Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

37. it’s a small world

Cuba, fine. Sumatra, fine. Namibia, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, fine. But what about Disneyland?

I’ve journeyed through Mexico and Guatemala with the esteemed scholar Joseph Campbell, exploring ancient ceremonial sites by day, and at night sipping gin-and-tonics on the verandas of tropical hotels while Campbell took what we’d learned that day in the field and weaved it into the whole glorious, fantastic tapestry of world history and mythology. I’ve traveled in Greece and Sicily with the laureate of the labyrinth and gladly grim Grimm Brothers gadfly Robert Bly, visiting the ruined temples of the gods and finding in the godly stories revealing insights into familiar human affairs. For sheer fulfillment, however, neither of those enlightening trips surpassed taking my son Fleetwood to Disneyland.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware that the Mickey Mouse myth is just that, mickey mouse. And the Magic Kingdom is to the Pyramid of the Magicians at Uxmal what Kool-Aid is to French champagne: deficient in cosmological sparkle and psychological depth. Seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old, Disneyland does present a vibrant, fanciful contrast to the mundane monotonies of everyday existence, and some of the rides are undeniably fun, yet even young Fleet became quickly aware that the trumped-up wonders inside the theme park paled beside the genuine working miracle to which he was introduced in our nearby hotel. I’m referring here to room service.

It might not surpass the wheel, the matchstick, kissing, or quantum physics, but room service definitely ranks near the top of the list of humankind’s greatest inventions; and while Fleetwood was hardly immune to the thrill of Space Mountain and the dizzy charm of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party ride, hotel room service was the white rabbit that led his imagination into fabulous new territory. We’d arrived in Anaheim late in the day, so I’d ordered dinner sent to our room. So enthralled was he at how that process worked, I let him call in our breakfast order. After that, we took all of our meals in the room and Fleet did the ordering. He always ordered far too much and none too healthily, but what the hell? We were on vacation.

By the third day, he had waiters knocking at our door every half hour or so, and our room was a wasteland of half-eaten cheeseburgers and melting chocolate sundaes. On our last day (though unintentional, I suppose it was his grand finale), two waiters showed up at our door with an extra-large cart and began setting out so many silver-domed plates and platters it resembled an aerial view of an old Russian city. Uncovered, the vast assortment of dips and canapés could have quelled the munchie madness of eight or nine stoners after a night at a hemp fest. Fleet had unwittingly ordered the hospitality menu, meant for in-room meetings or private parties during conventions.

Needless to say, the two of us made not a furrow in that fulgent field of finger food, and Fleet, eventually bored with the largess, elected to put pieces of it to a more captivating purpose. Playing bombardier, he began with much delight to drop pieces of the banquet on people in the parking lot below. Since we were on the eighth floor, I quickly drew the line at cheese balls and ice cubes, but didn’t restrain him from discharging peanuts or olives, and shared in his glee when he scored the infrequent direct hit. A victim’s reaction, in its bewilderment, topped any expression we’d observed in Disneyland proper, including at the Haunted Castle. The high point occurred when he bounced a slice of dill pickle off the yarmulke of a dark-bearded gentleman, who, after picking up the pickle that had struck him, stared skyward for what seemed like several minutes, and while from that distance his words were not exactly clear, I could swear he exclaimed, “Nosh from heaven!”

Ah, but the fun wasn’t quite over. The following morning, our last there, we were joined by a young woman with whom I’d been corresponding but had never met. Katherine was a pine-tree heiress and gifted psychic from East Texas, who was living in England (where a year later she would guide Fleet and me on a tour of Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, the Avebury Circle, and other Anglo-astro landmarks of the pre-Arthurian occult) but was back in the U.S. visiting family. After our farewell swing through the Magic Kingdom, I, flush with my Woodpecker advance, bought her a ticket so she could accompany us on our flight home. For better or for worse, I was done with hitchhiking and the Greyhound bus (and there really was a lingering sense of loss, the loss of a special brand of freedom, a freedom never known by the materially ambitious or those to the manor born).

Down in the Caribbean I once heard a guy proclaim, “Lookin’ good is da main ting, mon,” and we were looking pretty good when we boarded that Seattle-bound plane: Fleetwood sporting a spotless white T-shirt and his new Mickey Mouse wristwatch, advising us of the time every six or eight minutes; Katherine in a billowy summer dress of polar white, me in the white linen suit I’d worn in Havana, the three of us radiating such an aura of dove-down whiteness we might have been created on the spot by God’s own breath (though that watch, like all timepieces, was surely the Devil’s doing).

In the air, we petitioned the flight attendant for a deck of cards, which we put to use in a three-handed round of crazy eights, a favorite of Fleet’s as well as a diversion made all the more pleasant for us adults by the readily refillable glasses of red wine. It was an idyllic scene (Katherine in the window seat, me on the aisle, Fleet in the middle) that, were it not for the vino, it might have made a commercial for a family-oriented travel agency, and who would have noticed that neither Katherine nor I wore wedding rings? Now, crazy eights is not a game that demands a hefty expenditure of intellectual capital, but there is a wee bit of strategy involved and any game worth a tick of one’s time, including croquet and Scrabble, is worth playing with fervor, so each of us made a serious if manufactured effort to beat the pants off the others.

The first game went down to the wire, with Katherine eventually prevailing. Luck was on my side in game two. In the third game, Fleet dominated all the way — until the end, when with the very last card I beat him out. Yes, I know, I should have just let my young son win, but as reported, we were playing as if the personal stakes were high and my competitive spirit momentarily trumped my paternal fidelity.

In disappointment and disgust at losing by what in basketball would have been termed a “buzzer beater,” Fleet smacked the folding tray, our card table, with his fist. As everybody knows, those airline trays are rickety. Most of the cards stayed on the tray but Katherine’s recently filled glass of red wine flew off and emptied itself up and down her Easter-white dress, while the other glass and its entire contents landed with a small but portentous splash in my lap.

We sat there momentarily stunned, Katherine and me, soaked with a mediocre merlot, until a flight attendant, after surveying in horror what must have looked like the aftermath of an ax attack, hurried back with a comforting smile — and four bottles (two for each of us) of club soda. Speaking from experience, she assured us that if we immediately doused our garments with the soda water, the wine would not leave a stain. Taking her at her word and having no real alternative, we hustled with the bottles of seltzer to the toilet at the rear of the plane and, squeezing in together, set about resoaking ourselves, skeptically but with determination. And it worked.

It worked. The seltzer actually absorbed the merlot and did it far more quickly than an old wino’s liver might, but it still took a long time. By Fleet’s Mickey Mouse watch, we were jammed in that compartment, scrubbing, for at least twenty minutes. Meanwhile, a line had formed outside the toilet, for it was at that stage in a flight when all the passengers’ bladders seemed to reach flood stage in unison, a renal symphony in P sharp. People began first to sheepishly rap, then to bang with some urgency, on the door.

Imagine the looks on their faces when the toilet door finally opened and out stepped two people, a well-dressed man and woman, both sopping wet, especially below the waist. It makes me smile even now to recall their expressions (children bewildered, adults outraged or maybe envious) as they tried to picture — or tried not to picture — what sort of kinky business might have just transpired in that cramped cubbyhole of a public loo (aware, if only intuitively, that Eros, though a plump little bugger, has been known to unfold his salty wings in some very tight quarters); and wondering if it would be hygienic, or even morally permissible to go in there now.