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Knife | Oct 05 2002

The Greyhound security guy who checks my bag asks if I have a knife in it and I stupidly say, “Well, yes, a pocketknife,” so he tells me I have to leave it behind. I ask if there’s anywhere I can leave it, and he suggests I try the Greyhound office upstairs. Well, I have no intention of doing this because I know what the people in the Greyhound office upstairs are going to say, they’re going to say, “Company policy prohibits…” or perhaps, “What if we held everyone’s knife?” Instead I head towards the office (I’m careful to get exact directions; I even ask several times for additional details) and stop at a pay phone in a corner, where I switch the knife to a different compartment in my bag, a secret one, the one where I keep condoms and a wee bit of dope. I had first thought of stashing the knife in my shoes but couldn’t find a private enough place to do the stashing. When I return, the Security guy feels all over the bag for lumps. I’m convinced he’s going to find the knife this way, in part because he knows the exact shape he’s searching for and in part because of how big the knife is: I think it’s the biggest one they make, with tons of attachments. At one point he starts squeezing something around where the knife is—I’m sure it’s the knife!—but then starts squeezing other things. I maintain a stream of banter this whole time about how the person in the office said she would “try” to hold on to my knife. “She said she’d try,” I say. “Whatever that means: ‘try’.”