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Disney World

My favorite place is Disney World.

It is so emphatically *my* place, whenever, like, a bank asks me to create a secret trivia question, as a form of ID, and I say my favorite "childhood" place was Disney World, I think, ha ha, my favorite place PERIOD is Disney World. (Oops, I just published that and released it into the world.)

My husband sometimes makes a grand romantic gesture, and his grandest yet--around three years ago, today--was to take me to Disney World before proposing marriage. It was nine hundred degrees, and you had to fight to get a ketchup-coated rickety half-table in a dirty fast-food bodega, and my husband does not share my sentimental attachment to Howard Ashman, or to Lebo M., but, still, he endured this weekend. I'll always thank him for that.

Like most gay men, I particularly love the Haunted Mansion, in the Magic Kingdom, because it's sort of saucy and risque. I have a memory of a headless bride chasing a man with a battle axe. And there's the fabulous, claustrophobic waiting room, where you think you're just seeing a portrait of a lady, but then the portrait magically stretches itself and reveals a scene of murder. (Someone has snapped the lady's freakishly-elongated neck? You're constantly thinking, I can't believe this exists, at Disney World, in 2020.)

I'm also fond of Ariel's Grotto, because Ariel was Ashman's work of genius, and because the name "A's Grotto" makes me think of a sex club. It's like a weird attempt at double entendre.

After my engagement was made official, my husband suggested that we dance to "A Whole New World" at our wedding. But I had to draw a line here. First, I thought we should strive for something more "adult." Second, this isn't a Howard Ashman work; Mr. Ashman died before the drafting began (or began in earnest). I'm always happy to have Lea Salonga at a wedding, obviously, but I'd rather have her doing Sondheim.

But: back to pre-proposal.

Before the clock struck midnight, Marc and I took one more ride on Splash Mountain, which has Brer Frog (I think) repeatedly singing PRETTY GOOD, SURE AS YOU'RE BORN! But the recording is off, so generations of teens have wondered if the frog is instead murmuring PRETTY GOOD! SHOW US YOUR BALLS! And this is important, too: the way sex weaves itself into canonical Disney works, the way kids learn about life's mysteries through small Disney scandals. The apparent erection in the climactic scene from "The Little Mermaid." The big penis-temple where Triton resides.

Brer Frog sang to us about our balls, and we skipped off to Cinderella's Palace. "I have a question for you," said my then-boyfriend.

Fireworks. Ball gowns. Talking mice. And a whole new world.
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