ben patton blog

A Word to Airport Officials

Once not so long ago, arriving in London to record with Count Jaye, I aroused the suspicion of the Heathrow Airport immigrations police.
“What is the purpose of your visit?” asked a singularly unnattractive British lady behind a small desk, and a layer of bullet proof glass.
“To visit a friend” answered the brilliant but virtually unknown American songwriter.
The pale, pasty English muffin took a long hard look at my passport, filled with stamps from my many exploits around the globe. She saw a great number of trips to Berlin there, and also a fair number of visits to London, quite close together. Each, individually, was within the three month limit allowed to tourists. She asked about these other visits- was I visiting my “friend” on these trips as well? I told her yes, I had.
She looked at me incredulously and asked, “What is the nature of this friendship? Romantic?”
It wasn’t the first time this erronious theory about the Muller and Patton partnership had been put forth. I told her we were “good friends”.
“How long were you in Berlin last year?” she asked.
I couldn’t remember. It was all a blur.
“What do you do for a living Mister… (glances at my passport again)…. Patton?”
“I’m a songwriter.” I said with a glimmer of pride.She looked at me with a dubious expression, as if I’d just told her I was a unicorn.
“And how much do you make a year?”
“It varies.”
It went on like this for some time, with her asking increasingly personal questions, and me answering curtly, and avoiding eye contact with the hideous Brit. Finally, I was handed a “detainee” slip, and asked to have a seat in a hallway with a few other pissed-off detainees, all of whom looked either middle-eastern or indonesian. Reason for detention: “inadequate or false information regarding reason for trip to the United Kingdom.” We waited there until the entire arrivals line had cleared customs and escaped into jolly England. Then, one by one, we were interrogated.
About an hour went by before my turn. I was approached by a very different sort of woman. VERY different.
Our eyes locked together as she approached me, a half-smile curving her voluptuous lips. Her long, frizzy black hair was restrained in a bun, and her Immigration Police badge was pinned to her perky breast.
“Mr. Patton?” She said, in a voice men would pay by the minute to hear.
“God, I hope she frisks me” I thought to myself.
“Please come with me.” I followed her gently swaying rear end down a flight of stairs, to the luggage belt, where I was reunited with my bags. Then she lead me to a table, explaining that she would need to search my luggage for items or documents that could shed light on the reason for my stay, and asking me if there was any part of the claim I had given the first Immigrations officer that I wanted to change. I stuck to my story.
As she leaned over my bag, in her low cut Immigration Police blouse, I conducted a little inspection of HER luggage. Everything seemed to be in order.
She read every last word on every slip of paper.
I once heard a story of a musician friend of my sister’s who was sent home from Ireland by the immigration police, simply because she was found to be carrying an itinerary of gigs she was to play there. I’m sure that if the gigs payed at all, they would not have eve begun to reimburse her for the flight, and she certainly was not being “employed” in the typical sense, and could not have obtained a work-permit just to play the fiddle in some pubs. Nevertheless, she was found to be in violation of international policy, and sent straight home, never setting foot on Irish soil. Remembering this, I had taken the precaution of bringing not a single document relating to my work with Jaye. As Kurt Cobain said: “Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not out to get you”.
The luggage search was over. Was it time for my frisk? No, just another trip upstairs, where I was sat in the hallway again, for another hour or so. Finally, my enchantingly beautiful captor called me forward again. A long interview followed, and I tried to answer truthfully, while saying as little as possible.
“Did you live in Berlin?” asked my dream-weaver.
“No, not really. I spent a lot of time there, over the course of a year, though.”
She told me that she would need to fingerprint and photograph me, as a standard policy for detainees. In airport terminals, land-laws do not apply, because you are not technically on the soil of any country, like maritime-laws. Immigration Police do not need a warrant to search or question you. I probably did not have the right to remain silent. I did not have the right to a phone call.
My bronze goddess led me to a small room, and sat me in front of a blinding light and a polaroid camera. My mug shots were taken, head on and profile.
Then came the finger-prints. She asked me to give her my right hand. As her soft brown skin touched mine for the first time, I noticed my hand was quivering. Was I shaking with anxiety, that I was being held by police, and would probably be deported and banned from leaving the U.S.? Or was it…. true love?
She gently, almost sensuously dipped my thumb in the wet lukewarm black ink. Then she lifted my hand to a piece of paper, and firmly pressed my thumb to it. She repeated the semi-erotic process with every one of my fingers. I was about to suggest she do my toes too, when I was ushered out of the room.
In a sort of lobby, my coy coquette told me to empty my pockets, and hold my arms out from my body. “Oh God, this is it!” I thought, excitedly. “Lay those judicious hands on me, Mama!” Sadly, it was a big burly bald man who stepped towards me and frisked me, taking great care not to miss any financial documents I may have hidden in my testicles. …..Story of my life.
This time I was brought into a holding cell, and locked in. The room had florescent lights, a linoleum floor, a few hard benches, and a number of dark-skinned cellmates, sleeping on the benches, or curled up on the floor. There were mirrors everywhere, so that the guards on the other side of the giant plexi-glass window could see ever nook and cranny of the room. Mounted on the wall was a television. It was set to a channel that hardly came in, showing a billiards game. The poor reception caused a loud fuzzy crackling noise.
In this holding room I was allowed to make phone calls using their phone, but I couldn’t remember Jaye’s number. Another hour or so passed. I was asked to come back to the desk for a second interview. The love of my life was waiting for me. She asked me again, “Were you living in Berlin?”
“No.”
She held up a printed out page from the internet.
“Is this your bio?”
She had googled me. Underlined, was this excerpt from a bio of me appearing CDBaby.com:

“In 2005 Ben relocated to Berlin, Germany for a year, and toured in Europe and Asia. With Jaye Muller and a six piece backup band, he taped “Muller and Patton: 50505 LIVE”, a concert DVD.”

“Oh that.” I said, sweating like a pig, and not from arousal.
Then the real interrogation began. She produced reviews of “Muller and Patton”, press blurbs about our live shows in London and Berlin, and proof that our merchandise was indeed for sale.
Intrigued as I was by the idea of her putting handcuffs on me, I did my best to explain that I was not employed by anyone in the UK or Europe, and was not making any sort of profit from recordings done in London, or concerts given there, and it was certainly nothing that the good people of Great Britain should be threatened by.
This, to my lovely ebony dominatrix, was irrelevant.
I was put back in the cell.
I overheard one of my cellmates arguing about his verdict with a guard. He was to be deported on the next available flight back to India, which wasn’t until 9AM or so the next day. He would have to pay for that flight out of his own pocket. He was given a sleeping bag, and told he’d be let out of the cell the next morning, in time to check in to his flight. Could this be my fate? I went into the men’s room, which had no mirror, and no trash can, and ran some water over my face.

At about 2:30 AM, feeling sort of delirious, I was called back to the office. There was my Mistress. She told me I had been granted permission to stay for the length of this trip. Afterward, I would not be allowed back into Europe or the United Kingdom for six months, on a tourist visa.
She showed me the exit. She wasn’t even going to say goodbye, but after all we’d been through, I couldn’t just turn my back and walk out on her, as if we’d meant nothing to eachother. The hand holding, the long intimate conversations…. had these been meaningless to her, just WORK? I turned to her and shook her hand, and thanked her for being nice.
She said, “Well I always try to be a nice person.”

I know you do, angel. I know you do.

It all reminds me of the story my father used to tell, about a friend of his, a musician, who was audited by the IRS. Finally realizing that he didn’t make any real taxable income, the IRS agent said to him - “Well, we believe you, but…. why do you DO this?”

One more immigration story, if you’ll indulge me.
This one occurred more recently, when Count Jaye was taking the Countess and I to China, where he has colleagues. We first spent a pleasant day and night in Hong Kong, and then went to the border, hoping to travel by train to ShenZhen.

It’s not easy to leave Hong Kong and enter China. First you must take a long train trip to the border. Then you must fill out some paperwork, to leave Hong Kong, and some more paperwork, to enter the nowhere-land between the borders. Then you walk through a contained hallway that is neither Hong Kong nor China. Then you must fill out paperwork to leave Nowhere-land. Then, and only then, can you fill out the paperwork to ENTER China.
We got all the way to the last step in this process, before running into trouble.
It is as much my fault for not double checking this, as it is Jaye’s for not researching it, but apparently an American citizen will no longer be granted a visa for China on the spot, under a law that had only been passed a month or so before our trip. Most citizens of the world can simply fill out a form, and get a brief-visit visa, and be on his or her merry way. But you, Dear Uncle Sam, have declared China a threat to our baseball and apple pie.
The Count and Countess had already been given their visas, and let through. I was last in line. Denied. What could the Mullers do? I insisted they go on to China, and I was stranded in Hong Kong, alone.
As hard as it is to get from Hong Kong to China, it is much harder to get back to Hong Kong, once you have technically crossed it’s border. That hallway I mentioned, between Hong Kong and China, is a one-way hallway. It is actually illegal to walk in the other direction, back toward Hong Kong. No U-turns. Signs everywhere, in every known language, made this clear. The man who had denied me my visa, had moved to the next person in line, giving me no further instructions. Having been denied entry to China, I found myself unable to go forward, or backward, through this hallway.
I approached some security guards, one of whom seemed to understand some English, and explained that I had to return to Hong Kong. He checked my passport, pointed his index finger behind me and said, impatiently. “Twenty-eight.” I looked behind me, but saw no number twenty-eight. Perhaps he was guessing the age of one of the lucky bastards crossing the border into China?
“Twenty-eight” he repeated. I squinted, and tried to line my eyes directly up to his index finger so that I would look exactly where he was pointing.
I strolled in the general direction he’d pointed to, where there were some podiums (or whatever you call them) and more security guards. A woman guard who resembled an Asian Edith Head approached me and asked to see my passport. I tried to explain my situation to her. She took my passport and walked away. Was I supposed to follow her? I didn’t think so, and I didn’t want to push my luck, realizing there were certain directions one was not supposed to walk in here. It was then that I spotted the numbers, on the podiums, including twenty-eight. But Edith Head had taken my passport and disappeared around twenty-two.
A couple minutes later, Edith returned with my passport, handed it to me, pointed behind me, and said “Thelle.” We played the index finger treasure hunt game, and it lead me back to the same security guard who’d sent me to “twenty-eight”. He asked to see my passport, and apparently was satisfied with something in it that had changed since our last visit. Then he pointed his index finger down the one-way hallway, in the wrong direction. I didn’t believe him at first, especially because at that moment, a woman had just turned around to walk back to her family, who were lagging behind, and been stopped by armed guards, and turned back in the proper direction to wait for them to catch up.
Nervously, I began to swim upstream against the current, like a spawning salmon, glancing back at the guards, who nodded, and waved me on. At the end of the hallway, I found myself back in the customs area. Again, I had no instructions, and all the doorways were entrances, not exits. I asked another security guard, who referred me to ANOTHER security guard, who seemed to understand, and lead me personally over to a third security guard, in full camouflage, with an enormous gun.
This guard looked at my passport and searched my bag, and beckoned me to follow him. He was easy to follow, despite his camouflage, which, frankly, did not blend in to the white station walls. He lead me to what looked like a little shed inside the room. A woman who did not look like Edith Head gave me some paperwork to fill out. I did, and handed it in, hoping for a good grade.
I waited on a hard bench, with a few other international criminals, until we were all beckoned to follow yet another armed guard. He lead us through a passage-way, through more outgoing customs, and then told me to ascend the “stale-case.” I started up the stairs, noticing a sign that, if my memory serves me, read “This staircase for Wo Fun citizens only.” Around the bend the stairs continued and there were more signs. “Only Wo Fun citizens allowed.” Up I went. A man with a gun had said so. At the top was a door, baring a warning: “Wo Fun citizens Only”. I tried to open the door. It was locked. Behind me, some Wo Fun citizens appeared. Someone appeared at the other end of the door and allowed them in. I went with them, trying not to stick out in the gang of people who only came up to my chest. Wo fun, indeed!
Then I was free, in Hong Kong, solo. What befell me there is another story entirely.

All of these experiences have given me a terrible phobia of airport personel. Airports are vast Orwellian mazes of surveillance and suspicion, and now, when I pass through inspection, I must look awfully suspect, shaking, sweating and pale as a ghost.
I thought I would write this entry in my public blog, and give it tags like “Ben Patton, immigration, airport, customs” in hopes that this very entry will appear on an immigration officer’s screen, should they ever resort to googling me again, while investigating my weird life.
Is this an airport official reading right now? If so, I beseech you, let the skinny well dressed guy in front of you go. Does he look like a terrorist, or a drug dealer? Can you picture him pulling off any sort of deception without giggling?
I know you are used to very simple stories, easily told in a few sentences. A honeymoon, a vacation, a business trip. But the guy in front of you has a story too unusual for even him to explain. He doesn’t even really WANT to travel the world! These things just keep happening to him! He wants to do nothing but write songs, without starving, and he’s found it necessary to travel a lot in order to pull that off. He’s a little eccentric, sure, and we grant you it’s odd that he carries the entire filmography of Fred Astaire on DVD with him in his luggage, but he’s harmless. The worst he’s capable of is composing a really annoying advertising jingle now and then. He’s generally a rather subdued sort of fellow, and although deviant, sick, urges occasionally hit him, he usually does not act upon them.
Maybe your stern heart can be melted a little by reading a lyric that he wrote, inspired by his trouble with airport security. It’s from a song on his latest album “The Unquiet and Apart”, which, incidentally, is not a bad record, if you’re a music lover.The song is named “Nothing to Declare” after one of the areas of your customs inspection.

“Please Don’t ask me what went on over there /
Business or Pleasure? / I’ve got nothing to declare. “

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