Hump Day: The TSA Almost Took My Dildo Away (Again)

I can’t believe I am telling this story again. I think this must be the third time airport security has tried to take away my sex toys. The thing is, I live in New York; my girlfriend lives in Atlanta so I travel a lot.

I was standing in the security line at La Guardia airport looking over the list of allowed items and thinking, “Crap, I hope they don’t take away my hair product like they always do.” There’s an official list of allowed items on the TSA website, but ultimately it’s arbitrary and depends on who’s doing the checking. I once traveled from to New York to Australia, with a stopover in Los Angeles, and didn’t realize until I unpacked my bag back home in New York that I’d had a Swiss Army knife in my carry-on the entire time. No one batted an eye at the knife, but I was forced to surrender my deep conditioner in Los Angeles and spent 10 days in Tasmania with split ends.

Anyway, so I was on my way to Atlanta and in my handbag I had this metal dildo that I really love. I travel with sex toys all the time and I don’t care if they take them out and look at them. I have a system where I put all the extra personal items right on top of everything else in my carry-on bag so it’s the first thing they see. I’ve noticed that more often than not it makes the security guys less eager to unpack your entire bag.

I’ve traveled with metal sex toys before, and it’s always been a hassle. Because, let’s face it, they’re metal. You could probably jack someone with one if you were so inclined. The one I’m so into right now is made by my bff Metis. She owns a toy company called Tantus and they came out with a new line called Alumina and the toys are all made of this heavy aluminum (green! recyclable!). The best part is that you can take them apart -- all the ends are compatible with each other, and if you own a couple of pieces from the line, then you basically have your very own sex toy erector set. I took the heavy end of the one called Flow and attached it to the heavy end of one called Motion, so on one end it looks like a billy club and on the other end it’s pointy and looks like maybe you could put out an eye. Don’t let that description put you off. The thing is magic.

Soooo, as I’m standing there reading the big TSA advisory board, I get to the part about blunt objects and club-like items and I start to realize that my multiple orgasm-inducing sex toy is going to look a lot like a weapon in the scanner. There are so many jokes to put here — weapon of mass seduction, weapon of muff destruction — I can’t decide which one to use. And sure enough, my bag gets scanned, backed up and scanned again and then a second security guard comes over. There’s some pointing to the screen, there's some shrugging of shoulders and all I can think is some TSA worker is going to go home with all the kilos of coke they took off drug smugglers that day and bust out my fancy metal dildo and have a party.

By the time the guard picked up my bag and asked to search it I was in a panic. Not because I felt embarrassed to discuss my sex toys, but because I was worried they might not let me take it on the plane, so when she picked up my bag and asked to check it, I blurted out “it’s my dildo.” It was like you could hear a record screech, the entire TSA team, all the passengers, the curbside check-in guys, some lady with a chinchilla coat and a poodle in a carrier and the guy cleaning the bathroom, all stopped and slowly turned around to look at me. The security guard nearly died. She looked like she wished a giant sink hole would open up underneath terminal B. But it turns out that my Not Without My Dildo panic was the right approach because she looked at me, grimaced in a pained way, swiped my bag for explosives and sent me on my way.