Departures
Digging through an old directory of things I had written, I came across this. I don’t remember writing it. More importantly, I don’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote it.
I was watching television late at night, feeling sorry for myself and the directionless path my life had taken when I happened to catch a grainy, cheaply produced infomercial on the local cable access channel. In it, a very 80’s looking (curly brown hair, baggy brown blouse with huge shoulder pads) Julia Roberts described how she had spent nearly two months on the twin Pacific islands of San J— and San S— doing nondescript, charitable volunteer work and how this sabbatical, though arduous and full of privation, had allowed her find a new peace and purpose in her life. At the end of the show, she encouraged her viewing audience to call the following 1-800 number if they were interested in the experience of a lifetime. I wrote the number down on a receipt I found on the floor and promptly fell asleep on the couch.
I dreamed a fitful, fantastic dream, fantasies of a girl from far away hurtling into my life and knocking me out of the decaying orbits of my life, trips to Asia and half-serious jokes about moving away and what we’d do for the rest of our lives and other improbable notions. When I woke up and crash-landed back to reality, I felt more sorry for myself than ever; I hated my life and its pointlessness and the endless cycle of waiting, waiting, waiting. I grabbed the phone, called the volunteer agency and scheduled an interview for later that week.
Before the interview, the woman behind the counter said I would have to fill out these forms and watch a half-hour video detailing the specifics of life on San J—. She led me into a tiny, pea-green room lined with shelves overflowing with books. She threw a collection of worn pencils and pens on the table, letting them hit the scratched metal surface with a series of loud clacks, warning me to press down hard on the forms and to pay close attention to the video. She left the room and the small VCR/TV combo whirred to life.
6 weeks later, I was at an airport newsstand buying Dramamine with Scott, whose girlfriend was also accepted into the program. She couldn’t speak much English, but that didn’t seem to matter; we communicated just fine when we fucked behind Scott’s back, though neither one of us quite had the words to tell him about it just yet.