A TSA pat-down—security never felt so good! Or so bad. “But it’s against my religion,” I explain to the stern-looking officer who is directing me to the full-body scanner with a gaze that would stop Superman. I feel as if I have been profiled. A man traveling alone, looking like he has nothing to lose (people tell me I should smile more). It is a lazy weekday morning in the Raleigh-Durham Airport and I am returning from a business trip I didn’t really want to take. I am dressed in business casual. I’m about as threatening as your average Gund creation.
Having a total stranger employed by the government narrate just how he’s going to touch you is strangely erotic in a nation so squeamish about frank discussions of sexuality, especially involving same gender touching. In public. Yet, here I stand on big yellow footprints, hands raised in the orans position, as if in prayer, while a man I’d never met before runs his hands all over me. At home, I complain of my treatment and say that I hate being profiled. I may be a relic of the ’60s, but I’m no biker dude. The others selectively sent through the full-body scanners were obviously of non-standard WASP stock, I comment. “But you’re not Middle Eastern,” my daughter observes.
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