that scared.
Joe looked at me from the other side of the scanner and held his hands out like I was a toddler about to take its first steps. Trevor was behind me, his attention split between the TSA agent’s questions and my own, increasingly obvious, dilemma.
And me?
I was frozen in place with the words Don’t say bomb! Don’t say bomb! Don’t say bomb! screaming in my head like a crack addict with a butt plug attached to a jackhammer.
“Darla?” Joe called out in that fake-quiet shout where you are trying to get someone’s attention but not everyone’s attention.
My big old wide eyes met his and my heart slapped away against my stomach. I was, in a word, dying.
Just…dying.
The room swelled to ten times its real size, and people began to speak through gallons of Karo syrup. My shoes grew and my knees began to shake.
Don’t say bomb!
You’re wearing an underwire!
Trevor’s hands felt like searing-hot fire irons on my arms. “Honey? Darla? You are green.” He nudged me forward, three steps or so, to the scanner.
Amy was next. “Darla?” I couldn’t say nothin’. Couldn’t even croak out the word bomb .
Not that I should!
She went through the scanner real slow, looking back at me repeatedly, and then when she was done shot me a thumbs-up.
What was I supposed to say? Yay you, Amy, for doing that because I can’t. I am dying, and fuck your thumb, you overly cheery chipmunk who got an iPhone caught in your twat.
I get mean when I’m terrified, if you haven’t noticed.
A new TSA agent waved me and Trevor over. Joe was talking to Amy in a super-controlled way, both of them talking out the sides of their mouths and sounding like they were Stephen Hawking. It made them both look lawyerly and mature, and I wanted to annihilate them with a flamethrower for having the audacity to be okay while I wasn’t.
’Cause I was dying.
“You’re ice cold, too,” Trevor said in a voice of such compassion I would have wept if more than three brain cells were working.
But all three of them rattling around in my head were devoted to making sure I didn’t say bomb!
Finally, the TSA agent, a balding man who was built like my Uncle Mike but who had the cynical scowl of of a big-budget action movie villain, called out to me and Trevor.
“You need to proceed,” he said with a sneer, like it was so easy, like I could just take a step forward.
Trevor even kicked the backs of my heels a bit, as if I were Colin Mochrie or Brad Sherwood in an improv skit gone maniacally wrong, but all it did was injure my achilles heel and make me want to punch him.
“Do something,” he hissed, no longer compassionate now that his tender ass was in jeopardy of being made sweet, sweet love to by an un-lubricated silicone glove covering the hand of a government worker who made $17 an hour.
So I did. As Trevor went up to that big, Star Trek -like beast of a machine, I reached my hands behind my back and unhooked my bra.
That’s right.
My bra.
Don’t ask me why, but the part of my mind that wasn’t screaming Don’t say bomb! was telling me Take off the underwire . My left hand snaked under my right shirtsleeve and slipped that arm out of the bra, then ditto with the left, the long string of bra coming out, unfastened, through my left sleeve.
A distant set of catcalls from people in the security line reached my ears as blood pounded through me, my eyes now finding a gawking Joe, Trevor giving me a WTF look, and Amy shooting me that chipmunky thumbs-up.
My legs decided to work again, and I got one of those bins and threw my bra in it, nipples free and rubbing against the thin cotton of my shirt, poking out hard and ready for a fight. Most people think you go into one of two states when you’re scared: fight or flight.
But there’s a third. It’s freeze . Fight, flight, or freeze—and I’d frozen, all right. So had my nipples, because going around in a thin cotton t-shirt in mid-December in Boston would make
Joe looked at me from the other side of the scanner and held his hands out like I was a toddler about to take its first steps. Trevor was behind me, his attention split between the TSA agent’s questions and my own, increasingly obvious, dilemma.
And me?
I was frozen in place with the words Don’t say bomb! Don’t say bomb! Don’t say bomb! screaming in my head like a crack addict with a butt plug attached to a jackhammer.
“Darla?” Joe called out in that fake-quiet shout where you are trying to get someone’s attention but not everyone’s attention.
My big old wide eyes met his and my heart slapped away against my stomach. I was, in a word, dying.
Just…dying.
The room swelled to ten times its real size, and people began to speak through gallons of Karo syrup. My shoes grew and my knees began to shake.
Don’t say bomb!
You’re wearing an underwire!
Trevor’s hands felt like searing-hot fire irons on my arms. “Honey? Darla? You are green.” He nudged me forward, three steps or so, to the scanner.
Amy was next. “Darla?” I couldn’t say nothin’. Couldn’t even croak out the word bomb .
Not that I should!
She went through the scanner real slow, looking back at me repeatedly, and then when she was done shot me a thumbs-up.
What was I supposed to say? Yay you, Amy, for doing that because I can’t. I am dying, and fuck your thumb, you overly cheery chipmunk who got an iPhone caught in your twat.
I get mean when I’m terrified, if you haven’t noticed.
A new TSA agent waved me and Trevor over. Joe was talking to Amy in a super-controlled way, both of them talking out the sides of their mouths and sounding like they were Stephen Hawking. It made them both look lawyerly and mature, and I wanted to annihilate them with a flamethrower for having the audacity to be okay while I wasn’t.
’Cause I was dying.
“You’re ice cold, too,” Trevor said in a voice of such compassion I would have wept if more than three brain cells were working.
But all three of them rattling around in my head were devoted to making sure I didn’t say bomb!
Finally, the TSA agent, a balding man who was built like my Uncle Mike but who had the cynical scowl of of a big-budget action movie villain, called out to me and Trevor.
“You need to proceed,” he said with a sneer, like it was so easy, like I could just take a step forward.
Trevor even kicked the backs of my heels a bit, as if I were Colin Mochrie or Brad Sherwood in an improv skit gone maniacally wrong, but all it did was injure my achilles heel and make me want to punch him.
“Do something,” he hissed, no longer compassionate now that his tender ass was in jeopardy of being made sweet, sweet love to by an un-lubricated silicone glove covering the hand of a government worker who made $17 an hour.
So I did. As Trevor went up to that big, Star Trek -like beast of a machine, I reached my hands behind my back and unhooked my bra.
That’s right.
My bra.
Don’t ask me why, but the part of my mind that wasn’t screaming Don’t say bomb! was telling me Take off the underwire . My left hand snaked under my right shirtsleeve and slipped that arm out of the bra, then ditto with the left, the long string of bra coming out, unfastened, through my left sleeve.
A distant set of catcalls from people in the security line reached my ears as blood pounded through me, my eyes now finding a gawking Joe, Trevor giving me a WTF look, and Amy shooting me that chipmunky thumbs-up.
My legs decided to work again, and I got one of those bins and threw my bra in it, nipples free and rubbing against the thin cotton of my shirt, poking out hard and ready for a fight. Most people think you go into one of two states when you’re scared: fight or flight.
But there’s a third. It’s freeze . Fight, flight, or freeze—and I’d frozen, all right. So had my nipples, because going around in a thin cotton t-shirt in mid-December in Boston would make
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