Rhinocrisy

Tuesday morning I am in the shower before I am even awake, thinking about how the Sandman got his name as my heavy lids slide down over my eyes. We are in our hotel in Santa Fe, at the end of a brief but enjoyable sojourn. Our belongings are still half-scattered across the floor of the room. I seem to have misplaced a pair of boxers; somehow, I suspect the maid.

Then I am at breakfast in the hotel reception center - cold hard-boiled eggs, a bagel with cream cheese for each of us, and the vital coffee. Normally I don’t, but sleep is stubborn today and refuses to leave without being chased out. No, rewind - I am still spreading cheese across the bagels. I am still spreading cheese across the bagel; I am still toasting the other bagel.

I negotiate my way around one of the other patrons. He is large and doughy; even his mustache is paunchy and drooping. Non-threatening, except for what is written across the vast field of his back: “Peace through superior firepower.” I sense trouble.

I am lathering up my bagel. My sun-moon-and-stars has gone to check us out. Somehow I manage to balance the sum of our breakfast items in my hands and follow her to the desk.

The true American is there, talking to her.

I don’t even have to hear what he’s saying to know what it is. He turns to face me as I come around from behind him, saying, “Hello!” in a placating tone. “Hi!” I chirp back, but I can tell I make him nervous. She is telling him about the lack of basis for extremism in the Quran or the Hadith. He makes a hasty, ill-considered closing remark and retreats hurriedly - my small success.

We are storming out of the hotel, fuming.

I am driving. I am drinking coffee. I have been a bad environmentalist these past few days. Two hundred miles worth of gas, round-trip plane ride. If I believed in buying indulgences I would seek absolution.

New Mexico is beautiful.

She is angry. I don’t know what to say - I never know what to say. What is, is, even when it is unjust and should not be. But that isn’t something I can or should say. I need words that will peel back the layer of shadows and violence that others’ unsolicited stares and vituperation have poured over her, but I don’t have them.

So I am drinking coffee.

We are at the airport. There are lines, and lines of lines. Already the day is long, and it hasn’t begun. Vacations are tiring.

A woman is staring at her. She complains of those often, those stares. This one she doesn’t see, but I do. Hard little eyes, burning with anger. Mine are burning too. Violence is happening, in my head. God, it would be sweet.

We are at the front of the line. It is time to parse us into separate groups, at last, for the security check. We are chosen - randomly - for the detailed inspection. It is threefold: the conveyor belt, the metal detector, and a box with vents that puffs air at you. I am removing my shoes and slipping my laptop from enormous yellow courier bag, the one that I take everywhere. Sometimes my memory lapses and I take things I shouldn’t in it, but somehow they go unnoticed. Security is an illusion.

I am in the puffer machine. It is blowing air at me, maybe sniffing the traces, maybe combing through flakes of my dried skin. It has approved of me. I don’t feel validated - I don’t know what I was being judged on.

I am restuffing my bags. There are too many things, mine and hers. I cannot manage. I stop and proceed methodically. In the corner of my eye she is talking to a female security officer, who has coralled her towards a glass box with footprints painted on the carpet. I know what is happening. Her spine is straight. I put on my shoes.

Then I am alone. She is gone. I have too many bags - mine and hers, and her shoes. She is shoeless, wherever she is. Wherever they took her.

She appears at last, from somewhere. I am - something. Confused. Some anger. Her face is puckering. She is weeping against my shoulder, and I am feeling uncomfortable because everyone is not staring at us.

“Everyone who has headgear like yours has to go through extra security,” that’s what she was told.

Again, I don’t know what to say.

There are still twelve hours of travel ahead.

Posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 5:50 pm | Bad People, Travesty | feed | reply | trackback