olsen

Feeling a bit mischievious. When filling out my Aussie entry form, in the space provided for 'usual employment,' I wrote in 'pornography. It's as honest as anyhthing else for a life in flux.

....I wonder if this will catch up with me.

(4:12 pm)



I started to get nervous as I approached the customs counter. Especially when I saw that my form would be checked by a 40ish man. He didn't even look at the form. Could it be that simple? Did I waste my confession of porn-star status?

I waited at the baggage carousel seemingly endlessly. As I stood waiting, a girl from customs came up behind me and asked to see my entry form. She asked me a few questions, without keen interest, flipped the card over, looked at it for a second, and then innocently asked me what my occupation was.

Pornography, I said. I'm a pin-up girl, I said. She said sorry. Why should she be sorry? She asked me a few more questions, was I working in Australia? No. What did I plan to do in Australia? Travel, maybe see the Great Barrier Reef.

She scribbled a few things on my form, then moved on. I looked around to see that my airplane friend was not nearby to question why everything I have told her seems differend from what I told him.

Having had been entertained by her for most of the wait for my bag, I grabbed it, grabbed my surfboard, and continued on to the X-ray machines.

When I made it through the queue, the same girl asked me to walk to the far machine, tipping her head a bit to another worker, mouthing It's her. I pretended not to notice, secretly amused to have amused the airport staff by the choice placement of a surprising word.

Then she escorted me past the far machine, to a special corner for just me and her.

And she hoisted my bag onto the counter, and unzipped it, making me wince at my last-minute decision to bring my dirty laundry to the free machine in Australia, rather than paying to wash it in NZ. She began asking me more and more intense questions, all the while digging through my stuff, asking me to explain everything she found.

I of course was stuck with my porno story, which isn't really untrue. The next paycheck I recieve will actually be from a porn-site. I explained to her that porn was not my career, but that I didn't know what else to put in the form, and told her about the type of pictures I take, how well it pays, how many sets I've taken, whatever else she asked.

She asked why I chose to travel here, I explained about Meredith, and she asked me a lot of questions about that. I was happy to answer, except that it felt like she was interrogating me about something really personal rather than asking out of interpersonal concern.

Asked about who my Australian contact is. I told her. How do you know him? He's a friend of my mother's. How are you financing your travels? It's a gift. All true.

But there's the fact that I'm working, rather illegally. It's questionable, so I chose not to mention my work here. But there is all sorts of material from my work, schedules, contact numbers, business cards.

Someone wipes my bag for a drug-sensor. I see the head signal that indicates that there are no drug traces, but they question me at length. Do I do drugs? Not really. I have? When was the last time? A year ago, almost exactly. What? Acid. Have I done other drugs? Yeah. What? Uh...about three years ago, I tried ecstasy. When I say three years, they seem to get the point. I am not an habitual drug user.

I have told her I write musicals, hope to move to New York, but that I don't know what I'll do after Oz, as I didn't get into grad school. She finds my musical, finds (and breaks) Alii's book of staff paper, whose dedication reads "your a (porn) star shine." Finds emails, pictures, itineraries from my company. Finds a picture of me bungeeing naked. Finds too many books to count, flips through every one of them. Finds my allergy medications. Finds (and shuffles through) my really gross dirty underwear. Finds my vibrator. I volunteer the name of the butt-plug, since she seems to want the intimate details of everything else. Reads every paper she finds, including grad school rejection letter, including my emails, including my musical, including my diary.

Luckily, the pages in my diary that she flips to happen to corroborate my stories of pin-up porn, travels, death, and musical theatre. Finally, she shoves everything back into my bag, mixing my clean and my dirty laundry, and sends me on my way.

I have not been accused of working on a travel visa, bending rules, or stretching truths. I have succeeded in giving a really amusing glimpse of a strange little life to some girl who now knows me much better than she should.

I emerge from customs 2 hours late, as my poor roommate sits waiting, wondering what took me so long.