letter from heathrow jail
on the morning of september 8th, i headed to the san francisco airport to make my way to london for a year. on the morning of september 10th, i arrived back in san francisco. this is a tale of what happened in between.
the flight
the short version is that we should have paid the extra $200/ticket to fly virgin. bmi sucks huge balls and the flight was (surprise!) operated by united, also in the upper echelon of ball suckers. the first blow was dealt immediately: the flight was delayed by three hours. phyllis and i got our seat assignments late for some reason and we weren't even placed next to each other. when we finally got on the plane we were packed into middle seats like sardines and plenty of frustrated people were throwing fits. it was a 10-hour festival of suck. i had a xanax to get me through but i stupidly decided to save it... more on that later. the "authorities" boarded the plane at the end of the trip to harrass an old indian woman who could barely speak english. by the time we were allowed to move i couldn't wait to get off the plane. had i known what was in store for me, i would have stayed on the aircraft and started a new life as a stewardess.
customs
we joined the long line to clear british customs at around 10:00am london time the next day. phyllis and i were traveling together so we went up to our immigration officer's kiosk at the same time. in hindsight, we may have been better off separating but families who travel together are supposed to stay together in line. our customs lady was wearing a traditional islamic hijab and she was an icy bitch from the first minute. i'm not sure that women in hijabs are particularly fond of americans or same-sex couples. after an intense and very condescending round of questions, phyllis was cleared to proceed (she has a student visa) and i was asked to sit in a special area for further questioning.
caught in the system
i thought the hijab hag was going to follow up with me, but she just moved to another booth and carried on with ruining travelers' days. i sat patiently in my little dunce chair for a long while without being acknowledged at all. phyllis was just beyond the gate trying to figure out what was happening to me. i could only shrug as the customs officials talked amongst themselves and continued to ignore me. i must have been sitting there for almost an hour before a different immigration woman came to retrieve me.
what exactly happened during this next phase is a bit of a blur. i was shuffled from little room to little room and told to wait. at one point the woman took me into a private area to snap pictures and take my fingerprints. i wasn't sure why i was being treated like a criminal but i figured it was best to be cooperative. some time later, i was taken to baggage claim and reunited with phyllis. we were then led to another section of the airport where the immigration lady dumped out the contents of my luggage and searched all of my belongings. i was able to talk briefly to phyllis and eat a little sandwich. this turned out to be the coolest thing that would happen to me for the next 24 hours.
the search of my bags uncovered a file folder with documents that were of great interest to the officials. that file folder shouldn't have even been in my backpack as it was just some old papers that i forgot to throw away, but the lady seemed satisfied with her detective work and i was escorted into yet another badge-protected section of the airport. phyllis was told to wait upstairs at the information desk until further notice.
behind the secret door were more officials. my bags were confiscated, my phone was taken away, and i was checked out with a metal detector wand before being told to sit down in a cold waiting area. i asked politely how long i might be waiting and was told it could be "quite some time". some crappy british talk show blared out of a busted television for the benefit of all the derelicts in the room. i shared space with a colorful cast of characters that included hindu ladies, french-speaking africans, and other unfortunates. i was basically locked in a holding cell. there were a few small interrogation rooms off the main area but we were otherwise separated from the officials by doors that required codes to open. i sat around examining my bleak surroundings for another hour or so before an immigration officer came in and called my name. he was a happy fellow with a shaved head and i hoped he would be my ticket back to the real world.
we took seats in one of the interrogation rooms and he explained that i was being interviewed because more information was required to determine whether or not i would be granted entry to the uk. i thought this was a bit weird, as american citizens are allowed something like 3 months automatically when visiting but i played along anyway. he led me through a series of questions and i explained that i was here to help my girlfriend get set up with housing and stuff before she started school and then i would be doing some travel through europe. he seemed chummy enough for an immigration dude, but towards the end of our conversation he played his trump card: an old version of my resignation letter from work. the search lady had taken it from my bags. the letter stated that i would be "relocating to the uk for a period of one year" and he took that line to mean that i would *not* in fact be traveling through europe at all and that i had been lying the entire time. phyllis' student visa was apparently further evidence that i planned to permanently set up shop in london. wholly unimpressed, my shaved-head friend informed me that my case would be presented to the chief immigration officer and that he would be back with the results later.
it wasn't until about this time that i started to realize i was seriously in danger of not being let into the uk. phyllis and i have entered the uk via london three or four times now without any major issues. it's always a pain in the ass but that's kind of to be expected and we always get in eventually. i'd like to break for a moment and mention some details about our very first trip to europe back at the end of 2003. that time we had one-way tickets to london and no solid plan. we had no bank statement that proved we had any money. no visas, no job prospects, nothing really but a dream and some clothes and two crates of records. it was romantic as all hell if you ask me, but customs hated us. we got in anyway. i thought we were so much better prepared this time around. phyllis had a visa, i had job interviews, we had saved up several thousand dollars and had papers to prove it. i thought we had learned some useful lessons and were now traveling like adults. so much for being mature.
"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."
(vonnegut, from "cat's cradle", a fine book and my only saving grace while in that hellhole)
and now back to my post-interview story, which includes more of me sitting around, waiting, and trying not to freak out. more than anything at this point, i just wanted to get a line of communication out to phyllis. i knew she was upstairs at the information desk worrying about me so i scrambled to formulate a plan. i knocked on the thick windows to get an official's attention and asked if i could access my luggage to get long pants and a sweatshirt. i was in shorts and those assholes had the air conditioning on full blast. one of the guys agreed and unlocked the room where my suitcases were sequestered. i dug around in my clothes innocently as i located my cell phone and stashed it and some credit cards in a passport holder that was hanging around my neck. i also tried to grab my bottle of motrin since i had cramps of death but the detention center dude wouldn't allow it. i let him have the appearance of victory and then i headed to the bathroom to "change clothes". once locked in, i ran the water in the sink and called phyllis. talking to her was the relief of the century.
bitter disappointment indeed
my bald homie finally returned, presumably with a verdict of some sort, and greeted me with a cheery "hiya!" we sat down in the same interrogation room from before and he handed me some papers and told me he would read them aloud. i scanned them immediately to get to the point and saw that i was being denied entry. a surge of heat rushed to my head. everything in my chest and gut seemed to be spinning, whirring out of control, spitting springs and gears and shrapnel in every direction. the buzzing was so loud in my ears that i didn't hear a word he read. at some point he tapped the table with both hands in a gesture of finality and said "okay!" like he had just completed his good deed for the day. i stared at him blankly. he tried again, "okay?" i asked him when i could see phyllis. he said that wasn't going to happen. the spinning in my chest accelerated as i tried to explain to him that i *had* to see her, that i had all the money and the credit cards, that he was leaving her with nothing by separating us. he started to get all heated and authoritarian and told me that there was no way i was going to see her at all, that it absolutely was not going to happen, full stop. i hadn't ever heard someone say "full stop" out loud before then. i've determined only dickheads say that.
he told me that i'd be sent back to san francisco on the next flight out which was at 10:00am the following morning. a detention bed would be arranged. he then left in a huff and i rushed straight back to the bathroom to send frantic texts to phyllis.
it was maybe 5:00pm at this point and the thought of spending the entire night in this shitty fake jail was too much. i considered asking to be sent to new york instead. maybe there were flights out to new york that night. maybe i could go there and get horribly lost so that my actions would match the way i felt. maybe i could get swept away by something beautiful and pretend this wasn't happening. maybe i could buy another set of tickets at jfk and be back in london with a new story in a matter of hours.
instead i sat and rotted silently in the almost-jail as new detainees came and went. i stared at the tile in the floor which was obviously meant to look like marble but more closely resembled head cheese. i listened to the heavy institutional doors lumber open and then click-lock loudly back into place. i cried and sent my girlfriend endless texts from underneath a blanket. i knocked on the window to see if i could still get a sandwich from the night guard but she looked up at me and then went right back to doing nothing. i tried to hide from the blinding fluorescent lights overhead. that proved futile so i re-read my book. i did not eat. i did not sleep.
it was fucking bullshit.
on being deported
morning finally came and i drifted in and out of an unsatisfying half nap until the day crew came to get me. there were two people escorting me to my gate, a man and a woman, and they were actually somewhat decent people. they informed me that i wasn't really being deported; i was being denied entry, and that was much different. i was dying to get out of the detention center so they could call it whatever they wanted.
they quickly realized i was a normal person and not some sort of fuckup. the guy reviewed my paperwork, gave me a quizzical look, and asked why they didn't let me in. i explained that the immigration officials didn't believe that i was entering the uk as a visitor. he conferred with the woman as we walked and i overheard him say "that just shows you how inconsistent they really are." they both gave me some inside information about the current state of customs. evidently the american customs officials have been turning away english people left and right lately, so the uk is retaliating. "tit-for-tat" he called it. these two were pretty loose lipped. they told me some more stuff about the recent immigration battles between the us and the uk, then about the uk and australia/new zealand, and later they shared some racist remarks about somalian people. they assured me that a lot of the folks they send away are truly nasty and that it was a real pleasure escorting someone nice like me. fantastic. maybe they can put in a good word on my behalf.
adding insult to injury
i finally boarded a little bit after 9:00am and i was told that my passport would be returned to me once the plane was in the air. i settled into my aisle seat and rifled through my backpack for my face mask. it wasn't where i had left it. weird. i found it elsewhere in my backpack and reached into the small front pocket for the xanax i had stashed away. it was gone. my earplugs were still there but the pill had disappeared. i inspected further and noticed that my bottle of motrin was also gone. it seems an additional search of my baggage was conducted while i was locked up and someone relieved me of all my drugs.
i was running low on sleep so i passed out naturally for most of the flight home. i'm not any less pissed about being quietly robbed though.
so here i am, back in san francisco after two full days of the shaft, while phyllis is in west london without me. i have no apartment and no job and i've already formally said goodbye to all of my friends here. phyllis and i are working on a new plan that includes an official visa for me (as a dependant of a student), but even if it all goes well it will be at least three weeks before my appeal is processed. this is a very lengthy post and i don't know what else to say. phyllis called me up about an hour ago crying and saying that she wants to give up on this whole stupid thing and come home. i don't blame her, but i also won't let us be defeated this easily. i'm going to try this visa thing and if it doesn't work then i'm going to try to get my passport cleared for a short-term visit. if i get turned away again then fuck london.
to be perfectly honest with you, i've never liked london anyway.
the flight
the short version is that we should have paid the extra $200/ticket to fly virgin. bmi sucks huge balls and the flight was (surprise!) operated by united, also in the upper echelon of ball suckers. the first blow was dealt immediately: the flight was delayed by three hours. phyllis and i got our seat assignments late for some reason and we weren't even placed next to each other. when we finally got on the plane we were packed into middle seats like sardines and plenty of frustrated people were throwing fits. it was a 10-hour festival of suck. i had a xanax to get me through but i stupidly decided to save it... more on that later. the "authorities" boarded the plane at the end of the trip to harrass an old indian woman who could barely speak english. by the time we were allowed to move i couldn't wait to get off the plane. had i known what was in store for me, i would have stayed on the aircraft and started a new life as a stewardess.
customs
we joined the long line to clear british customs at around 10:00am london time the next day. phyllis and i were traveling together so we went up to our immigration officer's kiosk at the same time. in hindsight, we may have been better off separating but families who travel together are supposed to stay together in line. our customs lady was wearing a traditional islamic hijab and she was an icy bitch from the first minute. i'm not sure that women in hijabs are particularly fond of americans or same-sex couples. after an intense and very condescending round of questions, phyllis was cleared to proceed (she has a student visa) and i was asked to sit in a special area for further questioning.
caught in the system
i thought the hijab hag was going to follow up with me, but she just moved to another booth and carried on with ruining travelers' days. i sat patiently in my little dunce chair for a long while without being acknowledged at all. phyllis was just beyond the gate trying to figure out what was happening to me. i could only shrug as the customs officials talked amongst themselves and continued to ignore me. i must have been sitting there for almost an hour before a different immigration woman came to retrieve me.
what exactly happened during this next phase is a bit of a blur. i was shuffled from little room to little room and told to wait. at one point the woman took me into a private area to snap pictures and take my fingerprints. i wasn't sure why i was being treated like a criminal but i figured it was best to be cooperative. some time later, i was taken to baggage claim and reunited with phyllis. we were then led to another section of the airport where the immigration lady dumped out the contents of my luggage and searched all of my belongings. i was able to talk briefly to phyllis and eat a little sandwich. this turned out to be the coolest thing that would happen to me for the next 24 hours.
the search of my bags uncovered a file folder with documents that were of great interest to the officials. that file folder shouldn't have even been in my backpack as it was just some old papers that i forgot to throw away, but the lady seemed satisfied with her detective work and i was escorted into yet another badge-protected section of the airport. phyllis was told to wait upstairs at the information desk until further notice.
behind the secret door were more officials. my bags were confiscated, my phone was taken away, and i was checked out with a metal detector wand before being told to sit down in a cold waiting area. i asked politely how long i might be waiting and was told it could be "quite some time". some crappy british talk show blared out of a busted television for the benefit of all the derelicts in the room. i shared space with a colorful cast of characters that included hindu ladies, french-speaking africans, and other unfortunates. i was basically locked in a holding cell. there were a few small interrogation rooms off the main area but we were otherwise separated from the officials by doors that required codes to open. i sat around examining my bleak surroundings for another hour or so before an immigration officer came in and called my name. he was a happy fellow with a shaved head and i hoped he would be my ticket back to the real world.
we took seats in one of the interrogation rooms and he explained that i was being interviewed because more information was required to determine whether or not i would be granted entry to the uk. i thought this was a bit weird, as american citizens are allowed something like 3 months automatically when visiting but i played along anyway. he led me through a series of questions and i explained that i was here to help my girlfriend get set up with housing and stuff before she started school and then i would be doing some travel through europe. he seemed chummy enough for an immigration dude, but towards the end of our conversation he played his trump card: an old version of my resignation letter from work. the search lady had taken it from my bags. the letter stated that i would be "relocating to the uk for a period of one year" and he took that line to mean that i would *not* in fact be traveling through europe at all and that i had been lying the entire time. phyllis' student visa was apparently further evidence that i planned to permanently set up shop in london. wholly unimpressed, my shaved-head friend informed me that my case would be presented to the chief immigration officer and that he would be back with the results later.
it wasn't until about this time that i started to realize i was seriously in danger of not being let into the uk. phyllis and i have entered the uk via london three or four times now without any major issues. it's always a pain in the ass but that's kind of to be expected and we always get in eventually. i'd like to break for a moment and mention some details about our very first trip to europe back at the end of 2003. that time we had one-way tickets to london and no solid plan. we had no bank statement that proved we had any money. no visas, no job prospects, nothing really but a dream and some clothes and two crates of records. it was romantic as all hell if you ask me, but customs hated us. we got in anyway. i thought we were so much better prepared this time around. phyllis had a visa, i had job interviews, we had saved up several thousand dollars and had papers to prove it. i thought we had learned some useful lessons and were now traveling like adults. so much for being mature.
"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."
(vonnegut, from "cat's cradle", a fine book and my only saving grace while in that hellhole)
and now back to my post-interview story, which includes more of me sitting around, waiting, and trying not to freak out. more than anything at this point, i just wanted to get a line of communication out to phyllis. i knew she was upstairs at the information desk worrying about me so i scrambled to formulate a plan. i knocked on the thick windows to get an official's attention and asked if i could access my luggage to get long pants and a sweatshirt. i was in shorts and those assholes had the air conditioning on full blast. one of the guys agreed and unlocked the room where my suitcases were sequestered. i dug around in my clothes innocently as i located my cell phone and stashed it and some credit cards in a passport holder that was hanging around my neck. i also tried to grab my bottle of motrin since i had cramps of death but the detention center dude wouldn't allow it. i let him have the appearance of victory and then i headed to the bathroom to "change clothes". once locked in, i ran the water in the sink and called phyllis. talking to her was the relief of the century.
bitter disappointment indeed
my bald homie finally returned, presumably with a verdict of some sort, and greeted me with a cheery "hiya!" we sat down in the same interrogation room from before and he handed me some papers and told me he would read them aloud. i scanned them immediately to get to the point and saw that i was being denied entry. a surge of heat rushed to my head. everything in my chest and gut seemed to be spinning, whirring out of control, spitting springs and gears and shrapnel in every direction. the buzzing was so loud in my ears that i didn't hear a word he read. at some point he tapped the table with both hands in a gesture of finality and said "okay!" like he had just completed his good deed for the day. i stared at him blankly. he tried again, "okay?" i asked him when i could see phyllis. he said that wasn't going to happen. the spinning in my chest accelerated as i tried to explain to him that i *had* to see her, that i had all the money and the credit cards, that he was leaving her with nothing by separating us. he started to get all heated and authoritarian and told me that there was no way i was going to see her at all, that it absolutely was not going to happen, full stop. i hadn't ever heard someone say "full stop" out loud before then. i've determined only dickheads say that.
he told me that i'd be sent back to san francisco on the next flight out which was at 10:00am the following morning. a detention bed would be arranged. he then left in a huff and i rushed straight back to the bathroom to send frantic texts to phyllis.
it was maybe 5:00pm at this point and the thought of spending the entire night in this shitty fake jail was too much. i considered asking to be sent to new york instead. maybe there were flights out to new york that night. maybe i could go there and get horribly lost so that my actions would match the way i felt. maybe i could get swept away by something beautiful and pretend this wasn't happening. maybe i could buy another set of tickets at jfk and be back in london with a new story in a matter of hours.
instead i sat and rotted silently in the almost-jail as new detainees came and went. i stared at the tile in the floor which was obviously meant to look like marble but more closely resembled head cheese. i listened to the heavy institutional doors lumber open and then click-lock loudly back into place. i cried and sent my girlfriend endless texts from underneath a blanket. i knocked on the window to see if i could still get a sandwich from the night guard but she looked up at me and then went right back to doing nothing. i tried to hide from the blinding fluorescent lights overhead. that proved futile so i re-read my book. i did not eat. i did not sleep.
it was fucking bullshit.
on being deported
morning finally came and i drifted in and out of an unsatisfying half nap until the day crew came to get me. there were two people escorting me to my gate, a man and a woman, and they were actually somewhat decent people. they informed me that i wasn't really being deported; i was being denied entry, and that was much different. i was dying to get out of the detention center so they could call it whatever they wanted.
they quickly realized i was a normal person and not some sort of fuckup. the guy reviewed my paperwork, gave me a quizzical look, and asked why they didn't let me in. i explained that the immigration officials didn't believe that i was entering the uk as a visitor. he conferred with the woman as we walked and i overheard him say "that just shows you how inconsistent they really are." they both gave me some inside information about the current state of customs. evidently the american customs officials have been turning away english people left and right lately, so the uk is retaliating. "tit-for-tat" he called it. these two were pretty loose lipped. they told me some more stuff about the recent immigration battles between the us and the uk, then about the uk and australia/new zealand, and later they shared some racist remarks about somalian people. they assured me that a lot of the folks they send away are truly nasty and that it was a real pleasure escorting someone nice like me. fantastic. maybe they can put in a good word on my behalf.
adding insult to injury
i finally boarded a little bit after 9:00am and i was told that my passport would be returned to me once the plane was in the air. i settled into my aisle seat and rifled through my backpack for my face mask. it wasn't where i had left it. weird. i found it elsewhere in my backpack and reached into the small front pocket for the xanax i had stashed away. it was gone. my earplugs were still there but the pill had disappeared. i inspected further and noticed that my bottle of motrin was also gone. it seems an additional search of my baggage was conducted while i was locked up and someone relieved me of all my drugs.
i was running low on sleep so i passed out naturally for most of the flight home. i'm not any less pissed about being quietly robbed though.
so here i am, back in san francisco after two full days of the shaft, while phyllis is in west london without me. i have no apartment and no job and i've already formally said goodbye to all of my friends here. phyllis and i are working on a new plan that includes an official visa for me (as a dependant of a student), but even if it all goes well it will be at least three weeks before my appeal is processed. this is a very lengthy post and i don't know what else to say. phyllis called me up about an hour ago crying and saying that she wants to give up on this whole stupid thing and come home. i don't blame her, but i also won't let us be defeated this easily. i'm going to try this visa thing and if it doesn't work then i'm going to try to get my passport cleared for a short-term visit. if i get turned away again then fuck london.
to be perfectly honest with you, i've never liked london anyway.