Fly and frisk

adventures with airport security

I have dangerous calves. I learned this from a security guard at Charles de Gaulle airport on our way home from Paris. Christina and I breezed through check-in, thanks to her Delta Gold Medallion Stallion™ status. We cleared the first security check-point in two minutes. She bought perfume and macaroons at a duty free store; I killed time with my favorite airport activity — people watching. When it was time to board, we lined up with our group. When the gate agent scanned my ticket, an alarm went off. I had been selected for additional security screening. Which is where our story begins.

I never got the name of the French man who frisked me, so I’ll call him Jean-Paul Belmondo.

The first thing Jean-Paul Belmondo did was search my backpack. He found a laptop covered with stickers from some films that inspire my slacker noir approach to fiction — The Big Lebowski, The Nice Guys, Point Break, Inherent Vice, and Robert Altman’s version of The Long Goodbye.

“C’est un homme bon... et minutieux,” I said.

Jean-Paul Belmondo said nothing. After he finished searching my bag, he swabbed my shoes and clothes for gunpowder residue. Usually, I’m not nervous about those tests, as I’m not a gun-guy. But that morning’s pain au chocolat was literally figuratively dynamite, so I held my breath and crossed my fingers. I passed. Then I shed a tear, knowing I’d be downgraded to chocolate croissants for the foreseeable future.

“I search you,” Jean-Paul Belmondo said in heavily-accented English.

A second later, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s hands were all over me. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. OK, not toes. But he checked every inch centimeter of my body for a weapon. That’s where my calves enter the story. But first, a word about my calves.

I have great calves. They’re my best feature. Some men are blessed with strong jaw-lines, or bulging biceps, or six-pack abs. Not me. When they handed out body parts, I was first in line for calves. Even my yoga teacher, who looks at muscles all day long, thinks I’ve got the best calves in Los Angeles. She told me so while I was in downward dog, then quickly apologized for her unprofessional comment. I felt flattered. My calves are big, powerful, and defined, thanks to a passion for long walks up steep hills, endless hours of physical therapy after two broken ankles, and a regular yoga practice.

“Lift,” Jean-Paul Belmondo said, pointing to my pant legs.

He wanted to get a better look at my calves. Who could blame him? I pulled up the legs of my pants, but I didn’t get very far. The elastic around the ankles of my Flying Pants™ caught on my bulging calves.

“Lift,” Jean-Paul Belmondo said again. “More.”

“I can’t. This is as far as my pants go. I have big calves.”

Jean-Paul Belmondo looked intrigued. The next thing I knew, his hands were on my calves. And they stayed on my calves. For about thirty seconds. Which feels like an eternity, when a strange man is caressing your calves. When it was over, Jean-Paul Belmondo lit a cigarette and asked for my number. Or maybe I just imagined the cigarette and what he really said was, “you can board your flight now.” What I know for sure was that after Jean-Paul Belmondo was done, I felt flattered, like when my yoga teacher praised my calves, but also a little dirty.

They say additional security searches are random, but I’ve been selected too many times to believe that. Once, when Christina and I were flying home from Belize, the gate agent called my name. It was about ninety minutes before the flight. The search lasted three minutes. I spent eighty-seven minutes in a roped off “holding pen,” along with four other passengers. The five of us had one thing in common: Dodgers fans. We were political prisoners, obviously.

My theory is that I’m genetically predisposed to random searches. In the early 1990s, my father was flying home from Cincinnati, Ohio. He set off the metal detector, so they asked him to walk through it again. The alarm went off a second time. Out game the wand. As the security guard scanned my dad’s body for weapons, the wand beeped.

“It’s your pants,” the guard said. “Take off your pants.”

My father refused.

“Take off your pants, sir.”

“If you’re going to strip search me, you need to take me to a private room,” my father insisted.

“Take off your pants now,” the guard demanded.

“Call your supervisor,” my dad pushed back.

When the supervisor came, my dad explained the situation. The supervisor apologized to my father, then said he was free to go.

“And you,” the supervisor said, turning to the guard, “I told you the next time you tell someone to take off their pants, you’re fucking fired.”

Next time? Whenever my father told that story, he emphasized those two words: next time. There had been previous incidents. I want to believe that those passengers held their ground, like my father, but I can also picture someone dropping trow in the middle of the airport. Stranger things have happened, like the time at LAX when a TSA agent said my beard made me look like a 9/11 hijacker. I shot back, “none of those guys had beards,” although the subtext of my reply was clearly, stop cracking dumb jokes about the people you’re supposed to protect and do your fucking job. Come to think of it, maybe that’s where my airport security problems began.

Thank for reading! If you’re new to Situation Normal👇

Curious about slacker noir?

The stickers on my laptop speak to my passion for slacker noir. If The Big Lebowski, The Nice Guys, Point Break, Inherent Vice, and Robert Altman’s version of The Long Goodbye are your thing, you should check out my novel. Pick up a copy of Not Safe for Work on Amazon, or all the other book places.

Stick around and chat!

I ask, you answer (or else).

1. What’s your best feature? The weirder, the better.

2. Does airport security hassle you? Explain.

3. Christina earned her Delta Gold Medallion Stallion™ status via points on our American Express card. We’re both on the account, but I have no status at all. Why does AMEX hate me? Wrong answers only!

4. Jean-Paul Belmondo or Humphrey Bogart?

5. How do you kill time at the airport? Or, does time at the airport kill you?