Night Flight to Penis

 "Shall I take these off?"

I wave a foot at the customs man. I always have to take my shoes and boots off at the airport, so I've purposely worn trainers. My powder blue Gazelles find favour. 

"No, you're alright, mate. They're fine."

They're not fine. 

I ping at the X-ray. A customs guys beckons at me. 

"Just going to feel around your waistband, sir."

Fresh. At least buy me dinner first. 

He's as good as his word and his fingers start groping around inside my jeans, heavy handed and obvious, like a pick-pocket who's given up on life. I always ping at airports. I assume it's because my legs are held together with metal. I'm the Barry Sheen des nos jours. The man waves his beeping wand about, and the tight focus of his investigation is my groin. I see an image of a clip art style crotch on the monitor, glowing amber. It looks like a scene from an American Military film warning of the horrors of V.D. His busy hands skip lightly about my penis, while the wand makes a series of excited shrieks. His, not mine. I don't share its enthusiasm. 

"It's all a bit Spinal Tap, this." I say. He looks at me blankly. A customs official who hasn't seen Spinal Tap? Don't you even care about your work? It's the best customs scene in cinema! (I will also accept Madeline Khan and Mel Brookes kvetching their way through the X-ray in High Anxiety, though that's not really applicable here. Neither off them had their genitals screamed at by what sounds like an angry Geiger counter. Is my junk radioactive? It's barely even active.) 

He has me lean against a wall while he scans the soles of my trainers. Not good enough. 

"Could I ask you to slip your shoes off, sir?"

I comply, and he places them in a tray and puts it through the same X-ray all the rest of my stuff has already been through, but at the back of the queue now. I retrieve my other belongings and stand around, looking cool in stocking feet. 

The trainers are eventually returned, unmolested. Presumably because they contained neither explosives or contraband substances. Because they're shoes. They contained my feet. 

I'm slightly fascinated by the inconstancy of customs fashion. I remember when they used to swab your belt. They never seem to do that anymore. Whatever terrible threat was lurking on belts has been quashed. I once asked a customs guy what it was they were swabbing for and he told me he didn't know. He was going through the motions like his job was a fading marriage. Refreshingly honest. 

They're playing Rod Stewart's Young Turks in the airport cafe. They play it every time I'm here. Seems like an odd choice. It's from Rod's 80's-pink-golfing-visor-and-spandex period, and I quite like it, despite the Dire Straits keyboard sound. The chorus is good, Rod speaks in tongues on the fade-out, and I maintain it qualifies as motorik. Other people disagree. Their choice. 

I attempt to buy a coffee and stand at the counter to that effect. No one comes near me. I adopt the stoic expression of the perennially overlooked, which I'm certain renders me ever more invisible. Two members of staff have an animated chat through the serving hatch. One stacks and re-stacks napkins. O.C.D? Perfectionism? Displacement activity? 

I sigh, audibly, and the server can put it off no longer, loping toward the counter with the enthusiasm of a man approaching a toilet cubicle on the third day of a festival. He's young and with the accouterments of modern youth: tattoos, mullet, moustache. What must I look like to him? My hair has sides. 

"What's yours, mate?" he says and I'm assume he's asking me what I'd like to order, as I've been in Belfast a while now. 

"A flat white, please."

He disappears, returning with a cup of froth. No saucer, no artisan sugar lumps, no inedible Italian biscuit. Just a cup of froth. I pay, and the card reader asks me if I want to give the boy a 20% tip. I mull it over and decide not to. I take a sip. It's cold. Cold froth.  

I'm traveling to London to show a film at Bafta. That sounds pretty cool, right? I'm pretty happy about it. It can't actively harm my career - only I can do that, and recently I haven't. I'm not scared of the book launch either. I'll be able to do it. I'm fifty odd and I've finally found things I'm able to do. If not well, then inimitably. I have a style.