Two Men of Gentle Means Visit The Happiest Place On Earth:
The Quest for Freedom in the Age of Exploited Cynicism
Originally published in Welcome to The Land of Cannibalistic Horses (Puberty Press, 2005)
In America you’ll get food to eat
Won’t have to run through the jungle
And scuff up your feet
You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day
It’s great to be an American
In America every man is free
To take care of his home and his family
You’ll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree
You’re all gonna be an American
— Randy Newman
Part I
God Is Alive and Well, Shaking Hands With The Masses in The Center Of The Pleasure Peninsula
I’ve never seen so many fat people in my entire life. They’re everywhere. And I mean fat. Not overweight, husky, big-boned, hearty, well-fed, or chubby. These people are morbidly, insanely obese. Some of these fatties are so fuckin’ fat, it makes me think America should outlaw XXXL clothing. Whatever. It’s a lost cause. Keep eating, fatty. And if you can’t beat them, join them.
The World’s Largest McDonalds is located on International Drive in Orlando, Florida. Two stories tall, the building juts gracefully out of the ground like a Roman cathedral. Inside, even more similarities exist: intricate murals, high ceilings, statues depicting saintly figures like Sir Ronald himself and the often-forgotten Moon-Face-Man. And yes, a divine presence can be felt throughout the McDonalds, perhaps even Roy Crock himself. Although I doubt it.
I ordered a number three and paid $5.34. As I ate by the indoor grotto, mossy from lack of care and attention, I watched this chubby, crew cut kid in a red T-shirt force-feed dollar bills into the token machine. This kid was barefoot and looked like the offspring of some incestuous union between The World’s Ugliest Man and The World’s Stupidest Woman. Or something far worse. As I watched this mutant child struggle with the last crinkled bill, which the machine kept rejecting, I was surprised by my lack of compassion. Usually, when I see such creatures, lame dogs, blind rats, road-kill, a tinge of empathy sparks in my heart. For this monster I felt nothing. I hated him and consequently hated myself. He took the crumpled, endlessly rejected dollar bill, and rubbed it against the edge of the machine like his father had undoubtedly taught him to do if the machine refuses the bill. Well, at least he’s learned that much. Maybe there’s hope.
With one more bite, I finished eating my quarter-pound of beef, beef from the carcasses of 1,000 different cows. I then exchanged a dollar for tokens and followed the chubby child monster up the stairs to the second floor. At the summit, placed high upon a pedestal like some ancient relic, was a sculpture: Earth, in the hands of Ronald McDonald. This is truth; this is the horrific, unyielding truth. I played Missile Command and ignored the fear. Every single cell in my body was screaming for me to run. No, we mustn’t run from the truth, no matter how painful.
And what is pain anyway? Alienation? Embarrassment? Yes, that too. Pain is being stared at. Pain is knowing that no one wants you here. Pain is watching a child skip with glee until she sees you and stops, stuck to the pavement, paralyzed by, if not fear, at least an utter lack of comprehension. People like me don’t belong in Disney World. I could see it in the eyes of every terrified child who looked at me, every disgruntled face of every parent who passed in front of me, every ride operator who glared at me as if to say, “Why are you ruining it for everyone else?”
Stuck somewhere between childhood and parenthood, I felt ashamed. It’s true; I didn’t belong. I know the secrets; the magic doesn’t work on me. The men in cartoon suits do not entertain me. I know the rabbit from Alice In Wonderland isn’t taking a break to drink some carrot juice. He’s smoking a cigarette, savoring it, making it last as long as possible before he returns to work, a job in which he surrenders his voice, his face, his identity and signs children’s autograph books purchased from one of innumerable gift shops carefully placed throughout the Magic Kingdom. Now, that is pain. Lord, hear our prayer.
In this place, Walt Disney is God: unseen, yet omnipotent. This is the Holy Land. Do you believe? Yes, it is A Small World. Yes, Dreams Do Come True. Yes, I would like Fries With That. This is the new religion. Disney gives people hope. Disney quells their fears, reveals their ultimate desires, and holds them to a code of ethics that may rock the very foundation of reality. But without faith, what does one have? Without faith, one is lost in a sea of hedonism, debauchery and dissoluteness.
PART II
Unbridled Fascism Amidst A Utopian Underworld Where The Women Are Scornful And The Drinks Are Anything But Free
Before I left for Orlando I bought three packs of Polaroid film and a pack of condoms. The cashier looked at me knowingly, assuming I was about to partake in acts of sexual perversion suitable for documentation only with Polaroids. I wish. I just wanted to be prepared. Isn’t that the Boy Scout’s Motto? It’s good that children are taught to be prepared, taught to expect the unexpected at such a young age. Youth is a fertile field, not unlike Mesopotamia. And like Mesopotamia, years past, youth gives way to hostility and war. To which I say, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.” To which the authorities reply, “Come with us, son.”
You see, Celebration is a community, owned by Disney, a master-planned community of which the master plan was to create a town not unlike those dreamt up by Sherwood Anderson or Harper Lee or Tim Burton.
Established in 1994, Celebration is meant to be a refuge, an ultimate repression of all things bad. This town was constructed to be the quintessential feel-good town of both yesteryear and today. The citizens of Celebration embody the self-perceptions of The Best Country In The World: supremacy, righteousness, and piety. Their uniforms say it all: pastel pink T-shirts, khaki shorts, Birkenstocks with socks. These Americans wear fanny-packs and ride Segways. These Americans go camping every summer and return to tell how great it was to spend a week with “No TV, No Nothing.”
And this was the ultimate celebration: the eighth anniversary; Founder’s Day Weekend. Tables and tents representing all the local restaurants were set up throughout the Town Square. A stage had been erected, and finale of fireworks was planned. Children and parents alike, the whole town really, came out for the festival. The excitement was tangible. It may as well have been Christmas.
I was terrified.
Mike had wandered off into town and I stayed behind at the Town Square to document The Celebration.
In front of the stage where some cover band was playing, and everyone was singing “Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the music!” I stood videotaping everything: the band, the shops, the fat nuclear families eating paella, and two Oscella County Sheriffs approaching me, still approaching me, ordering me to turn off the camera and come with them.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Just come with us,” the one with the gray mustache said, placing a hand on my back, leading me around the corner, away from the anniversary party. As soon as were out of sight, the other Sheriff, the shorter one with a shaved head, snatched my camera and launched into the interrogation:
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to investigate freedom,” I replied, with pupils dilated. I still had the foul taste of dried fungus in my mouth and with the sudden absence of joy and music, the drugs were beginning to win.
“But why are you here?”
I was silent. These men wanted no answers. They would believe nothing. Their faces turned from stern to suspicious to bloodthirsty. I was going down.
“You say you’re from New York but you have a Washington state ID.”
“Yes.”
“So what are you doing in Florida?” The sheriff asked, dropping his palm on the butt of his gun. The other one finally figured out how to work the video camera and was reviewing my footage.
“Look,” I said, watching the whole scene from the air, ignoring the insects crawling up my back. “I know I look a little different, I know — ”
“Sir, we don’t care what you look like. We have a lot of different looking people in our community.”
“Then what exactly is the problem?” I asked.
“Just calm down, sir.”
I stood there as hatred and fear radiated off these men: their uniforms starched and flat-chested, decorated with a dozen autocratic ornaments, their bellies kept off their crotches by belts holding medieval weaponry, the likes of which I had never seen. If they searched me and found what I was hiding, there would be no hesitation.
“Just to let you know, sir,” said the soldier with the camera. “You’re free to leave at any time. We are not detaining you.”
“Then I’m leaving,” I said, open-palmed, waiting for my camera.
“Well, sir, for the time being we do have possession of your camera.”
“I’m not leaving without my camera.”
“Then you’re going to have to wait.”
“So I am being detained.”
“Just calm down, sir.”
The distant party thrived and my paranoia grew. Certainly I wasn’t the only person in Celebration with a video camera. Had someone tipped them off? Were these sheriffs merely stalling until the rest of their boys showed up? And what then? What would happen to the bearded, dreadlocked, college student when the cavalry arrived? I imagined the worst: a hazing with broomsticks, coerced Russian roulette, simple crucifixion, perhaps a filthy snuff film with me as the star.
“Were you taping the children?” the mustache asked.
“What?”
Suddenly the sheriff’s walky-talky squawked some code that assuredly suggested my background check had come up clean. Ten-four.
The sheriff handed me my camera. “You’re going back to the festival, right?”
“I was thinking about walking around the neighborhood and getting some foot — ”
“Why don’t you just head back into town.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for your cooperation.”
Back at the party, the band was leading a Wax-On, Wax-Off line-dance to the song “Car Wash.” I bought another beer and sat at a table near a foursome of elderly men in knee socks. Just drink your beer and smile. Smile, I told myself. Smile.
It was time to retreat. Mike and I left Celebration as the fireworks boomed on the horizon. We followed the pristine sidewalk of Celebration Avenue, crossed Celebration Boulevard, and headed towards the freeway, towards true civilization.
“I wonder if they’re any animals living in there,” Mike said, pointing at the swampy overgrowth past the white picket fence along the sidewalk. There, clinging to the trunk of a tree was a mammoth raccoon. Mike and I both stopped and stared, saying nothing. The raccoon stared right back. I smiled at the creature, illuminated by the distant pyrotechnics: first red, then blue.
“Did you enjoy your stay in Celebration?” The raccoon said, laughing like a maniacal Yoda. “Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?”
PART III
The Rise and Fall of Many Great Men and Women On Their Way To Something Greater
Tomorrow Land, home of Space Mountain, the Carousel of Progress, and The Time Keeper, is not the Tomorrow Land of Today. No, this is your parents’ Tomorrow Land. This is a cold vision of steel and iron, lasers and surveillance. After you disembark the Space Mountain coaster, all signs point towards a moving walkway that parades everyone past a series of televisions airing live-feed from hidden cameras aimed directly at your head. Sorry, Walt. I’m not impressed; I see myself on camera everyday.
There I am on television at the bodega, the liquor store, the bank, the bagel store, even the elevator. This is nothing new. But maybe something else is at play here. Where are the other cameras?
I saw not one camera in all the rest of Disney World. There were no cameras in any of the gift shops, no cameras in line for any of the other rides. No need for surveillance in The Happiest Place On Earth, no need for cameras where The Magic Lives.
Yeah, right. Disney World is the Supreme Casino, responsible for the happiness of a multitude of disillusioned internationals and domestics alike. Fourteen million people visited The Magic Kingdom last year. You damn right they have cameras. Everywhere. Hidden; yet omnipotent. Walt, you seedy fuck.
The reckless capitalism of Disney and all its Worlds and Lands has spread like herpes throughout all of Metropolitan Orlando. And International Drive is the sickest of them all. Puss-filled, infectious sores line both sides of I-Drive: Denny’s across the street from Congo River Gold God Volcano Golf Island; next to IHOP is The World’s Largest Gift Shop with 1,000 Gifts For $1.99; then there’s Magical Midway, Sizzler, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Wet N Wild Water Park, and finally, at the far end of International, amidst a cluster of palm trees, lies Skull Kingdom.
“I think it’s worth it,” said the fat Goth girl selling tickets to Skull Kingdom.
“Do you like living in Orlando?”
“I hate it.”
“You hate it?”
“I hate it.”
Tourism is the largest employer in Metro Orlando, accounting for 27.1% of the jobs in the community. The annual earned wages of direct tourism industry employees reached $2.9 billion in 2002. The admission price for the Magic Kingdom is fifty-five dollars. During our stay in Orlando, Mike and I paid for all of it, all of it but the airfare. Pratt paid for our airplane tickets, the first success of our Freedom Quest.
And yes, this quest was a success. We met our objectives: McDonald’s, Magic Kingdom, Celebration. We immersed ourselves, somewhat unwillingly, in the homogenous culture of Orlando. We dove straight into the blinding mouth of commerce and tourism and came out relatively unscathed. But had we seen it all? Was our mission complete? No. There was one more location, one more idea we had yet to explore. All our efforts would be in vain if we didn’t mingle with the truth-sayers, the domestics, the factory-workers, the beasts who run this whole operation… the locals.
Let me set the scene: Downtown Orlando is one sprawling tittie-bar. And you don’t have to tip. The clubs and bars are stuffed with Disney employees ready to get laid, desperate for someone to give them just a little happiness. In men, this is displayed by coy smiles and gelled hair. In women: boobs, lots of boobs; cleavage, erect nipples, I saw at least three girls wearing only a tube-top and suspenders. Everyone looked like a B-grade porn star.
I began to think Mike and I had made a mistake. These beasts looked hungry. And I was starving.
Hotdog vendors, thank God for hot dog vendors. Second only to a cabdriver, a hotdog vendor is the single best source for information, a contemporary oracle.
“Where’s the hot spot?” Mike asked the vendor as he fixed us our dogs.
“Uh, well…”
“Look at us,” I told the vendor. “Look at me, now look at Mike, now look back at me.” I paused for effect. “Now, what bar should we go to?”
“The Bar-B-Q Bar,” said the vendor.
Three hours, five tequila shots, seven beers, and two failed seductions later, the bars all closed and mayhem filled the streets. We decided to flee and hailed down the first gypsy cab to cross our path: a van, labeled simply, “Orlando Transportation.”
“Can you take us to International?”
“Sure,” the driver said. “As long as you don’t mind riding with these kids, I got to drop them off first.”
So we climbed inside and the four local college students were happy to share their booze and pot with us. The driver sampled a little too. Rage Against The Machine blasted from the speakers and everyone talked at once. It took almost an hour for us to reach the locals’ destination, some suburban house, somewhere off the freeway. Everyone jumped out, we said our good-byes, and before climbing back in the van Mike and I urinated on their front lawn.
Mike passed out as soon as we reached the freeway and the driver and I smoked more pot as he talked about how similar the situation in Iraq is to the Vietnam War. He talked about how it was better to work for yourself and he talked about home, Chicago.
“When’d you move to Orlando?” I asked.
“Six years ago,” he said. “I came to visit and just never went back.”
I was silent.
The driver glanced at me over his shoulder. He looked like a rabid Bloodhound and had only four giant, square teeth. “Where are you from?” he asked.
I told him New York, told him about The Prattler, and our mission, and my altercation with the law in Celebration, and suddenly we were at the hotel. I woke Mike and paid the driver and as we stepped out of the van, the driver called out.
“Listen,” he said. “People like you and me, we’re different. We look a little different, and people are always going to suspect us, think we can’t do something, think we’re doing something wrong. Ignore that shit. People are always going to judge you for not having their ethics. Fuck that. Just remember you’re not wrong; you’re just different.”
PART IV
Fathers of Freedom, Mothers of Homogeny, Children of Capitalism, Unite:
This Is Only The Beginning Of The End
The next time I visit Disney World, I may be a father. That thought scares the living shit out of me. But you know what? It might not be so bad. Children and adults alike stared at the sky above Cinderella Castle during the climactic fireworks show to conclude another day at The Magic Kingdom. Each face shared the same expression: uncontrived happiness. And I was no exception. When Mike and I entered the Magic Kingdom, we were foreigners, drug-addled cynics, contemporary artists in search of whatever Happiness we could find, all in the name of Freedom. But then, as a fiery Mickey Mouse head sparkled red and gold in the sky over the castle, something changed.
All the capitalism, all the homogeny, all the exploitation, the bigotry, the corruption, the repression, none of that bothered me; none of that mattered anymore. All of that evil was trumped by the collective happiness of each and every family during the fireworks show. It was a beautiful sight: communal bliss. And I was a part of it.
Happiness is a funny thing: fleeting, ephemeral, often superficial. And freedom the same.
On the airplane back to New York, everyone has their toys: camel-shaped guns, plastic eagles, reflective tiaras. All I have is a plastic bag full of half-empty bottles of rum and vodka and tequila, a full bottle of red wine stolen from Black Angus, and champagne, champagne Mike and I were saving to celebrate our return, our survival. Yes, we did it. We ventured to the pleasure peninsula, headed straight for the dazzling light that is the Magic Kingdom, the Happiest Place On Earth. And now, as our plane taxis on the runway these children slobber on their trinkets and toys as if the taste will postpone their departure. Well, children, it will. As will this rum. May we all choke on The Spirit of Disney as the plane touches down in New York.
