Cast Member Confidential:. Chris Mitchell

himself up, and then stumbled to the bathroom. Sipping my Corona, I tried to relax into the atmosphere. I was a Cast Member now. I had the haircut and a nametag; I knew how to point with two fingers and smile on cue (sort of). All I had to do was catch the Magic and ride it in. But something wasn’t clicking.

      Brady returned with a new drink in his hand, which he set down behind his original cocktail with enormous concentration. As he maneuvered back onto the stool, I noticed he was favoring one leg.

      “You okay?” I asked.

      “What, you mean my pimp walk? That’s nothing. Old battle scar, that’s all.” He tossed back his first drink and picked up the second. “To tell the truth, it makes for some real authentic show, if you know what I mean, a nice nuance for the performance.”

      I stifled a yawn, and scanned the room. “So you’re in production.” In LA, this line was the basic starter of any bar conversation; either you were in the Industry or you were aspiring. There were six versions of the Hollywood dream, and I’d heard them all.

      Brady looked over his shoulder like he was checking for spies, then leaned close. “I’m a friend of fur,” he whispered. “Mike 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. If there’s one thing I can’t tolerate, it’s intolerance.”

      Whatever I thought I was going to see in the apartment—smiling Cast Members with identical haircuts, sipping spiked punch and crooning about how waaaay-sted they were—I wasn’t prepared for the scene that was unfolding on the other side of that door. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of people swirling through the living room. As far as I could see, they were all young, beautiful, and seminude, abandoning themselves to a reggaeton soundtrack. Couples were paired off without regard to race, gender, or even exclusivity. One group was using tubes of cake frosting to paint an underwater mural, featuring Nemo, on the living room wall, licking off mistakes, and reapplying. As I watched, two girls disentangled themselves from each other to take turns making out with a muscular guy wearing what looked like a Ninja Turtle costume. The room smelled like rubbing alcohol, hash smoke, and something I once smelled in a Vietnamese flea market but never cared to identify.

      A cute blond girl rushed the door when she spotted us. “Brady,” she squealed, “you’re totally late. We almost started without you.”

      Brady whispered something to her, and she darted back into the chaos of the apartment. I followed the friend of fur into the living room, careful not to step in a suspicious puddle in the foyer. I tried to assess the madness, but there was no epicenter. Sweaty Cast Members swirled around the room giggling, brushing against me before being sucked away. I tried to make eye contact. I smiled in a way that I hoped looked natural, but I couldn’t make a connection. Cast Members looked at me through bloodshot eyes, and I would see the lack of recognition pass over their faces like a storm cloud before they turned their backs and walked away. In no time, I was an awkward junior high version of myself, eating Cheetos out of a salad bowl on the kitchen counter, wondering where the bathroom was.

      Suddenly the music stopped and somebody cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Brady announced. “Almost all of us know why we’re here tonight.” His announcement was met with cheers and suggestions of to get fucked up and screw our brains out. “All true,” Brady continued. “All true. But tonight we have a higher purpose—a mission of Truth, if you will, because as Galileo said, ‘All truths are easy to understand once discovered; the point is to discover them.’” Here, he paused for effect, but the crowd of onlookers just blinked in expectation.

      “We’ve gathered here to honor one of our dearest friends in the world, a young man who has shown great potential ever since he came to the Tragic Kingdom two years ago. He has been a friend to all, a booty call to many, and until this day, he has rested easy in the belief that we all think he is straight. Tonight however, we dispel all illusions in outing the newest queen in the Kingdom. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, everybody’s favorite