Permanent Record

Interpol, meet Jeff Donaldson:  It was bound to happen at some point.  All the stamps in my passport, boarding pass stubs in the bottoms of random bags, or used as page-marks in books I never finished just increase the odds of me running in to a bit of trouble along the way.  Until now it has manifested in the form of lost luggage, cancelled flights...  the normal benign hassle that people (me included) usually complain too much about.  But now I'm red-flagged in the system.  That system: the matrix that all of us long-haulers who've taken the red pill know is there even if we can't see it yet.  Everything about me that is camping out in that little barcode on my passport just got a little more exciting.  

Turns out I have been traveling to Australia with the wrong visa for a while now--I'm here to work, not to be a tourist--and only this time did the customs agents pick up on it.  And like the chronically honest dipshit that I am, I gave this information freely.  I was detained at a desk just the right side of the passport stampers, and just short of the baggage carousels, Purgatory, slightly elevated so I could see my bags going round and round as the rest of my plane's passengers collected their items and moved along.  Would I be let through the pearly gates of the Sydney airport to the land of milk and honey (murderous biker gangs excluded) or would I be cast back into the pit?

Well, here I am watching the Pacific waves crash in on rocks and sand from my eighth floor balcony bike shop, so you know how the story ends.  But the agent who helped me along did a little "official counseling" and informed me that I would be noted in "the system."  She was very polite, but gave me one of those looks that your fourth grade teacher gives you that instantly lets you know that pulling hair is not ok and you will be sent to the principal's office for discipline if you even give a crooked look to another pigtail ever.  For as long as you live.

As a cool-shades-wearing red-pill-swallowing long-hauler I can imagine what this means and I'm not looking forward to the working over in customs I'm sure to get on the way back home.  Now, whenever my passport is scanned, disembarking at whatever port of entry, I'll know that the agent will see something like, "not really a tourist"  or "too dumb to keep his mouth shut" in my permanent file.