xp_communication | Encrypted email to Kevin

To: [sydney]
From: [gabriel]
Subj: Aha!

Well, this explains your stance on flip flops: https://twitter.com/HistoryInPix/status/890646478989004801

Don't tell me this isn't true. I'm going to be staring at your shoelaces until the end of time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

xp_changeling

To: [gabriel]
From: [sydney]
Subj: Re: Aha!

Of course it's true. Signaling with clothing is basic tradecraft. Shoe thing only really works if you're going to be in close quarters with the person for awhile; say on a train. Suit colour, type, tie knot, type of briefcase are all easier to pick up in a crowd. Most times you want to tailor the signals to stuff the person already owns, so it doesn't seem out of place to counterintelligence agents. So, no, no one wore a fucking rose in the lapel.

But there are all sorts of methods for signalling. We once had a married couple informing for us in Italy who would use a sequence of sexual positions to indicate whether they had new material and which drop it would be in. We accidentally mistook them 'celebrating' their anniversary as a code which sent me crawling all over Portofino at three in the morning looking for a microfiche case.

There is no end to weird in the history of this job, Gabe.

From:

xp_velocidad

To: [sydney]
From: [gabriel]
Subj: Re: Aha!

Speaking of codes and sexual positions, allow me to teach you about the hanky code. You see, in olden days — I speak, of course, of your adolescence, although I'm sure this is still de rigeur in shitty of the American South, I'm sure) — long before Grindr and general sexual freedom, gays used color handkerchiefs to signal that they were DTF. They meant different things for different colors and whether you put them on the left or right.

I guess I don't know a ton more than that, except that green was for prostitutes and black was for bondage. I don't know my history.

See? We're all learning things.

From:

xp_changeling

To: [gabriel]
From: [sydney]
Subj: Re: Aha!

I can teach you the rest of the old ones for NYC if you want. Although I have it on good authority that some of them were never really meant to be used as any thing other than to fuck with NYPD Vice or FBI trying to infiltrate into the community. I'll tell you, there's more than one story about an agent having to simulate intense enjoyment at being pissed on in order to keep his cover intact (despite being pegged as a snitch the second he walked into the bar).

You ever hear about those paranoid stories that the feds infiltrated counterculture groups in the 60s to spy on them? True, at least in the case of the Agency. Hoover had to maintain a tough line on gay activists in order to deflect rumours about him and Tolson, but it was run by idiots in DC liaising with even worst idiots in local police forces who believed literally every rumour about the queer community they heard. With those morons blundering about and trying to fit in, made it easy for us to get our totally illegal and actually authentic informants in.