Chapter Sixteen The Land of Smiles
Sixteen
The Land of Smiles
Picture a wisp of a woman with long blond hair that falls around her face.
She is nineteen years old and is traveling abroad by herself for the very first time.
She doesn’t want to bother you, but will you please take her photograph?
She seems friendly, like she would do the same for you. Chances are, you say yes.
She hands you her pocket-size disposable camera.
Before boarding a plane to Southeast Asia, this teenager made sure to stock up on Kodak FunSavers, which she tries always to carry with her.
Each one has just twenty-seven exposures inside, and she’s vowed to use them wisely.
Given her situation, it seems smart to conserve resources.
Very few photos exist of Jenna Roberts during this time.
But maybe that is as it should be. After all, didn’t I come to Chiang Mai to disappear?
Later, though, I will wish I’d done more to memorialize this period of my life.
During the years I’d spent with Epstein and Maxwell, I’d visited many places people write guidebooks about: London, Paris, Tangiers.
But I had a feeling this trip to Southeast Asia would be more meaningful, and I was right.
What happened in Thailand would set my life on an entirely new course.
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There’s something about being up in the air, especially when traveling solo.
It’s as if the world below ceases to be, and to me that is a relief.
No one can touch me. I decide when to sleep, when to eat.
My own needs—no one else’s—come first. During my twenty-one-hour journey from New York to Singapore and then on to Bangkok and finally Chiang Mai, I wasn’t used to these feelings of independence, but I enjoyed them.
By my third and final flight, I was tired, but there was no sleeping now.
My body was humming, as if jolted by electricity.
Could it really be that, at least for the moment, I was free?
I had read that my destination city was surrounded by mountains, so I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse of them out the window: Chiang Dao to the north, Mae Kampong to the east, and Doi Inthanon—Thailand’s highest peak—to the west. Then we touched down, and I spent the next half hour corralling my six overstuffed suitcases.
Finally, a taxi delivered me and my luggage to my hotel.
I checked in, and a porter unlocked the door of No.
923, leading me into a spacious room with two queen-size beds.
Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a shimmering swimming pool.
I tipped the smiling porter, and he nodded and closed the door.
It was still daytime, but I needed to be unconscious.
I closed the curtains and crawled into bed.
I wish I could tell you that a few hours later, I awoke, grabbed a FunSaver, and headed out into the sunshine to explore this exotic new place.
Instead, my first two days in Chiang Mai I stayed put, eating fried rice and French fries I ordered from room service and waiting for the phone to ring.
Just as in that creepy fifth-floor bedroom in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, I felt as if I were on call and would be punished if I failed to answer.
I know that probably sounds ridiculous. There was no one there to reprimand me.
Still, I’d lived by Epstein and Maxwell’s rules for more than two years.
When Maxwell called to check in, I picked up before the second ring.
On my first day of school, anticipation woke me early, and I hired a tuk-tuk—one of those motorized three-wheel cabs—to take me to the International Training Massage School.
“What we will teach you here is a powerful massage technique whose origins go back to the days of the Buddha,” the head of school, whose name was Chongkol Setthakorn (but he went by John), told us in his orientation lecture.
He said the fundamentals of traditional Thai massage—known as Nuad Bo’Rarn—originated about 2,500 years earlier and had been handed down from generation to generation.
Thai massage employed principles of both yoga and acupressure, he said, and was based on the theory that the body consists of some 72,000 energy lines—roughly equivalent to the twelve meridians, or energetic pathways, of Chinese acupuncture.
We students would learn to breathe alongside our clients, to establish compatibility with them, and to use the weight of our bodies to help them stretch and let go of their stress.
John compared the relationship of masseuse and client to a mother who shows love and kindness toward her children.
Thai massage could be intense, he said, but fundamentally it should leave both the giver and the receiver refreshed, happy, and energetic.
From the start, I was reminded how much I’d once loved school.
It was amazing to feel curious again, even as doing so forced me to flash on the childhood abuse that had interrupted my ability to learn.
To hear my instructors speak of wholeness and respect and heaven-sent healing was not just intellectually intriguing, it was what I’d spent years yearning for.
Now ITM—which is what everyone called the school—was promising to teach me a set of skills, while also pushing me to grow in a spiritual way.
Given how I’d been living, the school’s emphasis on psychic release seemed aimed directly at me.
The ITM teachers were great at explaining the basics of Thai massage, which was fortunate, since I had a lot to learn.
Unlike what I was used to, this practice made no use of oils and there were no massage tables; clients lay face up, on mats on the floor, while we knelt beside and sometimes over them, leaning into them with all our strength.
We learned to use the balls of our thumbs, not the tips, to target pressure points.
The goal was to increase flexibility while releasing both deep and superficial tension, all in the hope of letting energy—or qi—flow more freely.
We needed both physical stamina and mental awareness to stay in tune with whomever we were working on, feeling for their heartbeat, trying to align ourselves with their rhythms. Hearing all this, I couldn’t help but think about how, without words, I’d forged a trusting relationship with my first horse, Alice, and that gave me confidence.
If one of the key elements of Thai massage was reading the cadence of another, I just knew I could be good at it.
Classes went from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, with one break for lunch.
Every session started with chanting a mantra, whose syllables (in Pali, a derivative of Sanskrit) were spelled out phonetically on a chalkboard.
Then we had an hour of yoga and meditation.
Finally, we’d break into groups of three—two students, one teacher—and take turns massaging and being massaged, with instructors modeling the proper technique and students mimicking them.
I preferred giving rather than receiving.
I didn’t like strangers’ hands on me, even through my clothes.
But I wanted to learn, so I made the best of it.
At first, I spent all my time after school at the hotel.
But soon I got bolder. Maxwell was calling me almost daily, but she left a message with the front desk if I didn’t pick up.
When we did talk, if I heard disapproval in her voice, I simply told her how busy school was keeping me.
“Have you tracked down the girl Jeffrey wants you to meet?” Maxwell asked in every phone call.
I told her no, not yet, and then promised I would.
But I never did. Every time I ignored her commands and nothing bad happened, I got a little braver.
Before long, I was exploring Chiang Mai with gusto.
Not for nothing was Thailand often referred to as the Land of Smiles.
Every man, woman, and child I met seemed happy to see me.
And as I discovered Chiang Mai’s celebrated beauty, the joyfulness of its people made more sense.
This vibrant city was bound by a moat and the remains of walls built a thousand years before, and it was crammed full of temples, monasteries, and stupas—dome-shaped structures erected as Buddhist shrines.
Good vibes, it seemed, were everywhere. At one of the city’s most famous attractions, the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar, vendors lined up along the footpaths, erecting tables and tents to display their goods: touristy trinkets, tooled leather, snacks, electronics, clothing.
I’d always loved shopping when I traveled—not just to acquire things but also as a way of interacting with local people.
Now I began visiting the bazaar almost every night, walking down the rows of tables, exchanging greetings with the vendors.
I knew they were hoping I’d spend some baht at their stalls, but even when I didn’t, their warmth felt genuine.
Back in my hotel room, I called Tony a lot at first. I was feeling lonely and nervous about what would come next, and as he had since my middle-school days, Tony served as my sounding board.
(Besides, since Epstein was paying the bills, I didn’t even consider what those conversations would cost. Years later, phone records unearthed in various legal cases would show that between talking to Tony, returning Maxwell’s calls, and letting my family know I was alive, I racked up a phone bill of about $4,000 in under two weeks.)
But it wasn’t long before my need to hear Tony’s voice waned.
Seventy-seven students were enrolled at ITM, and after school, groups of us would gather at the city’s lively clubs and rooftop bars.
For the first time in forever, I felt free to get to know interesting new people my own age, without being expected to drop everything if Epstein called (or, worse, to recruit for Epstein’s use whatever friends I managed to make).
After living without autonomy for so long, being in charge of myself felt liberating.
When a female classmate of mine complained that her accommodations were crappy, I invited her to stay in my room with me.
It may sound like a little thing, but to have the chance to help someone else out of a bad spot, without any strings attached, filled me with pride.
Looking back, though, I see that in addition to enjoying my freedom, I was also behaving recklessly.
A few of my fellow ITM students liked to party—smoking pot and trying other drugs—and I fell in with them in our off-hours.
I justified this by telling myself I couldn’t just quit Xanax cold turkey after using it so regularly.
And thanks to Epstein’s frequent infusions of cash, which I picked up at a Western Union near my hotel, I could buy anything I wanted.
Either I was blind to the dangers of procuring drugs in a foreign country or I didn’t care.
Probably a little of both. At one point, a male friend and I found ourselves at the wrong end of a dark alley when the drug dealer we thought we were meeting sent thugs to rob us instead.
We got away on my friend’s motorbike, but the night could easily have ended differently.
Even after that, though, I spent little time pondering the consequences of my decisions.
It wasn’t that I thought I was superior or immortal.
I have many faults, but arrogance is not one of them.
Instead, I think that a core part of me felt undeserving of self-defense.
I’d managed to convince Epstein and Maxwell to let me out of their clutches, at least temporarily.
In that way, I had successfully advocated for myself.
But still, their abuse—and the abuse I’d suffered before I met them—made me internalize a devastating belief: I wasn’t worth protecting.