I first discovered I was a deadbeat when I returned to Canada from several years abroad. How they knew I was back, I don’t know, but I started getting calls from a collection agency.

“This is Tony Tang calling on behalf of HKW Financial Remedies. Sir, you have an outstanding account of $845.41 with Dr. Braverman and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that Dr. Braverman deserves to get paid..."

Who was this nutjob? His voice was like a teacher’s pet answering a geometry question. I made some excuse and got rid of him. He said he’d call back. I looked into it and found out that it was Dr. Braverman, maxillofacial surgeon, who’d wielded the pliers that extracted my wisdom teeth three years ago. There’d been no insurance. I’d vaguely expected my parents to pay for it and then got caught up in my travel plans and the brilliance of Europe and so forgot all about anything so mundane as paying my bills. The dentists had written me off and sold my debt to a gang of chiselling bedwetters fronting as a company. And they knew where I lived. Good God.

At that time I was desperately trying to get a job as an ESL teacher. It was my rotten luck that the Asian economic crisis of the late 90’s had cut the number of students coming to Vancouver to learn English. Nobody was hiring. I started applying at coffee shops and bakeries but their intuition told them that I was wasting everyone’s time. Nothing turned up. So all I had for Tony Tang was dry conversation and a big load of nothing. Eventually I was reminded of my nominal middle-classness when my parents took pity and agreed to bail me out.

“Sir, I’m calling again to remind you of your obligations to Dr. Braverman and but so—“

“I’ve got the money.”

“But would you not agree that Dr. Braverman deserves to get paid?”

“Tony, I’m going to pay. I have the cheque right here.”

“If I send someone around to collect a cheque, sir, you are going to have to have a cheque to give to that person.”

Or else what? You might start harassing me by phone?

“45 minutes. That will be fine.”

In Europe I had always worked on a cash basis. I had this frontier notion that if you couldn’t pay up front, you’d be run out of town. Or you’d go to a Dickensian debtor’s prison and die a sentimental, multi-chapter death. Now debt was starting to look more nebulous. I thought of it as a kind of medieval scholastic exam question: What is money? What is debt? How many angels can dance on my loan agreement? Over the next several years, I acquired a credit card and a mountain of student debt. Along the way, the amounts I was running up didn’t seem quite real. Somehow I’d pay them off. Anyhow, I was always hearing about how a friend of a friend had won out over the system through tax loopholes or some obscure amnesty or flight to another country. The game looked beatable. If worse came to worse, I’d have to explain to some shadowy committee that I wasn’t really interested in money. I’d tell them I was fully prepared to sign a contract to that effect, stipulating that I didn’t have to pay off my student loans, but that in return I could never be wealthy.

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