Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  Backstage, somebody pushed play on the BGM, and once again, Disney asserted its dominance over the animal kingdom, as the real animal noises became indistinguishable from the recording. Shredding the negatives didn’t take long, but it affected me on a profound level, like I was extracting pieces of my soul. I could feel myself transforming into a corporate automaton, erasing history for the conceit of the Company. Had I slipped so far that I wouldn’t be able to return? I needed to ground myself again with somebody who knew the difference between right and wrong—even if he didn’t always choose the obvious answer.

  I went through the day with a bad taste in my mouth, then clocked out and called Brady. He picked up on the first ring. “Moshi moshi.”

  “Where are you? Can you talk?”

  “Honto desu.” He sounded like a bad voice-over on a martial arts video game. “I’m at home. What’s on your mind, gaijin?”

  “Why are you butchering Japanese?”

  “I went fishing today, and caught my dinner. Sashimi-wa oishii desu. If you want to come by, you’re welcome. There’s plenty.”

  Fresh sushi sounded pretty good, so I accepted. After a quick shower, I walked over to Brady’s apartment. It was one of the identical units in the Ghetto, not far from my own. He answered the door dressed in a kimono, holding a Samurai sword. He had painted his face white and accented his eyes and forehead with thick red lines like a kabuki actor. On his head, he wore a Shang wig, slick black hair tied back into a fist-sized bun.

  “Irashaimasen!” he exclaimed, throwing the door wide. “Welcome, tomodachi!”

  His living room was decorated to look like an eighteenth-century European parlor. Overstuffed sofas and chairs made from rich, dark woods and decorative fabrics were meticulously placed around the room in a way that ensured ease of conversation. Strategically positioned halogen spots highlighted textured oil paintings of fruit bowls and European landscapes done in the Renaissance style. Side tables displayed antique treasures: silver candelabras, a snuffbox inlaid with mother-of-pearl detail, and a blown-glass candy dish filled with inedible butterscotch candies that only ever seemed to exist in the sitting rooms of very old ladies. The BGM was Madame Butterfly.

  “My, Grandma,” I said, “what a fantastic interior decorator you have.”

  “Hate all you want,” Brady said. “When the Queen comes to Orlando, we’ll see where she wants to dine.”

  I looked him over in his long silk kimono and painted face. “From what I can tell, the Queen has already arrived.”

  He flashed the Samurai sword in mock menace, then stepped aside. “Please sit.” He gestured to the dining table, a massive baroque hunk of wood, surrounded by eight formal antique chairs, patterned with pink silk. The space above the table was dominated by a crystal chandelier that refracted the light magnificently around the room like a Gothic disco ball. Two places were set with simple black plates and chopsticks. Brady arranged a single orchid in the center of the table, then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Instead of sitting, I wandered over to a bookcase whose shelves were bowed beneath the weight of an enormous stack of books. There were books on every subject from financial theory to fairy tales, Agatha Christie mysteries, self-help manuals, poetry, pop-up books and books on globalization. And in the center of the case, a hardcover edition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the novel that had set me on my path of self-reliance as a professional skater.

  “Have you read all of these?” I asked.

  Brady looked up from the serving plate where he was arranging cut rolls and sashimi, using the edge of the Samurai blade. “Those are the ones I liked enough to read more than once,” he said.

  “How many times have you read Atlas Shrugged?”

  “Actually, I never really stop reading it. I use it as a reference manual every time I start to lose focus.”

  Like all philosophy, Randian objectivism meant different things to different people, but the fundamental principle was universal: A person must take responsibility for his actions.

  “I could use a little focus right now,” I said. I told him about the pictures and how it had made me feel sick to destroy what I had created. Brady placed the sword on the counter, and walked past me, into the living room where he picked up a framed picture off the coffee table, and handed it to me. It was my picture, “Mickey Flashing Tit.” I had only given copies to one other person: the subject of the photo. “How did you get this?”

  “She happens to be a very special friend of mine,” he said, taking the picture back. “And now she’s applying for a job at Starbucks.”

  “Maybe she can go to Universal,” I said.

  “Maybe Sam can go to Universal,” Brady spat. “So she took a couple of pictures. So what? She didn’t hurt anybody. They didn’t end up on the Internet or go home with a guest. Everybody takes out-of-character pictures. Here.” He handed me a stack of photos, each one depicting a different character in the Disney roster, behaving inappropriately: Aladdin on a cell phone, Cinderella on the toilet, Prince Eric kissing the Snow Prince. “Everybody does it. Nobody gives a fuck. Except Sam. So he made an example out of my friend.”

  “Couldn’t you talk to him?” I suggested. “You used to be friends.”

  “Friendship is a tandem bike,” he said. “You have to work together or you’re never gonna make it to the ice cream shop. For ten years now, I’ve been pedaling and Sam’s been putting on the brakes. No, the time for talking is long gone. I promise you this: before the end of the year, one of us will be gone from Disney.” Brady looked at the framed photo affectionately. “Good color balance, by the way.”

  Brady went back into the kitchen and reappeared with a tray of sushi and a large bottle of cold sake. No sooner did we begin eating than I heard a scratching at the bedroom door. Brady pretended not to hear it. “I suppose I could just spend some time researching Sam—dig up a little dirt—stuff that Disney would salivate over. It wouldn’t be hard to find…”

  The scratching behind the door became more insistent. It stopped for a moment, then started again with a muffled whimper. “Either your hostage is trying to escape,” I said, “or it’s dinnertime for man’s best friend.”

  Brady wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing white face paint across his lips and knuckles. “Just ignore it,” he said, filling my sake cup. “But if I got Sam fired, I suppose they’d approach me again for a management position, and I’d politely decline again. And some other douche bag would slip in to make my life miserable.”

  “You wouldn’t want to be a manager?”

  Brady popped a plump piece of octopus in his mouth and chewed without mercy. “Do I look like the management type?” He spat a piece of rice as he said this. “Seriously, twenty years in Disney characters does not make me the best candidate. It makes me crazy. Wanna know something? I never dreamed of being president or leading an army. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Batman. I wanted to be the sniper who got behind enemy lines and got the job done while the system languished under its own bureaucratic bulk.”

  “A lone wolf,” I said. Behind the door, the whimpering got louder, the scratching more frenzied. “So what’s a sniper doing working at Disney World?”

  He shook his head and swallowed the octopus. “You’re not asking the right question,” he said. “First, you need to understand my goals. What am I trying to snipe? Batman fought evil. Robin Hood robbed from the rich. John Galt stole the most creative, productive minds in the world. You need to understand the motivation before you can figure out the mission.”

  “Okay, then, what’s your motivation?”

  Suddenly, the dog behind the door started barking, mean, throaty, growling yelps that physically disturbed the air and made the crystals in the chandelier shimmer. Brady put down his chopsticks and went to the bedroom door. He opened it as if he were going to slide through, but the door flew open and a dirt-colored pit bull bolted through and headed straight for me. I fell backward off my chair, covering my face with my
arms, and rolled myself into a fetal ball until I realized I wasn’t being attacked. The dog was standing on my chair, wolfing down my sushi.

  Brady helped me to my feet, where I watched from a distance as he pushed the pit bull away from the table and led her back to the bedroom. She was healthier and fatter, and her fur was no longer patchy, but she was familiar. “Is that the same dog—,” I started.

  “We rescued,” Brady finished, closing the door again. “Yeah.”

  “I thought you gave her to an animal trainer.”

  Behind the heavy face paint, Brady looked embarrassed. “Turns out she kinda liked me.”

  I thought back to the night we had kidnapped the dog. There had been something nostalgic about his posture and the ridiculous ease with which he had found the unmarked mobile home in the dark swamp, far from anything that would show up on GPS.

  “That night,” I said, “how did you know that place?”

  Brady nodded as if he had been waiting for me to ask. “I spent a couple years there in high school, before I moved out on my own. It was my dad’s place—still is, technically. I never should have left Jake behind.”

  “You named her Jake?”

  “Don’t judge me. Ever since I was a little boy, I wanted a dog named Jake. My dad called her Zelda, after my mom.” For the first time since I’d known him, Brady looked shaken, his lips taut, the lines around his eyes deeper. In the refracted light of the chandelier, behind the makeup, he seemed his age. I felt sorry for him. He’d obviously had a rough childhood. But then, who hadn’t? A sense of betrayal took shape and floated to the surface of my emotional soup.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me we were taking back your dog? You made up that whole story about a DAK trainer and rehabilitation. And being a philanthropist.”

  “Guerilla Philanthropist,” he corrected. “And I didn’t make it up. I truly believe people are capable of doing something more if they just stop living within their comfort zone. Look, I shouldn’t have lied to you. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know how you’d take it if I told you the full story.”

  I looked down at my plate where Jake had turned my sushi into a disastrous mix of rice, seaweed, and slobber. “I’m no Puritan. I can take it,” I said. “But I don’t want to be kept in the dark. If you want me to be a part of your Guerilla Philanthropy missions, I want full disclosure.”

  “Full disclosure.” Brady smiled. “Deal.” We toasted saki cups, happy to be past that brief challenge.

  Still, something wasn’t sitting right. “You call yourself a Guerilla Philanthropist and yet you study Ayn Rand. How do you reconcile objectivism with altruism?”

  “Let me be very clear here,” he said through a mouthful of tuna. “Altruism in the ideal sense only exists in theory. When you give a coin to a blind man or when you donate anonymously in church—even if nobody ever finds out—there’s still a benefit, some sense of well-being or pride or divine grace, something that turns the act into a zero-sum exchange rather than an unequivocal gift. There’s always a payback.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Rand wrote that the purpose of a man’s life is the pursuit of rational self-interest. Before I die, I want to hike Machu Picchu. I want to see the aurora borealis. I want to sleep with an Icelandic girl. And I want to prove that altruism can exist by committing one purely unselfish act. I want to do one thing for somebody else that gives me no benefit whatsoever.”

  “Wouldn’t work,” I said. “The Karma dividends would nullify the altruism. The Catholic Church would canonize you. Some reality TV producer would want to follow you around, broadcasting your good deeds for big advertising dollars, and you’d be back where you started—selfish, ego driven, hungry eating sushi off designer plates.”

  Brady pointed his chopsticks at me. “You remember Beltran from the jai alai fronton?”

  “You said his brother wanted to fly us to the Caribbean.” I hadn’t given it much thought since then. I assumed it was just banter.

  “That’s the one.” Brady smoothed the front of his kimono. “His brother lives in Havana where he’s sort of an independent relief worker. He receives medicine from other countries and distributes it to hospitals around Cuba.”

  “Aren’t there government agencies that do that? The Red Cross or something?”

  “In theory, yes.” Brady refilled our sake cups. “However, pharmaceutical companies are charging astronomical prices for medicines to try to recoup the billions of dollars they’ve invested in research. Nobody in the undeveloped world can afford their medicine, and they’re the ones that need it the most. Diseases like AIDS are ripping through the population, virtually unchecked, and the Western world is unable to do anything above the line because of our cold war trade embargo.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Since Castro took over Cuba in the early ’60s, the U.S. has imposed a global restriction on trade with the government; that means, anybody who trades with Cuba gets cut off from trade with America. It’s created a unique society of complete independence, and provided the world with a shining Communist success story, but it’s also built a healthy underground railroad for Western pharmaceuticals. Cuba’s not the only country being ransacked by HIV, and Beltran’s brother isn’t the only person doing something about it. Resistance movements are popping up in Brazil, India, and all over Africa.”

  “Guerilla Philanthropists.”

  “For real.” He smiled and shot his sake. “So what do you say? You want to be a part of the revolution?”

  “What!” I nearly spat my sake through my nose. “Smuggle drugs into Cuba?”

  “Bring lifesaving medicine to people who need it. Actually, it’s not nearly as exotic as it sounds. It’s a very small quantity, and I’d be the one carrying the stuff. I just need a spotter in case anything happens to me. All expenses paid. There’s no actual risk for you.”

  Cuba’s an entire country off-limits to Americans, just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. I had always been intrigued by those mid-century images of Havana at night, glamorous and swanky, textured with cigar smoke and rum-drunk gangsters. Deep inside me, something was stirring. It was a feeling I hadn’t allowed since I’d internalized the Disney lifestyle: the thrill of stepping outside the box, of following my shadow down a mysterious alley at breakneck speed, and of dealing with the consequences much, much later.

  “We’re balancing the odds for people who have no way to help themselves,” Brady was saying. “The point is we’re doing something altruistic here. We’re the good guys.”

  “What if something went wrong? Who goes after the ‘good guys’?”

  “Good question.” He frowned. “The American government. The CIA. The pharmaceutical companies. And probably the WTO, but it’d take them decades to work out what we did.”

  “How illegal is it?”

  “It’s more illegal than stealing a dog from a trailer park,” he said, “but not nearly as illegal as premeditated genocide.” He noticed a mauled piece of octopus on my plate. “You gonna eat that?”

  I pushed the plate toward him. “Tell me, Nemo, how did you catch this octopus?”

  Brady paused, the sushi halfway to his open mouth, ready to launch into a story, then his face cracked. “Fine. As it turns out, I caught a trout, and I’m told they don’t make very good sashimi. So I stopped at the Publix fish counter on my way home, and there you have it.”

  For the rest of the evening, we talked about politics and philosophy, subjects that had turned mushy in my head. It felt good to stretch my mind beyond desert island fantasies and Disney trivia and to debate topics that used to matter to me like foreign policy, social issues, and art. Before I left, I agreed to go with Brady to Cuba, to assist in his quest to perform one truly altruistic act. I went home that night with a Zen-like sense of calm, a feeling that reinforced my belief that I had made the right decision, that dropping everything else in pursuit of the Disney Dream was an inevitable stepping-stone on my path to Enlightenment
.

  Just Around the River Bend

  Disney World is a municipality with its own governing body, post office, and fire department. They write their own building codes, patrol their own properties, and enforce their own rules. If they wanted to, they could build a nuclear power plant or a golf course made of cheese. They don’t need anybody’s permission because, in Disneytown,* Disney is the alpha and the omega. One upside of this sovereignty is that it assures them a direct role in Florida’s legislation, even when it comes to laws that affect the other theme-park residents in and around Orlando. Another bonus feature is that they have the ability to contain and defuse any embarrassing situations before the mainstream media can get hold of them and blow them out of proportion. The downside? Well, come to think of it, there isn’t one.

  Throughout the month of October, the Disney parks had become crowded with families in a rush. They needed autographs, pictures, and souvenirs, and they weren’t letting anything stand in their way. These were the late vacationers, the ones who had to cram in two weeks before the end of the year, but still wanted to avoid the airlines’ exorbitant holiday fares. They were in Orlando to have fun, and they were merciless about it.