You know your choices might haunt you. It starts with your studies: a German major, a European Area Studies minor. You ride the surge of liberal arts courses for three years, oblivious; the final year is mildly depressing, a plank that leads to something unfathomably dark. The nine and a half hour drive back to your parents’ house confirms this. You heft your bags upstairs to your room. Posters adorn the walls. Mom beckons you for dinner. You are a boy again. You cry.
Sales is what your father knows. Suits. A briefcase. A company car. He contacts a friend at a rival firm; an entry-level position will open soon. You stretch your résumé to one page. You list your GPA. Summer jobs, bulleted with muscular verbs. Hobbies. Dad has a manual of industrial tool companies, thick as a log. You finger through the pages and send off letters of interest. Nobody responds. In the meantime you wait tables at a Greek restaurant for two weeks before taking a job with Room Service Express, darting around town delivering families their dinners.
You drive to a hotel for an interview, where company employees are attending a sales conference. It’s all guys, all wearing teal collared shirts with the company insignia on the left breast. You don’t want to wear that shirt. You purged your head of long hair and earrings only a month ago. You like the Cocteau Twins and Pixies. The salary is in the low twenties, which means nothing to you since you’ve never had one. Commission can be earned on a fraction of a percent. Your job? Drive a vehicle the size of an armored car around the Midwest for a year or two. Visit hardware stores and hawk industrial tools, thick steel chains, and such. Stay at motels. Eat at restaurants with neon signs. Your mind brims with the wonders of cities, museums, bars, landscapes. You imagine the money you can bank before quitting. You think of your father and how this would reflect on him. You don’t take the job.
As summer closes, you start to lose it. Your girlfriend has a manual like your dad’s, but not as thick. And not about industrial tool companies. It lists NGOs. Doctors Without Borders. Bicycles Not Bombs. One organization responds: World Service Authority. You move to DC.
You read about WSA, a non-profit founded in 1953 by WWII bomber pilot Garry Davis, who gave up his US citizenship in 1948 to promote a world free of borders. For a few afternoons each week in the fall of 1996, you draft letters to embassies informing them of the human rights violations they have committed by restricting individuals’ attempts at international travel with a WSA-issued World Passport. You don’t fully comprehend what the WSA does until you’ve been there a few weeks, when the cost of leaving home without a plan finally sinks in.
WSA lets you stay in Garry’s apartment, a studio on Connecticut Avenue. The interior decoration looks like it belongs on a Falcon Crest set. Drawers and cupboards burst with Garry’s life. You live out of your suitcase.
The apartment feels like it’s yours when Garry comes to town from who knows where. Garry is older. Hair resembling tennis ball fuzz specks the crown of his head; a thinning white ponytail marks his spine. He sleeps on the mattress next to yours. You’re by the window, Garry by the closet. A small table sits between the beds. You’re almost asleep when you hear Garry stir. The light from the window illuminates his motions. He’s on all fours. He grabs a jar from the table and tucks it between his legs. He places a jar of urine next to your head. You crave borders now more than ever.
You apply to teach English in Japan. You land an interview at the embassy in DC. The JET Programme covers your flight to Tokyo. Business class. You stay in the Keio Plaza Hotel for three days of orientation. You try the bidet. The bullet train whisks you to Osaka, a blur of rice paddies beyond the window. You drop your bags in a small apartment bedecked with tatami mats and the sparse belongings of the teacher you’ve replaced. You speak little Japanese, have no phone, and no training as a teacher. You have no idea what you’re doing. You are 23 and you’ve just crossed a border and will soon learn you love being on the other side.
