The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Author:Ross Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

46. Reading Palms

As I was passing through airport security this morning, the young man at the giant X-ray machine, waving me through, made an appropriately appreciative observation of my socks, and the person’s socks before mine, and, using my detective skills, I determined, probably lots of people’s socks throughout his shift. Anyhow, to me he said about the floral design on my socks, “You have roses on your feet!” before turning back to the screen to see if and where he had to pat me down. His banter, which he kept up, like a mantra, “roses on your socks, roses on your feet,” betrayed his shyness when I looked over my shoulder to see the groin region on my video-game likeness lit up.

He walked me over to what was supposed to be a room, and was, though it was a room made of clear plexiglass, with no discernible obstruction of sight, by which I mean privacy, which the forthcoming search, puritanically speaking, might have longed for. The plexiglass room, a short walk from the pat-down holding pen just outside the spaceship X-ray room, actually exacerbated the publicness of what would be my not-quite hand job.

He offered, stammeringly, noncommittally, without a hint of eye contact, his obligation, which was an odd kind of consent—I am consenting to feel you up with the backs of my gloved hands, which he held up to me, both of them, all the way up the inside of your inseam, he said, palms facing himself, as though to reify the friendly distance, the pure utility of the massage.

As he was feeling me up he asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to read poems in Syracuse, which made him look up from his work, which he was kneeling to do, and he said, enthusiastically, if a little quizzically, “You must be good at that if they fly you around to do it!” I was feeling good about myself as we finished—I guess he finished—and walked me toward the hand-swiping wand, rubbing it along my palms and plugging it into the machine they say detects explosives but obviously collects DNA for future cloning. He then told me about his mother taking him to have his poems read, which made us even closer than we already were. He was talking about longer lines and shorter ones, and some broken ones, all of which, admittedly, I was distracted from, given I was cutting it close, checking my watch and listening for the boarding call.

“I never believed in it myself, but I know some people do,” he said, dismissing me at last, and I laughed and nodded, overhearing him saying to one of his colleagues as I jogged toward my gate, “Hey, Mike, that guy’s being flown to Syracuse to read palms!”

(Mar. 1)

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