My mother is half Canadian - First Nation, half French. My father is a hot mix of Irish, Scottish, and a little Danish. Accordingly, I’m stubborn, snobbish, a drunk, and keen to fight—but at least I’m tall. You can’t just dismiss 190 centimetres like that.

I listen to Tchaikovsky, The Doors, and Beastie Boys. Throw me to the squirrels. I keep my savings in a Malevich and a Vasarely painting. Sixty million (in Hungarian Forints, please, just don't ask why, it's better than the imperial pounds), but I’d bet my life my accountant is lying. They're worth a lot more. The fact that I’d bet my life on it says plenty. About the accountant, too. “That gobshite”—I learned that from my great-grandmother. She’d been through the camps. Dachau, Raczk, Reijk, something. She was fucking old. A cheesemaker died before they could deport her.

Of course, I was on the soccer team. I hated it. Baseball—same story. I was the news editor of the school radio—people hated me for that. And for Shostakovich. I hated everyone, too, but I didn’t buy an AR-15. Well, okay, I did—but not to shoot up my classmates. Instead, I became a journalist. Sold the AR and bought a beat-up Toyota. My dad disowned me: I moved to New York (thanks, Friends, yes, I'm that generation), I’d love to say I slept in doorways, but I didn’t. I got into NYFA. Just to get kicked out at the end of the first semester. Only to be hired by Vogue. Yes, only to be kicked out again at the first opportunity. Not their fault (of course it was, fuck them), it was mine. I ditched everything I could. My mom still sent me money. Without my dad knowing. It ran out. Dried up. Living in the Big Apple was fucking expensive—even then (thanks, Friends).

So, I worked as a professional animal petter on Staten Island and in the Bronx (or there I was something else. I can't remember, the powder has this effect.) Courier on Long Island, pizzaiolo in Brooklyn, drug dealer in Bushwick, gardener in Highland Park, and god knows, probably a dishwasher, probably in Hoboken. It was a long time ago, and I needed the money. And I was young. So fucking young. Eighteen or some. I can't really remember.

That, in a way, helped. I speak Spanish, mumble some Portuguese—but at least I understand it. Can’t be bullshitted in Yiddish, get by in German, though I mostly just brag about that like a speed-addled peacock. French—well, only when my mother yells. I understand when she tears me to the ground. Past tense. She's dead now. Six feet under, you see.

First Nation—my cousins. Haven’t seen them in twenty-ish years. I think I get them, but I just stare like someone who’s—well, no, exactly like someone who’s high as a kite. Natives. What am I supposed to do with them? They’re sweet. I’d love to love them.

Arabic, Turkish, Persian: "classified," I tell everyone. I understand and speak them, slang and all. Dialects. That’s how I make my living. I’m no hero, never will be, never wanted to be—I move in the direction of least resistance, especially if it pays. Usually, it does. In foreign currency. Euro, dollar, drachma, I don’t give a shit, bring it on. I love it.

I also love living large, yet I’m broke. You have to draw the line somewhere.

So let’s talk about Cliff and Jen. Jen’s my aunt—somewhere between sixty and death since I can remember. Strange woman—to you she’s strange, to me she’s the origin. She taught me how to tango, salsa, and, fuck me, how to do the Rocky. Cliff’s even weirder, but at least we suspect he’s CIA. And that’s not even the juiciest rumor about him. He never tried to fuck me, though.

What’s certain: Cliff Fryes has been running the foreign policy section of Rolling Stone since the eighties. A veteran. He introduced me to Carlos Turati, our generation’s Hemingway. Carlos took me under his wing—until he kicked me out. (You’ll notice a pattern here.) And Cliff was the one who pulled me back after my major fuckup in Europe.

Ah, yes, Europe and Carlos. CT (Carlos Turati) covered every conflict zone in the Mediterranean. Died on the Ukrainian front in 2022. For the slower ones: at the dawn of the “special military operation.” I followed him—even on the day he died, but from a safe distance. While he was interviewing Ukrainian soldiers at Hostomel Airport and “disappeared,” I was in a Kyiv hotel waiting for Andriy Khlyvnyuk.

Fun fact: Andriy was at the front. We never met. He survived, and Carlos lies in a mass grave in Bakhmut, whitewashed. At the time, I tried to drink myself to death in a Kyiv hotel.

Yeah, Jen. Weird woman, as I said. Met her in Frisco, she took me in while Cliff was out in the field. She makes fucking amazing pancakes. Dude, seriously, Jen’s pancakes are better than anyone’s. This bear-shaped, red-haired woman with Athlone roots deserves every word written and spoken about her. I’ll write more—she gave me one of the biggest surprises of my life. Though in hindsight, I knew—I just didn’t suspect it.

Anyways, Carlos went through every hot zone: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria—he was everywhere. For starters, he lied about his age and reported from Korea, Venezuela, flew with the Seals in Panama. He was a bloody legend even in Agency circles, keeper and knower of secrets. Sean Penn’s Sean Penn. You got it.

Between two whiskeys, I like to think I was Carlos’s Walter Mitty. False. If I’m honest, I bounced between the CIA, FSB, SBU, and the Belarusian KGB. I wasn’t a valuable asset, just a useful idiot. At least one girlfriend—and I suspect two—were operatives. If James Bond was going that way, I was headed the other. Mossad’s name for me: Tipsh Alcoholi. You need more?

The European years—that’s where it all started, what eventually led to the Reef.

Éva—Shiana, Adit, Yadohit. The triumvir of my ill-fated girlfriends. The fourth surah says: “So marry the women who seem good to you.” And we did—betraying everyone in the name of One God. Seriously, I must be the first person in Agency history to tell you: Alpha Blondy sang in nineteen-fucking-eighty-six that we can live together. Baruch atah Adonai—Isra Mi’raj—Al Quds. What gives you the right to think you're smarter than Abu Hamid al-Ghazali? Does Isidore of Seville ring a bell?

Forget it. They recruited me because I believed. In some such bullshit, anyways. I left as a nonbeliever. Horváth, the Hungarian, walked the same path. From kapo* to communist, communist to Zionist, Zionist to Atlanticist. Atlanticist to: my mentor at the end of the Cold War. I’m the godfather of two out of his five kids. Shalom, Salam Alaikum, kardes.

Let’s drop that too. I’ve read my own evaluation. Unstable, emotionally volatile, a polydrug addict, uncommitted. I agree. Ideologically unreliable, flirts with leftist ideas. (I’m not sure the person who wrote that even knows what “flirt” means.) Has a tangled network of contacts, meets suspiciously many hostile agents. Yeah, fuck, I drink without hesitation with Russian or Israeli guys. Has romantic, therefore useless notions about intelligence work. Yep, can’t deny that. I only found out Dariah was Mossad and VEVAK when our guys extracted me from Tehran. Dariah was Israeli-Iranian double, never found out her real agenda.

A few months later, Cliff contacted me—wanted to send me to the Reef. Exile for good money. Bullshit, not even good money. I respect him like a father, but we had a huge fight. The entire editorial heard me tell him to fuck off. And heard him call me a junkie little fuck. He was right. I was a junkie little fuck. My name was better known in New York bars than in New York newsrooms. I had contacts, sure—but I could buy coke faster than intel. I owed more at Off-The-Wagon** than anyone in town. And we’re talking astronomical here.

So yeah, I was relieved and pissed when Cliff came to me with this bullshit. I was working—“working”—on a piece about the New Jersey trash mafia, but the story was going nowhere. Wherever I went, I ran into Ginos and Antonios, everyone cushioned with blow and whiskey. My world, just not one I could navigate. When a guy called Pussy (minimum 240 kilos, around 500 pounds for you, u fucking a, bastards) looks you in the eye and says, “You don’t want to ask that,” you don’t ask. That's that. I’m no hero—I leave that to the brave and bold. And the Agency.

So that day—early morning or whatever the fuck—Cliff knocks, and by the time I woke up, he’s already sitting in my favourite armchair. I’m drooling on my (other) favourite couch, now upright, just out of respect. I’m forty fucking years old, but he can still make me feel like that dumb kid who broke Mr. Zhang’s window yesterday (thirty years ago). (Side note: Mr. Zhang’s daughter, Cixi, was kidnapped, raped, and executed. Cliff, well—imagine what he did.) Back then, my dad brought me in. Cliff got me out. Eternal gratitude. Both of them beat the shit out of me in different ways.

So here I am—my old lady is suing for child support, I’m facing charges for aggravated assault, being evicted tomorrow, and I’ve got, bare minimum, three addictions. Sex doesn’t count. Three is enough. If that’s not enough, Scott McKenzie – San Francisco is blasting on repeat. I’m clawing for an energy drink, trying to gather my thoughts. I swear I’m trying to focus, but all I catch is: Reef, tomorrow, now, fuck you, you idiot, am I fucking going?, pack, got a suitcase?, what the hell is a suitcase?, haven’t had one in twenty years. Cliff—Uncle Cliff—jabs his fat finger into my world: if I don’t leave tomorrow, you get a Senate hearing. My reward. And I can’t even sit through a DUI hearing, honestly. He’s right.

Okay. I throw in some underwear and socks, put on the rings, bracelet, fine, let’s go. Xanax, never hurts. Adderall either. Cliff gives me a card—gets me access to buy a weapon, even overseas. I’m a dumbass: never held a gun in my life and I sure as hell don’t want to start now. The old man sighs, ushers me out, tosses me into a company car. The last moment I still thought I had control over my life. Chirp-chirp. But that isn't enough any more, said Rosewater, I thought.

I’m fucking hungover, apparently I slept all the way to LAX. (Thanks, Xanax!) The huge and rude agency guys wake me up, shove my stuff in my hands—not much, maybe enough for a week—and load me onto the fucking plane. I got a passport, American, at least. Those fine lads know how to treat a fellow citizen. Fine. Get booze on board. Even better. Laptop, phone—can’t live without them—check. Eight and a half-hour flight. Slept through it, drunk—but at least I didn’t soil myself like last time. Tenerife Intl. From here, it’s just a few hours by boat to the Reef—fuck, it just hit me where they’re sending me.

And I’ve arrived. Worn out, stinking, in a Hawaiian shirt, like some cheap Adam Sandler doppelganger, cigarette hanging from my mouth—on the Reef, you can smoke anywhere. And be free. I just don’t know it yet. This is going to be the biggest adventure of my life. A fucking rollercoaster. Character development or whatnot. Whatever you want. I really don't know yet, but here I’ll be freer than I’ve ever been, anywhere, anytime.

PS: Even so, the story of the Reef is not (just) my story. When I arrive, I don’t yet know that I’ll get to experience and write this enclave’s tale from an angle that contains all the misery and dilemma of this century. It’s not black and white—no one is purely good or bad: seemingly right decisions ruined lives, and savages rose to power.