My Brooklyn Flight In One Paragraph

OK. I made it to Brooklyn, Prospect Park to be exact. There is a lot to say about what I see, but let's talk about the Nashville airport. The hardest thing was the airport security check. A man just walked by with a cell phone in his hand and was not stopped by anyone until he was well into the screening area. The brother behind me said that if it had been either one of us we would have been down on the ground with a gun on the back of our necks. And I agreed, loudly and boastfully as many an African is likely to do in such situations. Then the little black security lady with pearl chained glasses promptly took my ticket and had me thoroughly checked at a random screening. It was interesting because I did not know what to do with my insulin pump, and had actually thought about it on the way to the airport. It is one of those boundaries that I have to constantly cross in terms of learning to live with a tube coming out of my stomach which is attached to a machine in my pocket. In all honesty, the order of my machine dependency and development has been as follows: first, learning how to wipe my ass and pull up my pants after taking a shit and not breaking the pump, getting tangled in the cord, or straining my ass muscles so as not to turn into a stinky mess in turn sacrificing the sanitation of all the parts involved in my well being; second, learning how to fuck with a machine connected to my stomach without a belt or pocket to hang the damn thing on, plus not freaking out the object of my affection because of a fear of needles or cat herders (I just take the thing off to tell the truth); and third, how to get through airport security with a what looks like a detonator and tubing attached to my body. I always have been in awe of the Korean War Veteran with a plate in his head, or the matador that has a rod in his thigh after being skewered and severed on an unusually cool day in 1967. I imagined that I too belong to that legion of people, as I inconspicuously left Nashville for Brooklyn. "Should I have procured a note from my doctor?" I asked myself in bed a nana-second before the sleep fairy came in and busted my jaw. I then asked again on the way to Nashville International with my best friend and her three daughters on Interstate40 East, as the heat and weighed down the car, making me feel like I was traveling submerged, in some warm lagoon. It was very eventful. First I was set off to the side. Then I was moved into a small waiting area that is paneled off with clear plastic dividers. All was normal after that. They x-rayed my bags and I put my change and the machines in the nasty little box. I should have kept it on, but I guess I did not want any stuff from security. They make me nervous. Then after that, I went to a state of the art screening section where I had to sit down and lift my shoes. Then they did this swab test on my bags. I immediately thought of the swab AIDS test. Isn't the AIDS disease like a terrorist in some ways? It is part and parcel of our times, these swabs for evasive rogues that have no country or species. I don't know. Why don't you sit and discuss it. There were two people working on my bags. The first was a tall lanky gentleman who was of that physical type that leaves you wondering how old he is and very Tennessean in that Johnny Appleseed sort of way. There was something liberal arts educated about him, and there was something authoritative about him, but there was also something that was too cruel, too much like the real thing. There was something reminiscent of a public servant or official that is going to order your hands chopped off for stealing or deportation to Siberia for holding contraband sardines from North Africa in your cupboard. In the plastic tray he found my pump and held in his palm in this very dandy manner, like it was either a diamond pried from the stone socket of a bejeweled monkey or a dissected hummingbird pried open to view her bloated entrails. He turned his head and looked at me with a very serious tone and said: "You should have kept this on." Was it embarrassing? No it was not. It was annoying because I take the thing off all the time and drop it in my gym bag, on a park bench or the bathroom counter to exercise or shower. His blue gloved held it very plainly and his disgust was apparent. I simply glanced at the second attendant who was juggling though all of my diabetic supplies scared of the needles and vials of insulin. She unzipped every glucometer and caring case. Her tenseness was apparent and in the end she told me she did everything as to no compromise the sterile condition of my supplies. I said "Thank you. By the time I left I felt I had passed the test. Airport security, needles, pumps and tubes. Shitting, Fucking, Airport Security. It is now crossed off the list.