Friday, February 03, 2012

The No-Pants Club Inducts a new member

Somehow I thought the No Pants Club would be limited to my talented if slightly insane clients Sean Ferrell and Jeff Somers.

No, no I was wrong.  Here's an email from a potential client, who as far as I know has never met Sean or Jeff, although of course, she's a writer, thus slightly insane (in the very best way of course), explaining her recent run-in with TSA on her flight home from DBW.


And yes--it was a "sweater dress" that is somewhat short on normal sized people, but is like a crop-top on me. I usually wear it with skinny jeans, but I forgot my jeans. So I threw on some thigh-high tights, tied a long-sleeve sweater around my waist, and clipped it in front with a hair clip.



As I was getting ready to walk through the detector, the TSA guy says, "I need you to take off the sweater around your waist."

Instead of beating around the bush (so to speak), I said point-blank: "I'm not wearing anything underneath it."

This caused quite a ruckus as I got ushered into the glass enclosure to await a female TSA ass-grabber. She arrived and said, "I understand that you aren't wearing any pants."

Instead of affirming her statement, I pulled up the tied-on sweater and flashed her my thigh-highs.

"Ma'am!" she yelled, holding up her hands at me to shield herself from the horror. "No one's asking you to do that!"


Since the email was NOT sent from JFK, I am hoping she got home safely! Either that or there's great wifi at Rikers.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

I suddenly feel so much less pressure to act like a professional in my interactions with agents! I will be sure to let you know about my topless experience at LAX when I query, or perhaps shortly after. Hopefully I'll know when the time is right.

I think you should definitely work with the pants-less woman. I want to hear more from her.

Anonymous said...

I, too, had a topless plane and airport experience, but mine was in Anchorage, Alaska.

Glad to know I'm not the only one running around topless in public.

Writers are the craziest peoples.

E.Maree said...

This lady sounds amazing! I hope you sign her, I'd love to hear more of her stories.

As a Brit, I could probably spend most of my days wandering around in the no-pants-club and nobody would be any the wiser. :D

Feaky Snucker said...

That's fantastic.

Ali Trotta said...

I nearly snorted water through my nose. Holy hell.

That is hilarious.

Krista Riccioni said...

When my daughter was an infant, she received a diaper patdown - luckily she didn't detonate.

The Busy Author said...

This is how to be noticed by an agent I guess. I don't have any pantless stories to share. Though perhaps your future client needs to consult the "AM I WEARING PANTS?" flowchart http://www.buzzfeed.com/sly/am-i-wearing-pants

Elissa M said...

This isn't as hilarious a story as the pants-less writer's, but it does illustrate TSA's idiocy.

This happened very shortly after the shoe-bomber incident, when no-one was allowed any liquids of any sort on any flight.

My husband was coming home from a year's deployment in Iraq, flying on a USAF cargo plane with his unit's multiple pallets-worth of stuff. The flight originated on a military base in Iraq, was flying to a military base in the US, and everyone on board was a US service member. Still, they had to conform to TSA's rules. Thus, my husband had to throw away his toothpaste, and was not permitted to take any liquids (such as drinking water) with him.

He did, however, have his M-16.

Yay, TSA.

Michael Seese said...

If I ever get called in for the pat down, I plan to moan really loudly the moment he starts.

I suspect he'll finish rather pronto.

JS said...

That is a very "Little Edie" from Grey Gardens kind of story. I am both bemused and impressed by someone choosing to wear a sweater as a skirt.

Elle Lothlorien said...

Ahem. This may or may not have been me. And for anyone thinking of querying an agent with this kind of story--don't. Although this may or may not have been me, it doesn't sound like anything you'd put in a query letter.

And if it WAS me (something I can neither confirm nor deny) sharing one in an endless string of the sitcom-like anecdotes that seem to seep into some people's lives (perhaps mine, perhaps not), I might also share something like this:

"My stupid dog got sick and puked and crapped all over the house on Monday night, so when I wasn't washing the kitchen floor and battling my gag reflex (my god, the smell of it was enough to euthanize a hippopotamus), I was moving furniture for the carpet cleaner. Seriously, how many books do I have to sell before some sort of servant shows up?

Cue the carpet cleaner yesterday afternoon. Before I can let him in, I had to chase my diarrheal dog (who was, shall we say, reluctant to return to the kitchen) all over the house. And when I say all over, I mean ALL OVER. He ran from one room to the next in a fit of hysteria, blowing diarrhea all the way. He even tried to hide in my bathtub, but when he realized that his nails on the porcelain sounded like a cross between a DJ scratching a record and a vermin house party, he did what any sensible dog would do: he took a big sh*#t in my bathtub.

So after the carpets were cleaned, I started recording a webinar. After Part One, I stopped to listen to it and realized that my neighbor's dog can be heard barking all the way through it! My god, I hate that dog. It barks so much that even I don't hear it anymore! Then I got into a rather terse conversation with the neighbor, during which she claimed 1) her dog wears a bark collar and never barks; 2) when he doesn't have the collar on, her dog never barks.

Sigh.

Carpets are clean, what could go wrong now, right? Oh, well then the heater (which I'd turned off since I had the windows open to let the carpets dry) wouldn't come back on. I couldn't reach my landlord, so we sat here for three hours trying to follow the instructions of my friend's semi-hammered HVAC buddy over the phone, most of which consisted of things like, "Pull the w lead and jumper it to the r lead, and then find the limit button by the pilot housing." I asked him to please speak to me as if I were a very young child. Or a gerbil.

Still no luck. We went to bed in a house that was 50 degrees, and it was colder than a well digger's ass in Idaho in here when we got up. Calling HVAC potentials as we speak. When one of them answers the phone, the first things I ask is 1) Are you drunk right now? 2) Are you planning to get drunk before you come to my house?

At this point the bar is low. Very, very low."

Of course, I'm sure pantless experiences at airport security are common, so she's probably talking about someone else.

Farmer Kidd said...

Hilarious. As an aspiring novelist and as a current Aviation Security Instructor for a major airline (I train pilots and cabin crew on anti-terrorism), this scenario makes me laugh. In an industry that has somewhat lost its sense of humor in all the happenings of the last decade, it's healthy to hear someone recount a little hijinks.

Rashad Pharaon said...

Love the title, The No Pants Club lol. Thank you for sharing,

Best,

Rashad.

Sean Ferrell said...

I think your new client is our No Pants Diety. I will forward her the proper paperwork (an unclaimed dry cleaning receipt for a pair of slacks) as soon as I can find it. I think I left it in my other... Pants isn't the right word but we'll pretend it is.