I actually met a guy on the Island of Rhodes in the--
off the Turkish coast.
It's a Greek island in the Mediterranean--
in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I met this guy who, as it turned out,
was sort of an indentured servant.
He'd gone there-- he was a Dutch guy who'd gone there to gamble
and had lost an enormous amount of money
and was loaned the money to pay his gambling
debts by the owner of this pension where we were staying.
And I think he was going to have to work for the next five years.
He was actually a kind of high technician of some sort
back in Holland.
Or so we said.
So this is called The Debt.
Dignity exists, I'm sure.
And because this is Rhodes, it must
be kissed by the same Pentecostal
wind swaying the palms.
The histamine yellow light warming stones,
even if behind the lobby bar a Belgian
named Rene stands clowning, pouring, wiping, talking,
talking his bartender chat.
It is only later in the consuming
lime and gin of the later when he mentions the debt incurred
by gambling perhaps, keeping it vague,
sneaking in some explanation at any rate for how
he finds himself unable to return to his previous life.
His cot is visible through the open pantry door.
And on a shelf next to it by the hot plate, a bottle of luminol
for migraines.
But the blackness of his earring, a single pearl,
severs itself from light as if to corroborate the fact
that after his debts were paid off by the owner of this C-class
pension and his passport taken as collateral,
he went to work here as bartender, porter, night
clerk, and maid, a indentured servant
with a five-year contract, the first provision of which
asserts someone might manage to live purposefully
by hauling the aluminum white smoke of Gauloises
into his lungs.
His brain packed in pharmaceuticals
like a new camera, crammed snug into a Styrofoam carton
and shipped off to an unknown address.
The carton handled as carefully as a common box turtle picked up
by a slightly malicious, mildly curious child
who, having spotted it navigating
a tidal marsh, small flippers, leathery slo-mo paddles,
wriggling over the shallows and through the kelp,
grabs the turtle and ties it atop scrap from a wooden lobster
trap, launching the raft out into the pond where
the current takes it down the cut
and quickly, dutifully abandons it to the waves.
So the purpose of that was to see how far you could actually
get away from the story that you're telling.
It's like I seem to have this need to move sideways
a lot in my life.