Tits Out

I stare at the ceiling of my living room and start to notice the intermittent flicker of the lightbulb in the pot light over me. I try not to get self conscious as I glance over to see my face and nude torso in the top-right corner of the Zoom meeting. I'm lying tits out face up while Carly stands over me watching her instructor explain the next sequence.

The slideshow starts to show the "terminus thing", as I call it, and I stick my headphones in as Carly starts pushing down on my shoulders in such a way that it feels like her fingers are going all the way down inside of me and it feels incredible. Once she stops depressing my termini, I tap my headphone, and it starts telling me about how pissed off people were at my good friend Charles I, who was just about to start a civil war.

After removing parliament from the equation, he'd assumed complete executive control over the state in something called the Personal Rule era, or the Eleven Years' Tyranny, depending on how you feel about it.

He got all pissed off because these things called "laws" passed by "Parliament" prevented him from his favorite things like locking up his political opponents, and imposing random taxes on people. To overcome these obstacles he dissolved parliament and ran the whole show like the asshole he was. I won't get into it, but my general review of him is "Horrible king, zero stars, and I'm glad he gets beheaded in about ten years from now."

Carly continues the activation sequence by pushing on my cistern below my xiphoid process, which goes so deep and all the way inside of my ribs to the point that I think she's touching my lungs.

For some reason as I hear about excesses personal rule, I start thinking about the United States, and how ridiculous it is to remove your shoes at the airport. One guy tries one thing one time and now, 23 years later, we still have to stand in line and throw our shoes in a bin so that they can make sure that there's no high explosives in your flip flop, loafer, or, god forbid, Converse High Top All Stars that take like 9 years to take off.

After flying out at 6:15 AM, I landed in Calgary at 10:55 AM brain time, but 8:55 real time. My connection leaving at 10:30 this time, forecasted a fair amount of time to kill, despite doing preclearance here to head to Portland for the year's conference.

I'd been going to and from Portland, Oregon for a few years and had a system down to ease myself through security:

• Your outfit must be comfortable but practical
  • Do not wear a belt if at all possible.
  • Dress for the airplane. They are cold. Bring a zip up hooded sweatshirt
  • Wear slip on shoes for a quick on-off through the X-Ray machine

Passing the X-ray was also broken down into a similar list:

• Take no fewer than three bins. You can always put one back easier than getting an extra one.
  • Bin 1 hould have your Laptop (face down for some reason) and shoes
  • Bin 2 should have your carry-on bag, lying flat, as well as any pocket contents including your phone, and additional sweater you probably have.
  • Bin 3 should have your overhead item and any errata

I had managed to meet up with my friend Andreja back in Ottawa before takeoff, and after getting separated on the plane, we have a brief "Hey how was it for you it was fine I guess", she heads over to get a drink at a vending machine and I head straight over to get my balls zapped at security, and over to the CATSA border preclearance wicket.

I hand over my passport and the uniformed CATSA Agent asks me for my name. He then asks me where I'm going. He then asks me why. Then he asks me if I've ever been arrested. Then he asks me where I'm staying. Then he asks me for my fingerprints. Then he asks me again if I've ever been arrested. He asks me for my date of birth. He asks me again if I've ever been arrested or in the back of a police car or anything like that.

"No, I haven't."

He picks up the phone. That's not good.

From the far left side I see a guy in a plate carrier and sidearm with and a police-looking cap look directly at me. The CATSA Agent points at me. He tells me to go over to the man in the plate carrier who is approaching me faster than I can process the instruction. I am told to come with him. I am taken through a set of doors I didn't see were there. I am taken down a hallway and through an unlocked door into a plexiglass enclosure and told to wait there.

I still have all of my stuff, so that's something at least.

The actual room itself is large and while I am corralled by a plexiglass enclosure, it is by no means agoraphobic. It is clean and smells antiseptic. The lights are equally clean and sterile. The enclosure I am in has a couple of those one-piece cast aluminum benches, and is open on one side leading to a counter. Behind the counter are two equally clean and antiseptic looking officers. It looks like you could hold about a dozen people in here, and maybe a couple hundred in the outer area if needed.

On the far end I see two or three single aluminum doors, and before long I'm called over to the counter by one of the two guys in uniforms, and I see that it's, indeed, the Real American TSA. The flag behind them is American. There are at least three tiny American flags on holders along the back counter. I am still in Calgary, which is still in Canada, the last time I checked, but these men were clearly not Canadians.

I hand over my passport and the TSA Agent asks me for my name. He then asks me where I'm going. He then asks me why. Then he asks me if I've ever been arrested. Then he asks me where I'm staying. Then he asks me again if I've ever been arrested. He asks me for my date of birth. He asks me again if I've ever been arrested or in the back of a police car or anything like that. He's to the point, but not overly terse. I take a note that his nametag says Smith.

The guard on the right is Latin American and is giving me a really mean look. He has great hair. His nametag says Garcia.

They give me back my passport and tell me to stand "over there" with all my stuff, back inside the plexiglass enclosure.

I don't have Andreja's number to give her an update, so I text Carly.

I won't get into too much more detail, but she tells me she loves me and that everything will be okay.

About ten minutes later, they call me back over.

"Can we see your passport and boarding pass again?" Smith uses the light gun on my phone and swipes my passport through a reader this time. I can't see the screen so I don't know what they're looking at or for. The one named Garcia is looking up at me periodically as he watches over Smith's shoulder.

The tiny American flags cast vague shadows from the overhead indirect fluorescent lighting. Smith types at his terminal. Garcia continues looking at me. I notice the flag on their uniform shoulders are backwards. The silence gets to me, and I start getting chatty with these guys in hopes to charm my way into their good books, and therefore into America.

"So you guys know my name. I see your nametags. What's your first name?

"I'm Richard."

"Nice to meet you Richard," I turn to the other TSA agent, "What's your name?"

"My name is Garcia." He says it in such a way that tells me it in such a way that he won't tell me his first name.

Richard says "We call him Rocko."

"No kidding! I had a co-op student named Rocko. Not sure why. His real name was Francisco or Francesco or something."

Garcia's eyebrows knit together and his neutral look is even less friendly.

I don't love it, and neither does he.

I stop talking to Garcia and go back over to Richard.

"So why do you keep asking me if I've ever been arrested?"

"We can't tell you," Garcia says, starting to full on glower at me.

"Why not?"

"Privacy reasons," Richard says, typing into his terminal.

"Yeah I guess that makes sense. I like, accidentally skipped fare here once, but I paid that ticket."

"No, it wouldn't be for something like that," Richard says to me without looking over.

"The guy who issued the ticket, his name was Bob Hope. The weird thing is he had no sense of humor!"

They don't get it. Garcia looks even more mad at me, if at all possible.

I get sent back over to time out in the holding area again.

It's getting on to 9:45 real time when Smith calls me back over to the counter and Garcia still looks mad at me, but less mad then when I had told my Bob Hope bit.

By now I've gone up another time to answer the same questions, then show them my OHIP card as second form government ID. He then asks again me where I'm going. He then asks me why. Then he asks me if I've ever been arrested. Then he asks me where I'm staying. Then he asks me again if I've ever been arrested. He asks me for my date of birth.

Richard looks at Garcia then back to me.

"Listen, Matthew. There's another guy with your name, with your similar description, with about your date of birth, who uses your spelling of your name, and he has a warrant out. We know he has connections in the United States in the area you're going to. We also know, based on how you're acting with me, and– honestly, Garcia thinks you're actually pretty funny, so you're probably not him."

I glance at Garcia. I don't believe Richard, but okay.

"So we can't prove that you're him. We also can't prove that you're not him. So what we're going to do is that I'm going to go talk to Calgary PD and see if they can give me like," he pauses, "anything else to go on here."

Richard walks off around a corner leaving Garcia and I standing in silence. I do not look at him.

Richard returns to my relief, and says "Okay."

I say "Okay."

Richard says, "So this guy, he has a tattoo. On his chest. Do you have any chest tattoos?"

Hell no.

"No I do not."

A chest tattoo? Are you serious?

"Do you want to see?" I start lifting up my shirt at the counter with my bags strapped across my chest.

Richard quickly says "Not here." He and Garcia take me back to one of the aluminum doors along the back of the room. It opens, and inside is a single chair and table. Interesting.

"Okay. Let's see."

There, in the tiny holding room I stood, tits out, showing the TSA my blank chest.

"Okay, you're free to go. Have a safe flight."

Pulling my shirt down and zipping my sweatshirt up all the way, I shake off the indignity and jokingly ask, "So what does the tattoo say? Something like 'I Kill People' with a crosshair?"

"We can't tell you," Garcia says, still looking at me with his TSA Agent eyes.

"Why not?"

"Privacy reasons," the Smith says. "Besides, that's not even necessarily a bad tattoo to have. He might be an army sniper or something, and he kills the bad guys."

I laugh nervously.

Garcia turns to Smith, "Can you tell me?"

Once they're behind the counter Smith whispers whatever it is to Garcia, to which he says "Oh, interesting."

I realize at this point that I am completely turned around "So how do I get out of here?"

I eventually circumnavigate the instructions they give, and emerge out of a set of anonymous doors out into a food area. Andreja is miraculously there like a vision, eating what appears to be a vegetarian hamburger from the nearby Burger King.

She wipes her mouth as she sees me. "What the hell happened to you?"

I wake back up to hear Parliament hasn't been reinstated and Charles I isn't dead yet. Carly's instructor tells her that we're finally wrapping up for the day. She calls for a round of applause for "the bodies" this weekend so far. Carly and I have a quiet evening together. That night I sleep with a shirt on.