Having two big doses of “security” crammed down my throat in the past week has left me feeling queasy and confined. The first round came from those high temples of human control, the airports. This was my first passage through their warped world since 9/11, so I knew the intensity level would be upped, but I foolishly didn’t anticipate that the absurdity would also be cranked, and that a healthy portion would be aimed right at me.
I already have this history of being hassled by airport security mutants that dates back to before the Big Event, so I should’ve guessed that their antennae would be alert to my arrival. In the year 2000 alone you would have thought a “wanted” poster of me was posted in the security break rooms of all airports — during my every trip, I was singled out for “special treatment.”
Keep in mind that I’m a tall, fair female who dresses when traveling like I could be ducking into Sunday school at any moment. How this translates in the minds of security drones into someone warranting extra vigilance is something I’ll never get, unless they suspect that Hussein or bin Laden might have had a complete gender-and-ethnicity makeover.
All I know is that when I entered La Guardia in June 2000 after serving as maid of honor at a wedding, for heaven’s sake, I was immediately asked to step aside by a security bitch (or SB) who led me over to some contraption and ordered me to set my carry-on bag upon it. As I watched Ms. Bitch wave an electronic wand over my bag, I timidly asked what she was doing. Quaintly I assumed she was conducting some kind of high-tech search for pot, and prayed that none of the wedding revelers had accidentally passed the joint to my bag.
Her answer came as quite a jolt — remember this was pre-9/11: “Checking for traces of explosives,” she stated mechanically, causing me to be even more bamboozled as to why I was singled out. Was there a whole new terrorist sub-group composed of maids-of-honor-turned- suicide-bombers?
Fast forward to this year, as this demure model citizen once again crosses the threshold of an airport. I notice the lengthy maze of ropes now blocking the security area and an SB glowering at its opening. She asks the guy in front of me for just his boarding pass, but sure enough, she wants to see my pass and a photo I.D. Even after I produce both, she barks suspiciously, “Did you even check in?” What is it, the bobbed hairdo?
With obvious reluctance (possible matron-of-terror type, I guess she’s thinking), she lets me pass by, but a mere few feet down the line I encounter another security sentinel who again wants to see my pass and I.D. As I dig them out I wonder what exactly they think might have changed between the first post and this one.
When I finally reach the electronic archway the next security lady, a non-bitch, asks me cryptically, “How do your shoes do?” Um, I’m a little confused, but I’ve heard there’s something going on with shoes and airports now, and I answer, “I don’t know, they’ve never been to an airport before.”
She waves me on through the portal into the Promised Land of the Secured as my shoes do just fine, in that they don’t set off an alarm or draw attention of any kind, which has to be your uppermost goal in the airport gulag. A droning voice commands us humanoids to report “suspicious persons and unusual behavior” and I wonder just how unusual we’re talking about as I sit in the waiting area among a sea of fellow passengers who grip their cell phones like lifelines, making me feel pretty suspicious for not doing the same.
Once on the plane I notice that the days of the captain purring that we should “feel free to move around the cabin” are long gone. Even though the fasten-your-seatbelt light still goes out, a voice hastily warns us to keep our belts buckled at all times for our “safety.” Great. They don’t want any assholes marauding around, so we have to stay strapped in like babies.
On the trip back there’s no asking about how my shoes do, the SB instantly orders me to take them off. I feel like yelling, “I don’t want to!” but by now I’m afraid of being deported to Guantanamo Bay.
When I finally reach my destination, which is my alma mater, I open my checked bag and see a foreign scrap of paper staring up at me. It’s a little note from the Transportation Security Administration, just letting me know that my lucky bag had been “among those selected for physical inspection,” like it had won a contest. Jesus, I ask myself, did they sniff my underpants?
My consoling thought is at least I’ve made it to the college of the free where I spent the most unrestricted years of my life, not knowing that soon I’ll discover that even in academia the security creature, no more than a peeping mouse in my day, has grown into a many- tentacled monster.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2003.
