I Went to Disney World and All I Got Was This Identity Crisis

by Joseph Lezza

“I’m so bored I could die.” 

Few of us have the opportunity to select what our last words will be, much less when those words will occur. These words occurred to me around the third month of unemployment. With only so many hours one can fill with rolling up resumes and spitting them on the ceilings of job boards like LinkedIn, Indeed, Workday, and Little Hires Everywhere (that last one may not be real), turning around and revising those resumes within an inch of their lives, sending friendly (and not at all solicitous) “How Ya Been?” emails to every address Gmail has committed to memory, and doing just about everything short of hiring a Cessna to fly a banner featuring your face, your name, and “Works well under pressure!” up and down the length of Manhattan, there remains a healthy amount of day left to fill. Some choose to fill them with a hobby. Maybe they do something constructive like sign-up for an online learning course to pick up a new skill, thereby making themselves more marketable. Something like “The Fundamentals of Graphic Design” where you’re asked to draw a clock ten different ways, one of which winds up looking remarkably like an angry piece of toast. The easily discouraged quickly abandon such efforts and soon turn to less damaging distractions. 

My distraction took the form of re-watching comfort shows, the ones I’d watched a thousand times over and a thousand times again. Shows like these – and, everyone has their own – have a way of reaching past the perimeter of the screen and enveloping the watcher in a vibe that cannot be intentionally manufactured any more than a viral video can. These vibes are the results of a series of random aesthetic choices and happy accidents. But, when they hit, they hit chemically. Comfort shows also require no thinking. Welcome news to an already beleaguered brain. One knows what’s coming. We can prepare ourselves for the narrative and emotional hills and valleys. Hell, put the thing on mute and we could likely recite the lines from memory. Lines like “I’m so bored I could die.” 

Which brings us back to the start. These particular words are spoken in during the final season of the original run of Sex and the City. Across six years, fans of the show had watched the protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw, evolve from a fourth wall-breaking, benignly imperfect, early thirty-something whose relationships were always imperiled by her predilection for self-sabotage to a late thirty-something, still imperfect but less-impulsive woman who now purveyed her commentary through the omnipotence of unseen narration and who finally appeared to have broken her toxic pattern with men, having taken up with an unconventional mate several years her senior. In this particular episode, almost crudely titled “Splat!.” Carrie attends a grownup affair with said older gent thrown by a fancy colleague in a fancy high-rise apartment building. (Technically, I think, after the 30^th floor, you’re supposed to use the term “elegant.”) It is at said party where Carrie encounters a figure from her past: Lexi Feathersone. Played impeccably by actress Kristen Johnston – a tower in her own right at 6 feet tall – Lexi is described as a consummate party-girl, someone whose antics had once delighted Carrie during her days on the scene but who, now, appeared to have clung to the bit long past its sell-by date. Against the muted pleasantries and fifty-dollar canapés, Lexi stumbles and swerves, every inch the cliché of a bull in a china shop. Flinging a cigarette like Bette Davis, she meanders, slurring her derision at the partygoers who make no secret of their disapproval, and dotting the end of each expletive with ash. “Fuckin’ geriatrics.” 

From my vantage, on the couch, actively fusing with the cushion fibers, Johnston’s Lexi is the real party. A party in search of a crowd. Where she once governed the night at the likes of Danceteria, this stuffy conclave offers no quarter, dismissing her as a crasher at best and a sideshow at worst. Huddle to muted huddle, she electrifies the air but, finding no home amongst the over-paid and over-sprayed arsty fartsicles, departs just as quickly with enough voltage to torch the gouda on their out held crackers. Eventually, with nowhere to turn, Lexi retreats to the closest water closet where her once pal and familiar, Carrie, delivers a debilitating blow of alienation by refusing Lexi’s friendly offer to snort a line of coke off the top of the toilet tank. When next we see our party girl, she’s on the floor. Having shot any remaining decorum up her nostrils, Lexi is seen fumbling to unlatch a floor-to-ceiling windowpane with the frenzied desperation of a Pomeranian who needs to make. At first, it appears that her goal is escape but, as the crowd backs further and further away, the drama is revealed to be in service of her uptight host’s denouncement of the cigarette smoke. 

“No one’s fun anymore!” Lexi bellows, exhaling nicotine and venom into the snowy New York evening air. “What ever happened to fun?” To know Manhattan is to know that the space limitations mean the crowd gathered can be no more than a handful of feet from her, even in the more upscale dwellings. However, this particular scene is shot in a way that confines Lexi to her own shot, making her feel miles away from everyone else. It’s a visceral isolation that the viewer cannot help but share in feeling. Still, while it comes as a shock to watch her stiletto collapse under the weight of her own disappointment, sending her out the window and down to the cold concrete, it’s hard not to feel as if she didn’t fall out the window so much as she was pushed out. Splat. 

While Lexi’s demised was clearly choreographed for laughs, at the time, I couldn’t help but empathize with her. There she’d been, trying to pluck the sticks from the mud, trying to remind people of the days when the K was a party drug and not just something that followed the numbers 4-0-1. There she’d been, trying to reanimate a bunch of walking corpses while the beef carpaccio being passed around was closer to life than they’d ever be. There she’d been, trying – if not a bit too brazenly – to simply loosen up the rigor mortaied and remind them that they were at a party. And, at each turn, she was regarded as a relic, a glimpse into an embarrassing former life those around her sought to shed (if they’d been there) or estrange (if they’d never been cool enough to begin with). So caught up in ascending, in fact, the social climbers pooh-poohed her out a window, lest she weigh them down. 

Having found myself on the receiving end of a not altogether dissimilar dismissal, with my pride and metaphorical splatter still being scraped off the sidewalks of Manhattan, the wound was recent and raw and at once began to sting. It was nearing the middle of the day in the middle of the week and everyone I knew was still largely unaware of my recent separation from a regular income. They were all still out there. Working. Moving. Climbing. And, while it was still too fresh for me to envy them to any great extent, it wasn’t too soon to start feeling like an outcast. Yes, I’d been tossed out of their stuffy affair but, look at me, I was getting brunch with the girls! In the middle of the day, no less. Didn’t they know? Didn’t they realize there was more to life than brainstorms and regroups and microwaves that smelled like Davy Jones’ locker and a foosball table that was so untouched Madonna could write a song about it? Yes, brunch ain’t cheap and, yes, sometimes it gets interrupted by having to attend your flattened friend’s funeral. But, those were reckonings for another day. In the meantime, I had 12 grand in severance pay that was burning a hole in my checking account and I was going to spend it on a big ole’ plate of avocado toast. 

My avocado toast took the form of a trip to LA, more specifically a trip to reunite with my friend Misty that would culminate in a day at Disneyland and a one-night stay at the Grand Californian Resort where, at the time, the cheapest room started in excess of $400 a night. We would rationalize such an expenditure by splitting the cost of the room equally and by my spending the majority of the trip crashing on her floor in Pasadena. I was happy to do it; thrilled. Even if it meant waking up each day in a blanket of cat hair. I’d happily make a breakfast of Meow Mix with her two feline adoptees if it allowed me to put the length of a country between myself and the problems I’d left back home. 

Misty and I had met years before at the big theme park in Orlando. Entirely unready to deal with making any sort of declarative decision about my future, I had run there right after graduating college for a four-month internship that I’d just kept extending and extending. Unlike most who flocked there, I had little attachment to the physical place. I’d been indoctrinated by the films and sing-a-long VHS tapes as much as any millennial child had. Theme parks, however, had been an early experiment that my parents had quickly abandoned after experiencing my screaming aversion to riding anything that traveled faster than the speed of fart. Over the years, and from a distance, I’d been come intrigued by the place, the enormity of it. And, the latent theatre kid in me was tickled at the idea of being part of “the show.” So, with a still-warm Bachelor’s in Television, I spun it off as a professional learning experience for a large media conglomerate and motored through the swarms of lovebugs until I reached central Florida. 

As far as realism is concerned, the company makes quick work to construct a brick wall between you and that notion. Upon arrival, I was ID’d and neatly tucked into a gated apartment complex nestled somewhere within the 50-square mile bubble that separates America’s vacation destination from the outside world. Each floor is stocked with undergrads and recent grads, all at varying levels of euphoria. You learn that meager housing costs will be automatically deducted from your paychecks, that there are complimentary busses to and from work locations, that there are swimming pools and movie nights and that, really, there’ll never be any need to encounter a human who is not either a guest or an employee. It’s one big, long summer camp, and all by design. 

On orientation day, a nine-hour class entitled “Gratifications,” I was pummeled with videos and lectures, each one layered thick with history and emotional bear traps, meant to impress upon me how important this all was and how vital my role was to the operation and to keeping “the magic” alive. I was taught the meaning behind acronyms, drilled on company ideals, instructed on how to point in a non-aggressive fashion. The next day I was provided with my line of business, then my park, then my actual work location in a drawn-out process meant to stoke anticipation but which resembled something more akin to professional edging. I was fitted for a costume and summarily trained in what would become my role for the next year: piloting throngs of tourists through the rivers of an artificial jungle while delivering canned jokes that lampooned animatronic vignettes that had been chattering there for nearly forty years. 

It was absolutely everything. For someone actively running from adulthood, it was about as infantile as one could get while still having to pay taxes. I commuted through underground cities each day as waste clanked through a web of pipery over my head; cities designed to facilitate movement while maintaining the integrity of the illusion up above. I came to know the phrase “That’s what she said,” not from Michael Scott as most had but, rather, from a pixie pitched cartoon character on her smoke break. I walked the ride paths of some of the most iconic attractions under the unforgiving flush of utility lights that only deepened my appreciation for the darkness and what it could hide. Each secret unspooled only fed my transfixion with the great machine how we moved through it like blood vessels and how it used us to self-sustain. For some it had the opposite effect. And, it would be a lie to say I didn’t get a bit of a zing each time I witnessed one of the the starry-eyed turn tail and run when confronted with the truths that fed the fairy tale. 

For me, it was all too easy to get caught up in the game. Not so much because of what happened on the clock; “onstage,” as it were. Although, I can’t deny being somewhat taken in by the ceremony of it all. It’s difficult not to get one’s ego fed and feel a simultaneous sense of duty when you’re making people laugh, when you’re the show they came to see, and when you’re told – again and again – how you’re one of the chosen few upholding the legacy of the creator’s favorite attraction when you could just as easily have been assigned to scrape gum from underneath park benches so hot they left grill marks on the ass of any tourist who dared sit on them. No, while all of that was fun enough to keep me showing up for my shifts, the stuff that made me stick around, was often what fell between punch-in and punch-out. 

Days often began at noon, with a trip to the cupboard to visit its only inhabitants: two bowls and a plastic sack of off-brand cereal, usually something called Magik Shapez or Krispy Kolors (anything me and my roommate/coworker/friend could afford to keep stocked). We’d fish our (likely unwashed) costumes from the floor, stuff them in a backpack, and shuttle to one of the parks, randomly selected, where we’d glide through the gates and past the daily attendants, all of them grouped by matching custom t-shirts, all of them convinced of the originality of the premise. Riff raff, the lot, as far as we were concerned. Little did they know who we were; how it was us they’d come to see. But, that was for later. The daytime was for lunching on eight-dollar pretzels or all manner of frozen, fried nuggetry. Some days we’d frequent half a dozen attractions, some days maybe just one. Or, perhaps none. Perhaps we’d just come for a parade, or to shop or to wander, oh so glib in our advantaging of these multi-billion dollar playgrounds while those around us had paid the equivalent of a year’s college tuition to access what we got for free. Somehow it occurred to none of us that most of this free time involved pouring our paltry earnings right back into the company that had doled it out. 

We were too distracted, too low on the food chain, too busy working the same crappy shifts and the same crappy hours where we subsisted off a communal jug of animal crackers, learned to turn a 15-minute break into a 30 by calling operations and lying about when you’d gotten your slip, became intimately aware of the state of each other’s oral hygiene based on the stink of the microphone passed from pilot to pilot. Evenings were spent hoping you’d be sent out on an empty cruise in order to keep the river moving but, more so, so you could wait in hiding for the chance to do something just crude enough that the pilot behind you – often with a boat load of guests – would break character. If we were lucky, that’s how a shift would end. On less lucky nights, you’d deliver a cruise two the two people who stepped on board at 1:59am and proceeded to sit in the back and suck each other’s tonsils for the duration of the journey. But, win or lose, we all wound up at IHOP in the wee hours of the morning where company meal was served by salt-mouthed waitresses who were characters all their own. 

“Can I get the eggs on my Big Brunch Burger over medium?” 

“Fuck your eggs.” 

And, the next day we’d begin again. There were days that ended exactly the same, the good ones. There were days that ended at a piano bar where, over the twenty-seventh chorus of “Sweet Caroline” I’d get my heart good ‘n gutted by some boy named Shel and wheel home in the back of someone’s car trying to scream my way back to life. Hurting runs off my shoulder! But, even if I got my piece knocked over, there was always someone to scrape me up and deliver me to a manmade beach where I could wash the heartbreak down with pineapple soft serve and cheap Three Olives Root Beer vodka that was kind enough to taste as good on its way back up as it did going down. But, by that time the sky has had the decency to start exploding, and drawn every neck in the immediate area backward, granting me agency and privacy to – with bile as my pen – scrawl my sins into the sand. 

It was the having someone there that made it so easy to keep my piece in the same square. But pieces are wont to move in this game. So, they start to jump. And, soon, my evening itinerary was just a never-ending list of farewell parties. Before long, the faces of my coworkers were unrecognizable and, overnight, I’d become the straggler who’d stayed at the party well past his welcome. That’s when I ran. 

When you work for a company with more employees than the population of Youngstown, Ohio and that sits on a landmass twice the size of Gotham, there is no end to the distractions within arms reach, a smorgasbord of squares to which one can relocate their piece. All it takes is a little patience in waiting for the dice to make their way around. And, then you just wind up and toss. 

My first toss was timid. With barely a shake and release, I only managed to knock myself over a couple of spaces. A new role, but close enough to my last one that I still stood in its shadow. I traded fiberglass animals for real ones, traded boats for trucks, slapped a patch on the arm of the same exact costume and, wham. I was a real-life safari driver. Or, at least as close as ninety-nine bucks a day could buy the freshly deplaned. In my camo-print caravan, I mastered the savannah, snaking between concrete tree stumps and traversing rickety bridges while spouting factoids about nearby creatures to passengers whose comprehension skills were wanting, at best. 

“Folks, on the left you’ll see some Ankole Cattle. Here in Africa…” 

“Look, honey! Texas Longhorns!”

Round and round, in a constant loop, I’d pick ‘em up and drop ‘em off, with each trek ending in some version of the following interchange as they scuttled from their seats. “Kwaheri, adventurers!” I’d offer, with a wave. 

To which one of the Crocs-clad would inevitably respond, “Velveeta!” 

The majesty of it all wore off quick. And, right around the time I began delivering safaris in my sleep did I realize it was time, once again, to run. So, I tossed the dice, this time with a bit more force. Not enough to knock myself out of the jungle entirely, but enough to place me right at its edge. 

Beneath the thatched roofs of the Wild Dominion Lodge Resort & Villas & Spa (& Bar & Grille & Tire Center) the air was conditioned and danced around the atrium lobby, carrying the scent of money and the dulcet marimba of Samite’s Embalasasa. It was there that a base price of $400 per night bought guests as close to an authentic Botswanan experience as possible, only without the hassle of the malaria pills and having to have their view obstructed by all that poverty. The room rate also bought you me: your friendly neighborhood fancy-pants concierge. You could tell it was fancy because I was wearing a blazer. It was in this blazer that I met the platinum card class with our themed greeting. 

“Molo!” I shouted, all too self-seriously, whilst somewhere a Xhosan spirit wept.

“Rolos!” They’d retort, tickled at the rapidity of what they took for wit. 

But, it was no matter. Because, behind the desk, I held the real power. Against the backdrop of a colorful, woven tapestry I was not some kid in slacks three sizes too big but, rather, a hotelier, as so many pre-shift pep talks decreed. Behind the desk, I weighed a guest’s demeanor against any perceived sense of entitlement, sniffing the wind for any whiff of condescension and performing a character assessment that granted me the final word in whether their evening ended at a the bottom of a bottle of South African Syrah or over a wilted Caesar salad from the back of the grab ‘n go cooler. It was a power I wielded benevolently and that had given me a renewed sense of purpose, this idea that I could have an active hand in creating an optimal experience for worthwhile people. Then I went searching for more of it. 

When an opportunity presented itself to get trained on club level presented itself, I jumped at the chance for more responsibility. I saw it as an opportunity to liaise with our most exclusive clientele, those dropping the kind of dollars on their stays that, should they want a giraffe to tuck them in each night, animal services would find a way to make it happen. While the lobby “lifers” may have cast me sideways glances on my way up, I brushed them off as ambitionless drones who were content in their complacency. That is, until I reached my destination. 

What had originally been sold to me as a cushy desk job in an even quieter corner of the resort soon revealed itself to be nothing more than a glorified snack bar gig. Sure, the aforementioned desk did exist, but its occupants, two staff members whose seniority dated back to the Ptolemaic dynasty, held a stranglehold on their swivel chairs that they were not prepared to loosen. As such, newbies were relegated to “lounge” shifts wherein we traded our blazer and frocks for aprons and held court over buffet of snackery from which the elites could nibble between arranging their sunrise binocular conclaves and checking the business channels on our big screen to see how much their portfolio had gone up that day. By the time it dawned on me just why my tenured teammates went to great pains to avoid this fate, mine had already been sealed. Breakfast shifts, the most crowded part of the day, were spent slinging all manner of baked goods and hot cereals to early risers who quibbled over the correct pronunciation of “quinoa” (qwin-oah, queen-oia) and slugged down gallons of an exotic African “juice cocktail,” that was equal parts Tropicana. Once the hoards departed, there was little left to do but stand in the kitchen and gorge oneself on uneaten Rhino Hooves (a chocolate puff pastry). Evenings involved catering to the largely exhausted, replenishing trays of cheeses, puddings, mousses, and bowls of anything the people of Pepperidge Farm had bagged and tagged. 

The days blurred together. As far as my hopes of spotting any notables in the wild, aside from the errant Travel Channel host, my attention was largely spent finding polite ways to ask stray children to stop shoving fistfuls of goldfish crackers down their Pull-Ups. In the in between, there was little else to do but rest my elbows on the ledge overlooking the lobby, farther away than it had ever once seemed. Ass growing larger by the day, I watched the daily arrivals filter through the doors, traipsing past the glass displays of authentic Kuba textiles and Senegalese paper masks. The children plopped themselves in front of the monitors playing the same cartoons on a loop while the parents rifled through their bottomless bags, all of them unaware of the statue of a besmocked boy, five flights up, plotting his next move and dribbling bits of rhino hoof from the corner of his mouth. 

Reeking of Roncal, I took my chance at rolling the dice with as much force as my arms would allow, tossing myself in the running for a spot in Guest Services. The pride of the parks, GS staff were easily recognized in their polyester paisley vests – a mark of unparalleled achievement at the time. Tasked with acting as de facto ambassadors, they were expected to be resort-wide know-it-alls and problem solvers equipped with the trust and the freedom and, most of all, the money to dissolve any sort of dissatisfaction. Most appealing to hopefuls was their function as bodymen and exclusive tour guides to executive and celebrity guests. Put in your time and, yes, you could get paid to hurtle down the log flume with the likes of Celine Dion pressed against your spine. When roles opened, after an uncharacteristically long freeze, there were so many applicants we were subjected to panel interviews in groups of two. This meant being questioned alongside someone else vying to fill the same position and having mere seconds to evaluate their response and somehow make mine sound even better. I’ll never be sure but, would they have tossed us knives and demanded we fight to the death, I quite possibly could have taken a life. Again, mind you, all for a vest. 

Getting into the pool was only half the battle. Once in, my calendar was filled with introductory meetings with area leaders, scribbling follow-up thank you notes, and offering to do anything short of spay and neuter their pets in the hopes of scoring a temporary assignment on the way to securing the elusive permanent status. When I finally did get the call, I got everything I had asked for: the vest, the checkbook, the contrived esteem. More than anything, however, I got the sense that, no matter how many times I ran, every job was some version of what I’d been doing before, just with slightly different window dressing. I worked with mostly lovely people, all different shades of jaded, yet still coming alive in those moments that brought them back to their former selves. I lunched with venerable, graying drag queens, who pinched my cheeks as they hustled to keep the lights on between bingo nights at Hamburger Mary’s. And, out on the desk, I made what little magic I could while peppering the irate with placations. I appreciate your frustration but it does often rain in a subtropical environment. Or, I understand you have scurvy but, unfortunately, that does not entitle you to skip to the front of the line. 

More often than not, I was shunted out to a post next to the park map where, under the murderous Florida sun, I was charged with denying the urge to disembowel every guest who felt it his or her duty to saunter up and offer, “You look bored. I’ve got something for you to do.” When not tempering my homicidal inclinations, the dead time left ample room for the thoughts to creep in. There I was, four years past what was meant to be a four-month lark and I was still wearing a nametag. Most of those I’d met at the start had gone home, gone back to school, and simply gone on with their lives. The harshness of that light left no shadow to slink into. And, it wasn’t long before I was forced to acknowledge that I’d stayed at the party too long. I was Lexi 

Featherstone, and I had to move before I collapsed under the weight of my own delusion. What ever happened to fun? 

Having a friend like Misty, someone fully employed but still willing to take the day and play pretend at the mere mention that I would be in town, was a gift and reminder that there were people who hadn’t forgotten how to have fun. We had met years back, in Florida, at one of the many goodbye parties for those decided to jump off the carousel. Despite the fact that we’d worked in the same land in the same park, it had taken nearly a year for us to meet. We bonded quickly over a mutual proclivity to rush to judgment, a love for Elvira, and a shared brand of whimsy that pumped through our veins. She was the type of person who, when you wanted a Fame Monster cake for your birthday and the grocery store refused to make it, would show up at your door with a homemade pastel mess and a pocket full of candles. Sure, Lady Gaga’s face looked a little melted and slightly stroked out. But, she was made with love and every inch of her was delicious. 

In the years since we’d both departed, I’d made several trips to visit Misty, first in Chicago and, later, when she’d moved out west. We’d both become media creatures, her in radio and me in television - the best indicator of an inherent reluctance to ever fully grow up. This also meant that a 14-hour open-to-close marathon day in the parks would not be a reckoning, it would be the expectation. And, so, loaded on caffeine and sugar, we set our thirty-something bodies off on a Spartan race. 

Since the both of us had left our theme park careers before the love for them could be fully beaten out of us, going to Disneyland offered a unique opportunity. It was like working at a Chipotle and eating at one of their many other locations. We knew how the burritos got made but we didn’t want nor need to know who was making them. Most importantly, we knew how to work the menu to our advantage. While throngs queued up for your Peter’s Pan and the many mountains to conquer, my and Misty got lost in the weird. We visited the Mother Dough at the Boudin Bakery (“Hello, Mother!”), took a trip to hell with Mr. Toad, and boogied down to “Eh, Cumpari” with Luigi and his rollicking roadsters. The Golden Zephyr, an old-fashioned Buck Rogers-style rocket ride, offers eight airy revolutions above the lagoon in Disney’s California Adventure. More than that, however, it offers a little perspective. At only 90 feet in the air, riders can catch a glimpse of what waits beyond the park walls. Unlike in Florida, the California parks are limited in space by the encroaching bits of Anaheim that built up around it over the subsequent seven decades. So, one need not be lifted far off the ground to spot the telltale signs of something depressing, like a Tony Roma’s or a CVS. It’s in this way that Disneyland does its guests a kindness, providing the means for the fantasy while preventing anyone from getting too lost in it. The world waits just outside the gates. 

Aboard the Fun Wheel, the world knocked somewhere near the top. With our gondola parked, Misty answered a work call that I’d later find out was related to a promotion she’d been pursuing. The role, I’d learn, was essentially being created for her and the application process, while official, was merely a formality. I sat there, in the infancy of my unemployment, sipping on my seventh Nitro Cold Brew, where what could have been a moment of resentment turned out to be anything other. Perhaps it was the sweet cream cold foam that blunted any bitterness but I was purely happy to see my friend succeeding. She’d put in the work and even made a bit of a name for herself as a local voiceover talent in the process. She’d earned it. And, as we swung in suspended animation, waiting to complete the circle, I took heart in the belief that my own waylay could and would come to an end. Until then, back on the ground, there were buckles to swash, yetis to track, mansions to haunt, a sailing ship Columbia to crew. There was laughter, and screams, and hope, and almond mocha chip ice cream, and a giant king bed where my bones could rest and flip to the hotel TV channel and fall asleep to the sounds of World of Color, radiating gratitude for the fact that such places, where fun could be had, would always be waiting. 

The next morning, Misty dropped me off at the airport with a stomach full of mini mouse waffles and a head full of hope. While there’s no hard and fast rule as to when a vacation officially ends, the United terminal at LAX has a knack for squeezing the joy out of your as the walkway narrows and narrows before emptying into a dime-sized rotunda that somehow holds a dozen gates. With nowhere to sit that wouldn’t provide intimate knowledge of a fellow traveler’s deodorant selection, I sidled up against a wall, pulled out my phone and set my fingers to wandering. In that time to kill, boredom has a way tapping one on the temple and pushing the mind toward more pertinent matters. That’s when I wandered over to Google and innocently typed into the search bar: How long to find a new job? 

The usual results popped up. But, there, beneath a flurry of LinkedIn articles and Ace The Interview blog posts, in big, bold print, was a headline from the Toronto Reporter that I was not prepared to confront. 

Before I could think better of it, I was already knee-deep into reading. The article went on to tell the story of said job searcher, Dustin, who, despite the grades and the promise to veritably churn up the world had grown despondent after hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to land a job after graduating college. For Maple, a journey that had started with the dream to teach computer science or even be a news reporter themself, had stalled in midair, spinning and sputtering across two years of rejection after rejection, the most recent of which came hours after interviewing to be a school crossing guard. 

“It was painful to watch their sights diminish as the years went on.” The article quoted Maple’s father. “In the end, he just felt he had no future.” 

Whereas anyone might plumb the articles for any difference in circumstance, any distinction upon which to hang their faith, all I could notice were the similarities. The paragraphs went on to describe someone saturated with shame at having to rely on government assistance programs. It detailed an alarming rise in joblessness, an employment wasteland and its residents, a “lost generation.” I read and reread, trying to make sense of it all, trying to bridge the gap between point A and point B, with point A being application and point B being abdication. Surely there was something I’d missed. This was not some entitled youth, a label previous generations were quick to affix, someone in search of a handout. This was not someone unqualified or unmotivated. “He just wanted to work,” said the mother. “I had no idea how hard it would actually be.” 

Could it really be so dire? 

In the end, after an insurmountable amount of losses, Dustin had decided this was no longer a game worth playing, and took themselves off the board. “Don’t be mad,” he wrote. “I just can’t anymore.” And there, even with every excuse to acquiesce to the despair, he chose to wrap their last words in only love. “Please, please, please be happy.” 

I sat there for a while, shocked to my toes. Wordless. I’d been so preoccupied with fun, with running, trying to outpace my own reality that it hadn’t dawned on me just how real it could get. Sure, I’d acknowledged Anaheim from the back of a rocket ship, but no amount of trips on the Golden Zephyr could’ve prepared me for such a punishing reentry. It was all I could not to sink into the carpet. To, instead, sit there and ache, my heart breaking across the thousands of miles that separated me from this strange familiar whose story I’d now carry, whether I wanted to or not. I broke for this person, yes, but also, selfishly, I broke for myself. Here I’d been, if not identifying with, then at least toasting the Lexi Feathersone approach to the world because the caricature had made it all too easy. With the severance tucked away and the unemployment to surely follow, I went in pursuit of fun as an act of self-preservation, because the game had gotten boring. But, what I’d failed to mark, until just then, was how only six-months and a few weeks separated me from a set of circumstances not all that dissimilar from those of Dustin. And, with no guarantee I’d fare any better or any quicker. 

The fact that I could stand when they called my boarding group felt almost miraculous. It seemed inhuman to carry that much weight on two legs. But, as they moved toward the gate, I called out my footfalls by name. Lexi. Dustin. Lexi. Dustin. Lexi. Dustin. Each one drew me nearer the door, then down a jet bridge, toward a future where the choices were seemingly two: You either become a joke, or you wind up a headline.

Joseph Lezza is a Pushcart-nominated writer on the east coast. His debut memoir in essays, I'm Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss (Vine Leaves Press), was a finalist for the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award and the 2021 Prize Americana in Prose. It was named by Buzzfeed LGBTQ+, them, Syle Caster, abc7 San Francisco, and Lambda Literary as a "Most Anticipated/Best Book of 2023." His work has been featured in, among others, Longreads, Occulum, Variant Literature, The Hopper, West Trade Review, and Santa Fe Writers Project. Website: http://josephlezza.com. Socials: @lezzdoothis