A Necessary Evil: Confessions of A Former Mascot
By Nicholas Meadows
Nick Meadows is a writer who is just as confused as you are. He works to explore both the humor and horror of human experiences in his writing. When not questioning the validity of gender (It's fake!), he/they/she drinks coffee, stays up too late, and devours fantasy novels.
Let’s talk about the smell.
That’s always the first question: “I bet it fucking stinks, huh?” Short answer — yes — but you already knew that, didn’t you? A good mascot isn’t just standing there. A good mascot should be jumping and dancing, posing for photographs, acting the life-of-the-fucking-party (and all this while wearing a deconstructed sofa). This is a temperature sensitive business we’re dealing with; it gets damn hot underneath all those layers of foam and faux fur. No matter what precautions you take, the insides quickly become a catch-all for every fluid the body’s got to offer.
So yeah… the smell.
At my job, daily vodka sprays kept the insides clean while monthly tub soaks and dry-cleanings sought to scrub away the funk. It was only ever a Pyrrhic victory; certain scents can’t be washed away — not fully — and finally you’re left wallowing in the olfactory mire of gym-sock stench with a nice and breezy undercurrent of Tide.
I grew not to mind that aspect pretty quickly, but only because the job was something special to me. A life-changing opportunity as a matter of fact. Keeping that in mind, maybe you’ll understand when I say that I loved performing. Sure, sometimes the smell would fucking rip… but I maintain that it wasn’t all that bad. A necessary evil, if you will. Life of course, is full of such necessary evils. Perhaps the biggest offender being (you guessed it) puberty. The teenage years are a warzone, and most of us are lucky to escape with only minor PTSD. And yet without those years we would never grow to be the people we are. Puberty, being a time of bodily change is always a hairier situation than we’re lead to believe, but for some of us the associated transformations are especially troubling. I had never had a problem with my gender growing up, being that before puberty it never even crossed my mind. Only in middle school did things start to get confusing, but certain things just aren’t discussed in good Christian households. By high school the question of gender had become a hot mess — the kind that sends you to bed in tears, then wakes you up in a sweat. Why did I hate the hair on my legs, my arms, my face? Why was I more comfortable hanging out with girls? Was I just a boy who liked boots, and earrings, and lipstick — or was I something else? I didn’t know what to do. So like any true Greek I went with a time-honored solution: Bottle up my feelings and pray to all the gods (living and dead) that the bottle never broke.
So I advanced along the treacherous path of private education, graduating high school with flying colors. I was accepted to a good university, moved out, made friends, smuggled liquor into the dorms inside of shampoo bottles — you know, college! Things were going well at first, but nothing good can last or so they say. There’s always a wall creeping up on you. I hit that wall so fast I never even realized I was speeding. My happiness had done a complete about face and never even asked for permission. Clinical depression’s a bitch, especially when you haven’t been diagnosed. When you don’t even know what’s happening to you. At that time I was still processing a recent break-up. I started smoking. I slept every day until sundown, failing all my classes in the process and never breathing a word of it to my parents — you know... college. For the very first time people were treating me like an adul, but I still felt five years old. Worst of all, the question of gender had reared its ugly head once more. All my sunbeams had turned to clouds. All but one — the new job.
I had just been hired as part of the opening crew for Anaheim’s Great Wolf Lodge, the first Californian branch of a Midwestern waterpark/resort. Was I qualified? Quite probably not — but someone must have seen the Spark of Greatness in me. Or maybe all the gods of my ancestors were finally giving me a break. With nothing else going my wa. I attached all my hopes on the success of that job. A few months after being hired, I found myself sitting in the upstairs ballroom with the rest of my team.
And there she was.
Or rather, there they were — there were two of them, after all. Bodies in pieces on the backs of chairs, heads side by side on the lacquered wooden table. There they sat in all their glory. I only had eyes for one.
Their names were Wiley and Violet, the two wolf mascots of our company. After a grueling week of training videos, safety drills, and bonding exercises, we were finally learning the last trick of the trade: costume character performance. It dawned on me that our manager, Megan, had not stopped talking while I’d been staring at the costumes. Nine sets of eyes and ears were fixed on her. Nine heads nodded in agreement. All the while I’d been unable to turn away, my every attention on the wolves in the corner. Rather, just one wolf… Just Violet.
And there she was.
People get real goddamn pissy when you mess with their conception of gender. Even when they’re busy breaking their own rules. How often do The Straights© refer to boats as “she?” How about drag queens? The Straights© looove drag queens. They don’t have any
problem calling a queen “she” either. But ask The Straights© to respect one trans or one non-conforming individual’s pronouns and it’s suddenly the end of the fucking world.
“It’s just so hard for me to remember,” they’ll say, or, “It kind of makes me uncomfortable. I mean, why can’t they just be normal?” They’ll hem and they’ll haw, but truthfully they just don’t give a hoot about respect.
A double standard, to be sure, but that’s what The Straights© are known for. In the 21st Century we’ve seen the L and the G begin to distance themselves from the B, the T, and the Q, all because The Straights© can handle “gay culture” a little more easily than “queer culture.” And sure, it’s a good thing that gay culture is thriving, but owning a French Press you never use and knowing all the words to Wicked doesn’t make you better than the rest of us. Well, what can you do? Western society has dictated that being gay is O.K. — meanwhile the rest of queer culture is something to be avoided, something to be sprayed with vodka and dry-cleaned once a month. RuPaul and Alaska Thunderfuck remain national treasures while Wendy Carlos is all but forgotten, and Lana and Lilly Wachowski are still routinely referred to as the Wachowski Brothers. C’est la vie.
But just like drag queens are easy for The Straights© to respect, so are mascots. There were occasional questionings — “Is that a chick or a dude inside?” — but my team was trained for such occasions, and with a smile they would respond:
“Who, Violet? Oh no, she’s just a wolf.”
For me this was something of a godsend. As Violet I was able to perform overt caricatures of femininity every single day. Even surrounded by a damp and stinking wolf suit, it was a joy, it was ecstasy. I had been physically confined by the layers of costume but felt freer than ever before.
It took me many months of such performances and solo soul-searching to accept that I wasn’t quite cisgendered after all (Sorry, Mom!). In that moment a beacon of light fell upon me — books flew off the shelves — fish and whales threw themselves out of the sea and at my feet. Things were still confusing, and even now, years later, issues of gender don’t always make sense to me — I still haven’t solved that damned pronoun issue — but the door to something new had been opened.
Violet opened that door for me. It’s true — she opened it, and she held it open. Mascot performance gave me a safe (and frequent) place to practice different modes of self-expression, particularly the more feminine aspects I’d so long avoided. No one could say shit to me about it; I was just another performer, wasn’t I? Neither man nor woman… not even human! I was 100% pure, unadulterated wolf. My Violet performance became legend in those early days, and soon I was the branch’s go-to performer. Yet none of them could ever know how much those years with the wolves meant to me.
This one’s for V — keep holding that door, why don’t you?
I waddled across the ballroom while my group watched on, offering gentle observations and guidance. “Step here! No, not there — here!” “A little bigger now!” “Swing your arms more — more — that’s it!” “More sass.” “More spunk.” “More pizzazz.” ...and so on.
A million thoughts raced through my mind as I walked. The unpainted walls of the resort, still under construction, gave off a heady aroma of pine and sawdust. My breath came in little gasps. My vision was a narrow tunnel focused on the carpet beneath my size-30 feet. I could feel
embarrassment hot on my face, thanked the Lord and all His angels that no one could see me blushing. I tried to keep quiet and struggled to follow their instructions, to give my walk the ol’ razzle-dazzle — then promptly stumbled on a wire, was caught and steadied by my team. My face went beet red and it had nothing to do with the heat. I gathered my nerve; I kept walking.
The moments passed over and through me in a slow wash. The world grew still. A series of events had been set in motion and, unprepared as I was, there was no stopping it now. Both my feet came off the ground. I looked down, incredulous — I had started skipping. My arms went out to my sides, my hips began to sway, my head bobbed back and forth. It had been a long night of training and I was dog-tired, but I drew a new strength from within. The cheers from my team bolstered me even further. I skipped to the end of the hall, turned around, skipped back.
“Great job, Violet!” Megan called, “Now you’re getting it!” She watched me sauntering the floor, hands on my hips, then said: “Let’s get you out of that suit, we’ll get more practice tomorrow.”
I chose not to hear her, the EXIT sign ahead calling me onward. It was my own green light at the end of the dock and, Fitzgerald be damned, I’d reach it if it was the last thing I ever did. The decision was made unconsciously. I couldn’t part with Violet — not yet. And so I skipped on.
I could hear nothing now but my own ragged breath, could feel nothing but the tides of blood surging beneath my skin with each bounding thump of my paws. Everything else melted away, nothing but a buzzing of bluebottle wings. On and on, on and on, the floor stretching, world slipping away, a heavenly chorus, harps and bells in the balcony. Everywhere the promise of something new, the threat of stink nothing but an afterthought, my embarrassment gone. Blurring vision a spectrum of color, of new and vivid green, of yellow, of blue, of Violet, and
nothing to weigh me down. Nothing to hinder my progress, nothing but the two of us, she and I, the skin of the wolf that had become my own. Hallway shrinking around me, senses blunted, mind flying high, and nothing can ever stop me, nothing can ever stop me, nothing, nothing, nothing —