At Last, I've Been Groped By TSA!

I’ve waited years for this moment. While my sketchy business-like boyfriend has gotten his bits scanned and 99 year old grandmas are pulled out of the line to get extra pat downs, I’ve mostly glided through TSA except for that time I didn’t have government ID trying to get home to San Francisco from Dallas. Well no more, people, it’s official: JDA has been groped!

Not only was I groped but I was scanned, dusted for explosives and found a nice little note from TSA in my luggage that told me they felt compelled to check my stuff out.

After a quick trip to California to clean out my storage unit I no longer need, I shipped the few boxes I wanted to keep to myself at UPS and decided to check the final box with my luggage on my flight out of Oakland. No biggie, right? People fly with boxes all the time.

Maybe it was the fact that I bought my ticket to leave the same day of my departure from my iPad in the airport. Maybe it was that I checked an overstuffed suitcase filled with the last bits of my former life in California and a sketchy box triple-taped a whole 7 hours before my flight. Maybe it was the tattoos and the fact that I write an incendiary blog about how fucked up the government is. Who knows but something happened that made me get harassed by TSA in ways I’ve never experienced up until yesterday.

I made it to Oakland with only 20 minutes to spare before my flight. Thankfully it was late so security didn’t seem to be an issue. “OK TO BOARD” printed across my pass and headed home to the District of Columbia from which my government-issued identification comes, I figured I’d have no problem cruising through TSA with my laptop bag (that just so happens to have an official “Federal Reserve Police” badge safety-pinned to its flap).

I should have known when I saw TSOs everywhere despite the thin lines that I’d be up for additional harassment. Although I never do, I even pulled out my small (less than 3 oz.) Secret Wonderland body spray and tossed it in the tub. The last several times I’ve flown, I haven’t pulled out a single liquid (except for the sauce I smuggled back from San Francisco last time) and no one has complained as long as it isn’t toothpaste, body wash and shampoo crammed into 3 oz bottles in their own plastic bag.

The TSO picked the spray out of the bin before it made its way into the X-ray, looked up at me and tossed it back down.

“Smells AWESOME,” I said to him, smirking. That part is true. It’s like crack. It smells so good it makes me want to feel up myself, you can imagine what it does to my boyfriend.

“You know, we’re going to start enforcing the plastic bags,” he said to me, his face frozen in a snarl. Damnit, I knew I should have sprayed myself before I went into the airport. The guy was young. Maybe if he opened up the spray and sniffed it, he’d recognize it from some one night stand he banged at the bar not too long ago.

“Is that just Oakland or everywhere?” I asked innocently, stunned considering most airports honestly do not care.

“Everywhere,” this young TSO with the perfectly-trimmed white trash chin strap said to me. He believed it. Little did he know…

At this point, I’m standing there barefoot waiting to make my way into the body scanner. Whatever, I’ve had to explain my nipple rings at TSA before, no biggie. CHECK OUT MY BITS, YOU FUCKERS, ENJOY YOURSELVES!!

Apparently, something about my scan sent me to the bad line where the bad people wait to get groped and possibly pulled out for additional screening. They’re so quick about it you don’t even realize you’re in trouble for nothing until a TSO is grabbing your bra’s underwire looking at you like you’re a terrorist for wanting to keep your tits hiked up on a cross-country flight.

“I’m going to touch you here,” the female TSO said, motioning her hand up and down between her own breasts. Mine were better than hers, obviously, but I got the point.

“Go for it,” I said, smirking again. I couldn’t wait to tweet it at that point. I GOT GROPED OMG YOU GUYS!!!

She paused, rolling her fingers along my bra.

“Underwire,” I said to her as she felt up my hot giraffe print Victoria’s Secret push up. Maybe she needed a little underwire in her life herself, might make her a little less frumpy IMHO.

Maybe 45 seconds later, she’d made the trip from my underwire down to my belly button ring and back. Apparently satisfied that my push up bra which I’ve worn many a flight was not a security threat, she kept me corralled until the explosives duster could check me for the really bad stuff. Let’s just hope Victoria’s Secret doesn’t use nuclear weapon residue in their padding or I’m fucked, right?

At last, I was free to gather my shoes, laptop, belt, phone and hot stripper smell body spray and make my flight home to DC.

When I got through my front door and unzipped my suitcase to make sure the art I’d packed made it home in one piece, I discovered the note from TSA that they’d inspected my bag. Everything was exactly as I’d packed it (and smart traveler that I am, I took a photo of the perfectly-packed bag before I checked it to prove it) as if they unzipped it to see what the hell I was packing, realized it was just dirty clothes, a couple paintings, a box full of love letters and $300 or so worth of Federal Reserve-branded shred (it makes for good protection for fragile items like picture frames) and gave up. Damn me, I wasn’t a threat, I was just a 30-something tattooed white female born in the United States making her way home.

And I paid almost $600 for that experience. For that kind of money, I could buy my boyfriend a couple dinners and a gold-plated vibrator or two for a good time, WTF? Why do we allow this on our own soil?

Thanks for the good time, TSA.

Source: