On Sunday night, I arrived back in New York from Spain. I was on vacation for over two weeks. The great thing about vacations is that they enable you to live a fantasy. I didn’t check work email. I barely spent time on social media. I spent money and ate in ways I never would at home. For half a month, my reality wasn’t reality.
After landing at JFK, I knew I was back in the States because there was good air conditioning and because more than a hundred people had just been killed or maimed in the country’s worst mass shooting. A gunman who had claimed he was operating on behalf of the Islamic State walked into Pulse, an Orlando gay club, and sprayed patrons with bullets, leaving news outlets to ask in an apparent hate crime/act of terrorism.
What makes this shooting especially sad is that for many gay people, bars and clubs represent their own fantasy worlds, where they can escape from their daily lives to celebrate, dance, laugh, and simply be themselves—a particularly relevant point given that many of the gay men at Pulse were people of color, whose communities tend to be more homophobic. And so I’m left pondering the irony that I traveled across an ocean to escape my real self while some patrons likely came to Pulse to find their real selves.
There’s another irony: The shooting, now perhaps the saddest place in the nation, was only 18 miles from Disney World, the “happiest place on Earth.” Every day, hordes of people pack the Magic Kingdom. They, too, are leaving behind their reality to enter a world of fantasy, posing for photos with princesses and walking mice. Except maybe this juxtaposition is not so ironic. Perhaps it’s quite fitting. What is more American than Mickey Mouse and death by guns?
This is what it means to live in the United States. It means pretending that we don’t live in the United States. It means living as if it’s perfectly rational for average citizens to have access to semi-automatic weapons. It means expressing shock after a shooting, as if we’re really shocked. It means offering prayers, as if that helps anyone, but those doing the praying. It means clicking “Like” on Facebook posts, as if doing so were some civic duty. It means writing blog posts like these that, let’s face it, aren’t telling you anything you don’t already know.
So when you’re done reading this, locate your U.S. Senator here. Find your Congress representative here. Then email or call to let your elected officials know that they will not get your vote again unless they make true efforts to enact tough legislation to end gun violence. You can still enjoy Disney World—as long as you do something to change the real world.
