Whenever I travel abroad I'm struck by the fact that it's so much more work to get back into the States than it is to leave.  Flying to France was a delight.  Flying back had me wondering at times why I was flying back at all. 

Because my flight from Boston to Paris had been so easy, I held high hopes the trip back would be too. And there were some good signs along the way.  I had an utterly charming and flirtatious first clearance before reaching the ticket desk which seemed to augur well, even if it was with a female.  In fact, the female staff of Air France was disarmingly charming, both coming and going.  It's the first time I can say that I found the stewardesses across the board utterly beguiling.  They just don't make 'em like that at Lufthansa. 

In fact, the French in general were perfectly lovely.  But it was here, after a wonderful week in Paris, at the tail-end of my trip, at the airport an hour or so before my departure, having passed through three security checkpoints, metal detectors and scans without incident, that things started to get irritating. 

I had about fifteen euros left over I wanted to spend.  I bought a magazine and went to a space-age-looking food court near my departure gate. The prepackaged food looked unappetizing, but there weren't really any other options.  I grabbed the French version of a BLT in a box and a bottled water, which came to something like €8.10.  I gave the mousy cashier, who was almost cartoonishly downcast and listless, ten euros.  She handed me €1.50 back, mumbling that she didn't have change for a fifty eurocent coin.

There was a sort of pregnant pause while we both pondered this curious conundrum. It was clear that she was not offering to resolve the matter in my favor, which would have cost the food court ten cents. I was gonna lose that forty cents, no question.  The only question was, would I give it up without a fight?

OK, so she was no Bernie Madoff, but it was to my mind a transparent scheme to wring forty eurocents (about fifty cents American) from me.  And though she had — no joke — four registers at her disposal, and there are five denominations of coins of lesser value than the fifty cent piece, I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and came to the conclusion that everyone's dignity would be better served by not pressing the matter.  I'm sure she had faith all along that I would do the right thing.

I mean, travelers already eager to unload their coinage are not going to argue over forty eurocents.  I'm happy to be rid of the loose change, frankly, which would only end up in a box in my sock drawer anyway.  But that's not really the point.  The point is, if you want a tip, put out a tip jar.  Don't insult me with some pathetic ploy.  You know she probably garners an extra twenty or thirty euros a day this way, easy.  It's her personal tourist tax, and I'm sure she feels clever for having implemented it.  Queen of the Food Court. 

She has clearly done her own cost-benefit analysis.  And I had to admire the brilliance of the equation, which I'm sure is the product of perfecting this method of literally nickel-and-diming people for many years.  I mean, how petty would you have to be to insist she get change for a fifty eurocent piece?  Pettier than her!  Not likely.  So she has calculated, almost to the eurocent, the cost of your dignity, and hers.  I mean, who's willing to make a federal case over that amount?  Are you going to miss your flight for forty cents?

And yet there was a little glint in her eye daring me to go for it.  She's obviously sick of these spineless tourists.  She's bored.  She's grown decadent.  She wants her forty cents and a fight. 

Next came boarding, which had been so orderly on the way to Paris, but was something like a stampede on the way back.  Usually, after boarding the special needs and business class, they board passengers in sections from back to front, right?  Not this flight.  It was a free-for-all.  This was a big plane, too.  We're talking a 747 seating more than 400.

It took forever to get up to the ticket-taker.  As I approached I noticed his and hers final pre-boarding random searches taking place. At the his table was a very bored-looking young security officer with dreads pawing very slowly, almost dreamily, through a young, tall, dark-haired kid's duffel bag.  The dreaded (double entendre intended) security guard scanned the crowd for his next victim with an impassive mien as he went through the poor boy's baggage.

I had a premonition.  I knew I would have to time my passage through the ticket-taker's gate perfectly to avoid my fate.  But then, the funny thing about fate is it can't really be avoided, can it?  And so it was.  Try as I might, I managed to pass through to the other side just as Dreads had cleared the kid.  He'd had his eye on me.  I could feel it, and was avoiding looking over at him, and he could see that I was avoiding looking over at him, which made him all the more determined to pluck me out of the line.

I could not disguise how thrilled I was that he had. 

"Assalamu alaikum," I greeted him.  "How original to pick the dark-haired guy with the beard.  Allahu Akbar!  Shall I ululate for you now?"

Let me tell you why I don't feel safe from the terrorists, if you can't figure it out.  It is because I am not one, and yet nearly every time I fly I get singled out among the hundreds of other potential terrorists boarding my flight for this ritual public display of authority.  In the time it took Dreads to dig through my ripe underwear and scrutinize with great care the ingredients label of my Adidas "Sport Fever" body spray probably forty or fifty actual terrorists were boarding the plane.

A pair of dress shoes I'd packed had metal in the heals, apparently, which interested Dreads as well.  He swiped them with his wand, which shrieked.  He then scrutinized them in the same slow, dreamy manner I'd noticed when he was pawing through the kid's bag, and then half-heartedly set them aside. 

He then instructed me to spread my arms and legs and set about wanding me.  It's different when you're going through the metal detector and more or less everyone is subject to the same treatment.  This very public singling out of a small, select number of passengers, who are required to expose themselves and the contents of their baggage directly in front of hundreds of their fellow passengers, who invariably have nothing better to do as they wait but look on impassively, is pure theater.

I'm not making the point here that airport security is unimportant, or that being selected for a random search is any more than a mild inconvenience to me.  All I'm getting at is the fact that the function of these particular searches is not so much the safety of passengers as the appearance of the safety of the passengers.  And there is a difference.  These last-minute random pre-boarding searches, which take place on what amounts to a stage in front of the boarding gate before what amounts to an audience, is a performance piece, pure and simple.

That's why they choose the ones more often than not who represent stereotypes we have come to associate with plausible threats.  Some of us — I have several dark-haired, bearded buddies who have a similar tale every time they travel abroad — are "typecast" in the role of Plausible Threat.  Sure, they throw a granny in there occasionally, a token tip of the hat to our democratic pretensions.  Granny, too, is a symbol: of plausible denial in the case of complaints of profiling.

We're all supposed to play our role uncomplaining, and the sign of a good citizen is his compliance and his complicity in a ritual we should recognize as absurd.  Even though experts agree that "passenger screening has reached the point of diminishing returns," the visibility of the process, while not really an effective preventative (last-minute screeners are able to grab only a handful of passengers), is a symbolic means of reassurance and a reassertion of authority. 

When he had gone through my things to his satisfaction it certainly looked like I'd had a bomb — a gay bomb — in my bag, and that it had exploded on the table.  As I was trying to gather up my things, I asked him about the shoes, which were still set off to the side. 

He shrugged and said they were fine. 

"What do you mean 'they're fine'?" I asked.  "You hardly even checked them out!"

I was like: OK, here's the deal.  If you're going to go to the trouble of pulling me out of line, holding me up, performing this big strip search in front of everybody, pawing through my panties, waving around my issue of Têtu, then at least do me the courtesy of making an effort when you do find something that could be a b-o-m-b.  I mean, seriously.

Thank God Richard Reid, the infamous "shoe bomber," wasn't the infamous "bazooka-up-the-bum bomber," or something.  That would really have revolutionized those random searches.

Whatever it takes to defeat terrorism, though, right?

My Tenants Association's bank — Central Bank of Somerville — is doing its part, that's for sure.  I dropped by yesterday on my way to the office to make a deposit.  It being February in Boston it was colder than the balls on a brass monkey and I had my gloves and a fairly taut skullcap on.  This is the type of cap that actually accentuates rather than obscures your face.  You could almost mistake it for a yarmulke...


I was the only customer in the bank, no exaggeration.  I've never seen more than three customers there at once.  They've probably got all of twelve dollars in the safe.  I nonetheless made my way through the little maze cordoned-off by a faded velvet rope, and waited politely until the lone teller, a heavy-set women with a dreadful Prince Valiant bob, invited me forward.

I greeted her politely and told her I wanted to make a deposit, sliding my business under the glass.

"Take off your cap, please" she said, in a sort of marmish but otherwise inoffensive tone.

I did obligingly.  I think I even said "oops, sorry!" realizing that they must have one of those "no hats, no hoods, no sunglasses, no style" policies in place. 

So there we were.  I had taken off my cap — the very one in the picture above — without hesitation or attitude, and stood smiling, waiting for her to get to my deposit.  But rather than get down to it once I'd complied she treated me as if I'd just reared back, indignant, and demanded to know why. 

"There's a sign on the door that says so," she said, priggishly. 
 
I didn't take the bait.  I let her prattle on.  I smiled and nodded.  I mean, I visit this bank once a month to make a deposit for the tenants association.  That's it.  I was running errands before work.  Not looking for trouble.  She obviously was. 

Talk about passive-aggressive.  There was no point at which I could have justified taking offense, but she was giving it by the heaping spoonfuls.  If I was more that type, I might have one-upped her, with a sweet "oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see the sign.  Will my deposit take long?  I'm running a little late to work!"  That'd stick in her craw.  But what could she have done?  Just a question, right?  A cheery "have a GREAT day!" on my way out would've been the coup de grâce.  She would have fumed over it all day.   

The thing of it is, I understand the "no hats, no hoods, no sunglasses" policy.  But it's not so that bank tellers can act out whenever they're bored or irritable, it's so that they can get a clear look at  would-be bank robbers.  The hats and hoods in question are presumably hats with brims or bills, and hoods that obscure the face from surveillance cameras.  When you're essentially wearing a beanie, it's not really an issue, is it?

And don't give me this line that they're applying the rule across the board to ensure equal treatment.  That's malarkey and everybody knows it.  They apply the rule when they're having PMS, bored and feeling bossy, and don't like the looks of you. 

Here's what happened: she saw me come in, and I still had a little whiff of France on me, a little fairy dust from Paris in my eyelashes.  For whatever reason — the cut of my coat, the color of my scarf — she probably couldn't even quite put her finger on it — she didn't exactly approve of me.  She couldn't say, "the sign says no fairy dust in your eyelashes!" or "You must wait at least forty-eight hours after returning from Paris to visit this branch," but she could say, "the sign says no hats."

She was lucky I was violating a posted policy of the bank, even while clearly not concealing anything.  And even when I happily complied, so that she could not fault me for that anymore, she had to find fault in my not having complied with the sign in the first place.  I had to be guilty of something.  I just smelled too French — all those whore baths and Camembert — to be innocent.

You're probably reading this and thinking "persecution complex."  But like they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.