“paradise” in June 2012, shortly before his twenty-ninth birthday

Thief | 41 “paradise” in June 2012, shortly before his twenty-ninth birthday. Just before leaving Annapolis for Hawaii, Mills posted a seminude picture of herself on her blog, L’s Journey. In it, her face was cov- ered with a blanket. The caption under it read, “Trying to avoid the changes coming my way.” In Honolulu, she found “E.,” as she called Snowden in her blog, “elusive.” She found that he preferred to stay at home and avoided meeting other people to the point that her friends “were not quite sure that E. existed.” Lindsay’s fellow per- formers in the Waikiki Acrobatic Troupe told me in 2016 that they rarely, if ever, saw Snowden at the practice sessions. Andrew Towl, a juggler with the group, did briefly meet Snowden once. It was on a hike with Lindsay in Oahu. Towl said he asked Snowden what he was doing in Hawaii and Snowden answered tersely, “I work with computers,” and continued walking. Even though Mills had dated Snowden for eight years, most of her other friends, except for Jennie and Joe Chamberlin in Japan, had not met him. Next door neigh- bors I spoke to caught brief glimpses of him entering or leaving his house but did not engage him in a conversation as Snowden tended ® to avoid eye contact. If he had other social interactions in Hawaii, no © one he met came forward and spoke of meeting him, even after he became world famous. Two days after his twenty-ninth birthday dinner on June 21, Mills described him playfully as a “goof.” She wrote in her blog, “The universe is telling me something and I’m pretty sure it’s saying get out, Fuck you Hawaii.” In early July, she summed up her shaky situ- ation with Snowden in another blog, writing, “I moved to Hawaii to continue my relationship with E. [but] it has been an emotional roller coaster since I stepped off the plane.” She diverted herself by organizing a pole-dancing studio in the four-hundred-square-foot garage of the house. She also found her own friends in physical fit- ness and dance groups. She joined a New Age yoga studio called Physical Phatness, as well as a local acrobatic performance group, and, on Friday nights, pole danced at the Mercury lounge in down- town Honolulu. Unlike Snowden, she enjoyed socializing, writing in her blog, “We lovingly crammed a large group into a small corner of a delicious Japanese restaurant and filled our bellies with sushi, tempura, and good conversation.” | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 41 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019529