Nobody's Girl — Chapter no 17

SEVENTEEN

Bully Basher

think it was a week into my studies that I met a fellow student namedI Mathew Olsen. A tall, gentle Australian in his midtwenties, Mat and his best friend growing up had come to Chiang Mai together, he said, partly so Mat could do his teacher training at ITM.

One afternoon as we were finishing our lessons, Mat asked me and another student if we were up for an excursion. He said his best friend, Robbie, was studying Thai boxing at a nearby Muay Thai gym, which was having a competition that night. “It’ll be big fun,” he promised, writing down the address for me. I said I’d think about it—I wasn’t very interested in martial arts. But later, finding myself with nothing else to do, I put on a little mascara and hired a tuk-tuk. “Maybe,” I thought, as we wound through traffic, “I can convince the gang to go clubbing afterward.”

Thinking back now, it’s funny to me that those were my highest hopes as I arrived, twenty minutes later, at the address in the Saraphi District.

Looking around the cavernous space, I was searching for Mat when I spotted a lean, dark-haired man with probing brown eyes who seemed to be holding court inside a circle of friends. Everyone—men and women both— seemed to hang on his every word. In retrospect, maybe they had no choice: I was about to find out that to be near this man was to be swept up by his boisterous presence. But even at a distance, before I knew who he was, I felt instantly drawn to him.

A fight began, and I tried to apply what Mat was explaining about Muay Thai—something about it being “the art of eight limbs” because fighters use fists, elbows, knees, and shins—to what I was seeing in the ring. But when I turned my head, my eyes settled again on the dark-haired

stranger. Mat must’ve seen me looking, because he said, “That’s my friend Robbie.”

Mat has since told me that, at that same moment, he was noticing something strange. Mat knows Robbie like a brother—they went to (and dropped out of) high school together and had been roommates for years. So Mat knows how much Robbie likes to analyze other fighters’ moves.

Usually during a bout, it was impossible to tear Robbie’s eyes away from the ring. But on this night, Mat saw that Robbie was uncharacteristically distracted. I didn’t see it, but Mat did: instead of scrutinizing the two sparring partners, Robbie was staring at me.

Robbie insists he knew instantly that I was his soulmate. “I hear a ruckus behind me, and I look around and see this sheila,” he’ll tell anyone who asks how we met, using the Aussie slang for a pretty woman. “I hadn’t had that feeling since I was in primary school. I got these butterflies in my belly, and I was just like, ‘She’s it: the embodiment of beauty.’ Jenna was special. Even before I spoke to her, I just knew.” At this point, he usually pauses for effect, raising his dark eyebrows before adding with a laugh, “So I played hard to get.”

If only this were a joke. But it’s true: whenever I looked Robbie’s way that night, he seemed to be engrossed in something or someone else. Robbie says he sensed this was the only way to win me, and while I felt frustrated then, I think he was probably right. Had he come on strong, I would have deflected, batting him away. After so many years of forced intimacy, I could be aloof when I felt pressured. I didn’t know how to handle feelings of sincere, mutual attraction. But as Robbie leaned out, I found myself leaning in.

When the final bout ended, and everybody headed to the exits, I knew I needed to make a move. It was that or give up, but something about Robbie made me feel that giving up wasn’t an option. So I maneuvered myself to be at Robbie’s side as we squeezed through the crowd and out onto the street. “I’m Jenna,” I said, smiling. “Want to share a tuk-tuk?” I’ll never forget the way Robbie looked at me then, his face close to mine. His gaze was steady and calm, but the lights were on in his eyes. He waited a beat,

and then he said what he’s been saying to me in one form or another every day since: “Yes.”

Remember who I was in 2002: a survivor of sexual abuse who’d spent years obediently performing intimate acts on men and women—some of them repeat abusers, some of them utter strangers—without any true feelings of closeness or affinity or desire. In fact, cutting myself off from my own wishes or wants had been one of my coping mechanisms. Even relationships with my past boyfriends had had a transactional quality. I had never been in love, not once, not with anyone. But now, almost instantly, I was falling in crazy love with Roberto Antonio Giuffre. In the tuk-tuk, I noticed that I liked the way his body felt next to mine—its temperature, its solidity, its warmth. I loved the way he smelled.

I took Robbie back to the Royal Princess that night, but we just hung out with my roommate and eventually he went home. For the next three days, he continued his hard-to-get act, and he was so convincing that I was beginning to think he just wanted to be friends. Here are a few things I quickly learned about Robbie: He was smart. He was funny. He was loyal.

The youngest of four children born to Sicilian parents who’d immigrated to Sydney, Robbie—then twenty-six—had been very religious as a child and attended church frequently with his mother. But at the age of nine, he’d begun to have night terrors in which he believed he was being held down by a terrible force. The dreams scared him so much that he turned away from Catholicism and began to study other forms of spirituality. “I went into the forest and said, ‘You know what? No more fear. Fear holds you back,’ ” he told me, recalling how he began to read up on everything from Islam to Buddhism to shamanism. His studies brought him back, again and again, to a respect for nature, which he said gave him the sense of peace he was looking for. “I’ve always had a connection to Mother Earth. Put me in the bush with a campfire, and I’m centered. The cycles of the seasons just make sense to me,” he told me. “All my reading about different religions gave me a path to follow. You walk your walk. You look back at the sand and see your own footprints. The goal is flow—balance. It’s your own dharma.”

I didn’t know dharma from Parmesan cheese, and I told him so. But he didn’t care, and just as importantly, he didn’t judge me. He seemed to want to lift me up, not tear me down. A lifelong protector of the picked-on, he’d seen himself as what he called a “bully basher” long before he laid eyes on me, he said. As a kid, he’d made it his business to wait after school to punish those who picked on those smaller than themselves. “I’m a scrapper,” he said. “Always have been.”

On the third day of our friendship, we met up again at my hotel. My roommate was out, and Robbie and I were getting ready to go to dinner. I was sitting on the floor, and he was on the bed, and when he bent over to tie his shoe, I planted a kiss on him. I wasn’t sure what would happen—maybe he just wasn’t into me? But he kissed me back. I remember I grabbed hold of him then—and for the first time since I’d embraced my childhood best friend Kyle, I did so purely out of desire, not obligation or desperation.

From the start, Robbie and I had a different connection than any I’d experienced before. For one thing, Robbie was straightforward. How, he wanted to know, could a nineteen-year-old massage student afford such swank accommodations in a four-star hotel? We were sitting in my room, just the two of us, when he asked that question. And suddenly I wanted to tell the truth. After a lifetime of toggling between two modes—Run and Survive—I wanted more than mere survival, and I was tired of running.

Against all logic, something in me already believed this could be a relationship with real potential, a relationship that I didn’t want to fuck up.

And the more I talked to Robbie, the more I felt that way. I was sick of keeping secrets, of hiding what my life was really like. So I took a deep breath and told Robbie that I worked for a rich, powerful man who sexually abused me; that this man had a female partner who enabled and orchestrated an army of young women and girls to service him; that he and she lent me out to their friends, some of whom had hurt me beyond measure; and that I was deeply afraid of them.

As I spewed all this awfulness, Robbie’s face constricted. “Where is your family?” he asked pointedly. “Can’t they help you?” I told him they couldn’t or wouldn’t—I had never been sure which. I remember that Robbie

had a knowing look on his face then, like he could intuit what I was leaving out. “I had a rough childhood,” I stammered. The way Robbie locked eyes with me then, as if to say, “You’re not alone anymore,” told me I didn’t need to reveal any terrible details to be understood. At least not yet. Robbie sensed we’d have plenty of time to get into all that.

At first glance, Robbie and I were complete opposites—me, the slight, fair-haired waif, him, the muscle-bound athlete whose body was covered in a silky carpet of dark fur. But we fit together. I felt like a different Jenna when I was with Robbie. I’d never met anyone like him. When we made love for the first time, he asked me something no other person had ever asked: what I did and didn’t like in bed. As it turned out, there were lots of things I didn’t like, things that reminded me of past, nonconsensual encounters. But I didn’t share that with Robbie yet. I still believed that my role was to focus on my partner’s pleasure, not my own.

My understanding of loving and feeling loved was extremely limited.

For so long, I had only been seen as “good” if I did what was required of me, no matter how painful or upsetting. Now here came a man who claimed he didn’t require me to do anything. He wanted me to be myself, he said. I didn’t admit it to Robbie then, but it had been years since I knew who “myself” was. Part of me was stuck in time, as if still a little girl. I knew I felt safe when I was with Robbie, though, and I hadn’t experienced safety since I was six years old and sitting atop Alice.

Robbie asked more questions about Epstein and Maxwell. How often did they check in on me? How soon was I expected to return to the United States? I remember I was crying as I told him I wasn’t sure how I could ever break free from Epstein and Maxwell’s web. But Robbie shook his head. “You don’t have to live that way,” he said, taking my hand. “Come back to Australia with me.” A week into knowing each other, he dropped down onto one knee and proposed. “You won’t be rich,” Robbie told me, “but I will work hard to support you. I’ll never hurt you. Never betray you.

I’ll be here for you and always love you. I’ll have your back until we die.”

I’d never thought I’d hear those words from anyone, and as I told him yes, happy tears ran down my cheeks. “I love you, too,” I said.

Some people, when they hear our story, marvel at how quickly we moved after that. After all, it’s no small task to plan a wedding, especially in a country whose language you don’t speak. And then there’s the fact that we barely knew one another. But Robbie and I shared a belief that we had been destined to meet and be together. Fueled by that certainty, we found a seamstress to sew me a simple white halter dress and to tailor a dark olive suit for Robbie—I picked the color to match the green flecks in his eyes. I bought him a necklace with a Buddha pendant. He gave me a “Thai gold” ring that had sapphires arranged in the shape of a heart (it would eventually turn my finger green, but it was all we could afford). And on October 16, 2002, just ten days after first laying eyes on one another, we hired a translator named Charlie and stepped aboard a tram that would take us to the top of a mountain. Our destination: Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, the glorious temple where we’d be married.

Doi Suthep, as the temple is known, is a holy place marked by gilded pagodas, statues, and shrines. According to legend, it exists because in the fourteenth century AD, a monk named Sumanathera had a dream that he was supposed to go to the city of Pang Cha to look for a relic. He followed the premonition and found what many believe to be the Gautama Buddha’s shoulder bone. When the reigning king of Thailand heard of the discovery, he had the monk bring it to him. Half the bone, which had split in two, was placed on the back of a white elephant, which was then set free. The elephant made its way up the steep, 3,400-foot Doi Suthep mountain, stopped at the summit, trumpeted three times, and dropped dead. Seeing this as a good omen, the king ordered that a temple be built there in the year 1383. My favorite part of the legend was that the Buddha’s shoulder bone was said to have magical powers. Among them was that the bone was able to vanish.

On my wedding day, I was determined to do the same. At least when it came to Epstein and Maxwell, I no longer wanted to be seen. When he’d asked me to marry him, Robbie had given me the chance to achieve that goal. We were two people from two different countries who’d met in yet a third country and fallen in love, almost overnight. For days, we’d been

swept away by one another, as if there were no one else on earth but us.

Today we would become husband and wife.

As the tram ascended, I looked at my reflection in its glass windows.

My new dress fit perfectly; my hair was mostly up, with a few tendrils falling around my face; and I wore a crown of baby’s breath and small yellow and purple flowers. The vision made me cry again, overcome by the idea that I might be in control of my own life at last. Confused, Robbie asked if I was having second thoughts. Not at all, I reassured him. “But until you,” I said, “I thought weddings were for other people, not for me.” I felt like I was inhabiting a dream.

When we reached the mountain’s summit, we each tied seven strings around one another’s wrists, as Thai brides and grooms do. Each string signified something we hoped for: long life, enduring love, friendship, fertility, prosperity, sustenance, freedom. When we exchanged vows inside the temple, kneeling in front of a monk who wore flowing orange robes, they told us we were the first Westerners ever to do so. Mat, our only witness, used one of my FunSavers to take our picture.

After the short ceremony, we descended into the city again. We called our parents—Robbie’s in New South Wales, Australia, mine in Florida— and after they recovered from their astonishment, each one of them wished us well. Robbie took me out for ice cream, then we headed back to the Royal Princess. Opening the door to our room, I saw nothing but rose petals —on the threshold, strewn from the doorway to the bed, and arranged in a heart shape on the coverlet. Robbie had asked the hotel to turn our room into a bridal suite, and, boy, had they pulled it off. When we flung ourselves on the bed, sending the rose petals flying, I had never felt so tethered to another human being. I only hoped I could make Robbie happy.

Our wedding day was almost over when I realized I had one more call to make. Robbie had made clear that he needed to hear me tell Epstein and Maxwell goodbye. He wanted that for himself, he said, but also for me. I had a right to assert myself, he said—to choose my own path. Robbie believed it would be good for me, and for us, if I said so out loud. I agreed with him in principle, but still I hesitated. Even with eight thousand miles

between us, I was afraid of them. Finally, I dialed Epstein’s cell phone. I felt a churning in my gut as I waited for him to answer. Would he yell?

More likely, he’d threaten. I knew he would stop paying my way at the Royal Princess—Robbie and I were prepared for that. But could I truly sever my ties to the powerful people who’d ruled my life for more than two years? I still wasn’t sure.

A few tense moments passed before Epstein picked up. “Hello?” he said, and his voice—that smug Brooklyn growl—sounded impatient.

“I fell in love and got married, Jeffrey,” I blurted out. “I’m never coming back.”

There was the briefest pause. “Have a great life,” he said. Then a click —Epstein had hung up on me. We wouldn’t speak again for more than five years.