Do you feel safe yet?

A few months ago, I received a strange message from a friend who needed me to pick him up from the airport. My friend, a 250lb black man who doesn’t take shit from anybody, was begging me – a 105lb white chick who doesn’t have a car — to take two trains to meet him at the airport because “something really bad happened.” He was sobbing, hysterically so, to the point where I could barely piece together his words. All I knew was that I had to get there. So I did.

What happened: In 1989, my friend was severely beaten and raped by a couple of white guys who weren’t too fond of a gay black teenager moving onto their block. In 2011, my friend tried to fly back to his hometown to visit his mother and mentally relived his past sexual assault when a TSA employee’s hand grabbed his balls and penetrated his ass.

My friend’s story is not unique. The internet is full of videos and articles about kids’ throwing tantrums while being fondled, grannies’ being stripped of their diapers, and rape victims’ being devastated by the “pat-downs” of the TSA. But this was my friend — a tough guy I’d never seen like this, a person who could easily have been me. It hit home.

I asked him what happened after “it” happened at the airport. He told me he broke down. He forced himself with all his will not to try to kill the guy whose hand was on him. He vomited all over himself. He froze. He cried. He walked away. He couldn’t force himself to get on the plane. He couldn’t force himself to drive home. He forgot about his luggage and wandered around the parking lot. He called me. Three hours later, as we sat talking at a diner, he was still visibly shaking.

Later, I asked him what he wanted to do about it. I asked him if he was going to report the incident to someone. He told me it wouldn’t do any good. “What could anybody do?” he said. “The man was just doing his job.”

I disagreed, but it wasn’t my business. I don’t push unsolicited advice on my friends, especially under circumstances like these. I was sexually abused for most of my childhood. I know what could – or probably would – happen if I tried to get on a plane and someone “just did their job.” Compared to me, my friend was a perfect gentleman. If he never wanted to talk about it again, that was his right.

Last week, he called to tell me that he finally got his luggage back. This afternoon, I called to ask if he would consider reading this blog post: Don’t Give The TSA An Easy Time Of Violating Your Rights

I don’t know Amy Alkon, who wrote about her experience with the TSA. But I do know some of the lawyers who have written about the lawsuit she may face as a result of writing it.

Amy Alkon blogged about the emotional distress of having a government worker put her hand in Amy’s vagina, and now that government worker has threatened to sue Amy Alkon for $500,000 for “severe emotional distress, fear, difficulties performing her duties, and other problems.”

I don’t know if what Amy posted is true, because I don’t know her and I wasn’t there. But I do know what my friend says he suffered, and what countless others say they have suffered. I have no reason to doubt any of it. It seems to be common practice.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a government employee whose job it is to sexually assault paying airline customers under the guise of keeping America safe, but I am ashamed to live in a country where the emotional distress of a perpetrator could be worth more than that of the victim. Whether that perpetrator is the government or its employee in this case is not for me to judge, because I don’t know where the lines are drawn when touching peoples’ genitals becomes a government job.

All I know is that I’m more afraid of our government than I am of terrorists. I feel less safe thinking about getting on an airplane now than I did in the days immediately following 9/11. I no longer fly, because I’m not willing to take the risk of suffering a PTSD episode and ending up in prison for trying to kill a government employee who puts her hand in my vagina.

Our boogeyman Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but our civil rights are still being raped away. When I got to the airport to meet my friend, whose clothes were still wet with his vomit, he muttered “This is what safety smells like.” Do you feel safe yet?