Immediately a security guard stepped in front of me. He was tall, black, with sunglasses, a utility belt to equal the Batmans’, a Taser in one hand, a tank of tear gas on his back, ears full of electronics, “What are you doing here?” he said, pushing a forefinger into my sternum.

     “Is this where they keep the airplanes that fly places? I was going to do that,” I said.

     “What’s your confirmation number? Type it into that terminal right there, NOW,” he said, and shoved me backwards twenty-five feet into a kiosk with a keypad. I dutifully typed my number into the system- 8453BNU-459666666FF5T76HJ-45-769K-78458239P383874743-04 – and was rewarded with a flashing screen that said “APPROVED MINIMAL SEARCH FACTOR 765,”  which meant that the security guard merely cut my suitcase open with a giant bowie knife, held up my underwear for the lingering appraisal of the eighty-six people in line ahead of me, and confiscated my jam. From the shredded clothes and bowlegged stance of many of the people in line, I was thankful that I qualified for Factor 765. “You are cleared to proceed through the  Homeland Security Portal. Step to your left and get in line,” he turned and clicked away. 

     Gradually over the next hour and fifteen minutes the line inched towards the security station. The guards at the metal detectors made you remove your shoes, belt and everything in your pockets, and then you had to spin a giant roulette wheel. Again, I was fortunate and the wheel spun to “Nasal Cavity Search.” The guard shone a flashlight disinterestedly up my nose, swabbed it for traces of explosives, and summarily released me. The guy right after me spun “Bone Marrow Analysis,” and I hurried to get my shoes back on before they got the drill out. The floor was covered with scraps of underwear and greasy rubber gloves, and the air was full of the surprised exclamations of people experiencing undesired intimacies.

     I saw a couple of security guards leading a worried swarthy man with a beard into a room marked “EXTREMELY PAINFUL RUDE AND INVASIVE BUT REGRETTABLY NECESSARY FOR THE HOMELAND  PROCEDURES.” In fact, most bearded men were being methodically plucked from the line and marched into that room. When the door swung open to admit more people you could hear screaming and a rhythmic squelching noise.

     I sat in an airport bar on the way to the gate and tried to drink a fifteen-dollar Bloody Mary. It was difficult at 8:30 in the Morning, but I managed it finally when I overheard some fat blonde jerk telling his wife how darn safe and happy it made him feel to see them Arabs and them finally getting treated poorly after what they did on NineEleven. Sam Handwich was already at the gate when I got there.

     “You’re just in time, Fang! They’re just about to board the plane. Of course, I’ll be going in ahead of you, as I’m flying first class, and you’re in the economy seats, as befits our respective status.”

     “Naturally, Sam. I’m just glad you haven’t asked me to be shipped as cargo in your luggage.” Sam laughed at that, but I could tell that he was truly disappointed not to have thought of the option.

     The loudspeaker crackled and a voice screamed over it, “Homeland Security Level has just increased to Tangerine! All citizens in the Terminal will presently be asked to drop to all fours for and prepare for crowd anal examinations. The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind you that we can take you away anytime you choose discompliance and your family will never know what horrible inhuman things we’re doing to you for years until you beg for death as a sweet release.” Sam Handwich, the fat blonde jerk and his wife and about eighty percent of the other people burst into spontaneous applause.

     Handwich was disappointed that the plane boarded before the security procedure commenced- I could see, revoltingly, that he’d been positioning himself  to observe the anal examinations of a threesome of teenaged girls.

     We were herded onto the plane with excruciating slowness. By the time I got down the long, cold exhaust-filled accordion ramp into the plane, Handwich was seated in a massive lounger in the third row back of first class, sipping his second glass of Champagne while a beautiful stewardess massaged fragrant oils into his temples and sang him a soothing lullaby.

     The wodge of people, festooned with zippery carryons, pushed deeper into the plane’s sausage-casing, stuffing it gradually it to capacity with nervous meaty filling. The fat blonde jerk, predictably wedged into the seat next to my assigned seat 46F (a window seat of minimalist proportions), was particularly meaty, flowing generously into the seats on either side of him, and particularly nervous now that he was in the plane, with beads of perspiration on his upper lip. I vaulted over him and his substantial spouse, and smooshed up against the window, looking out at a guy with big earmuffs assaulting some luggage on the tarmac.

     I watched the earmuff guy beat suitcases for the next hour and a half, while the plane inexplicably failed to show signs of life. The Stewardesses, stringy women who appeared to have been freeze-dried and salted, did their little disaster pantomime at one point, which was very entertaining, but I was the only one who applauded. Finally the engines started up, and we disengaged from the gate and began to drive aimlessly around the runways of Detroit Metropolitan Airport for the next forty minutes, then we stopped somewhere else , with a nice view of a drainage ditch and a blinking light, where we waited for another twenty-five minutes, and then there was a lot of muttering and twitching from the next seat as the plane accelerated and wrenched itself up into the air. The sky was thick with cloud, and the plane tunneled through ten thousand feet of  wooly grey before bursting out into the blue sky above the clouds, levelling out around 35,000 feet. One of the freeze-dried Stewardesses came down the aisle with a cart, and relieved me of another fifteen dollars for two teeny bottles of vodka, which I drank quickly while staring out at the pure white cloudscapes of castles and valleys and cliffs and dragons. Nobody’s figured out how to advertise on the clouds yet, which is a great mercy.

     I was fairly tipsy by this time, actually, having had three drinks and no food whatsoever -I probably should have paid another ten bucks for the small bag of Salted Snackshop Sweepings. I climbed the fat blonde jerk and his wife, both now apparently unconscious or faking it, and went into the lavatory to look closely at my aging drunken face under grey florescent light.

     I looked like hell in there, but I didn’t take it too personally because I think they do that on purpose so that people don’t get too turned on in the airplane lavatory.

     I missed Vampirella and Natasha and Tibor so much. I pissed miserably into the tiny toilet and washed my pouchy face and stumbled back to my seat, stepping rather hard on the abdomen of the blonde man on the way in. The seatbelt sign came back on, and the plane began a rather bumpy and precipitous descent, which caused the blonde man to grab my knee in a way that I found overfamiliar, so I delicately speared him in the back of the hand with a ball-point pen. Then we had tense words that killed a lot of the two hours waiting for the plane to disembark. Gradually I pretty much stopped being drunk and started feeling simply wretched all over.

     Emerging through another accordion ramp, this one hot with exhaust-filled air, I walked into the Orlando Airport, enjoying the feeling of not pressing against other people. I met the well-rested Handwich at the baggage claim, pulling seven big expensive bags from the conveyor belt. Amazingly, my bag had also successfully made it to its destination, with only a couple of footprints on it, and the long rip from the bowie knife, which I’d roughly stitched shut with a shoelace back in Detroit. Sam looked disparagingly at my disheveled appearance. He strapped his seven bags together into a giant wheeled motorized cart, climbed on top and drove it off toward the rental car area, as I trotted behind. Sam had rented himself another gold-fleck Cadillac, this one with a small Jacuzzi in the back seat, which Sam immediately had to try out. He stripped down to a gold Speedo in the rental car parking lot and eased into the hot water, and  I had to drive to Alligator Al’s Central Florida Jungle Fun Compound while Sam splashed and bubbled behind me.