They Call Me Mister: How I Ended Up On a Remote Island in the Java Sea.

From Kyle Osborne

They call me “Mister.” 

I mean, to be fair, they call all Caucasian guys “Mister” here on the tiny Indonesian island of Belitung. It sounds like they’re mimicking  dialogue from a 1930’s Film Noir. ,”Hey Mister,” they call out as they whiz by on their scooters, genuinely excited to see a lumpy, balding white guy taking a daily jog through the narrow streets.

But their real word for white folks is “Bule,” (pronounced boo-lay), which is what I call an “affectionately racist” term. My ears have been quickly trained to hear that word wherever I go- shopping, walking, eating in a restaurant. I am constantly being watched and openly admired. It’s like unexpectedly seeing a deer in your backyard-you instinctively point and say, “oh, wow-look, it’s a deer!” You mean no harm. It’s not like you’ve never seen a deer, but it’s just unusual enough to make you smile and take it in before she scampers back into the woods.

In the one month since I arrived, I’ve felt like Brad Pitt or something–kids trot along with me as I jog, or wait for me to pass by so that we can fist bump. I mean, they run to the street to fist bump me, then run back. They ask for selfies. An older man pulled his scooter to the side of the road and turned it off for an impromptu chat–maybe to practice his English.

The point is, I have felt nothing but warmth and kindness from people who were colonized by the Dutch. You would have thought that all those years of being called the Dutch East Indies might have soured them on guys who look like me, but, nope. I am given deference for not having achieved one god damned thing other than being Caucasian. I am aware of the absurdity of that. Yes, I feel guilty about it. On the other hand, I was an on-air TV personality for twenty-five years and signed autographs and got invited to do every cool thing in the world, having accomplished nothing more than the ability to speak on television. This feels like old times.

I have lived abroad before and my philosophy then is still the same now: be humble, remember you are a visitor, a foreigner, an ambassador of goodwill.  And smile! I loathe the way this is going to sound like an inspirational meme on your great aunt’s Facebook page, but: Project love and good vibes, and you will receive the same in return. Even with my missing tooth on the side that makes me look like a pirate, I smile as widely as my facial muscles will allow. And I always, always receive a beautiful smile in return.

Well, How Did I Get Here?

Exactly one year ago, I was lying on the couch in suburban Maryland, unable to work due to the government shutdown imposed by the President of the United States. Something about money for a wall, as I recall. My money dwindled as I watched every bit of The Handmaid’s Tale in the reclining position (pro tip: if you find yourself in a depressing situation, do not choose to watch the frigging Handmaid’s Tale) and ate the cheapest fast food I could find. But the one thing over which I was most distraught, was that waiting out a shutdown with no end in sight was killing My Escape Plan. And My Escape Plan, already a few years in the making, had already taken several hits. I’d totaled my car, I lost my contracting job for 90 days the previous year because of a budgeting screw up. Thankfully, I was re-hired at the same position and salary after those 90 days, but the process crashed into My Escape Plan with unexpectedly harsh consequences. I used my IRS refund check–the one I was planning to use to buy my plane ticket for My Escape Plan, to pay rent. “It’s okay,” I thought. It’s just one more delay–surely this is the last .

And then came March

I woke up one Saturday morning to discover that I could only see clearly out of one eye. Looking out of my left eye was like looking underwater, but worse than just blurry-I was also off balance and couldn’t walk straight. I ran into walls, plowed over a sign in the middle of a food court, and fell flat on my back while trying to get out of an Uber. I hugged stairway railings as if my life depended on them. And here’s the crazy part: I actually kept my mouth shut about this on social media for a full month before I let people know. Didn’t even tell my parents for that month, and here’s why: the doctors didn’t know for sure what happened to me, but floated every scary theory they could think of, most prominently the possibility that a tumor behind my eye was the culprit. I spent a lot of time in two hospitals, as an outpatient, apart from one brief admittance in the beginning, getting every test imaginable. I cried, I grieved, I feared the worst and I only told 3 people outside of work, including my dear sister, to whom I will be forever grateful for her encouraging texts and prayers. My younger daughter was there for me every time I needed her, too.

Finally came the best possible news: a neuro-ophthalmologist said I’d had a “very tiny stroke,” and had third cranial nerve palsy. Why is that good news? Because the vast majority of patients heal in 3 months without surgery or further treatment. And, I could continue to work with my good eye–important for a videographer and video editor. A colleague at work, Dan Hockensmith, bought me an eye patch and it helped immensely.

Getting Back on Track

Damned if the doctor wasn’t right. Nearly three months to the day, my eye was healed. I could see. I could rent a car and visit my daughter. I could go jogging through the streets of Washington, DC without punk ass kids calling me “pirate” because of the eye patch. And, having spent money on some medical bills while waiting to heal, I could now resume my Escape Plan.

It All Started, as Things Do, with a Lady 

I’m leaving out a chunk of years spent in a downward spiral. It’s behind me now, but it involved treatment so horrible by someone (not my ex-wife,with whom I am friendly) that a professional said I probably had PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result. It was the lowest point of my life.

For four years, I lived in a roach infested dump with the occasional rodent thrown in for character development. During these four years, I had not one single visitor. Not a friend or family member or neighbor. Just me in my rented room. I ate virtually every dinner alone. The few exceptions to eating alone left me more stressed than anything. I eventually found solace in my solitude–people who know me well, know how unlikely that is. I had no romantic partner, either. Didn’t so much as kiss a woman for four years.

And Here’s How Things Started to Change

Sometime in 2016, I came to be Facebook friends with a lady in Indonesia. Neither of us remembers exactly how or when, but we think it might’ve involved a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio and me. A lot of people use social media pseudonyms in Asia-hers was Jessi Cool (you can call her Julie Osborne now). She spoke, by messenger, in a very formal way. Should she call me “sir,” she asked.  Uh, no. Her photos were mostly of her in what appeared to be a military uniform. I wondered if she played for my team or not–totally judging a book by its…uniform.. Ridiculous.

Before long we found ourselves video-calling each other every day on WhatsApp–free to use, no matter where in the world you’re calling. Our 12 hour time difference meant that I was calling her while driving to work in the morning and she was calling me during her working hours, my evening time. How we developed a relationship through hundreds of dropped calls, power outages, bad signals, not to mention something of a language barrier, is a miracle.

But we did. We became best friends. We had each come out of the worst possible relationships with deep wounds, not yet scarred over. We had each lost our homes, our cars, our sense of a good future.We helped each other-we showed each other the cities we lived in and, eventually, our families. I used to call her the Girl in My Phone. If I was out taking a walk, I’d turn the camera around and show her the Washington Monument. She’d show me the Jakarta traffic whenever I’d complain about the DC commute. I hadn’t thought of it until just this moment-but it was kind of like the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix. He is alone, and yet he is in love. He has no one, and yet when he needs her, she is there. We gave it a lot of thought and decided that we needed to be together, in the same place…in person.

The Plan is Hatched

So it’s 2017. I am still an empty-nester who has never gotten over that very fact. I have a good job, but, as I had learned, the government contracting business is tenuous. It’s a wobbly Jenga tower and many, many, many different fingers are pulling at the blocks. I’m having a blast flying around in planes, taking aerial video and producing videos for the FAA. But word was that this kind of work wouldn’t last forever. Nothing rooted in politics lasts forever in DC, and that’s good and bad, depending on where you are at the moment that tower falls into a heap. For me, it was time to, as they say, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

And so, I took Andy Dufresne’s advice. Hell, I even stole his method. You’ll recall that in the Shawshank Redemption (spoiler alert) Andy dug out of his cell, carrying dirt out to the yard, two front pockets at a time. I chose that method for my escape as well. Living in my cell, my $600 per month filthy room, I sent every extra penny to Indonesia to buy a house. Over there, you can build a house as you go–no need for a bank loan. You got 500 bucks this month? Spend it on cement or paint. You got 1,500 extra the next month? Build 1,500 bucks worth of more house.

Each Moneygram I sent was a pocketful of dirt being spread into the prison yard. And Julie? She’s the boss of her office here in a male-dominated business (natural disaster response) and knows how to not get jerked around. She went from vendor to vendor–never hiring a contractor–bargaining for the best prices on labor and materials, while also buying the best quality. She even designed the house. We were business partners with a common goal: a fully paid for house that could never be taken from us by anyone.

But it required patience and, above all, secrecy. I knew that if word got out that I was planning to move, my job would end a flash. If I set a date, it would surely get pushed back. I mean, look how many starts and stops I’d already had. So I confided in a few trustworthy people to keep from going insane and, apart from that, I kept quiet. I was tempted so many times to spill the beans, and I want to publicly apologize to everyone I deceived through omission.  I hope they understand.

Are you crazy?

I thought I’d be asked that question by everyone in whom I’d confided–but it never came. People would ask, “have you met her in person?” but they didn’t bat an eye when I told them that I’d spent more time talking to this person than probably any woman in my whole life. No, I hadn’t met her in person. But I’d been with her on video calls that ranged from child births to funerals. I’d spoken to her children many times and felt like my life was practically saved when her sister’s baby came along during my eye stroke episode. Talking to that baby as he stared back at the crazy man on the phone gave me hope and encouraged me not to give up. I wasn’t crazy.

The last month or so before I crawled through that tunnel? Now, that was crazy. Visa stuff, plane ticket stuff, last minute things for the house like, say, a stove! It was all coming together quickly, after years of slow walking. I spent Thanksgiving with my younger daughter in Richmond, VA. Next day, headed for Texas in a U-Haul to see my folks and drop off my remaining possessions (not much), and packed two suitcases to travel 10,000 miles, about 24 hours of flying

So here I am

I don’t know the name of the street I live on. There are no house numbers. I have no job and very little money. I don’t speak the language yet. Friends say I’m “brave” and “adventurous”, as if I’ve accomplished something. But that’s a very grandiose way of putting it, and I don’t agree.and I don’t agree.

I left a great job that paid  well to move to a place where it’s hard to get work. But I haven’t felt this peaceful in many years. I am not running from the law or the IRS. I am easily found. Some of those medical bills will remain unpaid for a while, but my credit took a hit when the rest of my life did, so it’s not going to get too much worse. What I was escaping was a life that had gone as far as it could go. And I wanted to keep living. I wanted to get busy living.

What will I do here? A YouTube channel before long. Blogging. Hopefully, some online work that pays in dollars. I’ll shoot some weddings and stuff. I hope my colleagues will let me continue to belong to their critics groups and review films, as I’ve always done.

I have a wife who is infinitely more complex than the Girl in My Phone, and that’s okay. It’s sort of romantic to reverse engineer a relationship at this point in my life. If the whole thing blows up (it won’t) I’ll be okay. I survive and adapt. I love and I am loved–that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

Here, my credit is good. My house is paid for.

And everyone calls me “Mister.”

Postscript: In October of 2020, exactly 10 months after I arrived in Indonesia…we had a baby girl. Life is so good