Juan: A Con-Story Over Four Countries

The *true story* about how I got caught in a narcissist's web of lies and how I got out.

Preface:

As I open the door to the police car a cold rush of fear runs through my body. How did I get here, being brought to interrogation by the Swedish police? I sit down in the backseat and the two police introduce themselves. There is a blonde woman in the passenger seat, and when she turns around I can see that her eyes are kind and my body relaxes a little. She gives me a smile and says “Ok, to get started, why don’t you tell me about the first time you met Juan Martinez?”

San Jose, Costa Rica

The Costa Rican dance floor is thumping with the beats of a loud reggaeton hit. My girlfriend and I are finally out of the house and dancing and drinking.

The flashbacks from the brutal sexual assault that we had lived through such a short time ago still flashed through my mind and body throughout most days.

After all that we’ve been through, it feels good not to think about anything other than shaking and laughing the night away.

As we take a break and lean onto a table, two guys come up and start talking to us and want to buy us drinks. Roberto is a tall and relatively good looking guy in his early thirties - probably a 6.5-7 - and the other guy, Juan, reminds me of a fish with big lips and a wide smile and he in other ways look like a giant baby, with sausage fingers and pudgy belly. But he talks a big game about being a music producer in Miami and tells all sorts of stories of the rock ‘n’ roll business. Both are from the Dominican Republic but now live in Canada and have that special slurring sound I’ve since learned to associate with the Dominican accent.

We exchange numbers at the end of the evening and I get a text the very next day.

In retrospect and from where I sit now it seems absolutely absurd that I would even give this guy the time of day.

But there is something that intrigues me about him, especially when he starts talking about a simple business he has that sells travel vouchers that allow people to travel at a lower cost. I love traveling and the thought of making money from traveling speaks to me and I ask him to tell me more. Juan offers to pay for a flight to Miami for me and my girlfriend and I can experience it for myself. He also puts us up in a hotel room.

Arriving in Miami is when things start being a little weird… We spend a few days partying and enjoying Miami Beach but Juan keeps having things “getting in the way” of meeting up with us and we end up leaving without having seen him.

When I get back to Costa Rica I’m still trying to grapple with the sexual assault and one day I get an email saying $10k has been deposited in my bank account from my insurance company.

Having money all of a sudden is also confusing and sends me spinning. That’s when Juan comes back to Costa Rica and starts pushing me into being in business with him. The money is alluring and the thought of traveling (read: escaping) is still totally appealing.

So I begin my email outreach to family and friends who I know love traveling. My mom and dad buy a few vouchers. So do some friends and friends of those friends. I am the middle woman between Juan and the “travel agent” and the people buying. Right from the beginning I have a vague, bad feeling about it all and the email communication just keeps getting weirder and kind of overwhelming, but I gotta “finish what I started” so I press on.

Las Vegas, USA

After a few meetings back and forth, I make the natural choice of traveling with Juan from Costa Rica to Las Vegas (!).

We get a shared room at Mandalay Bay. I’m thinking it’s purely a business and friendship relationship but the advances keep coming.

“Can you not kiss me on the lips when you say hi?”I ask him. “Come on Karna, why you so uptight!!?? This is how we do it in my country. I can’t believe you said that.” He replies. And on and on.

Well in Las Vegas, I barely see Juan, he’s off doing “business meetings” and really doesn’t tell me much of anything. But I don’t really care, because well, I’m in VEGAS, BABY!

I wander around Mandalay Bay and decide I’m not leaving the premises. I’m in a ‘fuck it all’ state of mind and decide to do whenever the hell I want. I buy a very expensive turquoise bikini with gold details and some Fendi shades. I go see Janet Jackson sing and drink in the bars. As I sit there I shoot the shit with all the interesting people at the bar, businessmen, people who work the shows.

As I glance over to the right one evening I see the shriveled face of Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards looking back at me behind black sunglasses and I’m in heaven.

The next night I go to the famous strip club Spearmint Rhino and Juan buys me a lap dance from a gorgeous girl named Autumn. He gets one too and then I’m living it up on the dance floor until one of the bouncers asks me to stop because “I’m a distraction from the girls”. I die laughing, but am happy to oblige and sit back and watch. These women are so f good at their job and I’m enjoying every moment.

Juan is getting more intense but I deflect his behavior and make excuses. He’s a businessman and I don’t understand his world. I’m feeling drawn to the fast cash lifestyle… because Juan has money right, that’s why, when there’s been an “interruption in the cash flow” that I agree to pay for the flight home to Sweden, he’ll just pay me back later…

Västerås, Sweden

When I get to Sweden I feel dead inside. I don’t know what to do with myself and I keep telling everyone I’m fine. Looking back I was so far from fine I should have been put on house arrest for a looong time. Instead, I went to Stockholm with Juan. The reason? To get the money from Western Union that was wired to Juan as requested from the vouchers. But the clincher, since he wasn’t Swedish he needed the money to be wired to my name and for me to pick it up.

I felt delirious and nauseous when I enter the building under that bright yellow Western Union sign (that still gives me the heebie-jeebies to this day).

It was like I was some secret agent with a mission. I handed him a fat wad of cash and felt like I’d been a very good girl.

Cadiz, Spain

Nothing felt right in Sweden, I couldn’t relax, couldn’t figure out my next move. I was a shell of myself, felt numb and weird but didn’t want anyone to know. I needed to get away. Far away from any inquiring looks or questions of what I’d be doing next. Juan said he was going to Spain, so why wouldn’t I go with him?

Hey, there’s an idea! Let’s go to Spain where I know nobody! Anything to keep. On. Going.

On a bright and somewhat breezy day in September of 2008, we landed in Sevilla and kept moving South. To the farthest tip of Spain, a port town named Cadiz. Perfect, I’ll stay here and explore the country and learn Spanish!

(Little did I know the dialect would be completely different than the Spanish spoken in Costa Rica. As one student blog puts it, “Well it turns out the Spanish accent in Cádiz is almost incomprehensible to Spaniards from elsewhere in the country, let alone for little English me, just studying the language!”. But I persevered!!)

I still love Cadiz with all my heart. I hope and pray I’ll be able to go back there one day and explore the city with my family…

Here’s a quick description:

“Cádiz is an ancient port city in the Andalucia region of southwestern Spain. The home of the Spanish Navy, the port boomed in the 16th-century as a base for exploration and trade. It has more than 100 watchtowers, including the iconic Torre Tavira, which was traditionally used for spotting ships. On the waterfront is the domed, 18th-century Cádiz Cathedral, featuring baroque and neoclassical elements.”

In other words, living in Cadiz was a magical journey back in time where I was surrounded by incredible architecture, street performers, students, and feisty locals wherever I went.

My first place to rest my head was a cheap hotel near the bus stop. Juan and I planned to stay there until we could find something more permanent. As usual, Juan would come and go on various mysterious business excursions that I knew little about. At the first chance I got, I set out on foot to explore the town. Before long I got chatting with one of the locals at a bar.

“¡Bienvenidos a Cadiz! ¡Soy el Alcalde de Cadiz y te voy a mostrar todo!!”

In other words, he was “the mayor” of Cadiz and he was going to show me around town.

He promptly kicked out some locals and closed down his restaurant and off we went on a winding adventure through the streets that ended in watching the twinkling lights of Morocco while imbibing some delicious champagne!

“I was guided here and right where I need to be,” I thought and drank in the vastness of the black night sky while slurping down aaaall the champagne.🍾

A few days later Juan and I found an apartment with two spare rooms. The host was a red-headed freckled skinny woman in her late twenties named Ver (short for Veronica) with an intensity that scared my poor inner “tempered” Swede. This would be my base for the next few months until… well you have to wait a little longer to find out why I left.

I used the little apartment as my base to venture out from. I went clubbing, found some friends, hung out on the beach, and went to the library to study. Juan once again had to head back to Canada to handle some business.

Back then, the only place to get internet access was the local Internet cafes. I went and started getting disturbing emails from my family and friends about having trouble with the vouchers.

The stress and anxiety of trying to figuring out a situation while dealing with undiagnosed PTSD and a narcissistic lunatic were taking their toll. The emails I got were getting angrier from people trying to use the vouchers. The 2008 financial crisis was in full swing and it seems to somehow be connected to the voucher scheme not working anymore. Juan’s emails are also getting stranger and more labored excuses keep coming. He emails me as other people from various email addresses, but of course, I know it’s him because of peculiar speech patterns and spelling. Some days I felt absolutely insane and my anxiety is crippling.

I disassociate as best I can and find solace in a local man named Fernando (queue Abba’s song Fernando!). Fernando is kind, loving, and is enamored with me. He comes with me to the library and takes me on little adventures. Dinners start at 10 pm and clubs close at 8 am. Much wine is consumed and try to get lost in my little bubble.

The bubble gets busted when Juan stops coming to the apartment and he’s late on paying his rent.

Veronica, the landlord, is furious. She busts into my room one day screaming at me in Spanish to pay for both rooms or get out. I become frozen and time seems to stop. I stand there, a deer in headlights, until she tires of yelling and jumping up and down, and stomps away.

I know there’s nothing to do but to pack my bags. I know no one and have nowhere to go… I need to get a plane ticket so I mechanically go down to the Internet cafe book the first flight home. It leaves the next day and I need to get cash to sustain myself until then.

I’m in such a deep state of shock that I type the pin wrong three times. No money comes out and the fucking machine eats my fucking card.

I press all the buttons but nothing happens. I drag myself to the nearest bench and start bawling. I sit there and wail and feel the pain and the loneliness of existence pierce me to my core.

An old man is sitting a few benches away and he calls over to me. He comes over and we start talking. Him, in a calm but fast Spanish and me, in broken Spanish that comes out between sobs and tears. “I’ve got a place nearby and it has an extra room that I use for my daughter. You can stay there tonight if you need to.” He scribbles down his address on a piece of patter. I tell him “Omg, thank you! I do have a friend named Sofia that’s a German exchange student. I know where her place is located. I will go there and see if she’s home. If not I will come back to your place.” His kindness allows me to collect myself and I drag my bag over to Sofia’s place. “Please God, let her be home.”

Sofia’s roommate greets me and lets me in. When Sofia gets back she tells me “Of course I can stay over on a mattress of her floor.”

We spend the night eating and drinking wine and late in the evening I finally fall asleep shivering on the drafty old apartment floor.

Almost right away after landing in Sweden, I get ready to escape again. I stay only long enough to pack up my belongings to prepare to move to the States to start nutrition school.

There are days when the darkness takes over to the degree I want to be dead.

But I can’t stop and feel. It’s too much. So, Up up and away I go again. Toward new adventures and without knowing that wherever I go, there I will be.

Epilogue:

It’s more than a year and a half after I saw Juan the last time that I get called to a police hearing. Some of the people that bought the vouchers have filed a police report against Juan and I’m the closest association.

I get called to a hearing in Stockholm and that’s when I end up interrogated by the blond police angel. She helps me get through the hearing and tells me not to worry that I can safely move to the States and get married and that nothing will come of the police report, that it will be the lowest priority and there’s nothing they can do since he’s not in the country and I was duped too. So I go. I get married and I go on with my life.

A year later, in 2011, I get an absurd phone call from Juan claiming he got meningitis and then his mom died and that’s why he disappeared and was defending himself at every turn.

I tell him not to contact me ever again and hang up. Then on November 6th, 2017, I get contacted on messenger by someone claiming to be Juan’s publisher and that he’s coming out with a “tell-all memoir” called “What a fool I used to be” wondering if I want a copy and if I wound mind speaking with Juan… once again, it’s clearly Juan writing from a fake FB account created 4 hours before sending the message. The cover photo is of the “memoir cover” which has a silhouette of a man with his head in his hands. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry and the short message exchange ends with a classic narcissist comment “well, since you’re so mistrusting you are going to have to deal with Juan directly” and the conversation ends.

There’s still so much mystery surrounding this story from start to finish, but one thing is clear: it is almost impossible for a boundary-wounded person with a narcissistic bend to release themselves from the world they create for themselves.

What I would say to my younger self:

My sweet, darling Karna. I am so sorry this happened to you. You were brutally attacked and it’s ok to stop and get help.

You don’t need to be strong all the time.

You get to be sad, mad, angry, and confused.

But above all: just because you start something, you don’t need to “finish” it. The feelings, “red flags”, inklings and intuitions in your body are REAL.

They are valuable pieces of information that you are designed to receive to protect you so you can act on them.

You do not have to resolve tension for others.

You don’t need to clean up their mess.

You don’t owe anyone anything.

Your allegiance lies with you and your inner child. When you’ve cared for those parts THEN you will be equipped to love and care for others.

You are so very loved, guided, and protected.

Love, Adult Karna