The Weekly Screed (#762)

Pants police pulling for Carolina
by David Benjamin

“Lawmakers had focused… on the contention that it might allow men dressed as women to enter bathrooms and commit assaults. There is no evidence that has happened elsewhere, and it is not clear how the North Carolina regulation will be enforced…”
                                  — Jonathan Katz, The NY Times

MADISON, Wis. — When the visionary legislators of North Carolina passed a law regulating the use of public rest rooms by rogue transvestites and transgender predators, I sensed a golden opportunity for my old friend, Wilhelm “Free Willy” Bienfang, America’s foremost “idea man.”

So I got in touch. Sure enough, Bienfang had already set up shop in Charlotte, ready to launch the first private-sector free-market security agency with a lucrative government contract to patrol every Tarheel toilet from Hothouse to Cape Hatteras. He was calling the company Drag Net, Inc.

“A little play on words there,” said Bienfang, chuckling.

Getting serious, the brilliant polymath explained that the easy part was the North Carolina legislature’s passage of a statute, swiftly signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory, that restricts men — who were born male, but who look, dress or feel like women — from using the Ladies Room, and vice-versa. “The hard part is figuring out who’s trying to sneak into the wrong toilet, and stopping them before they reach the stall and start unbuttoning.”

“Yes,” I said. “I see the problem. If a man is disguised to look like a woman, how do you know he’s not really a she?”

Bienfang immediately referred to the famous bar scene in the film, Crocodile Dundee. The movie’s eponymous hero is approached by Gwendolyn, a seductively dressed gay transvestite, and begins to flirt with him/her, only to be told — askance — that the doll is actually a guy. Dundee, a spontaneous frontiersman unschooled in New York mores, immediately takes hold of the drag queen’s crotch to confirm the diagnosis. She leaps in the air. So does Dundee.

“We’re recruiting an army of Crocodile Dundees,” boasted Bienfang. “Of course, the inspections will all take place discreetly behind a strategically placed screen. No leaping in the air. And latex gloves will be mandatory.”

I felt a shiver of squeamishness. Of all the dirty jobs I could imagine, this one pretty much took the cake. Who would apply to do something so creepy, intrusive and possibly violent — for eight hours a day?

Bienfang replied, “Ah, naive boy. You have no idea how many minor perverts, voyeurs and peeping Toms are out there, most of them living with their mommies,  sadly underemployed and drilling holes in bathroom walls. They’re already flocking to my human resources team.”

He added, “Besides, what redblooded American has not, at some time or another, pictured himself (or herself) lifting up a strange woman’s skirt or yanking down some random guy’s pants, just to get a load of what’s underneath? Ya follow?”

I blushed at this. But Bienfang had a point. Peeking into people’s undies seems like the only way to effectively enforce North Carolina’s ironically named “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.” I wondered how Bienfang was advertising for this “career opportunity.”

“Well, first of all, you’ve got to dignify the position with the right title,” said Bienfang. “I mean, the first term I discarded was Penis Police. A little too blunt, wouldn’t you say?”

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Bienfang went on. “We thought about calling our troops the Pubic Patrol, the Ben Dover Brigade, the Genital Generals, the Weenie Watch. We were even tempted by Graboids. Remember that one? From Tremors?”

“I remember,” I said, wincing.

“But finally, we opted for subtlety and good taste, in the spirit of Gov. McCrory,” said Bienfang. “If you’re lucky enough to get a position working in the field for Drag Net, Inc., body-searching people before they can enter a public toilet to take a leak, you’ll be officially known as a ‘privates investigator.’ Or P.I. ‘Pee-Eye,” get it? Nyuk nyuk.”

I conceded that this was about as subtle a title as this job could manage.

“Of course, around the office,” said Bienfang, “we’re already calling ourselves ‘dick dicks,’ for short.” Bienfang suddenly laughed. “Or long!”

Apropos to nothing, I noted that there’s actually an animal called a dik-dik, a small east African antelope with an elongated snout.

“Really? That’s great. We’ll put one on our logo,” said Bienfang. “Maybe somebody’ll get the joke.”

I tried to suggest to Bienfang — who tends to have too much fun with his ideas — that this was hardly a joke. We were discussing a serious threat to privacy, civil rights and every person’s physical autonomy. I said, “All kidding aside, in order to protect innocent little girls (and boys) from being molested, you’ve created a system that repeatedly molests innocent grown women (and men).”

Bienfang wiped the grin off his vulpine face. “This is bigger than that,” he added. “In the whole history of North Carolina — or just about anywhere — there’s never been a recorded instance of a man dressed as a woman creeping into the john to force himself sexually on the little girl in the last stall. Or vice versa.”

I knew there was more.

Bienfang said, “However, now that my prurient pals in Christian Carolina have hatched this appalling idea, it’s going to seep into the impressionable minds of our national pedophile population.”

“Which means?” I said.

“Yes!” said Bienfang. “Someday, somewhere, we’re finally gonna catch one of ‘em!”