my last performance, not with everyone else in the room. Believe it or not, I’ve listened to myself enough that I knew it was a bad note before you called attention to it, but it was so sweet of you to point it out just in case I’m a little slow on the uptake. Voice is an instrument, just like brass. Not every note is going to be perfect because it depends on so much more than your throat.
Singing is a full-body workout, and after a choir rehearsal, my core feels like I’ve been tied as tightly as an old sea salt twists his rope. It’s always my diaphragm. The only good part about knowing how to work your diaphragm is that you can stop your own hiccups…….. most of the time. But, training takes money.
Once I got vampire money, I’d pick a university and just park it. I could stay there a hundred years and still not learn everything. I’d start by finishing the coursework I’ve already started, then branch out. Maybe a second bachelor’s in music, but I doubt it. That part of my life is so long over that I really would be starting at zero again in terms of a professional career.
I’d probably read law, eventually. Lindsay and I were talking about that the other day, that sometimes I still feel the fire in the belly….. but what I’ve figured out is that I thought I was a bubbly personality and I am……… but not long enough to last an entire day in court. Repeatedly.
No, if I read law I’d still be in academia. There’s a lot you can do with a JD that doesn’t require taking the bar….. and I’d need a vampire’s lifetime to figure out where I’d want to live/work. Because after 200 years, DC might not be home. Who knows? What I do know is that I have no plans to relocate, not even out of this house, for now. I just mean that eventually, I’d like to see more of the world and write about it.
Doctor Who focuses on chance meetings with interesting people from the past. My thought is, “why not go meet them now, before all you have left is their work?” I can tell you the exact day I realized it- January 19th, 2019. On the 18th, Tony Mendez found out from the Publications Review Board at CIA that “The Moscow Rules” was approved and would be on shelves. He died the next day, before I got to meet him and believe me that is not the important part in the grand scheme of things- it just makes me sad.
I did try, but by the time I got here, he had stopped doing public appearances due to the Parkinson’s Disease. But meeting would have been good for both of us, according to Jonna, his widow. We’re not really friends, but we’ve talked to each other at The International Spy Museum a couple times and she’s read at least one entry here with her name in it and I cried when I got the note back- that she loved it, and that I was very perceptive about everything that was going on in the room.
Tony didn’t live as long as anyone would have wanted, so I wrote about being sad. It was a celebration of his last book, the last one I’d ever get. And, of course, that’s what makes Jonna’s next book so exciting. Only in Spy Dust did they really alternate chapters so that you could distinguish Jonna and Tony separately. “In True Face” is probably going to be my favorite book of them all because I love women that write about intelligence. Not that I don’t think Tony didn’t hang the moon.
I just want to know the woman he sat with while he was up there. She’s just as funny as he was, but different, I believe. She, in an interview, said that “she was a real hard-ass,” which means two things. The first is that CIA is a boys’ club, or it used to be when Jonna started….. and I want the tea if there’s any to sip. The second is that CIA is overwhelmingly geared toward women now, and the next cup would be how they got there. They’ve embraced female leadership at C/DIA in a way the that FBI just can’t handle. Thoughts and prayers.
So, their library is going to be read and reread by me long into the future, because I need female heroes. I need to see women succeeding because if I can’t reach that level of discourse myself, I would at least like to read about it.
I don’t know what Jonna’s famous line is, but John Le Carré’s was “I’m the only friend you’ve got.” That seems like tradecraft 101, but just like in music, spies have no accompaniment, and are completely exposed. Any flaw will show, because they’re hanging out on a ledge….. generally during a time where if you lose your footing, you aren’t exactly sure whether the person who helped you up is friend or foe.
In thinking about Rebecca, which I often do because the character is actually from a novel I started a long time ago, actually called -frog.- Gregory and Leila are also from that story, but not “Robert.” Robert is the new man in my life, for all practical intents and purposes, because once a character gets in, it’s hard to get them back out. Rebecca and Robert have been talking in my head all day long, and they need to go to bed.
Just not together.
Robert is a mixed bag. He talks tough. He’s a little boy. He knows Rebecca could end him, and that’s why he likes her. But Rebecca and Gregory are a solid item, and Robert is actually ace….. you just don’t see it because of his tough guy exterior. What man would admit that to a beautiful woman on first meeting? It’s all about representation. I picked up ace representation from TJ Klune, who is one of my favorite novelists and lives out in Fredericksburg, VA. So, it’s possible that he’ll do a book signing in DC eventually. I’d love to get an autograph on “Under the Whispering Door,” because I liked “House in the Cerulean Sea,” but I thought it couldn’t be topped.
I was wrong.
Under the Whispering Door is about death. Long lives, short lives, somewhere in between? It explores the great mystery……..
Zac got me a box of writing prompts from Freewrite for Christmas, so I thought I’d leaf through them. At first I thought you weren’t supposed to do that, but on the first card, “How It Works,” it says that you don’t have to do them in any order; it’s not a pop quiz. Just find one that speaks to you. The prompt is actually a quote, and I’ll highlight it when I get there. I told you I was at the bottom of a ladder, but thanks to this box of cards, I have a solid few rungs in front of me. Like I said earlier, if I have enough fiction to start a separate blog for it, I probably will as not to mix up my entries. Right now, I’m just seeing if I like posting my exercises at all.
Rebecca Alexis Radnowski checked her watch.
12:20.
They were late.
She had already kissed Kermit for the last time, her angel baby…. her little -frog.- She could not, would not do it again- torture on both of them. There was nothing to do but wait for the taxi.
As she got into the back seat, she did not see the little boy in the window, creating his first memory. For years, the only thing Kermit knew about his mother was that she owned a long red coat and high black heels. However, Rebecca wouldn’t have known that. Couldn’t have known. There were more pressing matters at hand.
Gregory, Kermit’s father, and Leila, Gregory’s sister, had to step up to be parents in Rebecca’s stead, because someone had to know the plan. It was too intricate not to have someone know how to get in touch with her, because she wasn’t sure how long the assignment would last. Was it going to be three weeks or three months?
This was a trip in which she had to get her ducks in a row beforehand, because she might not come home from this one. Overthrowing a government can lead to……… issues, and thinking about what was about to happen took away the sting of everything she was leaving (as she lied to herself). She was at least making it look like she was running logistics in her head; anyone with eyes could see the little death happening.
The file tree detailing her current life was dropping away, and the new information became synonymous with her initials…. Compressed and password protected, at that. People had always joked she was a RAR file because she’d always been buttoned up…… and failed to see the humor in it. People with emotions were unpredictable, and there were few things she could abide in life less than surprises. So, it was no issue that when she laid it out for Gregory, said she’d been “approached” and wanted to go, all he could do was kiss her and say “good luck.” Gregory knew that while he and Kermit were important, this was fulfilling Rebecca’s life ambition. Besides, Kermit wasn’t even out of diapers. Rebecca wouldn’t miss much and Leila was great with him.
Later on, Beck would regret this choice from the depths of her being, because she gave up a relationship with her son. It was not three weeks or three months. She doesn’t know that right now, though.
Right now, she is annoyed.
The taxi has dropped her in front of Dulles at curb check-in, which should have made everything a hell of a lot easier….. or it would have been, had Karen not been in front of her in line. Having traveled for so many years, Beck had packed her stuff in one large suitcase (she wasn’t going to check anything, but realized she wanted her weighted blanket) and a duffel bag. Since the duffel was a little oversized, she thought she’d check that as well. She had a small messenger bag with her tablet, keyboard, and some Sudoku…. plus a couple pairs of underwear in case her luggage ended up in France. It had happened before.
The name of the game, Rebecca believed, was traveling with the least amount of stuff possible. Ask around about local brands, etc. because you can always pick up stuff in your AOA and not count it as part of your weight limit. She was a firm believer in buying shampoo, soap, and hair products in whatever country she was “visiting” and giving everything away on her last day there. That’s the one part of her life that she will never change- being addicted to products she cannot find in the US.
Because of Rebecca’s clear superiority in packing, Karen did not impress her. Karen’s bags were full of all the shit Rebecca has learned to leave at home, because she didn’t want her stuff to end up all over the ground like Karen’s is now….. taking stuff out one at a time so that she doesn’t have to pay overage fees (but also her husband is very powerful and DO YOU KNOW WHO HE IS?).
Rebecca wears a tight smile and thinks, “I could have you killed.”
She doesn’t mean it, of course. Just a little black humor to let off steam. Or, it would have been if she’d not just realized she’d actually said it out loud. As predicted- once her idiocy was confirmed- Karen turns to her and says something to the effect of “who the fuck do you think you are?” Rebecca thought it best not to answer that.
Rebecca is, in the popular vernacular, “the one who knocks.”
She redirects to try and de-escalate the situation. “I’m so sorry. I was just annoyed. Take your time.” Also as predicted, it does not work. Karen is in show mode….. “THE AUDACITY OF THIS BITCH….” Rebecca steps back and thinks to herself, “I had a meeting at the White House yesterday. Aren’t I important?” This time, she made sure she only said it to herself, knowing that Karen would never know she was making fun of herself. She had one job. Get through the airport.
It was going so well.
After that kerfuffle, Rebecca realized that she hadn’t even had time to drink a cup of coffee and checked her watch again. 1:00 PM, and the flight didn’t leave for an hour. Her bags were already dealt with (surprisingly without any real bloodshed). Time to find a coffee shop.
She saw a couple of places, but picked Starbucks because she knew it would be the last time she’d really get a boost of that magnitude. She walked in and gave them her standard order….. “just fuck me up.”
A quad shot red eye later, she was smelling numbers….. just like God intended. She set a timer on her watch for 30 minutes, and sunk into her favorite novel, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.” She often thought that she’d like to write fiction, and saw promise in David Wrobleski because it took him 10 years to write his first novel, which turned out to be a masterpiece. “In my next life…..” she thought. “I”m going to have to choose something else eventually. This job is for young people.”
Rebecca Alexis Radnowski is all of 28 years old.
She is not a complainer. She would rather die than complain about anything. But the hard truth is that intelligence is hard work. It’s less physically demanding than police or FBI, but that doesn’t mean that her knees aren’t 80. She tries to keep in shape by hitting the gym several times a week, but there’s only so much she can do to stop the passage of time. She was supposed to have rested three surgeries ago.
…..which is why when her alarm goes off, it takes her a second to get moving again. Transitions are so hard, and being autistic just makes it worse. Rebecca is not the kind of person that can walk into any room at any time without extensive preparation. For instance, if she has a meeting with a high value target to pump them for information on even higher value targets, she will stand in front of the doorway to the interrogation room for a few minutes and will herself to walk in.
It’s not that she’s not good at her job. She’s not good at transitions. She’s always gotten glowing reviews from her superiors, and God help the person behind the door. That doesn’t mean her life isn’t made hard by autism. It’s that she had to develop coping mechanisms….. both for when to emote……… and when to……. not.
This particular transition is actually getting on the plane. It is something she has prepared to do for weeks. Her husband and sister-in-law are cheering her on from home, excited for all she will be able to do for the people she’s trying to rescue……. deep in the wilds of Guatemala.
Editor’s Note:
CIA did try to overthrow the Guatemalan government in the 50s under Truman, so there is historical precedent. However, this piece takes place too late for that and is just a fictional example of something that could conceivably happen.
Because the environment of the airport and the environment of the plane are so different, Rebecca knew that she would need extra time to adjust. She didn’t need to go through security, and got on the plane as soon as they called for pre-board. The agent gave her a little guff, so she did something she never does. Ever.
She pulled rank.
No further explanation was necessary, as she knew would be the case. She loved that with the way she moved in the world, it was open to her. She also knew that it was not a skeleton key. That the rules still applied to her, but at the same time, needing extra time to board for autism was as valid as everything else. She always weighed options and tried to decide carefully if she was putting other people out with her power, or whether she was using it for good. After eight years, she still wasn’t sure. She just tried to be as humble as she could be given that she didn’t open doors, they opened for her. She didn’t just board early. The gate attendant gave her an upgrade.
Somehow, when your badge has three particular letters on it, people don’t see anything else. Rebecca is used to it by now, but it gets a bit tiresome. All of the fuss really only happens in airports, because no one at the airport knows where she works, but they do know someone must be powerful if they don’t have to go through security, and are allowed to keep their weapons.
Even with the special treatment, she can’t get to her seat fast enough. She needs quiet like air…… but an air hostess greets her and tells her that she loves her hair. It sets her off at first, and then she breathes deeply. Finally, something normal. Rebecca tells her that she just got it cut at this great little place in Burke, then offers to Air Drop her the contact info. When the air hostess replies to the message, she saves the number in her phone. It wouldn’t be bad to have an air hostess’s number in her back pocket given her LOW.
Shortly afterwards, the air hostess shows back up with a glass of champagne and a cup of orange juice. She says, “I know this is already free because you’re in first class, but I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
Her seat mate grumbled.
“Jesus. Who do I have to fuck to get service like that?”
The air hostess, looking embarrassed, says everything without opening her mouth. Rebecca has nothing to lose. “Are you going to treat all the air hostesses like that or do I have to cut off your nuts?” The knife in her boot started itching, craving a workout.
Her seatmate looked amused, but said nothing except “I could have you killed.” And then, it might have been an accident, but she thought he winked. Winked!
She looked down at her tray and wondered what all this was about. They hadn’t even taken off yet, and she’d managed to make two enemies already….. but he didn’t seem that scary. It looked like he knew she wanted to be scary, but was actually just three little girls in a trench coat. It was unnerving, but she couldn’t say that she didn’t like it. No one looked at her as innocent. Not anymore.
Her seatmate said, “I’m sorry. We should start over. I’m Robert McCall.” “I’m Susan Plummer,” Rebecca replied, catching the theme. Robert didn’t miss a trick.
“Good catch, Rebecca.”
All the color drained out of her face. Her real name wasn’t even on her Guatemalan passport. Tony had crafted it especially for her, and it was a gift. So perfect there weren’t reproductions like it anywhere in the world. Who WAS this man?
They were now climbing through the air, 50-100 miles from the ground, and Rebecca had never felt so unsafe. There was no going back, there was only through. Someone had gotten the jump on her, and she wasn’t even sure of that. Maybe “Robert” was part of her ground crew. She didn’t know every company employee ever.
Rebecca went back to the Sawtelle farm, unsure of what to say next. A few hours passed, and she looked up. Robert was asleep, and the rest of the plane was quiet…….. right up until it wasn’t.
Robert and Rebecca noticed it first. They had flown a left hand triangle twice with 2 minute legs, so they knew it was coming. There would be an announcement that there was total engine/comms failure, a signal to the tower that the plane’s behavior might be erratic.
When the announcement was made, the tin tube of misery became as quiet as a crypt. There was no yelling. It was not like a movie. Terror is quiet. In those moments, even the hair raising on your arm feels too loud. Rebecca wasn’t religious, but she was raised in the church, so she said the only words she remembered….. “Jesus loves the little children…. all the children of the world….” Tears started to fall as she thought of her sweet baby boy, her tiny -frog.- Robert’s tenor soothed her…. “red and yellow, black and white….. we are precious in his sight….” He did not finish. His own daughter, Kiambre, was three. He broke when he thought of that particular aisle he’d never walk.
As the plane went down, they both made a note. If we get out of this alive, we’re going to need supplies. There’s a lot of jungle near the airport, so I am sure we’ll have resources…. but what kind and how much will vary, as will the speed of our ex-fil if we do not die on impact.
For both Rebecca and Robert, this kind of “casing” is their normal….. and now they each know the other is fluent in this particular language. Or do they? Rebecca really doesn’t know. She thought she knew everyone in the office, and her team wouldn’t send her help unless she asked for it. Robert, for his part, does not mention how he knows what he knows…….. nor that he’s not CIA.
They sit there in silence, fingers touching just for human comfort, until the plane comes to rest between several trees. The air is dense, a hot and wet blanket as they exit the emergency hatch.
Because Rebecca is who she is, she thinks that not being at the scene is a good idea. Nothing like being caught in a camera sweep during film at 11 to ruin a perfectly good day. She’s about a half mile away from the plane when all her adrenaline runs out. She looks down.
She really should have rested three surgeries ago.
A softball-sized hematoma is growing on her knee. There is nothing left to do but sit down. She thought she had power in this situation, but the universe decided otherwise. She didn’t need to stay in the jungle all day, but she decided that a few minutes of rest wouldn’t hurt anything.
Robert’s curiosity got the best of him. He knew Rebecca was CIA. He knew that in her agency she was more powerful than he was. He knew he was sent to find her because his government needed her more than hers did. He decided to push his luck.
“Well, I’m not actually a doctor. I attended med school for a few semesters… I’m not so great at finishing things…. Looks like I’m your best bet in the middle of the jungle, though,” he said between enormous bites of banana.
They say that if you are a conservative when you are young, you have no heart. They say that if you are liberal when you’re old, you have no brain. They do not suggest the unexplored third option, the permanently exhausted political science student who really doesn’t like any of you. 😉 Actually, I think it’s also due to age. Gen X (technically, I’m a Xennial) is now the adult in the room, because people older than us don’t understand technology, people younger don’t know how to function without it. We are the hybrids that remember what it was like to function on paper, the glue holding pre- and post- internet together.
If there’s anything I credit with my political views changing, it’s being in college before the Internet was really a thing. I was still fascinated by T1 connections at that point- you mean it’s always on? I don’t have to dial into anything? Plus, when I got to university, I was studying poli sci in school and my boss in IT was also a lawyer.
A lawyer who had a t-shirt that said, “Charter Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” Today, this would be ominous. It was 2000, so I still laughed. I’m not sure anyone knew back then how this whole thing would turn out, but I didn’t have Donald Trump on my Bingo card, I’ll tell you that much.
I will say that I think younger people than me are coming up with the best ideas on the liberal end of the spectrum, and I think what being conservative in your elder years means to me is deciding which of these ideas are too wild to fund and which ones are worth pursuing. At its heart, universal basic income is a good idea. Other countries have implemented it and it works. But how do we scale up something like that without breaking the funds available for such a thing?
When it comes to money, I want everyone at the table in terms of ideology. I want James Baldwin and William F. Buckley on every single issue, not what passes for dialogue now. It’s not a good idea if you can’t explain a liberal idea to a conservative or vice versa. That’s because 99% of the time people don’t get what they want because they don”t actually know the question.
The liberals don’t have worse ideas, they just can’t sell them. I think it was Aaron Sorkin who wrote that originally, but it has stuck with me. The Republicans demand complete buy-in and loyalty, the Democrats don’t because we like free thinkers. While not a bad thing, this has cost Democrats DEARLY and they have no idea how to fix it.
I’m including me in that statement, because I’d like to see the party embrace bigger and better ideas, but also to have a concrete idea of how to fund them. There is no sense of polity in the Democratic Party, because both Bill Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are Democrats, but their platforms were/are worlds apart. Hillary Clinton’s is closer, but that’s only because she stayed in presidential politics longer.
I am definitely a Clinton Democrat, because it’s the lens through which I take in information. I voted for Bill in 1996, my first election….. although I also went to the Republican convention in 1992 and was thrilled about it, because back then it was just a chance to go to a major convention, because first of all I was a child and couldn’t vote. Second of all, George H.W. Bush grew to love both Clintons, so I think he’d forgive me for voting for them.
In terms of the way I was raised, I didn’t really know anything about my parents or grandparents’ political leanings until I was older, because they didn’t wear hats like they were pitching for either party. The only thing I remember from being a young kid is that my grandfather did not like LBJ, because of the Viet Nam war.
Fair.
But if you do a little digging, you find that it’s not the whole story. The thing that people are most known for isn’t necessarily what is going to do the most good or the most damage from a historical perspective. I agree with my grandfather that LBJ made some terrible calls during Viet Nam, but we also wouldn’t have gotten Great Society passed without him.
It is controversial to the general public, but not in political science circles to say that Lyndon Johnson was objectively a better president than John Kennedy. That when you take away the mythology of Camelot, Kennedy was wonderful for the American image and Johnson was more effective legislatively because he knew how to whip. I do think that John Kennedy deserved to be president, and that he was good at it- most political science students agree that it would be easier and more fair to compare both of them at full term, but we’ll never get that chance.
What I do not think is that we’ve managed to capture the fever behind one idea like “Great Society” that will get us elected….. and The New Deal before it. We need people on the extreme fringe of the party to come up with the new and better ideas, so that the more conservative members of the party can red team them. It’s not “shooting everything down,” but it seems that way because a red team’s job is to take you to the mat before you’re in front of the Republicans.
When I think about red teaming now, I think about Molly Ivins, who was not afraid to call out hypocrisy or bullshit on either side of the aisle, and was in fact more mystified by Texas politics than anything else. She thought it was wilder and weirder, and proved it every day in her columns.
I am not standing outside looking in, I am definitely a Democrat. But at the same time, I do not discount conservative ideas. I discount bigotry, and that has become 99% of the Republican platform. How we got here is not really a mystery. If you’ve studied the rise of Hitler, you know that what is happening now is what happened in Germany- the people were starving for a leader, and they chose the most racist asshole they could find because he parroted all their shitty beliefs.
Trump is not Hitler in his later years, but we’re ignoring the signs of fascism nonetheless. Here are two things that you really need to take in about this, and they’re important:
Trump discredited CIA on day one. He went into their house and told them point blank that he trusted the Russians more than them. So, the message from day one was “don’t believe the intelligence experts that have historically been the best in the world, and only pay attention to me.”
Trump discredited the journalists. So, not only should you not believe the raw data coming out of CIA (filtered for publication through State and the committees on intelligence in Congress), you should not believe any stories written about it.
Trump has the same outlook on domestic policy. Don’t read any stories about me, only look at me. Meanwhile, he’s not really running the country because he doesn’t know fuck all. Getting his whole family security clearances was downright offensive to the spies I’ve met, because that is not a community you join easily or lightly. You have to be trusted beyond a reasonable doubt to carry that kind of information, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Jared Kushner is not one of those people, and neither is Donald Trump.
The president of the United States WAS NOT QUALIFIED to see the documents he saw, and managed to show other world leaders things that he should have had in his possession because he’s the president and should have had enough sense he was actively harming American interests.
But that doesn’t matter, because he’s a Russian UI.
Putin’s revenge for Khrushchev’s treatment by Kennedy was to make us implode, and I believe it worked. There are people who still believe with a passion that the election was stolen due to Russian interference that Trump welcomed. Trump didn’t want to be president. He wanted to have been president. I believe that he sincerely thought he was going to lose, and 2016 was a bid to get more people into his DC hotel, not a legitimate presidential campaign. Hillary and Donald have known each other too damn long for either one of them not to see through the other’s bullshit, and I don’t think that Trump really thought he had a chance, which is why he was such a total asshole the entire campaign. I honestly think he was wondering “what do I have to do to lose?” By the end.
But we elected him anyway, and the rank and file judges and State employee jobs stayed open for months because there was no one to direct presidential appointments.
People, the damn president of the United States didn’t know he was president of Puerto Rico, and that’s just okay because people in the US don’t know that, either. Do you think that the president is less the president to our territories?
The president also commands lots of people overseas being Commander in Chief and American representative in global affairs. Honestly, the fact that Trump got to be that for us is alarming, and other heads of state noticed. Do you really think that Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, Jacinda Barrett, and especially Sauli Niinistö (president of Finland- rake the forests? Get out of here with that bullshit.) and Kim Kielsen (premier of Greenland- I’m sorry. You want to buy WHAT now?) were in any way impressed with us at all? The only reason we didn’t lose the plot with the UK is that they’re experiencing the same wave of conservatism that we are.
If there’s any way in which my political views have changed, it’s by leaving the Democratic and Republican parties alone and just doing my own thing by studying world systems. I’m looking at the forest, not the trees. I love dating someone who works in intelligence, because I am with someone who also has the ability to look at global systems and not get stuck in the minutiae of daily life. The world looks different when you’re talking about countries at war and humanitarian aid and everything that comes with it, vs. the fact that Chuy’s is too far away for my liking and Whole Foods continues to be out of the veggie dogs I like.
Perspective.
Years ago, I was on IM with Supergrover and I was telling her that I was having a really crappy day….. and that one of my cases to call back didn’t have a name at the top, so I dialed the number and the woman answered “Doctors Without Borders.” I died for a second because absolutely anything I was thinking about that day melted away with perspective. There’s never going to be a day in my life more stressful than being a doctor in a war torn country.
It’s like working for NASA and actually being an astronaut. Not the person on the ground that has every resource available to them at a moment’s notice. No, the guy who’s stuck in a tin can having only what they brought with them. IF MSF doesn’t bring a medication with them, it may be unlikely to get a local supply. We’re not talking total health here- we’re talking HIV vaccinations and TB tests.
So, again, if we’re talking about politics, then I’m probably not the person to ask how to fix the party.
But I think the first step is leaving your heart and mind out of it, and committing not to elect someone who tells you that what you’re seeing and hearing is the truth, when he’s just the mouthpiece.
In this case, you should absolutely pay attention to the people behind the curtain. They’ll be the ones trying to save us from ourselves.
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
I will do this writing prompt as an exercise, but know that readers and writers don’t stop. There is no perfect place to read and write, because what makes someone good at either is being able to do it anywhere…. thus the reason I use a tablet and keyboard for everything rather than my desktop. I want to be able to get better whether I’m in my living room or in a restaurant… but I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on construction, so here’s what I’d do if I bothered to stay in one place.
The perfect reading/writing space for me is a cabin, and I’d like to build it myself (with a group of friends if they’re into that kind of thing). I wouldn’t like it to be very large, but I do want it to be made of the best materials, like rock wool insulation (my house burned down when I was in sixth grade, and it’s almost fireproof). Depending on how long the build I could create and still have people show up, I’d like to do two stories, but a root cellar and a first floor, not a full two-story house.
Where me being a writer comes in is that my desk would probably end up in the root cellar, even if I built myself a whole ass office. I want the place that has the least amount of sensory input, which is why a root cellar would be preferable to an office on the main floor.
The fictional character that’s been with me so long we’re roommates is Carol, and because of our past conversations, she would like a word. Carol works for NSA, so basically her perfect office is mine. When I’ve written about her before (“A Christmas Carol”), I’ve talked about how her husband, Roger, is a contractor and asked Carol where she wanted to live. They built their house into the side of a mountain, so Carol’s office is in a basement….. but only technically. She’s got a basement office in the Blue Ridge range, therefore also equipped with a stunning view. It is not lost on her that whether she is bathed in light or shadow is dependent on where she’s standing, which she feels is an accurate metaphor for her work.
I do not know that I could afford a piece of land like Carol and Roger’s, but the idea is cool. But let’s just pretend that I only have grass and trees. A regular cabin is fine to start.
So, we’ve got the resources we need except the things we need to buy. Instead of buying the lumber, I go ahead and buy all the tools to process cutting down my own trees. Everyone within a 10 mile radius will come to me for milling the trees they’ve cut down in their own yards, so I’ll make it back, or I can just sell all the equipment when I’m finished…. but I doubt I would do that because eventually I would see outbuilding opportunities….. 😉
I also want a stone floor, but in this weather I’d like a heating system for it. So, we’ll put one of those underfloor doohickeys in that connects to the hot water and keeps it running so the stones don’t cool down. But in terms of “stone,” I think I actually want polished concrete. I’ve seen so much of it done that there’s a wide range on what it would look like completed.
But for now, we’ve got the materials for framing, insulation, and the floor. Let’s make sure to add some drywall and fancy hardware for the inevitable doors. I’m not sure what I would like in terms of hardware, and Carol shops online all day. She’ll handle it.
(Because that’s what they do at NSA, right? Sometimes I even eyeroll at myself.)
My office tends to be very plain. I would like a desk and chair that are both too comfortable to leave, and outside of that, I don’t have expensive tastes. I don’t even really have expensive tastes in furniture, I’ve just had a $50 “gaming chair” and an Aeron and I’m going to tell you there’s quite a bit of difference after having sat in each of them for years.
So, I’d want to get an Aeron from a used furniture dealer because they’ll last a hundred years. I don’t need new….. and a big ass desk, because an Aeron won’t fit under anything small. If the room is large enough, I’d like to have the Aeron ottoman and another small chair behind me so that I can use my ottoman when I’m not using my desk and I also have room for another person to sit (but that chair cannot be comfortable enough to invite people to stay long term….)
If I did not put my desk in the root cellar and made the whole first floor my office, I’d like a wood-burning stove. That way, I could make coffee quickly in addition to staying warm. 🙂
The only thing I would take time to do on paper that I won’t here is mark where all the outlets go. As a tech person, I have to have a lot of them….. but what I’ve noticed is that I don’t necessarily need a lot of power. I mostly just need a lot of places to charge small things.
It would be nice to have electricity, even to be on the grid. However, I know that realistically I could get by on a jackery and a cell phone connection if that’s what was available.
I just don’t know that I’d ever bring these plans to fruition, because it’s unlikely that I’d find land like this near the Metro. That’s okay, though. Maybe someday I’ll get lucky like Carol and my husband will be a contractor, too. I could even say that. “Are you a contractor? My fictional character is married to a contractor and I’m jealous of her, soooo…..” Because that would make me sound completely stable.
But here’s what I know to be true. In order for Carol to live in that house with Roger, I had to think of it first. So, is Roger really that important in the whole scheme of things?
Yes, you’re right. He does fix everything.
Hmmmmmmmm.
I obviously need more than one thinking chair, here.
I don’t have one top favorite, so I’ll give a few of them. I’m not a huge traveler, so I would rather get an AirBnB for several weeks than try to flip body clocks twice in three or four days. Just not my style anymore. “I’m older and I have more insurance.” But if money were no object, I would love to see:
Paris
I have been to Paris once, but only for a few days. I definitely hit all the highlights with my dad, but I don’t know what it is to sit at a cafe and people watch. I don’t know what it’s like to go to Paris and do nothing, and that’s why it’s valuable. You don’t go there to find things to do. You go there to walk around in its culture and see what sticks. Then, you either commit yourself to finding out what coffee shop David Sedaris frequents- or perhaps going to Pere Lachaisse for inspiration. Oscar Wilde and I had a marvelous time. Just because I am living and he is not doesn’t mean we weren’t both entertained. I told him that Stephen Fry played him in a movie once. He said it was perfect casting.
New York
I have never spent more than 24 hours in New York, so it’s the same idea there as in Paris. I’d like to go there for a little bit and then get back out. There’s a rhythm, and it’s intimidating to me. It’s sort of like Las Vegas in that the culture is different but the level of sensory input you receive when you get there is just as heightened. In 2003, I wanted to retire in New York, and I have absolutely no idea what I meant by that. I do remember past trips there to be fun, but not in a way I’d like to live there- except maybe someone I liked wanted to live there, so I did, too. Now, I just want to find hidden treasures on out of the way side streets.
Ho Chi Minh City
I have to do a lot of research on the Vietnam War, rightfully called “The American War” there. I’m writing a novel about it, and I don’t think I could do setting justice if I just made it up. I mean, I can and I will,if I have to, but there’s a lot to be said about putting effort into understanding something fully. I have studied political science since I got to college- the news junkie in me drove me to poli sci and it hasn’t given up. With political science comes lots and lots on international relations as well. So, I know the story from the American side fairly well, but I don’t like to write from the perspective of only trumpeting American interests. The military and C/DIA had many faults and failures during this time, and since most things more recent than Vietnam are still classified, I don’t know that either organization has really wrestled with our actions in that theater in a way that processes out institutional pain. Vietnam was the first war in which it was clear that we might not lose, but we don’t have enough money or resources to outright win, either. The Vietnamese have the right to call us out on that, because American soldiers were responsible for a lot of atrocities. We have the reputation of being feared, and not in a healthy way. It’s why we’ll never win a land war in Asia……. and death is on the line.
Seoul
Before I started watching both Josh & Olly, I’d never wanted to visit Korea before. They’re responsible for making a lot of people feel that way on their YouTube channel, Jolly. Josh met Olly in college (I think- British system), then went to university in Seoul. I think. I haven’t done all the math. Anyway, when Josh and Olly were both done with uni, they decided to start making videos about what Koreans think of English people. Hilarity ensues. I’m not sure how often Josh and Olly get back to Korea, but one of the fun things they do is “red carpet” style interviews while they entice celebrities to talk using Korean food. It worked very well on Ryan Reynolds. 🙂
Enseñada, Mexico
I have been to Enseñada once. It’s a small enough city that I could picture myself living there. I don’t speak much Spanish, but I took two years in school and have spent time in both Texas and Mexico speaking Spanish. My language skills aren’t as good now as they were in high school, because I was going to Mexico regularly (Reynosa and Progreso, both on mission trips). I could not land in San Diego and drive across the border without incident, but within a month or so I’d be all right. Within three or four years, I’d be fluent. It’s amazing what you can do when you have no choice. The water is gorgeous. La Buffadora (Buffalo Snort) is magnificent, a geyser that makes me feel the power of nature unlike anything else. I’m sure Papas & Beer is still there, it’s an institution. I don’t know about Habana Banana, which used to be my favorite Mexican clothing brand. I bought a ton while I was there, and at the time, they didn’t offer online ordering or international shipping. So, part of it is to find another clothing brand I like just as much…….. the rest of it is to sit outside with a Coke (we’re in Mexico, after all) and see what nature is saying around me. I live my life like the sound track is 4’33. I think it would kick things up a notch to perform it outside. My past performances have all gone very well. No one even knew I was “conducting it all while I sleep…. to light up my yard.”
Vancouver
I didn’t live in DC very long before I went to visit Meagan in Ottawa. However, I lived in Portland for 12 years and never made it to British Columbia. I have heard I would love it, now I need to go see it for myself. I will admit, though, that there is some truth to only the Canadian provinces with her in them being interesting. It wasn’t a draw while I lived there, but now I’m just curious. I sort of know what life is like on the East Coast of Canada because Meag has lived in Alberta, Ontario, and New Brunswick….. maybe more, but I’ve slept since then. But West Coast Canada is completely different, it seems. They don’t have bagged milk there. 🙄 Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I regret not going when it was only a five hour car ride. It would be a much bigger deal now.
Washington, DC
I live in Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s a suburb that has everything I could possibly want within walking distance. As a result, I can go as long as a year without needing anything from downtown…… and most of it is that the bands I like don’t play in Silver Spring- some of them do, though. If I want to see something relatively big, it’s at The Kennedy Center, not The Fillmore. I also haven’t been to Wolf Trap in 20-odd years, mostly because it’s such a hassle that I think about going to Wolf Trap and back out. I feel about Wolf Trap the same way people feel about Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. It’s going to be a long concert, there’s no easy way in or out, and there’s a thousand people all screaming at once. I much prefer smaller venues, and wish Indigo Girls would play The Fillmore once in a while. 😛
Helsinki
My love of Finnish Independence Day led me to believe that one day I’d make it to watch the celebrations live- I watch them every year on YouTube from here. It’s not just that, though. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again that the palate for that part of the world is completely different- they don’t even have the same flora. Learning to cook there would be a whole new experience, and Anthony Bourdain introduced them to me through the magic of television. Why yes, I do want a large reindeer pizza. I also want to fly into HEL and drive up to Kilpisjaarvi so I can sleep under the aurora borealis in a clear-top tent. I also want to dress up really warm and sleep outside, just to see if I could do it. 😛
What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?
I have floppy muscles, it’s an inborn trait. Therefore, I have success with physical activity to a varying degree. I think if I had to pick a favorite thing to do outside it’s very simple. It’s walking Oliver, who is a dog. It’s better when Zac is with us because I don’t trust Oliver to behave with me the same way he would if Zac was there, plus hiking in the woods behind his house is intimidating if you don’t know the area well. I could get lost easily and because I’d be in the middle of the woods, my GPS would only say “continue to highlighted route” and I’d be shit out of luck.
Ask me how I know this.
I’m not sure what to call it, but Zac’s townhome development backs up to some sort of nature preserve, so I have hiking accessible to me that’s just as challenging as anything I used to do in the Columbia River Gorge . Zac likes to hike as much as I do, and because he does it more often, he’s more in shape than I am, too. Yes, I weigh less, but I do not work out my muscles in the same way he does. I don’t have to have a physical fitness test to stay employed by the Navy. However, I do stay slim and trim by not owning a car, and I have decided that because ride share exists, that should always be true of me. I don’t actually want to pay money for a car when I could pay money for a car and a driver, taking the risk of driving off me entirely. If we crash, it will never in a million years be my fault. It’s not the hassle, it’s that I know I don’t have 3D vision and driving is working without a net, knowingly putting other people in danger.
Nope.
I didn’t have a choice in Houston, which is why I moved back to DC. If you’re going to take public transportation, it’s a very good place to do so because we’re not huge like New York, yet we have all the same amenities. Maybe it’s because I lived here in my 20s, but New York frightens me in a way that DC doesn’t. I don’t know whether my sensory issues were out of control in Manhattan because it was that big a city or because I’d never been there before. I now know why writers live the way they live in movies when they’re set in New York. As soon as I got there, my nerves felt like they were on fire. As a writer, I was energized by it and also needed to find a way to mute it. Thus, writers in movies being hermits in New York. They’re trying to find a manageable amount of sensory input.
Writing is a sensitive area in terms of perception because you need enough stimulation to have something to say, energy that lets the words flow naturally….. but not so much that it makes your mind lose the train of thought that’s going to hit the New York Times. Fine-tuning that instinct takes time. When I am overwhelmed, I go back to zero. This means wired or Bluetooth headphones blaring white noise like TV snow or a jet engine (because people reading this are so young they might not know what TV snow is…..). Over time, you begin adding things.
I find that I function the best under a sensory deprivation diet, because it helps me to work faster when there’s less going on in the room. I cannot write if people are talking around me, and most of the time I cannot even write with music on. Today, my soundtrack is Zac typing in his office. I’m sitting in his room with my iPad and keyboard, he’s at his government computer because he’s neurodivergent as well. I wanted to cut down sensory issues for both of us.
The funniest thing that happened this morning is that I grabbed a pink coffee mug and Zac said something about it being his partner’s mug and her being picky about it. I said, “oh, no problem. If I’d known it was hers I would have respected the rule. You don’t have to apologize for having other partners or them having preferences.” He said, “I’m just sorry I couldn’t let you have a CIA mug.” I said, “that was a CIA mug? I didn’t know CIA came in girl shit.” I loved his laughter at that one.
Editor’s Note:
Every time I’ve read that line while writing/editing I’ve fallen over with laughter.
It’s not that I wouldn’t like pink CIA stuff, it’s that I’m a purist. I like the seal they already have on a navy background and think it looks classic…… There’s no need to change something that isn’t broken. I don’t need CIA feminized for me, because to me it’s already feminine. Look up all the department heads and count the number of women. It’s staggering.
The truth is that women my age are invisible, and that’s why we run the world. If you believe nothing else I say, believe that. There’s a reason female intelligence officers at CIA and in the military embed themselves in women’s groups all the time. Getting women together is a HUMINT ATM machine. Now I’m wondering what the equivalent of a “stitch and bitch” is in Arabic…………… You can tell a lot about a man’s mood, behavior, and actions by asking the women around him, because dollars to donuts he hasn’t heard what she has to say.
I love that my love of women in intelligence is making others excited as well. It caught on for Lindsay when we went to Zaytinya the other night, because I told her about a fabulous novel I’d read called “The Secrets We Kept,” by Lara Prescott. The premise is brilliant. In Russia, female spies were trained to use their sexuality to get what they wanted, so they were nicknamed “Swallows.” The United States does not do this, so the novel explores what would have happened if there had been an American “Swallows” program. It’s danger and intrigue, but also camaraderie. Spying is the world’s second oldest profession, and it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
My favorite female intelligence stories are “constant fish out of water.” At first, it’s being approached by CIA and getting trained…. hero origin story…. then it’s being fish out of water because CIA doesn’t work inside the US. My favorite part of the journey is from the approach to graduating from The Farm. The Spider-Man where you find out how he became that way is the best. I don’t make the rules.
I feel that though typing is not something one would classically think of as a physical activity, it is my origin story.
Especially since I can write it down.
Now it is time to transition into my day, because it always starts here at the keyboard and branches out. I have coffee to drink, news to read, and a trip across a city in which it snowed this morning. I am eager to get out and take pictures.
Taking pictures for me is a physical activity because I am one of those people. One of those who thinks nothing of holding other people up for a few seconds to be able to lay down in the middle of the sidewalk or whatever to get a shot. This is because I am willing to wait eons to make sure I’m bothering the least people. It’s really the only way I’ve shot the top of the steeple at Notre Dame.
It just occurred to me that creativity often feels like exercise. Creativity often feels like exhaustion once you’ve pulled ideas out of yourself. Both writing and taking pictures show your way of seeing the world, and especially because I don’t have 3D vision, the pictures I take look different than ones taken by people with stereopsis. It’s not a bad thing. It’s what makes me driven to take pictures. I want to see how I see the world by looking back at the way I shot it.
All writers search for themselves. In this blog, you can see it transparently. With novelists, you see it through archetype and allegory. A childhood is a writer’s credit balance, in the words of John le Carré. We start there and we excavate to a degree in which most people are uncomfortable.
And yet the physical activity of writing sustains us whether you’re comfortable or not.
If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
I would play it by ear. I don’t have the kind of mind that would plan it out in advance. I function way better as the red team than the planner/finisher.
Some people are unfamiliar with the term “red team,” but it’s journalism slang for people who point out the flaws in your plan. There’s a whole episode on the red team in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom.” Very, very much like prepping a presidential candidate for a debate; the red team researches the blowback you’re going to get before you publish something.
It is so much easier to red team than it is to create it because an autistic mind sees patterns and can tell you what doesn’t fit. Other people can do it, too, but allistic and autistic people have different criteria for pattern recognition. This pattern recognition is created by our autism, but also our extensive social masking. We research neurotypical people, but we do not take it in. We do not become neurotypical by socializing with you. We make ourselves seem more acceptable to you and you interpret it as “getting better.”
But, if you try to tell a neurotypical person that they’re wrong about something, you’re fucked. Because mental health issues mean they treat you with kid gloves. Your opinion comes across as “why does this child think she knows anything?” There’s a huge superiority complex that comes from not having mental health issues or processing disorders. It’s such a catch-22 because you can’t hide it and living with the consequences of telling people is a concentrated tisane of depression and anxiety, served to you every morning even when you don’t sleep.
It makes people feel better about themselves when they’re in conflict with you and you have mental health issues. People are so much more likely to write off my feelings as symptoms of my mental health than actually consider the fact that they might have hurt me. I am responsible for hearing when I have hurt someone and responding; I am also responsible for knowing when people are seeing symptoms when I express needs. Normal things that people should care about, should worry about, all of the sudden become “you should take something for that.” Bitch, please. My psychologist thinks you’re a freak show and my psychiatrist says “not enough medication in the world.” Truly, there is no medication in the world that will fix someone’s perception that it’s always your brain (therefore, you’re always wrong) because you have a diagnosed problem with yours and they don’t. It would be gaslighting if it was malicious, but it’s not. It’s every bit as systemic as racism.
It’s the sign, being treated like a pest. That’s the sign that someone thinks of you as mentally ill and not a person anymore… but not consciously. It’s not personal, it’s global. I am a diagnosis to a lot of people, and I finally stopped catering to them because I started treating me like a diagnosis as well. It didn’t do anything to make me feel better and often made me feel worse…. and in fact, a lot of the “symptoms” people see are indeed symptoms- of autism, not depression and anxiety or hypomania. In some ways, it was such a blessing because the symptoms I thought I had from depression were actually processing disorders. I felt lighter than I had in years, because that means my depression isn’t as bad as I think it is.
There’s never going to be a time I can wean off of my depression medication, but there is a lot of comfort in things being unique to me as a person rather than brought on by depression. They just tend to work in tandem. If my autism gives me demand avoidance, my depression will tell me I’m useless and worthless. Anxiety will tell me that if I do not get with the program, I will keep on being worthless. The boss music moves faster, and the threat never appears.
Therefore, I’ve never fallen into a pit of fire, but I haven’t saved the princess, either.
I take that back. I have saved the princess once. I bought an NES controller for my PC, and downloaded an emulator capable of cheats like a Game Genie. The only time I’ve ever beaten Super Mario Brothers was turning up the cheats to full-on invincible. I didn’t have to do that for Alduin (main storyline villain in Skyrim, a dragon).
If I didn’t sleep at all, I’d probably play video games more. I don’t have time for them, which is why I stick to Skyrim and don’t pick up new titles. If you get into Skyrim, it’s different than getting into any other game. There are so many makers of free content addons called “mods” that add quests and characters that you’ll never finish it all. I haven’t even finished all of the quests in the main game, much less expansion packs. While Bethesda is amazing, the creators didn’t make Skyrim immortal. The modders did. It’s basically a video gamer’s blog, because they keep updating the story and the software as newer hardware comes out (getting Skyrim Legendary Edition to run on Windows 10 should be in your quest journal).
Besides, I’m a monotropic thinker. I am happy disappearing into Skyrim more than once rather than getting used to new game mechanics every time. I can change them slowly over time if I want. Part of the joy of the creators’ community is that they’re able to create new animations as well.
And, of course, I love the Thieves Guild, and not because they’re bad. It’s because it’s the closest you get in Skyrim to being a spy. You’re tasked with burning someone’s beehives and stealing something out of someone’s house without anyone knowing you were there. I may not be Jack Reacher, but I get to feel like it for a little bit.
It is so easy to me looking back to see how intelligence became my special interest. Hearing about my great uncle when I was a kid made intelligence feel secretive in a good way. I know for sure that my great uncle was a watchdog on CIA and the military, part of the solution and not the problem.
I have a couple of stories that prove to me that the American government is not lily white from that era, so I also do not think of spies as superheroes. Because James Bond is, well, James Bond, no one thinks of spies as the babies they really are. Most are recruited at the same age as people in the military. CIA recruits at universities as well because they always need people fluent in more than one language. As John le Carré points out, when you’re old enough to do those jobs well, people stop asking you to do them.
What I do think is that I identify with living a double life. My personality on the street is not shown online, and my online personality isn’t me in real life. I am not hiding one from the other, you just can’t only know me in one way and see everything. It’s not the way I’m trying to present online and in person. “The medium is the message.” -Marshall McLuhan.
If I never slept at all, I think I would spend more time researching. It’s my favorite thing whether it’s intelligence operations or biographies of real people. This is because the more non-fiction I read, the more I have a library of images in my head to make correlations. Reading about intelligence is like reading any novel. You find random facts about everything while on one topic. That’s because nothing happens with one decision. With worldwide intelligence, you may have to visit Mexico and Iran in a day. So, in the course of one operation I can learn the habits and mannerisms of a policeman in Oaxaca and a tea shop owner in downtown Tehran.
I am deadly serious in that I believe the Netflix version of “Carmen Sandiego” is the most realistic show we have about intelligence available currently. Carmen is a young woman, but I’m not sure how young. Her friends seem to be teenagers, so maybe college? Anyway, she has a ground support team (ginger twins named Zack nd Ivy) and a handler, Player.
Player is not on the scene, he’s kind of like Justin Long in “Galaxy Quest.” He’s at the computer with the floorplans in front of him, but he’s never in Carmen’s physical location. And because they’re an intelligence agency unto their own, they’re not trying to mimic another one poorly. I really like the relationship between case officer and handler when it’s written as a funny and touching buddy comedy, which this is (my other favorite is “Spy” with Melissa McCarthy and Miranda Hart). In this version of Carmen Sandiego, Player is written very much like her little brother, and it makes child labor so endearing. 😉
Speaking of “child labor,” I love The Disney Channel. They’re the ones that have 14-year-old children saving the world at every turn. I believe that’s a lot more realistic than expecting me to figure it out. Plus, I love writing for adolescents, because it doesn’t take fancy language to make a good story.
It is not lost on me that I bond with these weird little families because Player is coded as autistic. Carmen is coded as CPTSD. Zack and Ivy are clearly ADHD. Ivy is also coded as queer. When you’re the ones picked to live in the shadows, you don’t get to pick and choose who comes with you. The relationships just keep getting bigger to accept who everyone is. Player is never going to be on the ground support. Zack and Ivy are never going to sit still. Carmen is never going to let other people control anything, because she deals in burning beehives.
If you love “Doctor Who,” you’ll probably love “Carmen Sandiego” as well, because it’s very much the same idea. Zack, Ivy, and Player are very much Carmen’s “fam.” And she has more important companions in her life, but that would involve spoilers I’d be devastated to give you before the story unfolded on Netflix.
Often the best representations of intelligence agencies across the world are fictional, because then people have so much more license with it. Less chance CIA would get upset with me if I changed their name and gave them global power to track down alien activity. Maybe throw in Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as the main characters. I don’t know. Seems risky. Think anyone would watch it?
I am watching very closely at how fictional characters are written across the board. My alternate history combines my two greatest passions in life, so I don’t know whether passion for cooking fed intelligence or the other way around, but now they are inextricably interrelated into the plot of my novel. The one thing that will happen for this alternate history with certainty is that OSS will not transition to CIA. It will transition to something else (or stay OSS, because its future would also be fictional). To me, it is better to create my own intelligence agency with its own fictional structure/rules than it is to guess what CIAs structures are and be wrong. I am a Virgo. I can’t be wrong. It creates a blip in the Matrix.
I have archetypes for my characters thanks to YouTube. There are lots of interviews with people from DIA, CIA, NSA, etc. Here is the one truism I can tell you from hours of all that. In every single one, someone says, “when you were a kid, did you think about working in intelligence?” In every single one, they say “nope. It just fell into my lap.” I think this is due to age. Most of the interviews I’ve watched are with people that are at least my age. When we were kids, spies were approached. There was no “go to CIA’s web site and apply.” Future female spies will be able to say that they applied when they were 18, all they did was send in a resume.
In fact, the way Tony was recruited was through an ad in the newspaper for a government artist. He was intrigued because he thought, “what would the government want with an artist?” Turns out, when an intelligence agency wants people to forge passports and documents, they call it “government artist” in the newspaper. 😉
I am certain that people still get approached because there are people out there doing all sorts of things that would be useful to CIA. For instance, you might love languages or cartography and think you’ll end up as a professor somewhere. But when you get up to six languages or images no one else has, someone will be impressed.
And honestly, we’re starting to be impressed as a country. People loved Madam Secretary, which is a great example of a show that shows how government works (heightened, but realistic). Not everything is accomplished in the shadows, but……….. “for everything else, there’s Visa?” When I think of CIA and State, I don’t want to picture Elizabeth. I want to read the real stories of the people in those jobs. I have read every word Hillary Clinton has ever written, both fiction and non.
I suppose I am trying to find what any writer is- the ability to find themselves while constantly researching other people.
Sometimes I have thoughts and need to write them down for myself. Then, I realize that they’ll mean something to someone else and I just write here, instead.
It just hit me on the head that Supergrover is beating herself up over what she thinks I think of her, and not what I actually do. Therefore, she doesn’t realize that because I’m creating a portrait of her, she is not just beloved by me. I think that she thinks I want to write about her because of what she does. I knew that wasn’t right, but I did feel this. One day, she’s going to be Jon Armstrong. One day, she’s going to be Victor Lawson. One day, people are going to compare Victor to her instead of the other way around. And I’m sure about that.
I cannot paint a true portrait without a bad side to a person, because that’s not real life. John le Carré taught me that.
“The cat sat on a mat is not a story. The cat sat on the dog’s mat is a story.”
I started reading “The Pigeon Tunnel,” and as I was reading I realized that though people say that my writing sounds like David Sedaris, it feels like I’m him in a different body just by the way he writes. This is for two reasons. The first is that we’re the same “type.” Both interested in news and government for the purposes of writing about it. Both interested in holding up a mirror to the world, because bad experiences are the spoils of war for a writer. As poet Mary Karr has said, “happiness writes white.”
David (Cornwall- real name, sorry- I use them interchangeably) has the same way that I do of talking about terribly serious subjects while adding just enough humor to keep the person reading. He seems like the same kind of serious that I am, because while the things that have happened to me are funny, I think David Sedaris is more camp than I am. David Cornwall is a dry wit, and that fits my personality nicely.
I like “The Pigeon Tunnel” the best of all Cornwell’s books because he’s not masquerading as George Smiley. It’s reading the non-fiction behind the fiction, just like I wanted to do in my own book idea of alternating chapters. I’ve also heard both David Cornwell and David Sedaris in interviews and I feel like they both represent me as a person. David Sedaris often explains the way I think to me, and David Cornwell explains how I write.
Apparently, I am an old English geezer at heart, which I hope makes him laugh wherever he is. He’s entertained me so much over the years. I think that’s because he’s such a marvelous blend of people like Rachel Maddow, David Halberstam, Tom Clancy…….. and also Ian Fleming. Basically, living in a system and writing the criticism of it. You can tell it’s a mixed bag. Even more when he was no longer under cover and people knew who he was. After his father heard that “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” had sold 15 million copies, he swindled him for the rest of his life and complained when Cornwell said, “no. Enough is enough.” Basically, his father wanted him to invest in some kind of farm. David said, “if you want a farm, I will buy you one and give you an allowance for maintenance.” I’m not sure he ever heard from him again.
He reminds me a lot of Jonna and Tony Mendez, which I learned quickly because after I saw “Argo,” I began looking for other stuff like it. I didn’t want to know what being a spy was like based on what I saw in movies because real spies had confirmed for me that the day-to-day job is better in terms of learning how policy is shaped, but most of it’s too boring to be filmed. I think it would be cool to be on one of the committees for intelligence in Congress, because I am definitely a “don’t tell me how you got this” kind of dude. I don’t need the semantics, I just want the protein.
George Smiley is just relatable. An Everyman with a normal job, with moments that would fry your hair. Every intelligence job seems to be akin to being the goalie of a soccer team. It’s red tape bureaucracy AND “oh shit, they’re coming.” What le Carré was trying to do in his books was to erase the public’s perception that all spies are like James Bond. At the time, CIA was all over MI-6 to get their shit together, they had a mole. Just like with Rick Aames, they went after the wrong people first because Kim Philby was good at covering his tracks right up until he wasn’t. People say that Philby was a double agent. I’ll believe it when I see that he also did something good for the British.
I genuinely believed that John changed MI=5/6 for the better by being honest about what was going on. They were a mess. He couldn’t fix it, but he could write it down. Especially when you can’t fix anything, having a voice is important. Even screaming into the void produces results because you don’t have to be heard to feel spent. That relief comes from getting it all out.
John does this so masterfully in “The Pigeon Tunnel,” explaining that his father was a crook, making him live in “show mode,” often doing errands for his dad when his dad couldn’t show his face in public. His father was not scared of the police. It was so much worse. It was the Russian mafia. So, John le Carré and David Cornwell are indeed two different people, but John has been around longer than his pen name. When you live a life like that, you have two personalities. His father constantly lost everything. He was well versed in espionage and needed refuge in the system. It was living the life he’d already been living, while having the stability of a government paycheck and normalcy at home. Living on an extreme edge, but with a safety net he’d never had before.
I don’t know how long into his career it was that he developed a knack for fiction. I don’t believe he thought of it as fiction, necessarily. He was just talking about people at the office. Guess what? They knew it was them. They got mad. They also got over it when he sold 15 million copies……. somehow, when other people loved his characters and the author was a great name to throw down at parties, they didn’t mind so much.
Reading “The Pigeon Tunnel” gave me new insight into who I am….. and how writing is not what I do. It is who I am, too. That’s because my blog is nothing more than a reflection of what I’m thinking. You are getting access to my brain without a filter. Sometimes, it definitely needs it, but generally those entries are popular so I know I can just be who I am and you’ll just roll with it. You know I’m Andy Rooney at the end of 60 Minutes over here. Just a string of words put together in a way that I hope others will find pleasing, but I don’t use it for that. I go back and see what’s changed and what hasn’t. I’m my own biggest fan, because reading my blog is not going to help anyone more than me. It’s a survival manual by now.
I also gain a better opinion of myself by reading myself with a dispassionate third eye, because I stop treating myself the way I normally do when the piece isn’t so close to home. I have empathy for myself in the same way I would in reading someone else’s work. Because I can look back over my life in a way that most people can’t, I think I do have a solid case for the fact that I am the greatest man who ever lived…. I was born… to give and give and give.
After the havoc that I’m gonna wreak, I hope my song also comes with full choir, band, and possibly even Shaker Melody…. but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. What people forget about blogs is that the story is always in motion. Essentially, that they are living in a book that is still happening. If they don’t like my writing, they don’t have to read it. I don’t require anyone who knows me to read it, but they often tell me when they do. The only thing they can’t do is coerce me into not telling my stories. I am strong enough to say that they can limit their interactions with me, but I’m a writer and this is what I do. I have plenty of people in my life who don’t mind that I do this, because they know that I wouldn’t do it if I could do anything else. Writing isn’t to impress anyone. It’s to tamp down the madness of feeling several things at once. How do you make a decision if you don’t try to see both sides of the story? How are people so certain they’re right so much of the time?
I would rather spend time with people who don’t read blogs at all than have to anticipate what their blowback is going to do to me emotionally all the time. I own my story. I own my perceptions. I am very perceptive and that’s one of the first things that Jonna Mendez noticed when I wrote a piece on going to her book talk and sent it to her. Having a spy tell you that you’re perceptive is pretty great, I want you to know…… because again, Chief of Disguise at CIA isn’t impressive at all.
I don’t know why, but I feel more at home writing about the British system most of the time. Oh, wait. Yes I do. I know exactly why. CIA doesn’t publish how they do operations, so there’s no real way to know what the American equivalent of C or M might be. I couldn’t tell you the difference between one American case officer and the next, but C, M, and Bond are all different levels and different personalities. If I had any job in the Bond universe, I think I would like to be Moneypenny. I don’t know whether I’d have the hots for Bond or not, but what I do know is that I would love hearing everything coming in and going out of M’s office. If we could make Bond regenerate into Hannah Waddingham, I’d be smitten. I also have a clear picture of who should play M in this fictional universe.
Jenna Redgrave has played the head of UNIT so long that she’s the archetype of who should play against Hannah. I don’t know that she’d get the role, but I think she’d be amazing if she took it.
It’s all an exploration of character, and how I accidentally make people in my life fictional characters on purpose. That’s because in trying to describe our lives together, I am only drinking from the well of my own memory. Therefore, anything that’s not fact checked is a fictional universe, and will change as my facts do.
I am trying to be as fair and balanced as I can, because I think like a journalist. There are just some times where there can’t be two sides of the story because this is my web site. I have to take care of me, and my writing is the only thing that does it. But as I learn more, I evolve and so do they.
Supergrover didn’t start out as Jon Armstrong and Victor Lawson. She earned it. In the end, she’ll never be more real to people than she is here unless she writes her own story. No one, even her, knows how valuable that really is. I haven’t said a thing I wouldn’t say to someone who worked at a gas station. I am not impressed by power/influence because my sister has it and I know what that life is like. It’s right for her and I’m happy she can do it, and also know that I can’t. I feel the same way about my beautiful girl…. “you do you and it’s okay, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard and I’m not entitled to my feelings.”
For as much as I come across like John le Carré, I also sound like Walter Isaacson. Walter’s books are so good because he explores people so in-depth it’s like you’re in the room with them. He made me love Steve Wozniak and continue to think that Steve Jobs was productive yet clearly insane. It wasn’t a puff piece.
But, of course, you’re going to hate it if someone comes to you and says, “I’m a biographer. Can I write a book about you?” There was never a discussion like that with Supergrover because we were idiots. The first is that she told me something I can’t talk about and it’s hard. The second is that her job and my blog are completely at odds with each other, because I’m not “on her social media team.” She isn’t on my radar because I decided to write about her. She decided to be my friend, and is therefore a character because of it.
One that is every bit as strong and comfortable as the blog “characters” we’ve both come to love over the years. She would have let me keep Beyoncé, too.
To eat, I say my favorite is pork because I like face bacon and all those esoteric things that professional cooks eat. I like offal, but some of it is awful. My advice is that stuff like hearts, brains, and marrow might not taste good to you, but they’ll definitely taste better than kidneys and livers. I don’t eat filters (immortal words from Dana, she’s right tho). I don’t care whether we’re going to Luby’s Cafeteria or a three Michelin star fine dining experience. I am not eating liver and onions, I am not eating it dressed up as $200 fois gras. The only person that has ever gotten me to eat a second bite of fois gras is Gabriel Rucker, head chef of Portland’s Le Pigeon (do not pronounce it in French). It is not “le pigh-jhon”). It didn’t taste any less like an assload of iron, but there was so much more to explore within the flavor. The crisp edges. The raspberry jelly donut. Just….. fuck me. Yet, I still couldn’t get away from the taste of blood, and not even blood. Just the constant taste of a coin in the back of your throat, and it will stick long after you’ve finished. It’d be okay if it was the jelly donut that reappeared………..
I also love the zoo with a deep and abiding passion, particularly in the Spring because it’s free and I can go write there every single day if I want. It’s lovely when it’s between 60-70 degrees….. not so much in August. I pick a table in front of whichever enclosure pleases me, and the animals’ activity makes writing easier. When I go to the zoo, I only sometimes go during tourist season…. but when I do, those days are often invaluable.
There’s a reason for that. Sometimes I am very much in the mood for an overwhelmingly large crowd, because in that space, I am not taking it all in. I wear a baseball cap AND cans, a move score blasting so that I’m only watching the crowd, I’m not listening to it. Sounds trip me up all the time- it’s my sensory issue, from the notifications on my phone that sometimes scare the life out of me to people talking and not realizing they’re talking to me because every sound in the room is equally loud and I do not process voices in the same way I process reading. This is true of most autistic people.
Editor’s Note:
If you are struggling to reach an autistic person, try laying out all your feelings in text. Write them a letter. Use Facebook Messenger. We don’t lack empathy, we lack the ability to process it correctly…… particularly in conversation. Again, voices are hard- so much easier to process it in our own way, get back to you and see if we’ve understood.
I am using it as cover. I learned this from Jonna Mendez, actually, in one of her videos for “Wired” magazine on YouTube (I’ll put one of my favorites at the end- she is so fabulous). The funniest thing ever said in a comment came from someone who understood the assignment. He said, “she was the Chief of Disguise. I was really expecting her to turn into a black dude at the end.” I died for a second, but I know something he doesn’t. The first mask she ever made for herself that actually animated when she put it on was indeed a black dude. In her memory, it was fabulous, but she could not walk it, talk it….. because she is indeed a white woman. 😉
Her next big coup was fooling George H.W. Bush by “borrowing someone else’s face,” and as I result I kidded her in person that we had mutual friends. George H.W. Bush and I used to go to the same church…….. what is really, really amazing is that she fooled him in the Oval and not when he was director of CIA. LEGEND. The other really funny thing is that she got dressed at a friend’s house before they went to the White House, and their dog didn’t like her when she first got there and went apeshit over her in disguise. 😉 Additionally, she was working for Tony when he came up with the quick change…. that you could completely change your look in between 37-45 steps depending on whether Jonna or Tony is telling the story. The funniest part of that whole thing is that Tony and Jonna’s boss was a narcoleptic (I KNOW), and Jonna’s job was to stand at his desk and make sure he was awake the whole time to see Tony do it. He started out as himself, the spy you see in “Argo” played by Ben Affleck (much to my Latinx stepsister’s dismay and humorous consternation).
It didn’t matter who played Tony, because that’s not what was interesting about him……. and also, Tony didn’t care that a Latino didn’t play him The only thing that Jonna noted about Ben’s character had nothing to do with race. It wasn’t public at the time, but Tony had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and his personality kind of flipped. Ben based the character on that personality because Ben and Tony spent time together. He did not know what Tony was like at the time. She said that he was more effusive with his emotions back then, and that it would have been in some ways a different movie if Ben had known Tony for many years. I’m paraphrasing her, but I am writing in the spirit of what she said. Even still, it wasn’t Tony’s personality that drew me in. He didn’t have to have that personality for me to love him. It was his brain, especially after he and Jonna laid out their thought processes so brilliantly in their books that not only do I have them all on my Kindle, my dad gifted me all of them autographed as keepsakes. And in fact, one of them I bought on my own and she signed it in front of me. It was one of the most significant moments of my life…… because I realized that even if I couldn’t be a spy, I could be them after they retired.
My idea is that I am capable of short stories where I do not feel capable as a novelist. I’d like to write Bond level stories for a chapter, and then lay out the research for why I wrote it. It would be cool to write science fiction like Men in Black, then explore why I picked their ops based on my enormity of reading…. and this is completely separate from my alternate history, because I have had the idea vetted and the red team says it’s huge; it will be a knockout if executed correctly. You can’t get that one out of me because I don’t want to give the idea away to anyone who’d publish a shittier version before I did. This idea is free because it’s universal. No two books written in both fiction and non-fiction would be the same. Even if you’ve read something like it, you’ve never heard it in my voice…… which, I think, would be “Rachel Maddow on the non-fiction parts and an amalgamation of Tony and Jonna when it’s fiction, and also me because they’re not neurodivergent (or I’m not brave enough to ask). I would write that in the inscription, to make it clear that it’s just a character and people shouldn’t attribute my indiosyncracies to her- necessary when you’re writing about someone who is still living and almost certain to read it. Calling someone autistic or coding them that way is not for the faint of heart because I wouldn’t let a dog I didn’t like be treated the way people treat me. It’s not my friends and family. It’s the way I walk in the world…… and I would die of embarrassment if I passed on the “wealth.”
I had to think about that.
In trying to hold a mirror up to the world around me, it often causes me to attribute my own idiosyncracies with someone else. I think I do it the most often with Supergrover because she is a mirror image of me. She emotes too little, and I emote too much. It is indeed the gap between neurotypical and neurodivergent. It causes issues because I tell her how I see the world and she doesn’t return the favor. Therefore, I write from my own echo chamber. We aren’t checking the stories we’re telling ourselves, and that kind of love is harmful to both of us. It is my responsibility to take care of my anxious attachment style. It is her responsibility to interrupt my reality with her story so that I am not basing every decision on what only I think. My self image isn’t strong enough for that. My history is that if I really love someone and they’re being avoidant, I’ll just cave for years on end to avoid ending the relationship.
I became aware that this story was total bullshit and realized that in order for Supergrover and I to move on, I needed a love big enough to silence the voices in my head. I needed her to tell me exactly what was up in her brain when she read it. I am neurodivergent, therefore I take everything literally. Meeting up one day was a “someday, perhaps,” and I waited five years. It wasn’t all because I was holding onto her. It’s that there was a pandemic. Why blame her for something so beyond her control? Alternatively, she didn’t seem to recognize when I shot for the moon and talked about a time in which she was retired and had nowhere to be….. anything from traveling to things neither of us have experienced to showing off our own experiences to the other to just having a damn cup of coffee together instead of in async. In short, I understood the assignment, I’m just establishing my area of operations.
I’m going to have to read “Nuking the Moon” by Vince Houghton, because I love the era of CIA involved in the space race. It is also an alternative title to this blog, apparently……. because having a relationship like ours would feel so relatable to every autistic reader. My friends become my special interest when I write to them. I don’t think of us as potentially falling in love later in life like I did with Dana. Dana and I worked on each other for a while, and she had me the first time she winked at me…… I just only know that in retrospect, because when you’re sapiosexual, someone has to open up to you over time. When you’re autistic, is has to be a forest fire to get you to notice…… and she’ll know exactly where she was when said wink occurred. It was not the same situation with Supergrover because she’s straight and she’s already met her life partner, anyway. I just like being cool enough to know her. It’s why I have no regrets at all right now, I’m just sad.).
Every neurodivergent person I’ve ever met has felt this way. Every single one. I haven’t realized my power in saying things that identify with AuDHD because I didn’t realize the rabbit hole was that deep.
Again, saying all this is not about my beautiful girl and me. It’s how perception of me would affect any character I write whether they’re fictional, living their lives, or dead now but their estate will freak. Any and all of these are bad, I assure you.
I should talk to Cora about this book because she absolutely is a novelist and creates entire fictional worlds. We could say a lot by not saying it at all. In fiction, you do things by showing. I want every character in the book to be neurodivergent and to show it by how they present. The book would basically contain how to communicate with a neurodivergent when they are trying to speak to a neurotypical. I can do this very well with spies because they are drenched in facts, not emotions.
Spies know everything, in my humble opinion. They take in too much information about the world every single day and remember random factoids all day long (e.g. American spies learning how to dress and count in Europe), allowing them to move quickly and quietly as the smartest person in the room. It’s not just Jonna and Tony that have taught me that lesson. It’s everyone I’ve ever met at the International Spy Museum or heard on SpyCast.
Even people who work at the museum are smarter than the average bear. In particular, shout out to Vince Houghton and Dr. Andrew Hammond, who both have served as the host of SpyCast. Otherwise, I would not know all this because I wouldn’t have gotten interested in real-life intelligence over Bond movie magic. Bond is the face of something very, very real…… and it has scared me more than once. I posted on an autism group that my special interest was intelligence, and the comments were varied from “oh, that’s so cool” to “does the American-based “International Spy Museum” have a wing for CoIntelPro?” Jesus God, let’s drag out every bad thing CIA has ever done right off the bat. I do not like those people. I really don’t. That’s because when you dig deep, you see that misses and wins are part of every organization. If the swing for a win is big enough, things are going to go very, very wrong- and faster than anyone would think.
But when I personally think of spies, I think about people like Julia Child, Virginia Hall, Alma Katsu (all OSS/CIA, but Virginia Hall also worked for MI-6 before she came to us), John le Carré (David Cornwell, MI-6, also a fiction author), and Jack Barsky (KGB). In terms of fiction, I’m not a Bond fan until we’re talking about the current set of movies, because the old ones are dated and incredibly misogynistic. (Pussy Galore? COME ON.). My favorite M is obviously Judi Dench, my favorite C is Stephen Fry in “Doctor Who.” And if I had to give an award to any intelligence officer in a fictional universe, there are two. I love K from MiB (“I never worked for a funeral home.”) and Carmen Sandiego (“Fedora the Explorer”).
In some ways, “Argo” is also a fictional universe because reel bears little resemblance to real. For instance, Alan Arkin’s character is completely made up, but John Goodman’s isn’t. John Chambers, his character, went on to do other sci-fi movies and his last one was “The Island of Doctor Moreau.” That being said, “Argo” is not Tony’s best book. It’s tremendous, but “The Moscow Rules” is better.
I think this is because in ’79 I was two. I don’t remember the hostage crisis in Iran. I very, very much remember “Mr. President, tear down that wall.” If you are not familiar, there used ot be a wall dividing East and West Germany. The dividing line was in Berlin. West Berlin had all the benefits of democracy and capitalism. East Berlin was controlled by communism, so this was a direct appeal by Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev. In reality, Reagan and George H.W. Bush probably advanced the wall coming down by roughly 11 days. That’s hyperbole, but it’s the funniest line about the Cold War I’ve read so far (no past or present government employee said this; I was researching a paper in college for International Affairs.). Jonna and Tony were instrumental in all of this, protecting their assets and underlings like their own children. They also came up with two pieces of spy technology that changed the direction of the war…. and I’m saying it, they didn’t. They’re too humble.
Speaking of children, the first thing they came up with was called a “Jack in the Box.” It was literally a large version of the toy. This is because all the spies in Tony’s department (he was Chief of Disguise then) were taught that there is no distinguishable difference between espionage and magic. The area of operation is your “stage,” or your ring depending on the size of the circus. There are two operations going on at the same time. The first is that you’re trying to pop smoke (military slang for creating a distraction). The second is that you are actively saying to the crown, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
Apt.
When CIA got a new building, they covered it in green glass. I don’t know what they called Langley before it was built as a code name/slang, but now it’s “Oz” (I don’t think Tony came up with it, but that’s on brand for him, clearly). In fact, one of the things that marks me as an intelligence superfan is that in “Argo,” Ben Affleck runs through the old building and ends up standing on the famous seal in the new one. I don’t know if you know that, but I know like five people who would know that…… and now I’m wondering if Zac is one of them.
ADHD moment- Zac is not a spy, but he works with the data they collect. He’s been in intelligence since he joined the military, which in my mind makes him a great boyfriend and a lucky bastard all at once. 😛 Unfortunately, he does not have the kind of badge where he can escort visitors, but he’s lucky that he doesn’t. I would have asked him to take me to a wide assortment of gift shops…………………… repeatedly. I’m lucky, though, because he remembers me when he goes. My baseball cap and “nightgown” are from the one at CIA (by nightgown I mean a CIA t-shirt that’s way too big on me), my sweat pants are from the one at the Pentagon, and I have a t-shirt from, I think, the one at DIA that’s for little kids (it’s my favorite). Interestingly enough, I don’t wear my intelligence/military shit all the time because they’re so great. It’s an added bonus that all their shit vibes with my sensory issues. If I ever find out who makes their clothes, I’d also buy a ton of stuff without the logo. This is because it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I get treated like a human comment section. Not all of them are nice. The best one was from a tween who pulled on my coat and said, “Do you work there? I want to be CIA, too.” I freaked out because she was the most beautiful girlchilde……. a future Alpha Kappa Alpha that could one day be Tracy Walder. And by freaked out I mean that this was on the Metro platform so my emotions and sensory perception were already turned up to hell and I just cried. Flat out. But it was after she walked away. The last thing I wanted to do was freak her out, too. It was good that we were in such a public place.
When you think everyone is watching, turns out no one is.
To the rest of the world, this comes across as hilarious. To me, I just stare and quote Sarah Silverman on Jimmy Kimmel. That if she had kids, she’d tell them that “mommy believes she’s one of God’s chosen people, and daddy believes Jesus is magic.” Not sure he’s ever been compared to Jesus, but he’s a Moses in “Argo.” Sarah’s argument is valid for both of us.
Again, what I’ve learned from Jonna and Tony is moving in a crowd with my sensory issues muted by headphones and having my head covered. I can get lost in my own little world, and I generally want to because conversation is difficult for me when every noise feels the same and often drowns them out.
I was going to the zoo that day. I found that I love giraffes and kept going with my day. Not going to see me walking one down Connecticut because the zoo had “Adoption Day.” And, I would have to check with all of them, but I do not have room for a giraffe and (correct me if I’m wrong) neither do Zac, Supergrover & Michael, or Bryn & Dave. I do know enough to know that Zac, Michael, and Dave would have to convince me, Supergrover, and Bryn that no, we do not need a giraffe (they both have a heart that beats for animals). Also, I cannot afford to relocate both myself and a giraffe to Oregon. It would be easier to make friends with an Oregonian giraffe, which is a whole mood.
What would it look like to be an Oregonian giraffe? They don’t wear patchouli essential oil or hemp flip flops, do they? The only thing I know about Oregon giraffes is that they probably love The Indigo Girls. I do not say this lightly, actually, because The Indigo Girls have consistently been one of the best concerts at the zoo over the years. There’s no way that the animals don’t like the music, at least in some cases….. and Indigo Girls play acoustic just enough of the time that I can’t see how it would get on their nerves as much as electric. I love how I have worked all of this out in my head…….
If you’ve never been to the zoo in Oregon for a concert, it’s like going to Miller Outdoor Theater or Cynthia Mitchell Woods Pavillion in Houston or Wolf Trap in DC. Primates and parrots can both sing “Get Out the Map” by now. I would have enjoyed teaching it to Kevin, who is a giraffe.
Kevin and I used to hang out. The way his enclosure was built, there was a table with a bench bolted to the ground right in front of him. Like, I couldn’t reach out and pet him, but akin to being in the same bedroom or kitchen. Space, but not much of it. He always sat right in front of me, as if he knew he was my inspiration, posing for a portrait…… yet a devilish one. I have never seen a giraffe roll their eyes, but I liked to imagine that Kevin did. It fit the theme. If wishes were giraffes, writers would ride.I just called him that and now I can’t remember why. But anyway, I thought of us as tight because he heard about the rough drafts of so much that’s here now.
It’s not his real name. I was just gathering intel and needed a codename for my asset.
If you’ve read me even twice, you probably know I love intelligence. I believe wholeheartedly that I could have been a spy based on my preacher’s kid upbringing (really, really not much different growing/maintaining a congregation and recruiting/handling assets), genetics (great uncle was C/DIA), and the fact that I’ve “done” news like cocaine since I was eight.
There is a direct correlation.
When I was eight years old, I came to Washington for the first time. It was love at first sight. A miracle dropped in my lap that the first offer Kathleen got out of school was from ExxonMobil, because we got to choose whether we lived in Houston or DC. Moving became a monotropic thought process in which I envisioned my life playing out much differently….. and it did. Absolutely none of the plans I made for myself materialized, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a hell of a good time making them.
If you’re that kid, the one that grows up in a small town and travels so that they see how much bigger the world really is than 40 square miles, you become a “type.” By 10 I had been to Mexico, the UK, and The Bahamas. I noticed the highs and the lows, the looming cathedrals and the neighborhoods made with tin. Global issues become important early. News becomes important early. Politics become important early. You begin to see that working for the government might be a positive thing because instead of reading the news, you are helping create it.
Kids like me end up at State or at the Washington Post. Rarely do we want to be the story. We want to shape it, especially for writers who process “verbally” in stream-of-consciousness spaghetti code. Writing about my life in DC is learning how to say “Hello, World” in every language.
(Sometimes when I write, I imagine people’s faces as they’re reading and now I’m smiling to myself knowing my programmer friends. Just for them, that line should be “every language……….. except JavaScript. Fuck JavaScript.)
My autism and ADHD are why my plans haven’t come to fruition, and my bipolar disorder threw my first choice out the window. So, right now, I am trying to concentrate my energy where I feel it can manifest. I am a better writer than I am anything else, and I know that I’m not the best. What I do know is that by writing every single day, there’s no way to get worse. I am sure that this brings hope to many, many people. Living in DC is where I feel the most alive, because I’m tapped into The Source. The United States is a living, breathing entity, and I am deep within the carotid artery (or the vena cava, depending on administration).
When I go to The Spy Museum, it’s not about seeing the exhibits. I’ve done it 10 times, they don’t change it that much. I hardly ever go during the day anymore, because it’s more fun at night. After the museum closes, all the Bond mannequins…. kidding…. after the museum closes, that’s when they do book talks and record SpyCast, how I met Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder.
Jonna is one of my writing heroes, because she writes about the stuff I like in the way I like to hear it. She’s got a very concise, no bullshit tone and the wit of someone like David Halberstam or Rachel Maddow, who have also written a wealth of political non-fiction thrillers. I should tell Jonna that if she sees an uptick in sales the next few days, merry Christmas. The post I talked about yesterday for reddit re: Spy Dust and Moscow Rules has had 471 upvotes in 23 hours. I hope I sold her a thousand copies, and I’m not even going to tell her about it because “Secret Santa” is a thing. Book sales are the best gift I could have picked.
A woman said her dad wouldn’t read a book about intelligence if it was written by a woman, and I think that if Jonna can’t convince him, he’s a misogynistic lost cause……. being Chief of Disguise at CIA isn’t impressive or anything (my eyes are rolling out of my head). I like Spy Dust better in terms of being able to pick out Tony’s voice from hers, but The Moscow Rules is my favorite of them all….. and I thought Argo was hard to beat. The book was made in reaction to the film, and it was still better.
I have a different relationship with/to Tracy than I do with/to Jonna because Tracy is so much younger, and in fact, is a bit younger than me (I think). Do you ever have a moment where someone says something and your heart just walks out of your body in empathy? I know it happens to people with their families, but Tracy was a complete stranger to me when she told the audience that she was born with hypotonia. I had never met another person who’d been born with it, she’d never met anyone outside her family. It was not just that kind of moment for me. The emotions we felt at seeing each other mattered. It is one of, if not the most intimate moment of my life. I wasn’t proposing or having a baby, and yet it was still that big because the chance of us connecting was so small, our affliction so rare. It’s one of the few times in a relatively unfamiliar situation in which I’ve been able to breathe that deeply.
However, there is a reason I chose Jonna over Tracy with the reddit comment. That dude is already predisposed to disliking female intelligence writers, so handing him a book with a sorority sister protagonist didn’t seem like the wisest choice. You get Jonna until you can handle pink coffee mugs without being an asshole about it. But make no mistake, he definitely needs to read it. There’s more dirt on scumbags like him inside FBI who don’t trust women in intelligence. To be clear, Tracy did not have problems at CIA. She had problems with FBI. Tracy has a problem with FBI, so they have a problem with me. It’s just that simple.
I am sure that Tracy appreciates the support in which I do legit nothing but talk shit about the FBI on my web site……… but hey, she has a great autobiography called The Unexpected Spy. It’s a thrill ride through her life having worked at both agencies, and thrilling to find out that CIA is actually as forward-thinking as I thought it was. Tracy also made an interesting style choice. When you write a book involving CIA (and I’m not sure if it applies to me, but it definitely applies to employees), it has to go through a publications review board. When Tracy got her manuscript back from the PRB, there were parts that were blacked out….. and she just left them in and published as is. Tracy’s is the one book I don’t have on my Kindle, and the one hardback I’m grateful to own, because the words come across the same on e-paper with Jonna and Tony, but the feel of the paper with its saturating amount of black ink looks official.
And in fact, I liked it so much that she signed my book after the lecture and as she was writing the inscription, I asked her if she would black out a word. Tracy understood the assignment. 😉 She blacks out one word, and you can still see what it is, so she asks around and finds a black Sharpie. She hands it back and it says:
To Leslie-
Go [redacted] the world.
Then she says, “there. Now no one knows what I told you to do to the world.”
We’ve (sort of) kept in touch- I should reach out and see what she’s up to these days. Last I heard she was in Dallas (went to SMU just like my dad, went back to teach at Hockaday). If she ever comes to DC, first coffee’s on me.
Here’s to hoping we can [redacted] the world together……..
because the Spy Museum is my favorite place in my city.
I am including the link to both book talks, and I’m in them at the Q&A. In the Walder video, I’m wearing my CIA baseball cap. In the Mendez video, I am “Sir Not Appearing in This Film,” because the video cuts off right when Jonna stops speaking.
Sometimes, you can do for other writers what you don’t do for yourself- promote them. I am currently over the moon because one of my comments on reddit is getting more and more upvotes by the minute. In r/suggestmeabook, a woman was telling the sub that her dad wouldn’t read intelligence writers if they were female. At last count, it was at 100, so safe to say my work is done. Here is what I said, and huge props to both women:
Alma Katsu is a former CIA case officer and she’s brilliant. She’s so quick she could run circles around him, so she’s probably your best bet. I’m a member of the International Spy Museum and a huge fan of fiction and non-fiction. For non-fiction, your go-to is going to be Spy Dust or The Moscow Rules by Jonna and Tony Mendez. They’re a husband and wife team who each served as Chief of Disguise for CIA 10 years apart. She will also wipe the floor with him because their stories are true. Women don’t just write these stories. They make them.
Women are better at being little gray men than little gray men. Anonymity has its privileges, and so does reading these marvelous books. For Katsu, start with Red Widow. One of the things that it touches on that made me cry was the reality of losing an asset/colleague while female. Some of them become emotional. It works out as well for female spies to be emotional as it does for the rest of us……………..
Even if I live without housemates, I’ll never live without a pet. In my current situation, I cannot have one unless I keep it in my room all the time. Having a litter box would be impossible because of the smell being too loud, and we already have the maximum amount of dogs on one side of the house (the owners). If I got one, too, the county might notice because of our addresses.
Therefore, I am grateful for Zac and Oliver, who is a dog.
Editor’s Note:
I say it exactly that way because I want new readers to know he’s a dog and for “Oliver, who is a dog” to be something that people think automatically because they’ve heard it so many times and now it’s funny. My inspiration comes from classical music. You can wake up a classical fan in the middle of the night and say “Sir Neville Marriner.” They’ll say “conducting The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields” before their eyes open.
(That line just made Jack laugh. I know it.)
Zac, for those just joining us, is my boyfriend. I joke that I’m his “twinkie bitch boyfriend,” but that’s because I’m closer to that stereotype when I’m with him because we don’t look heterosexual. We’re not building a life together unless the stars align in terms of being happy just as I am. I figure that it’s not up to other people whether I lived like a monk before I met them and it’s ridiculous to think I should have been “waiting for you.” I’m not Blanche, I’m Dorothy. I am sure that if Dana and I hadn’t been such knobheads to each other, I’d be joking with/about the fact that she’s Stan.
It took a lot to realize that I did a lot of negative things, but I am not a bad person. It’s a distinction that people have to make or they’ll hate themselves forever. Being a narcissist is not owning your shit because your ego would never let you admit you did anything in the first place. Narcissists feed on your love and your fear because they know they have control. It starts out small so that you give up power willingly and not notice you’re about to be a boiling frog.
It’s good to have a pet when I’m thinking this deeply about something and writing it down, because stimming to soothe myself is not limited to the feel of the keys. I don’t write at Zac’s much (sometimes I housesit or stay the afternoon to work in silence while he’s at the office). When I do, it is often sitting on the couch with Oliver’s head on or near my lap. He fits his muzzle around my keyboard.
At no time to I stop thinking about something deeply, so Oliver is a good companion when I’m walking. He interrupts my pain signals by having to keep my attention on him (also why a stick shift car is basically an ADA accomodation for me). I’m stimming through every sense and not one, keeping the parts of AuDHD that suck to a minimum. I don’t have demand avoidance with Oliver because I enforce all the rules in a rigid system, I’m not walking in the dark about how Zac trains him. Therefore, I am not spiraling out over what the demand is because I have clear written instructions for the whole process, including a credit card that will work at his vet so I don’t have to panic about how much it will cost if we get hurt.
I have to watch for Oliver’s age and neurodivergence, because he has anxiety around strangers. He also comes off as an asshole while frightened of his environment, but relaxes just like I do when his sensory perception is turned down to normal. Oliver’s not just a dog because I see the same patterns in his behavior that I do in mine, making our relationship free and easy because we understand each other. He understands English to the point where I can say things with syntax instead of direct commands and he’ll still pick it up.
“I need you to get off the couch and go lay over there” vs. “Sit”
Oliver introduced me to the reason it’s important I have a personal/service dog (depending on the plan with my neurologist/therapist/etc.) because it helped my mental state so much. I would also rather have a cat in terms of responsibility, but they only help with stimming when I’m anxious at home. A personal dog can go more places with you, and a service dog can go everywhere.
I would want something like an Italian Greyhound for portability and still being tall enough to handle more challenging walks. I prefer bigger dogs than that, but I cannot carry them…. not important for a couch potato, but Zac and I like to hike. So, small, but just big *enough.* When I get said dog, we will be going to training *immediately,* whether it’s Bryn or a class. This is because of anything that bugs me about dog owners, it’s having little dogs that are terrors and not expecting them to behave like big dogs.
It’s annoying for everyone, for me, a sensory nightmare. I don’t want my dog to breathe without my permission, and I can do it all with positive reinforcement. One of the best things you can do for your puppy is train it in sign language (babies, too). This is because before they have age and experience, they react to everything. Whatever energy is in the room, they pick it up. You need to be able to stop your dog from digging, fighting, jumping, etc. without losing your shit at the dog because if you don’t, the bad behavior will only ramp up because of your adrenaline. Not being verbal takes the energy in the room out of the equation (for the most part).
Editor’s Note
For your baby, they can communicate long before they’re verbal. They just don’t know how without signs. It keeps the crying and tantrums to a minimum when you know how to ask for more milk. They’ll be able to speak in sentences before they’re into toddler diapers. It makes communication easier when a look and similar cries aren’t all the intel you can get.
That’s a thing it’s good to know *before* you have a pet….. whether you’re the kind of person that can be so dedicated to the cause of making your dog behave that you don’t get lazy, because you can derail it by being inconsistent *once.* It’s why I’m so much more into cats. It’s not that I don’t like dogs more, it’s that I have the executive function to take care of a cat and I’m not going to bet against it until I have a partner who also wants a dog or someone I’ve hired because I can’t manage the relentlessness of its care. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, and I won’t because a dog’s life isn’t sitting in my house all the time. The point of having a dog is to get me to leave it.
I already know its name should be “Sidney Virginia Bristdog-Woof.” Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers and the joke is obvious, Virginia Hall is my third favorite real female spy, and Sidney Bristow is my fictional favorite.
Julia Child and Jonna Mendez are first and second. Don’t let Julia fool you with that “I was just a file clerk” crap. She is a tough motherfucker. I have a feeling that after working with spies, culinary school wasn’t that hard. Jonna is my second favorite because she would endorse the message regarding the first and Julia came long before her- OSS in WWII. Jonna was Cold War/Middle East terrorism…. but I honestly think she has a lot more areas of operation in her portfolio because disguises vary by climate. I doubt she was only limited to Eastern Europe and the Middle East because of it. I also know that at one point she spent time in somewhere like India or Pakistan because one of the chapters in Spy Dust locates her “on the subcontinent.” However, she could have been talking about someplace like southern Africa as well, and that’s what makes her books fun.
She is also a person who *loves* animals and would love appearing in an entry *about* dogs. I am positive she would rather write about dogs some days than her old job. But her old job makes for interesting stories that can’t be duplicated, so I’m glad she focuses on it. Having a dog is universal. Being Chief of Disguise at CIA is not.
I can say this surface level stuff because we actually do know each other on a superficial level. As in, I don’t have any more inside scoop than the rest of her readers, but I do enjoy hearing her live, talking afterwards, and sending her things I’ve written. It’s how I know she’s lost her dog within the last couple of years, but I don’t know if she’s gotten another one yet.
She would think “Virginia Woof” was funny even if you guys don’t. 😉
It’s funny how I can connect the love of a dog to even my special interest because so many people know its power. We all love our dogs because they can love us back in the way another adult can’t. No terms, limitations, provisos, clauses. No divorce unless you initiate it, and those people are generally wrong about it being time. I do not understand giving up a dog when the situation isn’t completely untenable, and I don’t understand keeping an animal alive at all costs because you think you can’t live without them. There are too many homeless pets to grieve long. I say I won’t get another pet. I won’t mean it two weeks later because I don’t like living without a pet.
I’m glad I don’t have to. Loving Zac is loving Oliver, who is a dog.
Podcasts are so sophisticated that they’ve turned my attention away from music. I enjoy conversation, so interview shows are essential.
My friend Wade introduced me to my current favorite, a CBC show called “Writers and Company.” The host is retiring, so I don’t know if she’s going to be replaced or a new show is going to be made instead. Through that show, I’ve met so many people like me. I’m not the same level of writer that they are, particularly for people like le Carré, but I identify with the creative process. I like hearing how people work.
In the unedited version of “On Being,” Krista Tippett always starts with asking the guest what they had for breakfast, and I’m like, “Krista…. thank you for asking the real questions here.
Pete Holmes (You Made It Weird) and Marc Maron (WTF) compete for my attention week to week based on guest, and if I have time, I’ll get involved with the show more regularly because keeping up with every show is how you keep up with Marc and Pete. They both have what I call the “Craig Ferguson effect.” They can both talk for an hour and it will be fabulous. Craig could have hosted The Late, Late Show until he died, no guests, and I would have been glued. I was devastated when he didn’t want the job anymore, but genuinely hope for his happiness and success because he’s another person I feel is a kindred spirit. He’s an alcoholic and I’m bipolar. Both rabid Doctor Who fans. Same software, different case.
I don’t think Craig has a podcast, but I have genuinely enjoyed listening to him when he’s been a guest on others. Sometimes I just need to hear “it’s a great day for America, everybody.” And when I need to, I can hear him say it on YouTube.
I love “SpyCast” and have been on it a couple of times, because I’ve been in the audience and thus the recorded Q&A. I haven’t always asked questions, but when I laugh, you always know it’s me. I got into it because of the interviews with Tony and Jonna Mendez in the archives, but stayed because I really liked Vince Houghton’s interview style (and later Andrew Hammond’s).
It’s cool to hear people like John Brennan when they’ve got five minutes on Conan or whatever, but they’re amazing when they’ve got 45 or 60. Spies are personable, yet not trained for television, either. It takes more than five minutes to find the rhythm in which they’re comfortable opening up, and that’s true of everyone who doesn’t work in television. Hell, even people who do work in television. I love long-form interviews with actors as well.
It’s not technically a podcast, but The Hollywood Reporter funds roundtables where actors, directors, and writers interview each other. There is a moderator, but for the most part the actors talk amongst themselves. You learn more about the craft than you ever would by watching TV.
In terms of writing roundtables, my other favorite podcast is “The Writer’s Panel.” You’ll see a list of guests and not recognize a single name, turns out they were on a team that wrote five of your favorite shows this year. And it’s always a random assortment, like “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “Schindler’s List.” Not a real example, but on brand. Work is work. I particularly want to hear from black writers, because their voices are more authentic to mine than whites given my sexual orientation. The Writer’s Panel is the first place where I’ve met a lot of black TV and movie writers at once, and even more importantly, all talking to each other. That’s the kind of “creatives talking about business” I need because they have the same limitations I do in working for a system that’s not built for them. Hearing multiple people come at the problem from different angles gives me solid information on which to reflect.
I have loved news since I was a child, so now I listen to it in Rachel Maddow’s voice whenever I can and Alex Wagner’s failing that. I listen to everything Rachel does, and I’m particularly wrapped up in her podcast series (multiple). I like how she weaves history into the present and I think that’s what makes me sound like her some days. I used to have a picture of Rachel sitting in her office as the background on my laptop, and my housemate asked me who had taken that picture of me. We look alike, we think alike, we have the same interests. I believe that I remind people more of her after we speak than before, and I’m her archetype everywhere in the world with my genderqueer schtick.
Before Maddow, people pegged me as kd lang. They probably connected me more easily to her because not only do I sing, she’s the lesbian who resembles me and other people know who she is. If I looked like Melissa Etheridge, people would have told me I looked like her on multiple levels….. and I know this because “you look like kd lang” has all sorts of connotations depending on tone of voice. Rachel and I probably both got called “kd lang” as a kid, because I can’t remember who’s older, but it’s not enough to be memorable if there’s an age difference. Therefore, I feel very tender toward her even though we’ve never met. Another person with whom I could set a date, step off a plane, give her a hug, and go for beers. On the surface, we are the same person, and not because we actually are. We are holding the same banner at the same parade. Rachel is one of those people that I think “I’d be happy with her.” It guides me as to who I actually want to date because not only do Rachel and I not live in the same city, she already has a partner and they’re so happy it’s impossible not to be happy for them. It is cool that she works here sometimes, though, because if we ran into each other I think we’d have fun. She could certainly introduce me to women I’d have never met otherwise, the reason I came to Washington in the first place. I didn’t want to be a Texas writer. I came here to play.
And with Rachel, it wouldn’t be about meeting women in terms of dating. It would be walking down the hallway and Hillary Clinton stopping us for a second. I wouldn’t have any business with Hillary and I wouldn’t care what their conversation contained. I would just be honored to hear something like that. It wouldn’t just be Hillary Clinton, either. Rachel knows everyone. She’s so powerful she probably knows we’re talking about her right now.
I am sometimes one of those women who likes murder podcasts, and always someone who likes “dark history.” Bailey Sarian covers both my bases with two shows available on YouTube and as a podcast. “Mystery, Makeup, and Murder” is a long form lecture on a murder while Bailey is applying her makeup. I love it because it’s so informal, and very much like reading one of my own blog posts because she just lays it all out there like we’re sitting there having a drink. She is also an outstanding makeup artist, and reminds me of Kevyn Aucoin with her style. I flip back and forth between MM&M on YouTube and audio because even though I am not into makeup as a general rule, she is so gorgeous that sometimes I just want to watch her in a not-creepy way for when I do decide to get “all nellied out.” The new foundations that are coming out are like magic. You can basically PhotoShop your whole face in 15 minutes flat. For the uninitiated, “all nellied out” is queer for someone looking extraordinarily femme and comes from Nellie Olson in “Little House on the Prairie.” I don’t do it much anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m not good at it. But really, when it comes to Bailey, I’m more attracted to the murder. She is just the wrapping that comes with the murder. It’s an excellent package.
When MM&M became insanely popular, a company asked her to do a second podcast called “Dark History.” These are long-form lectures that translate just as well on audio because she’s not doing something else. There are obviously dark episodes, like Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but also things that most people don’t think about, like the war over pineapples and sugar. The child labor in chocolate and coffee. It’s just fascinating and I recommend it both because it is interesting and so is Bailey.
Indirectly, Bailey changed the direction of my media-watching habits because for the last, I don’t know, year or so? I haven’t really watched TV. I’ve watched YouTube. Finding MM&M and Dark History led me to watching other long form lectures, which in effect, sent me back to college. I haven’t seen all the latest shows because I’ve been thinking about the Roman empire. 😉 No, seriously. I watch lectures by college professors on history- military and CIA particularly because that’s what I’m researching. Right now, it doesn’t matter what era of military history it is, as long as we’re talking about WWII forward.
That’s because before then, we didn’t have an official intelligence service (and my novel focuses on both defense and intel equally). We had “Wild Bill Donovan,” America’s one-man traveling Langley. He had few friends in this town. Any mystery and cool factor over CIA that exists today isn’t based on them, I assure you. Military hated intelligence at first because they weren’t helpful, they were a threat to their authority. Americans love CIA because Ian Fleming charmed them into it. George Tenet knows this better than anyone else. He knew that CIA needed a win, so he was the one that declassified the operation so that the story of the Canadian houseguests could be told.
That’s because he knew Britain was in love with James Bond, and so was America. What if it was provable that CIA has a spy who is just as lovable? It has to be a good movie if my heart goes a little squishy every time I see Ben Affleck and it’s not because of “Chasing Amy” (I do not know a single bisexual girl who didn’t become absolutely 100% obsessed with that movie….. maybe I’m less bi than I thought or something.)…. and honestly, it’s exciting thinking about who I’d like to play Jonna if “The Moscow Rules” is also optioned (and she’s told me that there’s interest, but nothing has come of it- no ink). Kristen Stewart might be a good choice because she and Jonna both have the same vibe- feminine and rough and tumble. Same for someone like Megan Fox, Mila Kunis, etc. It would have to be an actor about Friends-cast age because if I was Jonna, I’d want Ben to play Tony in TMR, too (I’m just thinking out loud. Jonna, you can stop me at any time…. kidding, I don’t know if she reads me, but it’s not impossible). I can’t think of anyone I would choose based on direct comparison in looks, because I don’t think that the best actors do imitations. For instance, I don’t think Peter Dinklage actually looks like Cyrano De Bergerac, but I do know he chewed the scenery. It wasn’t an imitation. Dinklage became him.
I would choose Taylor Schilling to play Jonna if she hadn’t already played Tony’s first wife in Argo. I don’t remember how many years it was post-Iran, but she died of cancer before Tony and Jonna started working together.
Here’s the most important scene in “The Moscow Rules” to me, and I will be seriously pissed if they leave it out of the movie. Tony and Jonna worked in disguises, right? So they were in charge of giving people their disguises and training them to detect when they were about to get made. They did this by taking the “kids” to Georgetown and letting them loose, a spy game. They all have different skills, like one’s a linguist, one’s got the map in their head, etc. However, all the spies have to be functional in everything. It’s all about leaning on each other’s strengths and being capable when you’re alone. I think it’s the part about spying that’s ignored the most- how fun the training is. God forbid you get a job where you actually enjoy yourself.
I am sure that in a lot of ways, The Farm is like boot camp. You get out and the real world bears no resemblance to anything you just learned. The courage to be a spy isn’t being fearless all the time. It’s letting go of the fear that you’re going to suck and acknowledging that it’s okay to suck until you know what you’re doing. However, if you’re going to be a spy, know that it’s not a movie. Err on the side of caution because other people’s lives are in your hands. You could get people killed by leaving a newspaper in a coffee shop. It was an accident, and assets still got made.
If I sound like a I know what I’m talking about, it’s exclusively because of podcasts. After seeing “Argo,” I began to look for other writers that did things like it- and then Tony and Jonna released the book in reaction to the movie. But by looking around for writers, that included listening to podcasts about intelligence. Everything I’ve said is something I’ve heard directly, or is my opinion based on something someone else said.
I notice things that people don’t say in audio, more clearly on video. For instance, when I first started dating Zac, Jonna Mendez scared the life out of me on YouTube. We’re friends in real life, it wasn’t directed at me in any way, and yet my stomach clenched. She said something about “when you work for an intelligence agency, it’s not your family that’s the problem. It’s your friends.” And yet, for her, it was the other way around because she did tell someone in her family that made it a huge deal all the time, causing her not to tell her best friend for 35 years… interesting.
In fact, I’m not sure that said best friend still doesn’t know, because I don’t know if the friend was still living when she said that to the audience. Betraying a boyfriend with infidelity is child’s play, and both Zac and I are clear on it. I don’t have a problem with saying I’m dating Zac Wood here because I say it on Facebook, his profile is public, and it would come to someone’s attention faster than it ever would here in terms of search results. That being said, I don’t say things like the specific name of his agency, either. When I say he went to Langley or whatever, it’s because they’re his clients, not the other way around. You could probably Google all that, but my friends/fans on Facebook could do the same thing because he follows me personally and professionally. In short, I don’t want his Facebook profile and his character here to be different, because I want his professional persona to only be what he projects, and for my reactions to him to be genuine without touching on anything too personal in a business sense.
For instance, he can’t discuss troop movements in Ukraine, but we can both geek out over “Folksoda,” “Burn After Reading,” and “Slow Horses.” Neither of us have seen that last one. It would be a cold day in hell before either of us had time to schedule a marathon, but if we did it, “Slow Horses” would be a good one. It’s not that we don’t like being lazy and sitting on the couch. It’s that our lives are too packed to make too much of it. As a result, we make plans to watch things with no recognition of the fact that it’s been a month or so since we’ve seen each other and end up talking for six hours in a row instead.
I want to be with someone like Zac, and I only say “someone like Zac,” because I can have him, but I can’t have all of him. That doesn’t bother me. I just need to find my own partner if I want to settle down. I made the commitment not to start looking until January, because I do not want to be the type of person that turns my back on “The War Daniel” at a time when he needs love the most. He was lost in a pit of despair, anger, and addiction that will only start to lift in January (at the earliest) because it will have been a year since his last drink and his brain will be in a totally different place. No one knows this more than a doctor, and that’s why I call him “The War Daniel.” John Hurt plays “The War Doctor” in the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who, and Daniel (before he retired) was a medical Navy Corpsman embedded with a team in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. If he’d done the same job as a civilian, he could be certified as both a medical and surgical nurse practitioner, and in some cases is, I believe, superior to an MD trauma surgeon on his best day. Most people who have been to medical school didn’t have to put a brain back together under cover fire.
That is why I am comfortable living with him like royalty or paupers, because he deserves to earn his fortune and he also deserves to kick back and just be poor, living off his retirement so that he doesn’t have to ever do anything he doesn’t want to do ever again.
Dana’s dad (my former father-in-law, high comedy) was a Marine, but he was in the JAG and went into private practice later. I think Daniel could do something like that if he wanted, because he has the mind that would make law incredibly easy for him. But that’s only if he wanted to change careers. If he went to school to become a nurse practitioner or a doctor for real, that’d be a good move, too. It’s just that I wouldn’t want to do something if it caused triggers in me, but Daniel is in the unique position of never being able to walk away at any time. He has a patient population that will never in a million years trust anyone else. They may not have physically seen each other for ten years, but he’ll still get calls in the middle of the night. Sometimes, it’s easy, like “I can’t tell anyone I have a rash there.” Sometimes, it’s talking someone down who literally has a gun to their heads because he’s the only psychiatrist they’ve got.
Daniel could become president of the United States and he’d still be a doctor. He’d still be The Doctor. And here’s the thing. Daniel is George W. Bush if George W. Bush was smart. That’s because he’s the W. version of Bill Clinton without the rabid infidelity….. and he’s a war hero, having won an award that most win posthumously. Daniel could become president of the United States, and I know it like the back of my hand. But I do not want him for that. I would hate every minute of it. I have more in common with Michelle Obama than I don’t. All I’m saying is that if he decided he wanted to be president, people would show up in droves.
That’s because he’s got a George W. demeanor and my political/historical/writer mind. If he did want to become president, I could help him do it. That’s because I’d be great at writing his speeches in the background.
“When did you write that last part?” “In the car.”
If he is Jed Bartlett, I would have to grow into the role of Abby….. but he already has his Sam, Toby, Josh, and Donna…… on multiple levels.
“Oh. This is bad on so many levels.”
Accidentally sleeping with a law student that also happens to be a prostitute is exactly the kind of trouble I’d be in all the time, too. This is because a prostitute, lawyer, and preacher’s kid (and spy, feeding my special interest) have one thing in common. They’re all the type of people that connect to other people immediately and have interesting stories because of it. With someone like Laurie, she would have set my brain on fire talking about SCOTUS cases before I ever realized she was a professional…… another thing I wouldn’t give a fuck about because I would care so much more that she set my brain on fire, which is I think how Sam Seaborn would have reacted if he wasn’t deputy chief of staff……… who also thought at first that his boss’s daughter was like, nine to disastrous effect. He has an archetype, and it is me….. incidentally, I am also the archetype for Toby Ziegler because I believe he is coded as autistic. I see it clearly now because of The West Wing Weekly, which has made me look at the series again after many years. Scenes play in my head.
Ziegler acts like us, even stimming when he throws a ball against the wall to think more clearly. Everyone I know in real life just went “ohhhhhhhh.” Light bulb.
I’ve realized I stim by walking everywhere and dictating my notes. Attaching a sensory memory like walking makes an idea move faster and retain longer….. for instance, not only do I retain a lot of what I read, I retain a lot of what I write because typing is stimming in and of itself…… and honestly, prevents a lot of burnout because I am emotionally distanced from people while I write so I’m not anticipating someone else’s needs. I am fluent in my own and asking for your input so I can change my mind if I think you’re right….. at the very least, explaining my dealbreakers in detail so that someone understands why I can compromise so easily with some things and am so rigid about others. It all revolves around my disability because that’s something I can’t change, and is just as valid as diabetes or COPD. A panic attack in your mind is just as valid as an attack in your heart, and it makes me angry when people admit themselves to the emergency room with a real psychiatric issue. That’s because most of the time, it’s treated like a “false alarm,” thereby ignoring the underlying problem and ensuring that if it happened today, it will also happen next week because Xanax isn’t important and surgeons have prepared for battle. You can smell disappointment in the air.
If you’ve ever watched Scrubs, it’s the most accurate medical show in the history of the world because Todd is for real. Surgical really does have a bigger complex than medical, even though medical is generally smarter because they don’t just pull it out and see it like a plumber. They’re detectives. In my opinion, House is superior to your basic cardiologist, if you are unclear on what I’m saying. It is absolutely the difference between medical science and medical art.
I say this because J.D. is another good archetype for me. In fact, I would say that I’m more like J.D. than I am most characters on television and not because I have experience in medicine myself. It’s that my ability to learn the jargon has been heightened an enormous amount by living with e medical detective.
Because we also lived in Houston and I went to a math and science magnet in middle school, I was fascinated by her being a doctor because I thought she should apply for the space program. She said, “but Leslie…. I already am a space doctor. I’m a “room atologist.” Here’s the serious part underneath the conversation. Going to space is all about improvisation because you don’t have any tools or materials you didn’t pack.
My stepmother’s second favorite stethoscope was from the medical bag of a Playskool set, and I’m passing this information to all my friends who are still field docs…. but check them out and if they’re not good anymore, try to find one on e-bay from the 90s if you can plan in advance. Retro toys are all the rage- it’s not impossible. It’s something that bar being in the space program, if you don’t have it you can find it at most big box stores on the fly….. provided Playskool hasn’t fixed something that wasn’t broken. It makes me laugh that a Playskool medical bag is as essential as a burner phone in some cases…….. and a tampon can save your life in two ways. It’s ironic that two male soldiers told me why I needed to carry tampons on me at all times even if I didn’t use them.
To pivot to that story, the first way is if you get injured. They’re a great addition to a Band-Aid if you’re bleeding profusely (and you can put it directly into a wound if it’s deep enough). The second way it’s absolutely crucial requires two more ingredients. In order to start an all-weather fire (not foolproof), you need a tampon, a way to start a fire, and some petroleum jelly, which is most useful to keep in your car if the temperature drops and you’re stranded. The reason that the tampon needs the petroleum jelly is that it makes the flame last longer, essentially turning the tampon into a candle. It’s not enough to last more than 5-10 minutes, but it is a better shot at catching kindling than using matches, sticks, and paper.
Another thing I’ve learned in terms of the whole field doc schtick is that multitools and “spy pens” are no joke. They’re not practical for everyday with things like mini-glassbreakers, so it’s kind of like having a truck. Alternately and absolutely the most useful and wasteful thing you’ve ever bought depending on the task at hand.
For instance, a parachute cord bracelet that unwinds is another thing it’s useful to keep on you for emergencies, but the reason it’s not useful is that it doesn’t go with every outfit; who knows if you’ll have it if said time where it’s necessary is absolute and wearing it is optional?
If you are a photographer, my attitude is extremely similar. The most important camera you’ll ever own is on your phone, not your Nikon “Turn it Up to Stupid o’Clock.” That’s because you don’t want to lug around all the equipment, and your smart phone that records in HD for video and takes 12 MP photographs (perfect for printing) is in your pocket. If you have a smart watch, you also have a remote. Anything you can do on the best Nikon can be done with an iPhone or an iPad, a Samsung tablet or phone. When you can carry something so heavy and aren’t required, you won’t.
That’s because most people don’t specialize in photography and filmmaking, therefore do not need the file size that most professional cameras have on photos and video. Even then, for pros it becomes about convenience and they’ll deal with lesser quality because of it.
Seriously, get a tablet and it will change your life because it’s so light you’re more likely to have it on you. The two tablets that accomplished this the best for me were the Nexus 7 and the iPad mini. There was enough real estate to be able to edit accurately, yet they were small enough that it felt like the same diameters in terms of height and width in portrait mode as a novel. Great for things like writing documents and would fit in the front pocket of a hoodie or my smallest bag. My problem with them has never been the form factor, but that they haven’t been able to fit better hardware than is currently available into that form factor. That’s because CPU power for 7-inch tablets is “budget” because they’re going off of price and not use case scenario.
For instance, I could build a marvelous tablet out of a Raspberry Pi Zero because it would fit into a tablet form factor. However, it does not have the power of a Raspberry Pi, which won’t unless you’re just talking about a laptop with a touchscreen on the front. There’s no way to get it small and cool. Pick a lane. It’s not that they can’t stay cool, it’s that laptop cases that don’t come with fans are more likely to overheat, and there’s currently no Raspberry Pi laptop case that’s immune to it. The best I could do with a Raspberry Pi Zero is a file server or a smart mirror, because a graphical interface would run like a three-legged dog. Clicking a menu, then being filled with rage because you’ve come back and it’s still not done, etc. Because of this, it would take a ton of work and the best performance I could get would come with an interface that looked like NASA in the 60s, with Bluetooth for a keyboard and wifi to access other devices on the network. That would indeed be useful, but not on the go. You’d be limited to a tablet where you had to carry the keyboard everywhere, the interface wouldn’t support a touch screen (it would, but you’d get tired of it quickly), bail to the command line, and be limited to the applications you can run using only text. Games like Pong. A text editor. A web browser that doesn’t really work anymore, lynx. An e-mail client so ancient that all college students my age have used it, pine- so old that when I use it, I feel nostalgic and put up with its limitations often. But we didn’t use it the whole time. We transitioned to Eudora at University of Houston. One of the funniest support calls I ever got was from a lady who asked me how to configure her “Endora” account. She asked me why I was laughing and I told her that Eudora was a mail client. Endora was the grandmother on “Bewitched……” Really, I wasn’t laughing at her. She reminded me of my mother’s mother, who made malapropisms standard operating procedure. She once told me she was going to lay down on the couch with an African (afghan). I doubted it, because losing certain words was so hard for her.
I’m not ashamed of being a Texan, but there’s always been a lot wrong with it.
After all, I did agree to marry George W….. if W. was smart. I’m not holding onto him forever, but I am holding onto him until I am sure that we’ve both had enough time to decide whether we made the right decision in the moment or not. I believe, like Meag and me, that it wasn’t that we aren’t good together. It’s that it was the wrong time and the wrong place, because with his addiction and both our mental illnesses/processing disorders, we were trying to find a secure environment in a hurry. But read “Blink” and then question whether I was wrong after you’ve had time to really take it in.
I blew Supergrover’s mind with two blinks in a row, but because of my autism, I could express my entire thought process in a way that came across clearly in text. She was excited for Daniel and me once I explained the ins and outs. That it wasn’t a snap decision like a wedding in Vegas. It was taking a leap toward a better life with a friend I’d known since I was seven and has a daughter I’m completely in love with as if I’d had her myself. It blows my mind that I’m old enough to be the stepmom of a 25-year-old. It was also good for me to have a partner, that polyamory meant he didn’t care if I fell in love with him or not because being friends trumped everything else, that having his back was more important than a wife. That whether I ended up being Leo or Abby it wasn’t a dealbreaker. I said the same thing to him. That even if I can’t be Abby, I’ll always be CJ.
This is better than, for instance, being with Meag and secretly pining for……. someone else. Being with anyone and pining for someone else, now a recurring theme I can’t ignore because it lends itself to cheating when you have ADHD and autism. Your brain makes you ruminate about someone who is not your partner and if they have ADHD, you won’t have to guess because they won’t keep their mouths shut for love for money.
Ask 50 neurodivergent people. We all agree.
That is why research suggests that poly behavior among neurodivergent people is sky high. They throw truth bombs whether you like it or not, which actually makes it easier to communicate because boundaries are secure. It’s especially common among couples where both halves are neurodivergent, because they understand the idea that obsession and complete disinterest are symptoms and there are times when both of us are going to tap out and come back together. It’s extreme because of the processing disorder, not because we’re mad at each other. There is also a complete and total difference between the love you have for a partner and the love you have in NRE (new relationship energy). The former is deeper, like drinking fine wine or looking at a Renoir. The latter is Jackson Pollack deep fried on a stick.
You can enjoy both environments depending on mood, but to be clear your partner is never going to be Jackson Pollack ever again…….. and not because they’re less valuable. It’s the nature of the dopamine when you first meet. Once it’s gone and lust isn’t the “forward note,” it is only really then that you find out where the rubber meets the road. I am neurodivergent and find it quickly. That is either because I am pastoral in nature and people spill things to me up front, or they are annoyed by my ADHD and Autism. There is no in between and my relationships tend to burn bright and flame out because of it, including at work.
I am not alone. I think something like 80% of autistic people are unemployed at any given time, because think of how hard work must be if you were bullied in school and teachers of “real” subjects looked down on special ed? Do you think that bosses and coworkers are in any way different when we graduate from high school? Teachers decided that you didn’t need it if you were smart, limiting anything we would have learned to help us later on. It makes for a hostile work environment because without special ed, we might have suffered in school and still made it through, but we didn’t learn any thought processes except social masking. Nothing even close to what’s available on autistic YouTube right now…… and lots of podcasts are just YouTube videos with the visuals cut, so the videos are the podcasts I listen to whether it’s on YouTube or not.
Everything I have said in this essay can be found in one podcast or another. I am so grateful that talk radio has expanded in this way…… but podcasts can only do so much when I want to see Rachel Maddow instead of just listening to her voice.
We all need more time to understand things than we think we do, and are trying our dead-level best to overschedule; we’re all going place to place and taking in none of them. When I travel again, I’d like to stay at least a week if possible. It takes a while for my body clock to accept a new rhythm, particularly going east. Jet lag was objectively worse coming back to DC from Oregon than it was in the moments I was taking the obligatory Portland airport photo (iykyk). I am using jet lag as an example of needing time because it’s the best way I know how to explain autism to a layperson. Imagine feeling like you have the pressure of your emotions changing to that degree all the time rather than just after a long-haul flight. Taking on change is easier when you feel normal, right? Would you enjoy living in jet lag fog permanently?
This is why transition time is essential to the autistic brain, and why I am yet again grateful that I do not drive. I caused my last wreck from rumination. I’d talked to a close friend earlier in the day, and we hadn’t spoken for years before that. She’d ghosted me without a trace and then reappeared. It was jarring, a new environment for me, so I did what any normal person would do. I thought about it so hard I ran into a guardrail trying to blow town for Frederick, the closest Waffle House. I was about 800 feet from a triple order of hash browns with chili, cheese, and onions (superior to Frito Pie, fight me) when I took a curve a little too hard. Girls with blonde hair will do that to you.
Editor’s Note:
You should absolutely add Fritos to bean burritos at Taco Bell. Also, every once in a while when I hit 7-Eleven, I buy a snack bag of Fritos for the back of the pantry because I’m a Texan and I don’t make the rules. Sometimes you have to have Frito Pie and in that instance, there is no substitute so you might as well be prepared. Not being prepared is such a rookie Texan mistake, because whoever heard of homemade Fritos? You’re going to the store. It’s not that you can’t make AMAZEBALLS tortilla chips at home. I can and they’re fabulous. But they sure as hell don’t taste like Fritos…….. just like pastry chefs are going to use Oreos/Oreo crusts. They’re not going to reinvent that particular wheel.We’ve learned it over time.
Back to our regularly scheduled program.
What you learn with enough time is how to control your environment to the extent that you can and let go of the rest. I’m not going to be able to convince Supergrover that what she read as narcissism was actually an autistic meltdown. I am sure that she regularly thinks I am the most toxic person she’s ever met because I just keep throwing these truth bombs because I’m an asshole and not because I am genuinely curious and love her more than anything on earth. If I throw an emotional bomb, it means I care about the answer and want to hear it. I heard a line from “Friends” that expresses this so well…. when Chandler looks into Monica’s eyes and tells her that she’s high maintenance, but he likes maintaining her. I am not an asshole with a God complex, she has complex problems that cannot be solved with “yeah, I’m fine.” If you want to see a question as an attack, you will.
I honestly found out I was autistic because of this relationship. I had to find out two things. The first was why I was so empathetic on the inside and yet it came across as being self-absorbed. Everyone knows that autistic person, or we know each other. Bet.
I learned over time that the meltdowns happened in a cycle because I would unmask and start letting my brain run wild on these ADHD/Autistic tangents and she would take offense at me not acting like a woman, seriously, and I’m not being dismissive toward her. It’s that traditional women are programmed to fix/please and anticipate everyone else’s needs.
We used to be a little too much alike in that arena, but I felt safe enough to stop with her because she’s so goddamn strong. She lays down the truth bombs as easily and often as I do. It’s just that hers are in the context of what she knows, and mine are in the context of what I do. Her emotional bombs are surrounded by not understanding my neurodivergence, her stepping all over my ass while I’m trying to teach her why my reactions to her are so much more intense than her reactions to me and failing miserably. Why it feels like I’ll always go a little stupid in that dreamy-eyed kind of way when I think of her, and have to stuff that kind of emotion back because it’s part of a social mask I don’t have. Just so many sensory issues that I attach to her, like the smell of coffee or the feel of the t-shirt that I kidded her I ordered that “has her portrait on the front.”
I have already said that the building blocks of our relationship are adrenaline and dopamine. My ADHD/Autism created those memories of smell when my brain chemicals were the most flooded. It’s why I’m so attached to her with a love that won’t die, but not like I loved Dana. Like I love my parents and siblings. The thing is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves me the same way, because when Sam dumped me I told her and then she said her Mama Wolverine claws were coming in. I have never been so grateful for anything in my entire life because my next line to her was that my biggest delight in life was thinking about just how pissed off she was about this. It was that night I formed my first company. It’s called Leslie Lanagan & Pet Monsters on a Fraying Leash, Inc. We’re waiting on our 501, though.
When I become the most upset, I have a meltdown and then burnout. In those moments, burnout looks like me losing function and going mute, only communicating through writing. I get sensory issues from eating because it’s an ADHD hyperfocus interruption and I switch to vegan protein shakes. If that’s not enough, I develop sensory issues with leaving my house, reinforced by depression, anxiety, and an overactive imagination. The overactive imagination is a straight up problem because everything I imagine is a hundred times worse due to rejection sensitivity dysphoria, a common trait among neurodivergent people because we’ve been programmed to think of ourselves as problematic.
I should mention that there is also fascinating research suggesting that the number of autistic people who are nonbinary, queer, and poly is off the charts. My behavior suggests I’m not poly unless we’re talking about writing and physiciality, because emotional intimacy with multiple people is easy. Physically? Not so much. I’m just not wired that way. That doesn’t mean I’m not poly. It just means I probably wouldn’t meet someone on the ground and behave the same way. It remains to be seen whether I could manage that or not, and doing the work to see whether I’m doing the right thing for me or lending myself to getting into a situation where I can’t help myself and put someone I’ve made a monogamous agreement with completely uncomfortable because I broke the rules. Just because it happened organically doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. Just because it only happened to me doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.
I need to make it so clear that I cheated on Dana, but Supergrover didn’t cheat on Michael because of course since I’m queer, my reaction to her was different than her reaction to me. That doesn’t make my emotions to her invalid, just different. She also doesn’t have autism or ADHD, so none of her sensory issues are going to run as deep as mine, and she gave me some pictures that caused sensory issues, but not sexual ones. They activated my alpha dog and my mama wolverine. When I feel that way about someone, it makes me attracted to them…. and in fact, when I don’t feel connected to someone in that way, being physical doesn’t come up. Romance, as with all things, has two modes for me. Obsession and absolute disinterest. It’s why autistic people have trouble with relationships. If they have neurotypical partners who take everything personally, they will not be happy, and probably jump too quickly to the conclusion that their partners are lazy, unmotivated, and angry at them because of their rejection at lights out.
It was a relief to come to that resolution in my mind with Supergrover, that even though the relationship was not nor would ever be physical, I had learned a lot about the way I work in a relationship because she took so much personally that I never intended.
I remember telling her that it was really hard hearing about the abuse she endured as a child, that my heart walked out of my body and I just had to breathe through it. She thought I was trying to make her feel bad, but I was trying to explain both why our trauma bond was immediate and deep. She became a monotropic thought process, what I mean when I say she lives in my ink. I was telling her why I loved her with such intensity and drive, and that in some ways I was sorry that process came across as negative, but not sorry for loving her as much as I do. She’s amazing, and part of the reason that I haven’t fallen in love again is that I hold every woman to her standard and find other women uninteresting. Why would I put myself out there when intellectual stimulation is more important and no one gives it to me more than she does? No one will ever be able to beat her in that area, even though Zac and I are wrapped up in my special interest. It’s not because he’s not brilliant, it’s that we’re talking about history and she’s making it.
If you never believe another word I say, believe that.
She jokes that other women are the smartest woman in the room except her, but you don’t know the room where she said it and I do. She knows an actor I would kill to meet, and a director, and neither of them do what she does. She knows them by dumb luck, the same dumb luck that put us together. Karma is magic and I will never believe anything more than that. I got a gift from the universe at the exact moment it needed to drop in my lap, and my nose got red at that, the first signal I’m about to cry, when I wrote that. And yet, even Zac doesn’t know who she is and respects my privacy like I know when to stop pushing about work. She’s my “classified information,” for all practical intents and purposes. I could tell you if it wouldn’t embarrass her across the world, but I wouldn’t. I keep it tight to love her, not to diss you. The “classified information” joke just fits in with my whole vibe. I will never stop being, in the immortal words of Zac Wood, a “drooling fangirl” over CIA, but that’s only because I’ve seen the disparity between the way people treat soldiers and the way they treat spies. Civilians matter.
And I’m a judgmental bastard, just not of people. Of institutions and situations. It’s how I can feel every emotion in the spectrum about Supergrover. How love and fear are inextricably interrelated, why I have no problem walking on eggshells for years and yet struggled so hard with my needs being met that I finally walked away. It was killing my self esteem and better for me when I stopped letting it.
Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her, and at first it was every moment of every day. You don’t learn to let go overnight, and my writing has proved it. She’ll never be far from my thoughts, though, because in the last 10 years of my life, my thought processes and emotions regarding her have been so deeply ingrained. It’s why I even thought we’d be good for each other as partners in the first place, but not that I insisted on it. It was just too good a question not to ask, because it made sense at that point, a united front. But then my monotropic thought process spiraled out about that, too, and it was just bad juju. It was a question better left unanswered, I’m just autistic and ADHD. My autism made me hammer away at it and my ADHD gave me no impulse control.
I didn’t know how those diagnoses affected my behavior until I knew I had them. I only knew about one. I didn’t know about the other, that when I am in autistic mode relationships take over my whole brain because I’m also an INFJ. I wanted the best for both my red and yellow strings and got them tangled. It was a struggle to stop dwelling, but I’m glad I did it and I know the root cause.
I have learned not to let relationships take hold of me in that way because it makes me give all my energy toward making them a better person. All INFJs are attracted to teaching and social work sorts of positions because we want all of our close relationships to be the best people that they can be. I wasn’t obsessed with who Supergrover could be, but helping her to be her best self. An INFJ will not watch anyone stagnate.
It was all reinforced by the fact that it’s easier for me to talk to other people about their problems than it is for me to talk about mine, because then I can stop social masking. I can stop remembering to make my thought processes masked and just listen.
I notice things that no one else does and people call me brilliant for pointing it out when it’s something they love and hurtful even when I don’t mean harm. It’s a lost place to be when your self-esteem is dependent on other people to that extreme, because when you take off your social masking and other people react poorly, you drift toward making masking the priority and it drains your energy before you even have the spoons to leave the house. The meltdown/burnout cycle is real and it’s deep.
Neurotypical people can only take so much before they decide you’re too much for them, and that has been true of neurodivergent people since we were born. “Autism Speaks” has an awful video where a mother says in front of her child that she thought about strapping her into the car and killing them both. I am sure that she thought she could get away with it because her daughter wasn’t “high functioning,” whatever the fuck that means, and she has no idea what her daughter is capable of processing emotionally without being verbal. What if the internal tape that plays in her head is “my mom wanted to kill me and didn’t.” Being “high functioning” is being able to speak for the mute and letting them speak for me when I am….. more specifically, I am non-verbal a lot of the time but I can reach out through text.
I need the world to adapt around me, and I am not being selfish or egocentric when the problem runs as deep as children feeling like their parents don’t want them. I am not alone when I say that I feel the pain of being too much for people, driving my depression and anxiety. Everyone wants to stop me from drowning, but few people are willing to help me from falling into the river in the first place.
Supergrover did the best she could, just not fast enough for my autism not to kick in. A trauma bond is a hell of a drug. It’s what made me rearrange my life around her and not Dana. It was the same deal with her- I never wanted to have a situation with another partner where I leaked information that wasn’t supposed to go to them because I felt so bad when I did it. She forgave me and moved on, but thought it was impulsive to solve the problem.
When you have situations where your sensory issues attach to a problem and it gets deep fast, you move quickly…. often what leads to getting married in a hurry and things like that. You are always trying to create a secure environment and you’ll grasp at straws because acceptance of your neurodivergence is transient. Because of this, Supergrover is the longest of any of my significant relationships by almost three years. It was more significant to me because it was in my wheelhouse, the writing.
Her greatest gift to me was that time, and I’ve loved it despite walking away in frustration. I needed a secure environment and couldn’t get one, so I grasped at the comfort of isolation whether I wanted it or not.
I want more because she’s wonderful. I also love her enough to let her go because the relationship didn’t serve us presently like it did in the past. I didn’t have room for other people like Zac, and in some ways my pathways are so changed there might not ever be. Sam got in under the wire, but even then my attention didn’t completely turn.
I need more time to spend with her, but only in reflection if need be. I learned so much from her, and it’s time to take all that away because I don’t want to pour love into her if she does not accept it. I would rather be alone with my thoughts in that case. The affect she has on me is tremendous and I cannot underestimate its effect. She doesn’t think of her (or me) in this way, so it clouds our judgment on whether we’re telling the truth. We both have trauma reflexes, and don’t treat each other like we’re worthy of being treated like goddesses. That’s because the root of our anger is how we feel about ourselves. We are both fixer/pleasers, and both easily jump to the conclusion that the other means the worst.
For instance, when Supergrover said “I can do nothing about the past. I can do something about the present,” and “this is all I can manage,” I took it to mean I would never get anything I wanted and to die mad about it. What I didn’t say is “what can you do about the present that you haven’t in the past?” I saw the writing on the wall and pushed her away.
I will never know if I was correct, but I do know that our relationship had that cycle for 10 years and I didn’t want to do it anymore. There was quite a difference between Mama Wolverine and ignoring me because you think I’m goading and provoking you instead of asking me questions in return. We both got defensive immediately.
I never wanted a war, but I started it. I am only suffering under the terms and conditions of the surrender. My bad behavior was supposedly forgiven and I haven’t been able to express a need without nuclear war for eight years. I didn’t think she was lying because she said she forgave me. I thought she was lying to herself about how much she wanted to be friends with me because she always seemed pissed off. I know enough to know that the world doesn’t revolve around me, but I can feel the energetic difference between “I’m busy” and “I’m ignoring you” even in text.
For instance, I have lots of friends that I hope aren’t mad at me because I’ve gone mute and can’t handle conversations right now. I have enough energy for an occasional Facebook comment, but mostly I am spending my energy on changing my own thought processes here. I will never be able to sustain myself if I don’t. It is how my life is coming together, not how it is falling apart.
I had huge sensory issues that Zac didn’t tell me he had a roommate before I arrived on Sunday, but I told him that and he apologized. He wasn’t trying to offend me, just spaced it, but that didn’t render my feelings invalid. He’s a solid dude and remembers so many things I don’t remember saying, so I know he does listen to me, deeply, I just have to roll with it because he’s neurodivergent like me.
Stories That Are All True 