I was at the Kristi Noem press conference and all I wanted was the restroom

Look, I’m not a political operative. I don’t even own a suspicious blazer. I was at Kristi Noem’s press conference because the Downtown Los Angeles InterContinental Hotel ballroom where it was being held also happened to be where they were serving complimentary meatballs on toothpicks for some unrelated tractor expo, and I have what you might call a “low-sodium meatball radar.”

Anyway, the event got off to a shaky start when US Senator from California Alejandro Padilla tried to ask a question. I didn’t catch what it was, but next thing you know, he was flattened by five Secret Service agents and a man who may have been an aggressive Marriott bellhop. They hand-cuffed him like he was a wiggly couch cushion.

The room got quiet. Kristi Noem smoothed her hair, looked offstage like she expected a fog machine to go off, and said, “Any other questions?”

And that’s when I—nervous, meatball-bloated, desperate—rose slowly from my seat and said, “Hi, thank you for taking my question. Do you know where the restrooms are?”

Apparently that was also too bold.

I barely got out the word “restrooms” before someone in a square jaw and aviator sunglasses shouted “THREAT” and I was mid-sentence tackled from three directions. My glasses flew off, someone whispered “we got another one,” and I found myself face-down next to a table of marketing pamphlets about pheasant conservation.

I tried to explain.

“I just need to pee,” I wheezed through a mouthful of carpet fibers. “I’m not a political agitator. I have the bladder of a frightened guinea pig.”

An agent leaned in close. “Well go ahead and get it over with.”

“I would,” I said. “But you’ve cuffed my hands behind my back. I’m not a magician. I can’t unzip my pants with the power of suggestion.”

Eventually, they escorted me out with the sort of dignity typically reserved for a guy caught trying to shoplift a rotisserie chicken under his hoodie.

The press later said I was “performing political street theater.” If using your words to ask where the urinal is counts as theater, then yes, I was the Daniel Day-Lewis of biological urgency.

But let the record show. Democracy dies in darkness—and also in line for the men’s room while two federal agents argue over whether my cargo shorts constitute a security risk.