I was felt up by a woman today.

And before you worry that I was molested or somehow ruined in any way I will tell you I was not. I was in the airport. And trying to get through security, the shiny metal things on the front of my shirt made that 360-radiation-thing you have to stand in to make sure you’re not a terrorist upset. So I needed a pat-down–on my chest.

The Transportation and Safety Administration woman designated to check me out stood there, strong and silent. She looked at me with eyes I assumed had seen a lot: big breasts, small breasts, cleavage, covered, underwired, no-wired, old, young, t-shirted and no-bra’d. I was certain she’d had her share of discomfort from the patted-down who didn’t like the idea of a stranger touching their fronts. If she only knew she was about to touch somebody for whom that entire issue died 8 years ago this week with a double-mastectomy-no-reconstruction. I looked back at her and wondered what she’d make of me–not the small breasted nor the small chested but, for lack of a better term, the de-breasted.

“It’s your shirt,” she waved her powder-blue-gloved left hand at my flat chest in explanation for my deterrence. “The machine doesn’t like those buttons.” Her eyes met mine. “I’m going to need to feel around–” she stumbled, “here.” And she waved at the area where my breasts would have been had I had them.

I looked at my own chest which is flat but not obvious-to-the-eye gone. I keep myself trim so it’s not so clear to anyone who doesn’t know my story that I have had a double mastectomy without reconstruction. Of course when I say that I mean it’s not clear to anyone’s eyes: somebody’s hands are another matter. You can count my ribs if I let you.

I was just catching up to the reasons why I’d been stopped– this had never happened to me before and I wasn’t exactly with it–until she started to pat my stomach. I smiled because it tickled. Then she looked at my eyes and readied her hand to move up a few inches, maybe waiting for me to complain? Or react? Or at the very least acknowledge what was about to happen so that if I was going to complain I could do it now and save her a lot of trouble..

“I don’t mind,” I smiled at her. The blue latex glove rubbed on the material of my shirt as it slid up an inch to the area where my breasts would have started where they still there. For a beat, nothing in the airport seemed to move for me: not the airport itself, not the travelers behind me eager to get to their gates, not the TSA agent’s hand. The whole moment was the complete opposite of TSA testing/finding something dangerous: this was TSA testing and finding something missing instead.

The agent looked at me. I have no idea if she knew. Her hand rested for a millisecond on my ribcage–the only hard thing on my front frame for the last 8 years. That second clocked like hours for me. I couldn’t let her hang there in confusion.

“I have no breasts,” I said, smiling. “Breast cancer,” I shrugged as a quick means of explaining 8 years of hell. And to ward off any “poor you” looks from her, I smiled again and said, “It’s all good.”

She looked at me, same dead-pan face she started with. No recognition of what I’d just admitted. “You’re all set,” she said.

“Okay,” I answered her, moving quickly past her blue glove. I grabbed my computer, bags, jacket and ticket spread out on the conveyer belt like a lawn sale. Pulling on my shoes I thought–8 years into this battle with breast cancer that I am fighting and for the moment winning and that’s right, I am all set–

and lady, you don’t even know the half of it.