Dissociating in a Whale Costume Under the Texas Sun
To feel any semblance of air pass through the whale costume, I could only rock my arms up and down in a thrusting movement. Unfortunately to park-goers, this action looked like I was dry-humping the air. But the slightest puff of relief that passed through the black mesh-lined mouthpiece to hit my obscured face was worth it. It felt like heaven. Sometimes I’d attempt to step as I humped, so it looked less like a mid-air gyrate and more like a zany whale dance. But most of the time, I did it unabashedly; my 20-year-old manager chastising me was a small price to pay for the glorious bout of air that fanned the beads of sweat.
Exiting an air-conditioned dressing room into the San Antonio summer heat felt like opening the door to a 400-degree oven and climbing inside with your frozen pizza. Underneath a 20-pound polyester whale costume, it was like experiencing hell in real time, only survivable because we were stationed outside in 30-minute increments. All of the suffering would, eventually, end. And when it did, my grey t-shirt would be soaked through under the weight belt I was required to wear while in costume. Beneath the black nylon caps we wore to keep hair out of our eyes, my hair was matted to my skull.
When my manager mentioned my air-humping in front of guests, I looked her square in the eye and said sincerely, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I would never do that if I realized how it came off.” That appeased her. From then on, I only humped when I knew she was out of eye-shot. I was at the park every day the summer I turned eighteen, working forty hours a week and dumping each paycheck into a secret account my parents knew nothing about. I had made the mistake of clueing Mom into my finances at my last job, only for her to drain my account so she could make rent. At eighteen, I was escaping my parents’ grip.
In early 2009, the minimum wage in Texas was $6.55 an hour. By July of that year, it would increase to $7.25 to match new federal standards, while I — barely out of high school — got paid $10.25 an hour to work in my whale costume at SeaWorld. It was nearly four dollars above the absolute bare minimum the state of Texas was allowed to pay a human being. In other words, I couldn’t believe my luck. Recruiters had visited the school gym to drop off flyers during my varsity dance team practice. The boys’ locker room received visits from Army and Air Force pushers; the girls got SeaWorld. I took the bait.
SeaWorld anchors my high school memories, but still, the years blur. I know now that forgetting is a way to survive. During my four years of high school, my family and I drifted in and out of homelessness. We inhabited and were evicted from duplexes, apartments, and rental houses. I learned quickly what an envelope taped to the front door meant; how we’d have to spot clean a home just before we left it to avoid charges from the landlord. Sometimes my sister and I lived with friends while my parents went to… where did they go? Once, we packed into the spare bedrooms of someone my dad met at his retail job selling electronics. Another time we paid by the week at a motel with two full beds and a small kitchenette.
Once we were staying in a motel right next to SeaWorld when I entered the elevator in my uniform and met a family who had flown in from out of town. They had come all this way just to see the famous whales in person, so they were excited to talk to me. They also wondered what a park employee was doing at their motel. I was always ready with an excuse. When friends picked me up from new locations, I’d say it was my aunt’s house, a cousin’s house, or a temporary stay while we got our plumbing fixed.
“My apartment is being remodeled!” I said in the upbeat park voice I used to talk to children. “Have fun at the park today!”
I learned quickly that people accept what you tell them if you say it cheerfully. I also learned that if I spoke like nothing was wrong, my body believed it. At the park, concealed under costume, I could dissociate from the reality at home. I was just another teenager working a summer job, laughing and complaining about the heat like everyone else. I had been acting in my real life for so long. Now I was finally getting paid for it.
The park felt more empowering than my first job as a cashier at a greeting card store, where I earned minimum wage and had to contend with creepy men complimenting me or asking me out. Never mind that I was sixteen. One day, a man said he would wait outside in his car all day for me to be done with my shift. He said he’d come back for me and take me away to give me a good life. I knew by then that men caused more problems than they solved, thinking of my dad, whose verbal abuse was more consistent than his employment.
But inside the steely gates of the park, men exhibited their best behavior. Why? Visiting was a special occasion, one that cost about $80 per person – before the popcorn buckets, chili cheese fries, and refillable souvenir soda cups. Men typically didn’t come to SeaWorld alone, but with families. Even when I wasn’t in costume, I was free to be my confident, gregarious self without getting asked for my number or followed around. I directed guests to the dolphin tank and restrooms with the grace of a flight attendant flagging exit doors. And I loved every minute of it. This artificial utopia devoid of openly lecherous men did wonders for my ability to dissociate even further. My shoulders somehow relaxed under the weight of my 20-pound costume.
The park offered something else I hadn’t experienced at my card-hawking job: perks like free uniforms, so I didn’t have to spend money before making any. SeaWorld demanded I wear white sneakers so they gave me a pair. They had an employee canteen where I could get chicken tenders, fries, and a drink for $3.25 — my daily diet that summer. I could avoid meal prepping at “home” during the times I didn’t have a kitchen, or avoid being around Dad in the common area of the kitchen when we did have one. How dehumanizing it is to shell out $10 for a sandwich when you’re only making $6.55 in the hour you get to eat it — if you get a paid lunch break at all. Why weren’t all jobs like this?
…
During my second summer as a costume character, my job evolved to costume character plus park singer in the water park. I was accepted to the Newhouse School at Syracuse University in Central New York. Today on TikTok you see entire families gathered around the computer screen to read acceptance emails. If that much family involvement was happening back then, I’m glad I didn’t know about it. For me, there were no moments of celebration; only anxiety-fueled planning.
People in Texas didn’t typically leave Texas, so I hadn’t heard of any out-of-state schools from my guidance counselor, or had friends who were packing to leave. I also didn’t know that most people tour college campuses before they make a decision. During my junior year, my sister brought home a book that said on the back flap that the author went to Syracuse. I thought, I want to be an author too, so I blindly applied. Syracuse also offered me the most financial aid. That was the extent of my research.
Due to my family’s level of poverty and my good grades in high school, I received government funding to attend three out of four years for free, and I figured one year of loans wasn’t too bad to pay off in the way-distant future. However, I still had to pay $400 to secure my admission before any of the federal grant money kicked in. And then I had to figure out a way to get a laptop so I could actually do my homework while I was there. As a South Texan, I had never seen snow, so I would need a coat (my first), boots, and long-sleeve shirts. I’d also have to buy my own one-way plane ticket and hotel room the day before I moved into campus housing.
Still, something about landing my SeaWorld job felt like fate. Moonlighting as a whale provided the brain space to not only dream of a better life, but the resources to help it materialize. The concept of bootstrapping is uniquely American, but today, government programs that make climbing out of poverty possible are dwindling. Federal grants for school helped me take my first steps out of a paycheck to paycheck life, and took me physically away from my abusive father. It felt like I was meant to conclude my Texas life after all. I felt like I was special.
…
The nightmares began just before I was about to head off to college. I’d dream I was at work, passing the whale stadium, when suddenly a group of men would pick me up and throw me into the tank. I couldn’t see where the whales were because the water was black and oil-slicked, completely opaque. I’d swim in fear, waiting for a dorsal fin to appear as I realized, for the first time, the magnitude of the whales’ size as I swam for my life next to them.
I had the murky whale tank nightmare about three times a week and eventually, I was unable to watch the orca show altogether. I went to the park on my day off with a friend who wanted to sit in the front row, and I took off running the second the killer whale made its grand splash entrance. Before these dreams, the whales had rarely crossed my mind.
Back then, social media and phone cameras enabling people to share their observations and call for change weren’t yet mainstream. The whales had simply lived in these tanks since the late ‘80s when the park opened. My teenage self didn’t think about how they got there in the first place. I didn’t think of how much energy it took to keep the massive tanks a consistent 30- to 40-degrees in the sweltering San Antonio heat or how said tank was probably too small for the 8,000-pound whales themselves.
In November 2013, after I graduated from Syracuse and left homelessness behind, a documentary about SeaWorld came out. A whale had killed a trainer, and it was alleged that park employees knew the animals were dangerous and aggressive when they allowed trainers into the water with them. Social media pressure to shut down the parks ensued.
The whales, intelligent creatures meant to be in an endless ocean, should have never been imprisoned there in the first place. But I knew I might not have been able to get myself out of homelessness without my job that summer, without those glorious $10.25-an-hour paychecks. Years later, while living in New York City, I told a friend about my time working at SeaWorld, and she reacted in horror. She had seen the documentary; she had even protested the park’s existence. She looked at me and said, “I’m sure you would have never worked there if you knew — if you had the chance to do it all over again.”
I summoned my well-honed entertainer voice, the one that always got people to believe whatever I was saying. “Oh my god,” I said dramatically. “Of course not!”
I remembered the nightmares. How spending time with the whales every day only made me afraid of them. How by the end of my time there, I couldn’t even look at them. I got out of Texas, but after spending their whole lives in captivity, it would be impossible for the creatures to ever return to their oceanic ecosystem again. Whales rammed their heads into the glass walls of the tank until they bled. They held the trainers who fed them day after day down underwater.
Who would I be today if I hadn’t gotten out? As I studied journalism in college, my parents experienced more homelessness and the brutal loss of their only car. They had to rely on friends to drive them around to get to work or to Walmart for essentials like soap (never full-size bottles, only 99-cent travel-size ones) and food ($3 rotisserie chickens that lasted all week).
But since I made it out of Texas, their problems were no longer my own. I didn’t dream of the whales either. I could think only of myself and my twin bed in the dorm, and the future stretching forward like the open ocean.
Brittany Leitner is a journalist, poet, and on-air host who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her essays have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Bustle, Elite Daily, and more. Poems from her 2018 debut chapbook 23 Emotions won the new writer award at Sequestrum and third place in the Palette Poetry contest. Her poems have been published in No Dear, Cutthroat, Gasher, New York Quarterly, and elsewhere. She’s currently working on a memoir.
This story was the runner-up in our “the way we work” essay contest in collaboration with Dirt media. This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project’s James Ledbetter Fund.