Everyone at the Airport Is My Enemy

It's lowkey the Stanford Prison Experiment

BRRR… BRRR… BRRR… my alarm splits the silence like a nuclear civil defense siren. I rip my eyelids open, breaking their seal of crusted rheum with a crackle. In the pitch dark, my pre-early-morning-flight mantra begins: THIS SUCKKKKKKKS. Fuck my life. Fuck my life. Fuck my life. Fuck my life. Fifteen minutes later, I’ve changed from pajamas to sweats and am out the door.

The bag-check attendant greets me with a rehearsed smile. “That’s 53 pounds. You’ll need to take something out,” she brims. Her teeth match her steam-pressed ivory button-down, and her hair is pinned with surgical precision. I become hyperaware of our contrast – the power differential visualized. My pants are stained from the McDonald's hashbrown that fell on my lap while I was merging onto the highway with one hand, iced coffee in the other. My breath is hot, my face is unshaven, and under my thin tank top, my nipples are so visible that you can trace my areola. I was going for effortless chic, but I’m giving gender-bender Rue from Euphoria.

I swore it was 50 pounds – or was that my usual body calculus subtracting a few pounds? “Are you sure? You can’t just let me go?” I muster weakly.

“No, sorry, it’s policy.” Her cheerful monotony is so palpable that I wonder if she’s real. If I waved my hand through her face, would I meet resistance? Or would the holographic projection twitch?

On my hands and knees, I unzip my suitcase, trying not to notice the suppressed laughter and scrunched eyebrows burning my neck from the long line behind me. I’m reminded of how haphazardly I tossed everything together last night; my clothes are a snake ball of fabric. My toothbrush is smothered in the wide-open mouth of my weed pipe, which needs to be power-washed at this point. They are lying together on a bed of underwear and bras, reminding me of my last situationship with a guy who always smelled like Doritos. I quickly cover the paraphernalia and pray she doesn’t notice. Humiliated, I throw a sweatshirt over my head and stash a few socks in my Baggu. I have no idea what 3 pounds looks like, but luckily, she doesn’t recheck—content with my branding of complete submission to American Airlines.

Weaving through loitering passengers, I repeat another Airport mantra to myself: MOVE, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE. As I approach the security line’s entrance, I am side-stepped by a family of six in matching Disney World memorabilia. For a split second, I contemplate screaming so loudly I traumatize their baby for the rest of its life. Instead, I give a white-person pursed-lip soft smile and nod them forward.

I’m not proud of how I turn into a vector of spite, how no one – not a tender grandma nor a peachy baby – is free from my mental persecution. It’s a side of me that only exists in the most liminal of spaces, where the air is as stale as the $18 sandwiches, and everyone is my enemy: The Airport.

My father, a pilot, trained me in airport cotillion, the subtle social choreography that separates the well-traveled from the uncouth masses. Move with purpose, don't ask questions, and remove your shoes before someone has to tell you to. It's an art and a sport, requiring both grace and grit. Yet, my years of training will only save seconds as I stand paralyzed behind mothers cooing to their crying toddlers while fathers stand a foot apart, seemingly unaware as they punch at their iPhones with blunt sausage fingers; herds of edible-sedated spring breakers grazing the pastures of Dunkin Donuts and Chick-fil-A; and battalions of airport workers in their official go-carts, ready to run me over like a speed bump in their urgent missions to cross the terminal.

I’m not the only one eliciting a watchful scorn.

“Liquids must be under 3 ounces. Want me to toss it?” The bleach-blonde twinky TSA agent dangles the bottle of La Roche Posay like a cat toy. The woman manages only a broken nod. “Okay!” he chirps, flicking the bottle into the trash before she can change her mind. We scramble to empty our water bottles and turn out our pockets in a desperate attempt to avoid becoming his next victim. Like a troll, he pokes us with riddles and rules as we pass under his metal bridge.

Finally aboard, I wedge myself between strangers in a plastic seat ergonomically designed for a body type that exists only in CAD software. In no other scenario would I celebrate an experience that is so utterly unenjoyable. And yet, here I am, grateful despite the pounding altitude headache, popping eardrums, claustrophobic bathrooms, and 3D-printed snacks. I have to admire the Machiavellian feat of psychological manipulation. Only in a state of complete surrender does my dryer sheet “pillow” feel like a cloud.