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May 19, 2006

Peter Berlin Searched at Airport

From Leah Garchik's column, SFGate.com:

German-born Peter Berlin, gay porn star and self-portraitist/poster man of the '70s, is famous for wearing tight pants -- often tailored by his own hand -- that bulged in a place relevant to his career. A few days ago, going through security at Ontario airport in Southern California, he set off a metal detector. Guards searched his things, patted him down, wanded him and OKd him to board. But just as he was about to walk to the gate, a supervisor who'd been observing from the side asked him about a string hanging from the front of his pants. "My zipper was a little broken," Berlin told me, "so I had a string sort of holding it together."

Berlin explained, but the security supervisor wasn't satisfied. "What is in your pants?" he asked. "My penis," answered Berlin, who thereupon was surrounded by five security guards who grabbed both his arms and led him away. The detailed search that followed included the exposure of the body part they apparently thought might have been dangerous.

"On one hand it was very funny," Berlin said. "On the other hand, I was treated like a suspect. ... It was a nasty situation." Berlin, born Baron Armin von Hoyningen-Huene, said that when he travels abroad, security guards take one look at his passport, which is in his real name, and treat him with kid gloves. No such niceties in the U.S.A., although he was an innocent man in fact and in principle. "My God," Berlin said, "I wouldn't put a bomb there."