Things being what they are, in these the days of the Kleagle, various and sundry friends and acquaintances are moving to get their passports in order. But, things being what they are, in these the days of the Kleagle, many in this are experiencing Problems.

One woman was told she must first secure a “Real ID.” She did not know what was this “Real ID.” Neither did I. She and I then learned the Americans went to a Real ID when they were a-feared brown people would crash the airplanes with box cutters or maybe their underwear. A Real ID is said to be a special magical form of Paper designed to foil and repel the box cutters and the underwear. She asked if once she secured this Real ID would she be approved for a renewed passport—and the passport people wouldn’t say. So the Real ID may be just the first of many stations of the passport cross.

Another woman is seated under the bright lights because the passport people don’t like her name. Because she changed it. Once upon a time women were ordered to change their names, when they married some man, but this is not that, she changed it just because she felt like it. Which is becoming increasingly common, in my experience, among the women. But the passport people do not like this new name. They have all these questions about it. “Why?” she wondered to me. “It’s a perfectly normal name.” Which is true. It’s not like she changed it to I Will Stab Big Forks Deep Into The Kleagle’s Bulging-Ass Stomach Over And Over And Over Again Until He Is Dead Dead Dead. Then, yeah, I could see how there might be questions.

Then there's the fellow who for decades went round the world free of criming or any other ferment but is now in an eternal waiting room occasionally told in gnomish kafkaesque tones only that his application is “in progress.” Why? What’s the hold-up? No one will say.

Another friend cheerily says he anticipates No Danger because his passport is good and godly and also he is a “global entry” person—which permits him at the airports to sail right through but for a brief pause at a machine that looks at his retina. After which he is free to proceed into the Blade Runner.

And. Maybe so. But there may come a time when he is told, “Sir, I’m sorry, but there seems to be something wrong with your eye. Would you follow me to The Room please?” Because, like, they learned about Albania, or some shit. Then we will have to try to find out in which gulag he is being interred. To gather there outside, ululating and banging pots and pans, for his release. Until that happens. Or we are all firehosed into the wagons.

We shall see.

There is meanwhile an interesting story about this song. Eddie Mahoney was a Brooklyn kid from a police family who was supposed to beat heads for the NYPD himself. But this he fled at top speed. To cross the whole of the nation, and settle in Berkeley. Where he went to work as a JC Penney receiving clerk. And fell for a sorority gal. With a father so moneyed the man more or less owned several states. As she also fell for him, “her mother would do everything in the world to get her away from me on the weekends so she could meet a nice young doctor or lawyer or CPA.” He dreamed of going with her up to the redwoods. He didn’t have a car, so they’d have to take the bus. That’s what is happening in “Two Tickets To Paradise.” As it developed, that bus trip to the redwoods, it never happened. Just the song did. As the two eventually drifted their separate ways. The song, it stands as just a dream. Like the dream, of living, in a nation sane and decent, where you don’t have to worry, about your passport.

As. If. Only.