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Out of my personal database of stories, this has got to be the one that takes the cake. And that’s saying a lot considering I was raised by one incredibly intelligent person (he nearly got his PhD) who might be a psychopath—let me tell you, my childhood was a multicultural chessboard for psychological wargames—and another person whose origin story is so harrowing it includes my matriarchal grandmother dying in a tragic gas stove explosion. Grandma lit a cigarette. My mother was only seventeen when it happened. Ma became a chain smoker but kicked the habit before I got old enough to notice. Damn resilient woman. Bipolar. And we grew up in DC. Not the point though. This is a true story of mind breaking terror. More terrifying than my childhood fear of my little sister being disappeared by my Haitian relatives. Equally as terrifying as confronting my father about the knife he hid on top of the washing machine. I was his little attorney. Relentlessly questioning him with my vocal inflection never rising above the reasonable tone you’d use to ask about why the barbecue came without napkins. I was not even twelve then. By the end of this convoluted story I will have passed the Foreign Service Officer Test with a score of 158. I will have done this sans a university degree, and on the heels of a painful repatriation to depressing, wintertime mainland USA. Still, somehow, I will feel like Elle Woods when she shared her ambitions for law school. I could be homeless (again) by this May. But for right now, I’ll tell you how I (a black, genderqueer college dropout) got from hell on 4th St in DC to a dark room in a convent scared to tears behind a barricaded door. Scared to death on an island in the jewel blue Pacific. One thing I must make clear: the insidious danger that I encountered did not come from a Pacific Islander. On the whole, Chuukese are giants in friendship and knowledge. They’re world class Olympic athletes, female constituents at United Nations events, and incredible guides on hikes up luminous and haunting jungle promontories. The terror was The American. A white, unassuming, nice guy. I feel like I have to say this because I’ve come face to face with ignorance. When I was a volunteer at the fire department, I told an EMT I was going to Chuuk. His response was that I should beware of mass murder while I was there. This was the same guy who would eventually divulge that he proudly believed he was a sociopath, and that he had a would-be vigilante in his paternal lineage. I mean—fam. Come. On. Who wants to hear that at 4 am in the firehouse? But I digress. I’m just saying, be aware of the exploitive behaviors of certain fellow Americans and other privileged travelers while abroad. Have a detailed risk management plan, funds, and protocol for an independent emergency repatriation. I also want to underscore that I am writing from a very western viewpoint. Many Chuukese travel to and from Chuuk all the time and never have the experience I had. Additionally, Chuuk is a treasure in the Pacific for its nuanced cultural depth, complex oral based language, and world class wreck dives—significant for their historic value in combination with the accessibility and high quantity in which they appear. And there’s more. Chuuk is phenomenally gorgeous. Orange comets with tangential tails of diamond fire; sea turtles and reef sharks; nimbuses superimposed by partial rainbows and exhaling mists over expanses of flawless ocean: all things you can see in Chuuk. How did I meet the American? I was overseas working as a volunteer teacher in Chuuk, Micronesia. With no degree? Yes. I worked for FEMA. Then what happened? Time for micro-nonfiction. He was new, and too good to be true. No background check. Xmas on the island. We bonded as expats. So good till not. He picked up the Belgian. Wanted a human flesh book. Asked if there was a market for human skulls. My friend was scared shitless. Alone on the most terrifying car ride of my life. Made it.