April 1, 2008
LAX: Lord of the Rings?
Phil ST John writes:
When I heard about Mandi Hamlin, who was briefly detained at LAX because her nipple rings set off a metal detector, I got really angry. Hamlin, according to her attorney, was forced by snickering male TSA agents at LAX to remove one of her rings with a pliers. What the fuck is going on at LAX? I have been wearing a nipple ring for 10 years. I have never taken it off and have been advised against taking it out; I would have to be re-pierced. The few times I had a problem with my N ring triggering a metal detector, I'd tell the TSA agent, "It's a nipple ring" and that would be the end of it.
But last month, on a trip to Buenos Aires, I slipped my watch, house keys, jewelry, and loose change into a zip-lock bag that I put into my carry-on. For some reason, as I passed through the metal detector, it kept going off. After my third try, the phrase "Male assist!" loudly bellowed around me. It took 10 minutes to get a TSA agent to wand me, while I waited, sans shoes, corralled in a type of holding pen. As I stood there in the open, the agent kept touching my torso, my ass-crack – my entire body – with both his hands and his wand. It was a kind of Sexual Terrorism. He squeezed and tugged at my nipple with his fingers. The ring continued setting off the wand each time he dug it into me and his intense physical manipulation and stimulation of my nipple ring was not only embarrassing but physically and sexually disconcerting. Finally, he let me go. What kind of idiot could think I or Mandi Hamlin could hijack a jet with a nipple ring? And what kind of idiocracy would hire him?
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