Wicked Wednesday: Suitcase

I’m always leery about packing good toys in luggage if I have to fly. It’s one thing to take a road trip with a suitcase packed with vibrators, lingerie, and floggers, but quite another to take that suitcase to the airport.

It’s a tough decision to put the toys in checked luggage or carry-on. Checked is usually fine for lingerie, blindfolds, floggers, and the like, but I always worry that either TSA is going to go digging through my bag to see what that 5 pound metal object is, or the bag will be opened and my expensive vibrator will “go missing.” The other problem is that many of my toys have rechargeable batteries, which aren’t supposed to be in checked baggage.

Taking a carry-on through security can be interesting, and it really depends on the airport. Going through screening in a big city’s airport, I’ve seen a few raised eyebrows, and I’ve wondered just how big does that oversized silicone dildo look in the suitcase? I’ve always either travel-locked the vibrators or made sure they’re not charged, and I’ve never had an agent pull one out for closer inspection there.

Small airports, on the other hand, can be a bit disastrous. I hadn’t flown out of one in quite a while, but the last time I went to Las Vegas I decided it made more sense to take the jump plane – it’s cheaper than driving, and a lot faster as well. While waiting in line to go through security, I noticed first that they were randomly opening large bags and rifling through them with gloves on. Then I noticed that they were opening every other carry-on bag. Apparently, just running it through the scanner wasn’t enough – maybe because we were going to Vegas? I had a 50/50 chance, and I knew mine was going to be opened. And it was.

The worst part about the agents opening the carry-on bags wasn’t that they were opening them, but that everyone in line could see what was in them. I was hoping my vibrators weren’t going to be waved about for public display, and they weren’t, exactly…but you could certainly see from the line exactly what was going to be buzzing for me later on that day. I didn’t get questioned about any of them, and I would have been fine if I had – I realized a long time ago that if I was going to be too embarrassed to explain what I was taking with me, I probably shouldn’t be taking it. Why yes, officer, that green tentacle really is a sex toy – let me show you how it vibrates and rotates…

Will I be taking toys the next time I fly? Of course. In my carry-on, no matter what happens.

Check out the other Wicked Wednesday posts!