T.S.A.

Off with the wristwatch, the Reeboks, the belt. My laptop's in a bin. I dig out the keys from my jeans and do my best Midwestern grin. At O'Hare, at Atlanta, at Dallas/Fort Worth, it happens every trip, at LaGuardia, Logan, and Washington Dulles, the customary strip is never enough for  a young brown male whose name comes up at random. Lest the randomness of it be doubted, observe how Myrtle's searched in tandem, how Doris's six-pack of Boost has been seized and Ethel gets the wand. How polite of the screeners to sham paranoia when what they really want is to pick out the swarthiest, scruffiest of us and pat us top to toe, my fellow Ahmeds and my alien Alis, Mohammed alias Mo— my buddies from med school, my doubles partners, my dark unshaven brothers whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends, ourselves the goateed other.