Imagine my surprise when I'm about to head outside for a walk1 and our groundskeeper cuts me off before I can get my first foot out the door. After a lot of panting and whispering he manages to get out that, "the police are at the gate and they want to speak with Nicole".2
Weird, but it can be any number of things as of late...so I make my way quickly down the stairs. My Spanish teacher is already at the (locked) gate and is trying to explain to the two men and two women through the fence that I don't speak very much Spanish. Then the 'Special Agent' from the US embassy identifies himself as such in English. We ask for some identification and he clumsily flashes his badge through the fence (blocking all the important parts of it) and shows Hannah a(his?) card. We confirm that its nice that he has some identification but we'd like to know why these people are seeking me out. After much boring back and forth about how I'll talk to them but I'm not going anywhere, we agree and I move to the secret location on the side of the fence where I can still be seen by everyone and can also see Hannah speaking with the other two women.3 The sky is that beautiful grey mixed with blue and the clouds are so low over the valley you feel as though you could grab each one and rearrange it into a different shape. A new and unpredictable sky every hour is part of the reason I love living in Costa Rica.
So, I mentally strap in for the ride that's about to occur and repress the flashbacks of dealing with any sort of US bureaucracy. First, he wants to explain that I'm not in trouble and that "this is a welfare and wellness check because some people are very worried about me." Ah, those people and their definition of care. I confirm that the terrible passport photo of me that he has printed out is in fact me and I apologize for people wasting his time. Then I cannot help but notice that he has print outs of me from a recent article on Master's blog where I'm being strangled by a zip tie. It's hard not to chuckle at the print out of my head looking like a hot air balloon. Everyday something new in the scandalous live of a slave.4 I confirm that the photo is also me and see - I'm alive and about to take a great walk in the beauty that is Costa Rica and I even remembered to bring an umbrella this time. Then he drops all of his printouts and I suddenly feel the pang of danger that would be if my neighbors had printed photos of me naked with my passport photo. I also abstain (to no ones credit) from mentioning that the sex we had after that photo was some nasty good sex.5
"Well, we think a crime has been committed here." At this point I'm starting to get annoyed at being badgered by someone from the US government.6
"Sigh, no crime has been committed to me. I am in a consensual BDSM relationship. Not being held against my will, I'm a fully functioning adult who is about to go on a walk. If this is actually about my well being then we have nothing else to discuss because as you can see...I'm great." I stop myself from telling him that the header on Trilema changes so if he wants equally good pictures of Master then he can just wait a day and hit the refresh button but people gotta learn on their own.
He asks some more personal questions which I abstain from answering and then asks me a few more times if I'm actually okay.
Which gave me flashbacks to how dudes actually pursue women by hoping that on the 10th time that they ask her out, she'll be worn down enough to say yes. Because all life seems to be for everyone else is the same mad lib script used over and over again which transcends police investigations. After he gets his predetermined number of okays, we return to the other two women and to Hannah. He repeats the same speech about "how we're not in trouble but the opposite and people want to make sure we're okay." Then he requests a photo for proof that its actually us and I can only hope that the photo is now clipped to the one of me being strangled and left in a desk somewhere. Maybe he gets a new job and doesn't get to go through all of his papers and then some other agent inherits the desk. She finds the photos and gets inspired to pursue a life of kink and slavery. Its much more exiting to be the one who is being investigated, anyways.
Hannah and I continue on with our walk to get coffee and then vodka. Its a little difficult to maneuver the long chain that is attached from the top floor of the house all the way down the hill when its raining but we always manage.
Its taken me an extra three days to write this post because I couldn't decide how much of the stupidity is necessary to dissect.7
I keep encountering this thing wherein people who "care" about me think that them telling themselves this means that they get to interfere in my life. The concept is flawed. Why do you think that you know better and how do you find that acting on this makes you any different than someone who is an actual abuser? The beauty of BDSM is that the control is immediately identified and not used as a manipulative tool.
So, sure care about me... but what you don't get to do is make decisions for me or attempt to force me to live my life in a particular way according to your narrative. This is my life's story. I lost my family, friends, and I have skin off of my back for it. Furthermore, over the past two years I've seen a great deal of how manipulative people can be to themselves and to the people they love. Masking concern over my "death" is not you actually caring. The truth is, that you want me to be dead so that your thoughts about the world and lack of life will finally be confirmed. Well, I'm never going to play that role. Regardless of what you tell yourself, you don't want to actually help...you want to be in control over reality. So no, you don't get to use my life to make yourself a hero in the story that you tell people.. "I helped her, I saved her from the bad bad man by forcing her to do what I wanted instead!" Being the main character of your own story takes work and its your choice of how you interact with the world that will determine if you're leading the story or just another NPC. Besides, "life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting."8
- walks are fabulous in Costa Rica [↩]
- Damn, if reporters are here and want to take pictures I'm going to miss out on an opportunity of getting my collar in another country's newspaper. [↩]
- If someone out there is being held against their will, I sure hope that the police aren't interviewing them in plain sight of their captors. [↩]
- Red wine over fed time... [↩]
- Well, really only them. [↩]
- To his credit, none of this is his fault. The dude is merely doing his job in the typical US style of doing things. [↩]
- If you think everything on trilema is true to the point in which you think I'm murdered, how do you discount the other articles that were linked in that post? Or the mention of my name in the following posts? How do you construct an honest narrative knowing that these things exist? How do you decide which lies you're going to tell yourself? Do I care that much? [↩]
- A quote by my boy Karl Wallenda who was a circus daredevil in the early 1900s. [↩]