Chris Mitchell by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir Read Free Book Online Page A

Wazowski and I are fuckin’ inseparable. Pooh and Roger Rabbit too.”
    “I see.” For the first time, I considered the very real possibility that my new drinking buddy was certifiable.
    “What about you?” he said, sizing me up. “You’re, what, five eleven, six foot? I bet you know Tigger, or—I know.” He snapped his fingers. “Aladdin!”
    “Yeah, we play hold ’em on Fridays.” I reached for my beer and stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll see you.”
    “Oh!” Brady snagged my arm. “Shit, I’m sorry. I thought you were…You have the haircut so, you know, I just assumed you worked at Mouschwitz.”
    “Actually I do,” I said. “As of this morning, I am an Animal Kingdom photographer.”
    “No shit!” said Brady, holding up his glass for a toast. “Welcome to the Greatest Fucking Job on Earth.” I waited for him to laugh or crack a smile, but as far as I could tell, he was serious.
    “Thanks.” I returned his toast and sipped my drink. “Why did you ask if I was friends with Aladdin?”
    He screwed up his face in what I assumed was supposed to be a conspiratorial smile. “It’s code ,” he said. “When you work in the character department, you say you’re friends with your characters.”
    “I get it. So you dress up as Pooh and Roger Rabbit, and what’s his name.” I tried to sound sincere when I added, “That’s cool.”
    “It is.” He nodded solemnly. “The character department is very cool.” His reverential tone reminded me of the way surfers talk about Tavarua Island. I didn’t see the attraction to dressing up as a cartoon character, but I could appreciate his passion. The guy loved his job the way I had loved mine. He drained his glass and slammed it on the bar. “Hey, you want to go to a party? It’s Cast Members only. Should be a blast!”
    Something about Brady reminded me of Tas Pappas, a skateboarder friend with a big heart and a chemical imbalance. He had a not-so-quiet insanity behind his eyes that made him seem capable of anything, as if crime was fun, but punishment was the real adventure. It was a quality I could relate to.
    “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
    I offered to drive after watching Brady pull a hip flask out of his pocket and drain it in one pull. Sitting in my passenger seat, he immediately lit up a joint and started slurring out random nonsense.
    “I’m flying blind on a rocket cycle,” he announced. “You gotta go up to get down.” He rolled his window down at a stoplight. “I like your tits,” he told the drag queen in the Jetta next to us.
    “Thanks, honey,” she rasped. There was lipstick smeared across her teeth.
    Brady handed her a card. “Call me,” he told her as she pulled away.
    “Disney gives you business cards?” I asked. “What does it say? Friend of Roger Rabbit?”
    “Wouldn’t that be somethin’?” he chortled. “I don’t have a business card. But my manager does, and sometimes his cards fall into my pocket. The bastard. Won’t he be surprised when he gets a call from Tits McGee…. Pull in here and park wherever you can.”
    The building was an anonymous block of apartments that went on as far as I could see. Brady explained that we were in “the Disney ghetto,” a low-income, high-density suburbia where Cast Members came and went at random. “It’s depressing as fuck, but it’s close to the parks, and there’s plenty of…” He shot me a sideways look. “Well, whatever you’re into, there’s plenty of it.”
    As drunk as he was, Brady negotiated a maze of hallways that brought us to the front door of an apartment, behind which there could be no doubt a party was raging. A pair of boys dressed like fairy princesses crashed out of one door and into another, squealing as they groped and snapped each other’s bras. Brady grabbed the door before it slammed shut.
    I put a hand on his shoulder. “What kind of party is this?”
    “Do me a favor,” he said, turning back to face me. “Reserve your judgment.