I love Facebook memories. Here’s a list of things I love about them:
From today:
I just put something together and I am freaking out. I posted a scholarly article the other day about how neurodivergent people are more likely to be queer. Check this out. It’s from my blog about a week ago:
It makes me happy today that I realized Bert from Sesame Street is coded as autistic. He has a paper clip and bottle cap collection. He likes to do like, five things. Anything else is annoying. He talks like he knows everything.
Ernie is an ADHD spazz basket.
I have been learning myself since I was two.
I just didn’t realize it until now.
From a year ago:
I don’t know why this randomly popped into my head, but it made me laugh so I’m writing it down for posterity. I used to have a tuxedo for performing in choir/orchestra concerts. A few days after one of them, I was sitting on a bar patio with friends when someone knocked over their beer. 90% of it landed all over me and I was miles from home. Thinking fast, I went to my car and changed. I’m walking back and one of my friends says to the other, “oh my God. She’s James Bond. She has a tux in the car.” Actually, I’d just forgotten to bring it inside after the concert, but I kept it in the car for three years after that (between washings, of course).
From 2016, this picture (I need a new prescription, btw):
From 2014:
Being at work while my nose runs is snot very much fun. In fact, it truly blows.
From 2013:
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.” -Doug Larson
So true. I have a jackass magnet on my forehead that must blink in neon letters “ALL CRAZY PEOPLE! I AM YOUR LEADER! YOU CAN TALK TO ME ABOUT ANYTHING!” because that’s what happens. I have been on public buses and learned that the driver is an alcoholic 7 hours sober. I have listened to miscarriages, divorces, broken arms, warts, you name it. I don’t know how to extract myself from crazy people so I just generally let them go until they run out of steam. As a result, I’m a good writer. What is the take-home message here? If you’re going to sit there and be weird, I’m going to watch you do it. And then I’m going to rat you out to the Fanagans.
From 2011:
I just downloaded the new Britney Spears album, and it’s just kind of meh. But then I imagined listening to it in a dark room full of sweaty gay men and neon lights. THEN it got better.
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
I have seen “Space Camp” at least 25 times since it came out. I was in love with both the camp itself AND Leah Thompson/Kate Capshaw. I don’t want to be an astronaut anymore, but I do still love women. Therefore, at least one lesson took. It is important to learn everything you do not want in adulthood as it is what you do.
Two or three years after “Space Camp” came out, I went to a science and math magnet in Houston called “Clifton Middle School.” I’ve actually spent time at NASA on more than a field trip. I was intimidated by science, fascinated by the way people have to teamwork up there. It’s all creativity whether or not you started with creativity in your wheelhouse or not.
Music gets under my skin faster than television, so I have not watched all of “Westworld” or “The Good Fight,” but I’ve listened to the themes on YouTube for days at a time. I feel that way about a lot of television themes. I have never seen Peter Gunn, but I have blasted the music at top volume screaming down 95. It’s especially fun hearing the vamp and inserting your own rendition of “Dope Nose” by Weezer.
I have seen “Argo” more than 25 times, but the difference between it and “Space Camp” is that by now, “Argo” lives in my brain and I can quote from it at will. The only lines I don’t know are in Farsi, but I still do the sounds and the hand motions. 😉 If someone starts a line from the dialogue, I can finish it. There aren’t any YouTube videos or articles I can stomach called “Things Even Real Fans Don’t Know About Argo,” because I could have made a better one and I know it. If that sounds too confident/arrogant of me, Jonna Mendez knows who I am, and Tony would have had I met him before he stopped doing public appearances (he once taught an entire room of people at The International Spy Museum how to forge Putin’s signature). It’s not Jonna’s story, but she did help write the book with Tony after the movie came out because there was such a demand for it. I knew that she was an uncredited writer on it, so I think she was surprised/pleased that I asked her to autograph my copy. So, my copy of “Argo” is unique, because it has both their signatures on it….. if I can track down Matt Baglio, I’ll have him sign it, too, because he’s the person that’s helped both of them on all their books. I think we’re friends on Twitter? I don’t know. Jonna hasn’t said where he lives, so I don’t know if he’s local or if they work together electronically.
For instance, I’ll bet you didn’t know that if you watch the busy airport scenes in Argo, Jonna and the kids are in it.
I told you I could make a better video. 😉
In terms of TV series(es), I do not have HBO. But if I did, my two comfort shows there are “Six Feet Under” and “Homeland.”
I was so shocked by the end of Homeland that I felt like someone shot me. My nerve endings just all went to shit. Now that the show is so old, I’ll just spoil it so I can tell you what I didn’t like about it.
Carrie was a bipolar mastermind working on the side of the United States. THEY FUCKED WITH THE FORMULA. She could always pull it out in the end. She could always make things go her way. And then all of the sudden she started working for Russia? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. Yes, I realized she replaced our Russian asset there, but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to betray the US and then get a “get out of jail free” card after you’ve already screwed us to the wall. Saul’s face looked like he was pleased at the end. Why he didn’t burn that bridge is beyond me.
She self-destructed and shouldn’t have had any friends at the agency left. The great part about the show was seeing a bipolar person doing the work of five case officers because she could think outside the box. The ending was a shitshow and I will hate it forever because it just shows that CIA was right all along not to trust her, and it adds to the exact stigma that the show was trying to erase.
“Six Feet Under” still resonates with me because my family worked a little bit like a family who runs a funeral home (I was a United Methodist preacher’s kid). I remember talking with my friend Meg about this, because she grew up in a house with a funeral home like the Fishers and our lives were not dissimilar. It’s also my “Lindsay” show, the one thing that both of us are always in the mood to watch.
As she says, “Leslie, you’re David. I’m Claire……. and there’s a little bit of Nate in everybody.”
I have found over time that I’m actually more like Keith, uptight like a cop and also rushing in to take care of everyone. It’s an accurate description of INFJ/Autistic, physically reacting at people breaking the rules and holding taking care of people above all of them.
Wait. I have to say that to myself again. I think it’s one of the biggest truth bombs I’ve ever uncovered about myself:
I’m physically reacting to people breaking the rules, and holding taking care of people above all of them.
In order for me to love people the way they need to be loved, I have to keep my autism at bay. I have to keep physically reacting to other people’s problems the way I do my own. I physically reacted to one of Supergrover’s issues so hard that she thinks I’m out to get her, when I’m actually empathizing with her. I don’t know what I did to give her the message that what she told me was bad. She’s been having a fight with me that is in her own head, really, because she thinks I want to make her feel guilty when I am telling her the reality of how her behavior affects me….. and that we should talk about it.
She starts from the position that I’m out to get her, which means she won’t open up. That causes me physical pain, because I know that what she thinks is not true, and I cannot fix her problem for her. She accused me of wanting to rush in and fix everything in someone else’s life, when that is exactly what we both want to do to our friends because we’re both big sisters. She just does not like being the younger one. At all. In any way. That means she’s blind to the fact that I’m doing the same thing to her all the time that she does for everyone else. She thinks I’m out to get her while I’m trying to do the same thing for her that I do for all the people I consider brothers and sisters. It’s a fundamental breakdown in communication, the can we’ve been kicking.
Media helps me to understand all of this, but I learn about emotions through intelligence movies and TV better than anything else because they’re procedural, even if the procedure is completely made up. I can also tell you the exact moment I switched procedurals in college. I used to like detective shows, and then there was “Alias.”
I’ve watched “Alias” many, many times. I still return to it when I want to be with those characters- something about it won’t let go of you. Jennifer Garner is so cute, the perfect balance of sweet and “I can kill you in 57 different ways, none of them pleasant.”
I’ve been trying to find a new character like hers to love for years, so I have gravitated toward intelligence shows ever since. I know they’re fake as FUCK because the CIA cannot tell everyone their current methods and sources. I don’t care. Emotionally, they’re all written the same way.
The way you get an accurate depiction of intelligence is to write about it in a time period where those operations are declassified. Those documents will tell you exactly how they did what they did without sugar coating anything. Dialogue can be accurate because there’s no reason for smoke and mirrors 40 years later…. or however long it takes for your interest to declassify, which may be a lot longer.
It is why I like the founding years of CIA the most, their origin story. OSS/early CIA operations are declassified, essential for an author if I want anything to sound real. The easiest stories to make true to life are now science fiction, I believe, because there is so much more information on how those intelligence operations actually ran between Russia and the US in the 50s and 60s. The way we got to the moon first was largely due to a war between CIA and KGB, because we had real chatter they were going to put nukes on the moon.
Speaking of which, I got to see Vince Houghton at Jonna’s talk the other night. So good to see him. Vince was the host of “SpyChat” before Dr. Andrew Hammond took over. His non-fiction book about intelligence is called “Nuking the Moon,” which is what made me think of him. 😉 I don’t think Dr. Hammond was in the audience, because I would have known his Scottish brogue anywhere. And yes, it is like James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser does Spycast.
I will be taking no further questions. 😉
Vince was actually on a PBS documentary about intelligence at Bletchley Park, and it focused on women. Of course Alan Turing is important, but he wasn’t the only operative there, either.
I find now that people’s true stories matter more to me than television and movies. I reference old media because I watch YouTube most of the time. That gets me Frontline and all the other PBS shows, plus videos about people making things. Live bootlegs are also exciting because they come in video now.
I just can’t think of channels that I subscribe to that would be that well known, and I’m always trying to use universal illustrations because my audience is all over the world.
I should start looking for an intelligence show to watch while Zac is busy, because I love “Slow Horses” and I could never cheat on him. That way, I will at least have some updated references and shows that aren’t 20 years old that still appeal to me.
I started one on Hulu that has so far been outstanding called “The Lazarus Project.” Go into it blind. It’s a rabbit hole with a great payoff.
I can already tell you that “Slow Horses” is going to be one of my new comfort shows. I’ll give you the basics.
River Cartwright blew up a bunch of people by not stopping a terrorist…… in a simulation at MI-6. It is taken every bit as seriously as if it had really happened, but they can’t fire him; his grandfather used to be “C” or something…. unclear, but a higher up (my prediction is that this is going to be Tinker Tailor and that the grandfather is a puppet master. I have only seen season one. Please don’t spoil).
Anyway, since they can’t fire River, they place him at “Slough House,” which is where all washed up MI-6 go. Then, it becomes a story about a team who everyone thinks is shit flipping the script. If I had to compare it to an American movie, it’s “Moneyball,” and the writers are just as good as Aaron Sorkin. They take everyone’s imperfections and they blend…… because River is every bit as smart as his grandfather and he is able to lead others. He made a mistake in a simulation, and Mi-6 isn’t prepared to accept the fact that River is the real deal, or they know exactly who he is and have to keep him out of the way. Unclear, and a brilliant plot device. Is his boss disgusted with him or proud of him? The audience knows. River doesn’t.
I love Gary Oldman, who plays River’s boss. If I had a picture in my mind when I watched the video of Jonna calling herself “a real hardass at CIA,” it was Lamb.
I also love Jack Lowden, as well. I’ve gotten to know him through watching Graham Norton. It was great because I knew who Jack was before I got into “Slow Horses” at all.
“Killing Eve” is another one of those shows I’ve watched over and over, but I haven’t seen the end. I just keep rewatching the first few seasons, thinking I’m going to rewatch the whole thing and giving up. The pilot is the best episode of them all, anyway. It is a fight within me over whether Carolyn or Eve is my favorite character. Oh, wait. No. There’s not. I love Carolyn. It’s my mother’s name, as well as her character being an archetype I happen to love.
She kind of reminds me of Jack Bristow in “Alias,” except Jack had a bigger heart. Eve Pulaski is a lot like River Cartwright.
I used to love the show “Whiskey Cavalier,” because it was a very lighthearted look at CIA that didn’t suck up all the air in the room with drama. It was often ridiculous and therefore, well, fun.
I don’t always want as much realism as possible. Sometimes, I just want to be able to let go and laugh.
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.
For people like me (INFJ, highly sensitive, neurodivergent), empathy is a river of everpresentlovingkindness and a waterfall of tears. My mirror neurons go off for all people who struggle. Because of the negative effects that come with ADHD and Bipolar disorder, sometimes that part of me seems dammed, but it’s not. My focus has turned away, but the emotions are still there. I can’t turn them off, especially with ADHD, because there are 57 channels (and nothing’s on).
I try to focus on empathy, though, because if I didn’t I would recede into myself. For instance, my love of real world intelligence comes from more than one place. I lost a family member in Somalia who was a helicopter pilot for C/DIA, so when I see the stars on the wall at Langley, I know one of them is a personal memorial for me to visit should I get the chance. Another is spies in popular culture, but not necessarily fictional characters. “The Courier” is a true story, as is “Argo.” But those I watched as an adult. As a kid, I was introduced to James Bond and that was a love affair all its own. I didn’t want to marry James Bond. I wanted to be him.
I think that’s because I didn’t connect it that I would have to move to England to do that. I love CIA because I’m an American and feel proud of us, but I am equally obsessed with MI-6 (and the Tom Clancy level of detail that John Le Carre puts into his books). My favorite stories involve collaboration between the two institutions, which I’m sure happens all the time in real life, but isn’t reflected on screen all that often. The reason I think that is because I met a spy from London that was basically “on loan” to us for a task force on human trafficking. I thought that was infinitely cool and became interested in other countries’ intelligence agencies as well. KGB/GRU is fascinating even though I don’t particularly have a fondness for Russia itself.
I am focused on the Vietnam War era of CIA because I am indirectly writing a book about it… but the Cold War is a close second. Most of the retired spies I’ve met were active in the 80s and early 90s, steeping me in stories of East German and Russian operations and cute little Trabants. Regarding my book, it’s actually a platonic love story between two men who are trying to prevent the war from happening altogether. I do not know how the novel is going to end. That’s the best part. I want to write this book because I want to read it.
I’ll put a picture of a Trabant at the end because they’re not popular cars anymore and you simply must see one. To me, they look like pets. When Chevron and Pixar created their cartoon cars, they really missed the boat. A talking Trabant would be every bit as cute to me as a puppy.
The fact that Zac has worked in intelligence since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is not lost on me and is in fact extraordinarily meaningful. That’s because historically, queer people haven’t been allowed to be spies. It’s not because the US was actively trying to be homophobic….. I mean, they were, but there’s an extremely valid reason behind it that I cannot ignore. If they were caught, it was a short path to blackmail. Either come work for us or we’ll blow up your whole life. I don’t have any anger or bitterness against CIA for not being able to hire me, either, for a similar reason.
If I was caught, the first thing that would be done in another country is taking away my psych meds, even if they were available there. That’s because they automatically think that making me unstable is the best way to get me to talk. Joke’s on them. I wouldn’t talk, but I would be a rage-filled chihuahua (I’m 5’2). Physical withdrawal from an SSRI or mood stabilizer lasts weeks. I have a feeling that wouldn’t go well for me. It’s discrimination, but also empathy. They’re not going to allow me to be in a situation where someone takes away my medication.
Knowing that part of it comes from being a fan of both “Homeland” and “Jack Ryan.” Carrie Mathison did get made and had her psych meds denied. My bipolar disorder is far less severe than hers, but it drove the point home. James Greer was sneaking heart medication, I believe. Different drug, same issue.
It’s devastating because I really would have liked to work on the whole world’s problems at once. I’m just not dumb enough to lead the crusade in a fight to get me hired because for as much as it sucks, I agree with them. The problem, to me, is not getting hired. It’s what happens after you join. I have trouble believing that a case officer will never have to supplement or balance their brain chemicals at all during their entire career. CIA is so massive that there are plenty of jobs where you don’t have to travel at all, but if you are an operative, there’s probably not a chance in hell you’d take one.
That’s because spy agencies are hyped up by the movies to an enormous degree, and yet when I read true life spy stories, I realize that there’s a lot of the same nervous energy I felt before service at a restaurant. I’d be standing in front of a table daydreaming, prepping and nervous before the pop. Feeding hundreds of people is also an operation, and so many nights I could have used an ex-fil. 😉 If I was a current operative, a great place for me would be embedded with World Central Kitchen. I don’t think CIA likes to embed people in humanitarian organizations if they don’t have to do so, because it affects the reputation of the charity. For instance, you will never see an operative disguised as a priest or a Peace Corp officer. That being said, I think CIA should basically be Jose Andres’ right hand, because there’s no one more invisible to the rest of the world than cooks and waitstaff.
I could be The Little Gray Man because I’m just “the help.” What the fuck do I know? Meanwhile, I can learn everything without saying anything. I don’t even have to ask any questions; I can give them enough rope to hang themselves.
But it’s not in the interest of anything other than empathy. Being able to stop horrific things from happening is a worthy cause. I would love to work on saving the people of Ukraine, or perhaps saving women and girls from the Taliban. If I could pick, it would be Ukraine because I don’t necessarily want to work where it’s 110 in the shade. I grew up in Houston, and still technically live in the South. “Dry heat” only helps so much. MENA (State designation for Middle East North Africa) is a giant sandbox where the sun is actively trying to kill you. Poland sounds nice this time of year compared to that. That being said, it wouldn’t matter where I was placed based on geography. I’d just like a job where I actually felt capable. I don’t know which problem in the world would make me feel that way.
But here’s what I do know.
Jose Andres went to Ukraine/Poland out of the same empathy I would.
If you have the means, please donate to World Central Kitchen, and if you’re local, take every chance you can get to throw money in his piggy bank. Zaytinya is amazing down to the French fries.
There are more ways to love the world than just trying to stop bad things from happening. Sometimes you need to actively support the good.
If we can use intelligence to stop wars, we save lives by not putting soldiers in harm’s way. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we averted nuclear war due to several people. Some of them were Russian assets who gave us invaluable information without Khrushchev knowing what cards Kennedy was holding, and and one submarine officer that pulled a Denzel Washington on Gene Hackman.
Now the theme to “Crimson Tide” is playing in my head.
So, when you think of my empathy, make sure it includes people I will never, ever meet. My heart is big enough to love them all.
This has never happened to me before in terms of writing. Ever. I’m a blogger, right? So I’ve hit post and never had to search through a directory tree in 20 years. The worst part is that I’m fluent in DOS and Linux, so I know how to do all the shit that would compare and contrast documents…. and it didn’t even occur to me to do that with my writing until right now.
I even have a pen pal that I’ve known since Jesus was a boy and I know to create different subject lines so that all our crap doesn’t mix together, like separating personal from professional (editing vs. friendship, really… not for this, for my books…. this is graffiti with punctuation [cracked me up in Contagion]).
Today I started with creative writing instead of memoir type stuff because every time I write about my life, blowback comes from somewhere. So, no more about that. I’ll write about things long enough in the past that they don’t matter anymore, or put up fiction. If I write about a decision that is currently being made, there are just so many, many people who have an opinion that is either stupid or invalid.
Let’s start with Daniel.
I would marry that boy like yesterday. I still feel that way even though right now he is acting like a jackass by being a doctor and a patient.
Now, why would I know what his motivations are?
If you have to wonder, you’re not my friend.
How do you know that I don’t have years and years of experience with addicts?
I’m a line cook. I’ve wondered if people relapsed to the point of wondering if they died and that’s why they didn’t show up today or give me a call.
I’m not laughing.
If you are, you’re not my friend.
How do you know that I’m building a family too fast?
My daughter is trans and 24. The reason I call her my daughter is not because she actually is. It’s that her biological mother is straight and I’m both bisexual and genderqueer. I get it, where her mom and dad are blind. I am giving her the relationship I should have gotten.
If you have to wonder, you’re not my friend.
None of you have ever asked if I had friends who I’ve married in terms of loyalty and confidentiality so I have people that hold me together. I have friends in multiple places who support me and I can reach out any time, day or night, because it might be 1100 there. My friend Suzanne is in Aberdeen. I wake up at 0400. I have coffee, she has tea.
Since I’ve never gotten asked that question, I feel like it’s necessary. I have friends who have supported me for years and years now. I don’t need a romantic partner. I want one, but I don’t have to have one to function.
And finally about this topic, if you know all of the above, than you’ll know that my absolute best friend at one point was a severe alcoholic and now she’s one of the most successful people I know. All of you who are so incredibly worried about me can stop now.
Even if Daniel broke up with me every day from here til kingdom come, I wouldn’t believe it until January 2024, which is the conservative estimate on how long it takes his brain to clear. Right now he’s finding out that life is rough without medication to control cravings and all that shit.
So if you think for one second that I thought this would be easy, that I’d have it made in the shade, or that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. Daniel was in a bad place. I sold him a fantasy to give him the courage to get to rehab. He did. My work here is done. But that isn’t the whole story. The whole story is that I love him more than anyone on earth, including me. He just doesn’t know it, because his brain is dopamine-starved and using every trick in the book to try and get him to believe that he’s a worthless piece of shit.
Here’s the thing. I sold him a fantasy to get him to rehab. I want to make the fantasy real so we can be done with rehab and off to living in Fez, Cairo, Casablanca, wherever. I don’t care. Just anywhere to get us somewhere cheaper. The US is bananas. I didn’t fake him out. I didn’t do anything but promise him a fantasy that was doable if he would only get his shit together.
Every addict in the room is quietly nodding. They might not agree with what I did, but they will also tell you to do whatever you have to do to get your partner into rehab. WHATEVER. So I did. I got him there. Whether he comes home and still wants to marry me is up for grabs. But does it really matter?
I GOT HIM TO REHAB. I MADE SURE HE WAS GOING TO LIVE. I HELPED SAVE HIM.
The rest is totally up to him, and I’m going to let him figure out all that. He’s the one in therapy most of the day, so I think I can move on to something else. They’ve got him. I can rest until May.
And I will, because I’ve already got two best friends who love me enough to marry me, but not enough for the fun stuff. That is for the love of my life if he decides he wants it.
Again, none of this comes from a place of “he’s going to screw up.” Addicts, raise your hands. Who among you got through the last drunk and getting into rehab without fucking up some relationship or another?
I thought so. I can hear you choking with laughter from here.
Now that I have explained myself and hopefully shut the shit down (can I get a witness? HELL YEAH!), it’s time for today’s lesson on metaphor.
Men in Black II is a documentary.
K was a designation in the British system of intelligence. If you’ve seen the more recent Bond films, K has not been in use since WWII, I believe. However, it’s the rank above M, played by Ralph Fiennes and Judi Dench. You don’t see C in movies very often, but my biggest example of who C is comes from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I can’t remember whether C is the bad guy in that one or not. I’ve slept since then. No UK disrespect meant. The C I’m talking about is basically Stephen Fry in Doctor Who.
Q means quartermaster. In MiBII, this is like the scene where K says, “guess I’ll have to buy The White Album again.” That’s because Q is representative of an entire department of people. In the US, it’s called the Office of Technical Services. Back when it was OSS and CIA hadn’t started…… chefs and cooks, sit down. You’ll need it……. Julia Child worked for OTS. She developed shark repellant. Why case officers would need such a thing is where I draw the line in terms of research.
Z is probably also a rank somewhere, but to me it refers to the decryption of the Zimmerman Telegram in 1917. That was the first time in modern history that signals intelligence (SIGINT) was useful on the world stage. Interestingly enough, the guy that played Z (Zed) was in my grandfather’s class in high school.
In terms of rank, I’m not sure where Zed falls. My guess is that he’s C.
C was named for Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming. If I were to compare him to an American, it would be “Wild Bill” Donovan, because he’s the one that started OSS to begin with. Cumming managed to wrangle together MI6, which is why the head job is named after him. I’m honestly not sure who he would match in today’s CIA, because they don’t publish how they do things. For instance, are people like John Brennan C, or is C under cover and people like Brennan are just figureheads?
Damn, Gina.
If you got that joke, you can stay.
If you’re wondering whether I just like Bond and spy shit or if I have a direction with this, yes to the first and still working on the second.
People have no idea why I like spy stuff. At 18 I wanted to be a trumpet player in the Airmen of Note. I didn’t care that the Air Force was basically a group of people standing next to the military. I just wanted to play.
I didn’t get to, which began my lifelong obsession with books and movies where people fought each other without using violence.
And then CIA appeared on Doctor Who, and it was all over for me. Of course I can love Everett. Of course I can love The Doctor when Richard Nixon asks him how he’ll be remembered, and of course The Doctor can’t say SHIT, and just says, “Oh, Dickie. THey’ll never forget you.”
Of course I love MI6 and CIA. They’re basically the closest thing to magic we have on this earth, and as I was telling my friend Zac, “it’s like science fiction because they already know the new technology coming out, but they can’t tell us about it.” It’s real in the way that real magic occurs.
MiB training even reflects real life. Jonna and Tony Mendez both write beautifully about taking their subordinates to Georgetown and giving them a head start while they make everyone and no one makes them. Jonna was even the old guy….. Chief of Disguise gonna Chief of Disguise. Can you imagine being a case officer and finding out your boss was Tony Mendez, then stayed in long enough to have also had his wife as a boss? That’s magic.
Like taking an American and a British intelligence agency and filling it full of aliens and putting a Burger King in the lobby of the spaceport.
In terms of the actual training at MiB, case officers in VA had to lose themselves in Georgetown and try to pick out who was watching them. J shot a little girl alien because she was carrying a chemistry textbook that was way too advanced for her. It’s the difference between life and death, that noticing things.
Down to a Lay’s potato chip bag life and death.
That Burger King isn’t really a joke, either. If you look on CIA’s web site, they’ll tell you they have a Starbucks at Langley and it’s one of the busiest in the world.
I have also found a place for The Hot Sheets that’s really friggin’ funny. In my head, The Hot Sheets are the Presidential Daily Briefings.
I swear to Christ, you just cannot get photographic journalism better than this. Even Shane Harris couldn’t write something this good (teasing him because he’s the local National Security reporter at WaPo and has been on Maddow several times). I don’t stop hoping, though. Pro tip, Harris. Memorize it.
Stories That Are All True 