The following is not “based on a true story.”
It IS a true story.
It happened at an indeterminate time in the (fairly recent) past. After these events took place, I felt tempted to post somewhere about it while my rage was still fresh. Instead, I opted to “save it up” for retelling at some point in the future when I could gain a degree of perspective on my experience, so I could give as objective an account as possible.
Objectivity, of course, cuts both ways. If anyone objects to the details I give here, or feels compelled to apply some dastardly and disreputable label to my point of view, please know that it is exclusively my interest in objectivity that compels me to provide the details which may give you discomfort or clash with your righteous sensibilities.
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The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the busiest hub for air traffic in the world. Given the racial diversity that courses through its concourses and tromps down its moving sidewalks every day, one would expect the airport staff to be similarly multihued, multifaceted, and multicultural. But the staff of Hartsfield-Jackson is exceedingly monoracial and monocultural; the culture they reflect, from all that I can tell, is nearly 100 percent the race and culture found in urban Atlanta.
Is that important? I’m not sure, but it is a inescapable detail and I won’t avoid mentioning it.
Of all of the airports I have experienced (and I’ve seen my share), Atlanta’s is easily the most dystopian. It never escapes making me feel like I’m in a Paul Verhoven movie from the 80s or early 90s. It has the personality of a futuristic police state.
If this iteration of Big Brother is bulky, brawny, and mean, it is also rather dumb. There are high-tech features, such as this one, which must have cost a fortune but seem to serve little practical function. As you stand in line at the security gate, you’re greeted to the sight of a 3-D image of a pistol spinning crazily and reflecting a cascading avalanche of rainbow colors, with an affixed screen reading, “Guns are not permitted.” (A simple sign would have sufficed, but even that would seem gratuitous; don’t we all KNOW this already?)
On this day, I was anticipating the typical unpleasantness dished out by TSA’s finest: the ever-absurdist shoe-removal ritual, the brusque demands to put your laptop in a different conveyer-belt bin than the one you put your put your shoes, and to put your carry-on bag in yet another bin, or whatever, and the ceaseless hectoring commands to get in the line on the left or the one of the right, or whatever: that is, the typical irritations incumbent upon the process of making one’s way to a passenger plane.
As it turns out, Big, Mean but Dumb Brother had other plans for me. I was bidden to the X-ray scanner, the machine that apparently allows its users to see you totally naked, put my feet in the requisite yellow footprints, and put my arms up in the “don’t shoot” pose, as per instruction.
Don’t get me wrong: the “typical” treatment is bad enough, but what can a person do? Put up a fuss, and they’ll no doubt tackle you to the ground; you’ll miss your flight and probably get dragged off to jail for disturbing the peace. So you let them see you naked, then recover your shoes and things, reattach your shoes to your feet and get on your way.
And I was ready to be on my way, when I became aware that the middle-aged lady with the crooked teeth wearing a TSA shirt was saying something to me. I looked at her. “It says you got somethin’ in yo’ groin or yo’ buttocks,” she informed me. She pointed to some picture which displayed an outline of a human figure with a small red square in his midsection. The picture clearly wasn’t an X-ray of me, but it was meant to show me where they had discovered “somethin’”… I gazed at it in disbelief, but the woman gestured that I step to the side, where a man with a linebacker’s build was standing, waiting for me, holding a pair of blue gloves.
“Do you have anything in yo’ pockets?” the linebacker asked me. I said no, and began to wonder what in the world that state-of-the-art machine could have detected. Absently, I grabbed at the front of my shirt, was something there? “Sir, please put yo’ shirt down,” the linebacker instructed me. He spoke in a Radio Raheem-like monotone, and radiated a similar absence of erudition. He asked if I would prefer to go to a private room to be “patted down,” and I could I only say, “I don’t understand why this is happening…” Radio Raheem took this as a “no” (even though it very much wasn’t, though if I could have thought straight at that moment, I don’t think I would have wanted to be taken anywhere “private” with this hulking, threatening figure).
He told me to turn around and stand with my feet apart. “Further apart,” he muttered. Then he put his gloved knees on the outside of my lower things, and moved his way up to my waist, before repeating the same motion from the inside of my thighs upwards... He asked me to turn around, and again moved his hands up from my thighs to my waist, first on the outside, then on the inside.
“OK, sir, yo’ good to go,” he said, removing his gloves, and gesturing for me to proceed down the line to collect my shoes, laptop, and carry-on bag from the end of the conveyor belt.
That was it! There was no, “Sorry we messed up and our state-of-the-art X-ray machine led us to believe that you were carrying contraband in your private regions, leading our hired thug to feel you up and put his hands on your rectum, testicles, and penis (though thankfully over the sheath of your pants and underwear; count your blessings, citizen, it could have been worse!), only to discover that there was really no contraband there at all! Our bad!” No apology whatsoever was forthcoming from anyone.
A moment later, when I had half-collected my wits, I loudly exclaimed, “Nothing like getting groped early in the morning!” Someone sympathetically chuckled, but the TSA staff, including my unrepentant molester, had no reply.
Just before the escalators leading down to the moving sidewalks and Verhoven-esque train with the cheerful mechanical voice, I saw a man sitting at a high desk, something like a judge’s chair. He looked official, so I asked him where I could file a complaint. “Uh,” he said. “That would be me, I guess.” He looked a bit sheepish. Someone from the security station must have glimpsed me addressing the man in the high chair, because he came running up and pointed me to a notice, whereby I could make my feelings known:
I realized then that filing a complaint would be both a waste of time and an exercise in futility. After all, the TSA thugs had done nothing but follow protocol; they would surely get backing from on high. I envisioned the form letter I would receive, which would begin, “We’re sorry that your experience with our staff was unsatisfactory, but…”
I would add that I have flown a few times after this incident, and have never had the X-ray doohickie falsely report me for having crotch-contraband, either before or since. The fact that my molester acted so casual about finding nothing after conducting his frisking causes me to wonder if false-positives are in fact a commonplace. Or perhaps they are just excuses for conducting random gropings on unsuspecting travelers. Maybe just for kicks? Who knows.
I would also add that, while TSA employees are a ubiquitous irritant at all airports, they are, in my experience, several degrees more likely to be utterly insufferable in Atlanta. Perhaps there is a… cultural reason for this frequent objectionable behavior?
I don’t know for sure, but I do think that the question is worth asking, offensive as its implications may be to some.
Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.
I hate like hell that happened, Brother...but, "welcome to the deep, dark South!" Try the DMV sometime! Or the Wal-Mart Returns Section lol...They love it, because they be knows they'll *never* get fired. Rape-a-rations, and all that, ya know...Love your work, Andy.
Anyone not worried what it will be like for us Whites once we're no longer the majority has never been to Atlanta, St Louus or Chicago. They REALLY don't like us. Sorry about your experience.