Clenchè

So what's a boy to do, waiting to be cleared through security at 6AM two days before Christmas?

Fidgeting is not an option in the Expert Traveler line. Pausing for the slightest moment holds up this so-called fast lane and makes you the target of businessman ire: You can practically feel the hate seething off their thumbs and into their Blackberries if you don't continue the slow shuffle forward. But the queue moves too fast to start unpacking your laptop or removing your boots. Reading is stupid and moot and puts off a pretentious air that's completely unappreciated so early in the morning. And I'm totally self-conscious when traveling by myself.

So, what's a boy to do?

My bored eyes busied themselves by searching the crowds as they often do, looking for odd behavior or cleavage or well-done pedicures or ironic T-shirts or hair styles I should consider trying down the road. Anything to keep me from breaking down into nervous, tired twitches-- I hear that's how you get chosen for a cavity search.

During this idle waiting time I started to notice a certain, particular behavior shared by every potential passenger: Clenching. No one passes through the metal detector without tightening their rear cheeks, and no one relaxes until they're waved on to collect their belongings.

At first, I thought it was some sign of guilt. Those people must have condoms full of heroin stashed up there. Maybe they're hiding some CP on their laptops. Maybe they know they're going to set off the metal detector with their C4-lined Mujahideen briefs. But then I noticed that even kids as young as seven or eight tighten up with fear as they pass through America's second-most-ominous arch. Husbands, wives, geriatrics, and 20something hipsters alike all pinch up painfully as they prepare for TSA judgment.

So why does this universal behavior exist, anyways? Houston Hobby has to be one of the more likely places you might find a completely guiltless Christian person who could pass through security with their conscience clean and their ass relaxed. It also happens to be the sort of place where you might find asses so big that clenching is just too much effort. Is it some sort of mass post-9/11 phenomena that speaks to our culture of fear? Or is it a certain distrust of technology, knowing that these metal detectors go off even when you're ferrous-free? Maybe the entire country really is on drugs and everyone worries whether they forgot to take the pocket pipe out of their apple-bottom jeans before heading home for the holidays.

I was lost in these thoughts as I went through the traditional motions: Step up, grab the gray bin, throw your Docs in with your laptop, throw the backpack on, top it with the plastic baggie full of allergy meds and Tide stain sticks, watch your stuff disappear into the magic false-color X-ray machine, and then...

I stared ahead at the kind-looking TSA attendant on the other side of the beige arch. She smiled but held her hand up, signaling that it was not yet my time to pass. I glanced at the bar of LED lights on top of the detector as it fluctuated with randomly-changing electromagnetic fields. I was about to be the guinna pig in my own little experiment: Can you really pass through this thing without tightening up?

She waved me forward, like Neo ready to take on Agent Smith. Her gesture was some sort of dare. But I knew I could do it. I tried to reassure myself. I turned my pockets inside out before I put on my pants this morning. The last guy made it through no problem, and his teeth looked loaded with fillings. No turning back now. This isn't just an experiment. This is a challenge to discard the past eight years of fear-mongering American life and...

...and...

...and by the time I opened my eyes from the feighned blink, I was on the other side of the detector, handing the TSA agent my boarding pass like I always do. I sighed and relaxed.

All my favorite authors had the flu

I've been riddled with flu for the past three days now. Lungs: Riddled with boiling black goo. Throat: Riddled with darts of pain. Upcoming paycheck: Riddled with absences.

So riddle me this: Where in the world did the following half-written narrative come from?

At some point in the past 72 hours, my poor brain reached up from beneath a sea of NyQuil, DayQuil, and whatever other self-medicating remedies were in my system at the time and tried to write a ridiculous short story. I have no recollection as to why, how, or when I started writing this. It was lingering in an unsaved tab in Notepad++ this morning when I woke up. It has no apparent message or meaning. In fact, it sounds like another cold open to a TV show I might watch, or maybe a Palahniuk novel I didn't read.

God, my medicated subconscious writes like the lofty bastard child of all transgressional fiction writers. You don't know self-loathing until you know how you write when you're delirious. I don't think it's bad. I just think it's the worst sort of cliche.

Usually, I would file this sort of thing under "finish later" and never think about it again. But since I have no idea where to take it from here, I present to you the half-written, unedited, misspelled scribble of an overly-medicated, sick individual. (To think I was considering going in to work yesterday!)


Light was easing through the cracks in my bedroom, gently rolling over the hardwood floor as dawn broke. The crisp, cool air of this Houston morning was like an unbiased conductor of sensory energy: Bird songs, warm coffee aroma, and a tickle of cool breeze all glided over my bed and landed, fruitlessly, on my empty pillow.

Because that's not where I was. I was face-deep in a sofa cushion that had not been washed for over five years, pinned down by a wicked hangover.

The smells of the sofa were stratified. If I pushed my head down lightly, I was privy to the smell of stale beer, Levis, and some girl's body wash from the night before. But if I gripped both ends of the cushion and really sank my schnoz into the stained brown cloth, something magical happened. I could see late 2003 like it was just yesterday.

Sniiiffff--- mmm, they just captured Saddam Hussein! And wait! Sniifffff-- yes! I smell John Kerry's presidential campaign taking off! Sniiff-- eww, wait, that smells like the first reported case of BSE in the United States. Sniff-- and I'm still a virgin?

Between the hangover and the sounds of construction outside, I probably kept my face burried in the couch for about two hours longer than I should have. But I wanted more sleep. Just a few more hours. A few more seconds. I finally gave up when the residence maid lazily knocked on the door to the basement and barged right in.

Her loud, frightened sigh prompted me to actually look up and survey the damage done to the basement during last night's round of careless debauchary. No pornography stuck to the wall with mustard on this perticular morning, but it looked like someone had carved about fifty crude dicks into the ceiling tiles with their long nails. I bite mine, so I'm in the clear. I guess I could be responsible for the pile of vomit next to the sofa, but I don't remember eating anything with peanuts in the past couple days. I'm most likely the one who scribbled "Queer for Beer" on the beer pong table with eyeshadow.

I pat my eyes for a second, half expecting to draw back eyeshadow and half expecting to draw back blood, too. Luckily, it's just eyeshadow this time.