The events portrayed here are true. They have haunted me every day since they occurred. I find myself unconsciously running through the confrontation at random points throughout my days, repeating the things I said that kept me from being black-bagged and shipped off to Gitmo. This is a therapeutic writing to try to process them better, and more fully.
The Thai Airways jet, on a direct flight from Bangkok to LAX, banks hard from the usual approach vector (with which I am well accustomed, having flown into El Peublo de nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles many times), heading over Whirlywood, around Downtown, and approaching the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense. The mood within has become hostile. We land well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along the big plane's long axis, and taxi for an unusual amount of time. It is nine fifteen in the evening, right on schedule. Sitting by the window, I can see our police escort, lights blazing, follow us to a darkened section of asphalt.
For nearly an hour we sit. Roughly half of the passengers are south Asian. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man unbuckles and rises from his seat, the stewardesses, thin, elegant Thai women, scream at him to sit back down. People begin to ask questions, demanding to know what is going on, requesting a reason for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft, and have not used the restroom in nearly seven hours. Having purposefully dehydrated myself to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a somewhat rude older man whose English sounded a little too groomed, I am in considerable need of a good long piss. I get a funny feeling about my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), and reach inside to pull out my portable gaming device. A wave of enemy troops fall before my well-placed defenses, and I beat the level.
Finally we begin to deplane. I thank the stewardesses on the way out, bowing to them and saying sawadee krap like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of officials line the mobile staircase, asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors overhead. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that will hopefully take us to the distant terminals.
I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is long and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of sun and surf. My clothes, of which I only brought one pair, are ripped and stained with sweat. The tattoos on my arms and chest are clearly visible. My bag, a cheap Nike knockoff I bought in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed in tightly, with TSA agents sewn heavily amongst us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces, trying to figure out who is looking at whom, changing locations at times to get a better view of whomever they are trying to find. A man behind me asks when we will have the chance to use the bathrooms, as we were not allowed to on the plane, and as there are none on the bus. The TSA agents answer sporadically, sometimes not at all. Having no knowledge of what is going on, and knowing that asking questions to any type of law enforcement officer is a bad idea, I stand quietly wedged against a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control my need to void.
After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus and to enter a terminal building. Shouting agents direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with departing passengers eager to board their flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a waiting area that has seen better days. As one of the last to enter, I have no seat, but I find a space against a wall where I stand at parade rest, my torn bag at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixed on the far wall, and do my own time, as they say in prison. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards, normal looking, sometimes down-right unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.
A tall man with a hollow chest approaches me, sweating under his counter-terrorism wind-breaker. "Did you notice anyone acting strange on board? Was anyone visibly upset?" he asks me. "I can't say I did, sir," I respond. "Someone wrote a threat against the airline in one of the bathrooms," he says. "So I need to know if you saw anything suspicious." I tell him I was asleep most of the flight, and cannot say I did. He nods and walks away, and at that moment I realize that I am a suspect. The realization churns my innards, but the semi-trance holds, and I resume my patient waiting for whatever the fuck is going on to be over, but now I am seeing everything but looking at nothing, letting my peripheral vision do the work.
A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass, then sneak a glance at her perfect ass. She talks with the agent with the hollow chest who approached me, and glances over as I am eye-fucking her through her immaculately tailored grey suit. "Would you come with me?" Hollow Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a sectioned-off area piled high with rows of discarded seating and introduced to a TSA agent whose name I will not here mention. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, if I have ever had any military training, where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions, and we begin to chat amicably. The lithe female with the perfect ass walks over and says, "Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" I tell her I wasn't, but refrain from explaining why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union cut boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, and consider myself a patriot.) "Why are you so calm, and why were you standing against the wall like that," she asks. I explain that my father was a Navy man who taught me how to stand correctly, and how to act the gentleman. I also mention that, as an unofficial American ambassador to the Thai nation, I had been on my best behavior throughout the trip. "Oh, well, sweet tatts," she says condescendingly.
"Do you have any writing instruments in your possession?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. "Better sit down, get comfortable - this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close by, but I decide not to ask to use them. He asks if I have had any trauma in my life recently, and I tell him that my father died not long ago. "You must still be pretty upset about that," he says. I refute this gently, but he does not seem convinced. Hollow Chest and an airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.
Rounding the partition, I discover a sea of faces staring at me. Everyone who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me, some with hatred in their eyes. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily down it. A door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly gentlemen sit along a far wall, elbows on knees, shooting daggers. "This way," someone says, and I enter a room with glass walls. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I am instructed to sit at a cheap folding table.
"This is federal property," Hollow Chest says. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, sitting down. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I am in international waters, where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm, controlling my breathing. Inside, my mind is utterly still, focused to a razor sharpness. Every second bears tremendous weight, and as the eight agents lean forward to stare at me, pens poised above their notepads, I remind myself that I have done nothing wrong.
Hollow Chest introduces himself and another agent, a short, ugly man who looks like a Tolkien troll. I have to force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the comparisons my mind is making to every spy flick I have ever seen and their portrayals of coiffed and dashing agents grilling a suspect. "Do you have a camera?" Hollow Chest asks. I produce it, and as he is rifling through my saved images the trollish man asks me about which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady characters, and if I participated in any sort of military training. I answer truthfully while forcing myself not to look over at the three agents emptying my torn bag and fingering its seams.
"You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Hollow Chest says. "Thailand is full of amazing street art," I reply enthusiastically. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful stuff there." My zeal bounces off their stony faces. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I tell them I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I answer that I will.
"Well, the thing is, we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts, we do see a fair bit of this sort of thing, and, again, we're going to have to run this past the handwriting guys, but the way you wrote the letters O and P on your customs form is very similar to the Os and Ps used to write the note," Hollow Chest says. "Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."
"OK," I say, nodding, waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Hollow Chest says. Before I can answer, my TSA guardian produces my marker and hands it over. I can see the excitement in Hollow Chest's face. "So," he says, "we have the pictures of graffiti in your camera, and we have your marker, and we have the handwriting match on your customs declaration. It would be best for you to just get this over with now. If you admit to anything later on, it will be far worse for you. So you should probably just get it over with now." Variables flash through my mind, and I think, 'Shit, if I fuck up here, I'm looking at three to five in a maxsec federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.'
I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Hollow Chest repeats himself, again telling me that I should just get it over with now before I reach a judge. "Look," I say, pointing at the items on the table, the camera and the marker and the form. "I realize that all these things probably indicate to you that I am somehow involved with the note..." Here I pause, for the agents have all perked up, straining to hear and thus indicating just how important is what I will say next. "That I am somehow involved in whatever happened on the plane, but I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit."
"That is your right, here in America," Hollow Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?"
"Absolutely," I say. "I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync, but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, eight a.m., I'm there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I didn't even set foot on the left side of the plane." I give him my seat number. "Sweep the bathroom for prints," I say. "You will find none of my prints in the bathroom where whatever happened occurred. You will find my prints in the bathroom nearest to my seat, on the right side of the plane."
"Will you make these statements under polygraph?" he repeats. I again assert I will. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now." Again I tell him that I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit. "As a matter of fact," I say, "take my marker. Run a chemical analysis on the ink in my marker against the ink used to write the note. You will find they are not a match." I slouch back in the chair and stare into the faces of the assembled feds, forcing my breathing back to normal, willing the rising anger to abate.
"Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you are staying in LA, so, we'll be in touch," Hollow Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says. I say I do not and rise also. "Thank you all for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I take a seat next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say. He laughs so hard he shakes in his seat.
I take a bottled water from a passing pushcart and, after a few minutes, walk with the rest of the passengers over to customs. While I am waiting in line, the unpleasant man who had sat next to me gives me a strange look from across the way, but then I am called to the customs desk, where a stone-faced agent dutifully stamps my passport. Having no checked luggage, I walk calmly through the baggage retrieval area, but, halfway to the exit, my TSA guardian, he whose name I will not mention, stops me short.
"You don't have any checked baggage?" he asks suspiciously. "You're traveling alone, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say; "it cuts down on time and removes the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough, and keep my answers short. It is nearly one in the morning.
I face no hassle at the customs desk, and exit into the main arrivals hall. After urinating for a glorious eternity, I make some calls (to my lawyer and to my arranged ride, who has long since gone back home), get money for a cab, and, just for good measure, check if the Flyaway bus to Westwood is still running (it is not). Sick of being followed around the airport by uniformed personnel, I jump in a cab, and speed into the night.
FIN.
p.s. If any agent of law enforcement tells you to confess, claiming that it would be better for you to, "Get it over with now rather than later," he or she is more than likely bluffing and wants you to sacrifice your rights and to send yourself to prison because he or she has no tangible evidence. Do not do this. Do not give up your rights. Ever. Educate yourself about your rights, and do not give the Man an inch, for He will surely take a mile.
p.p.s. I never received a call, and have not been questioned further.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JPR
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