Inside Bananas the Monkey
It was my first paying show business gig.
And my last.
“Can you be Bananas the Monkey tomorrow?”
Randy, the front-of-house manager of Tulsa’s famous Casa Bonita restaurant, stood in front of me with his clipboard, hurried look and rubber-soled shoes. He smelled of fried dough, or sopapillas, a house specialty served at every table with a jar of honey.
Bananas the Monkey. I followed his pointing finger to the orange fake fur costume of the restaurant’s furry mascot. It drooped from a bent wire hanger, hanging on the closet door frame in a narrow hallway near the staff restroom. Inside the closet I could see the bright and frilly hostess dresses I coveted, as out of reach as authentic Mexican culture was at Casa Bonita.
I’d never been one to shy away from the spotlight but dressing up as Bananas seemed more frightening than fun. And the risk factor for ridicule was a little high for my teenage ego. Why couldn’t he ask me to be in the treasure room instead?
“Pays fifty cents an hour more than waitressing,” he said.
“Okay,” I said.
I started waitressing at Casa Bonita restaurant in Tulsa at age sixteen, my black Keds logging thousands of steps a shift before anyone imagined we’d all wear fancy high-tech pedometers every day. The year was 1985, eighteen years before the television show “South Park” put the small restaurant chain’s Colorado location on the pop culture map with its “Casa Bonita” episode, in which one boy kidnaps and psychologically tortures another for the bliss of attending a birthday party at the pink palace. Back then, working at Casa Bonita was kitschy fun, the kind of job you pretended to hate while secretly loving it. My parents were firm believers that teenagers should work and Casa Bonita was parent-approved — my older sister had worked there during high school. The work ethic demonstrated by waiting tables had helped her get her current, post-college position as a legal secretary. I also wanted to earn my own money for crop-tops and oversized T-shirts from Tempo and Poison Ivy as well as late-night bean burritos at Taco Bueno.
This massive Disneylandish restaurant sat in a strip mall full of the usual suspects: a wig shop, buffet restaurant, used record shop and a check cashing place. It outshined them all with its pastel pink storefront trimmed in white like a little girl’s birthday cake. Just entering into its massive wooden doors was to be transported into a magical world where you were never quite sure what the visit would bring, but you were guaranteed to have fun.
Like Cartman and Kenny of “South Park,” I loved to eat there as a kid, not noticing that the so-called deluxe plate looked and tasted like the elementary school cafeteria version of Mexican food. Like every other kid, I devoured the atmosphere: the Christmas lights in the fake palm trees, the stars glittering in industrial ceiling tiles painted matte black, the lantern-lit cave, the gushing waterfall and stream. Mariachis roamed the restaurant, which also included a puppet theatre, a video game arcade, an indoor carousel and the treasure room, where children could exchange tickets for trinkets like play jewelry or small toys. Working there was like going behind the scenes at Disneyland, and the large and young staff earned a reputation for rowdy after-shift parties, often with beer, at the apartments of the older guys who worked there while studying at Spartan School of Aeronautics. I quickly found my place in the partying clique and formed a tight set of friends who wound up being more than just good-time pals.
I’d heard about waitresses being promoted to the higher paying and higher status jobs working in the treasure room, the video arcade or as a hostess. Of those, hostesses held the highest rank and were plucked from the most outgoing females on staff to wear the rainbow-hued Mexican fiesta dresses with embroidered flowers that were vastly superior to the white-blouse-and-black-skirt uniform reserved for the waitresses. And the work was easy, escorting visitors with little kids to the seat of their dreams in the caves or Acapulco room.
But that summer, I ferried refills of drinks and deluxe plates of enchiladas and tacos most nights, answering the call of the raised flag at each table which alerted us that a table needed service. One night, as I plopped day-glo yellow enchiladas on two deluxe plates in the kitchen, I got the promotion I had been hoping for. Only it was for the wrong job.
Bananas. I stood in the narrow hallway again with Randy. Up close, the costume looked like a skinned Muppet. I had some serious regrets but I talked myself out of them. I told myself that if I displayed a good attitude by being Bananas, I would earn my way to the other, more coveted positions soon.
Randy’s eyes flicked between his clipboard and my face.
“There are three rules for Bananas the Monkey,” he said. “One, never take the head off in public. Two, Bananas the Monkey does not speak. Three, if a child starts crying, Bananas must leave the room.”
I nodded that I understood and eyed the large, fiberglass head, covered in a thinner orange fur and topped with a tall yellow and orange hat with a plastic banana affixed to the front. Randy, about to scurry away to his next task, stopped and said over his shoulder, “You can have all the free soda you want on your break.”
I donned the suit with its rubbery backing, pulling it on over the shorts and T-shirt I’d been told were suitable undergarments for Bananas. My sneakers filled out Bananas furry paws nicely, but at five feet, five inches tall, I was just a few inches shy of filling out the costume, and the fur around my shins bagged strangely, as though Bananas wore fleecy Ugg boots. I asked one of the waiters, a thin black guy named Harold who was studying radio technology at the Spartan School of Aeronautics, to zip me up and he did, snickering as though I had lost some dignity. More money and free soda, I told him, but he was not impressed.
“What exactly are you going to do out there, Bananas?” Harold said. The little bit of satisfaction I’d gleaned from being asked to be Bananas evaporated. I took his question as a vote of no confidence in my ability to entertain children.
“Leave the room if they cry,” I said in a huff. But he’d pierced the heart of my anxiety. I had no skills like juggling or dancing the moonwalk. I worried I would not walk straight in the costume. I worried I didn’t have the kind of enthusiasm expected of Bananas by the patrons of Tulsa’s favorite Mexican restaurant.
My friend and fellow waitress Catalina, a tall Romanian whose family immigrated to Tulsa the year before, rushed through the door with two deluxe platters to refill at the steam table next to us.
“Cat, Harold thinks I don’t know how to be Bananas,” I said. No need to acknowledge I suspected he was right.
She plopped two cheese enchiladas onto one of the plates.
“It’s not hard. You either hug the kids,” she said in her thick accent full of rolling R’s. “Or dance.”
Yup. Pretty much the options I had come up with on my own.
I picked the head up by both ears. It was surprisingly lightweight, which renewed my confidence, and I lifted it over my head and onto my shoulders. Immediately my breathing filled the head with moist air and my vision narrowed to two holes covered in black mesh that made up Banana’s mouth.
“Your paws,” Harold said. I tried to look down at his hands but saw only the inside of the monkey head. I could really only see what was right in front of me and at eye level. Finally he grabbed my hands and put the fur covered gloves on for me.
“Knock ’em dead,” he said.
“You’re supposed to say ‘break a leg,’” I said, surprised at how distorted my voice sounded as it bounced around inside the big head. He just stared at me.
“I can’t understand you,” he said.
I shuffled out of the kitchen with what I hoped was a jaunty monkey stroll and into the Acapulco Room, where diners sat near the indoor waterfall under fake palm trees and plaster parrots in bright colors.
I raised my arms in a V for Victory salute and pretended to tap dance. A few adults looked up and then quickly back down, with that kind of wariness usually reserved for door-to-door evangelists or the girl who sold long-stemmed roses.
Then I saw her — a small red-headed girl in a booster seat who pointed and smiled at me, which made her parents smile too. I pointed back and she became delirious with excitement, bouncing up and down in the booster seat so it rocked dangerously from side to side. I did the jaunty monkey walk to their table, as the mother slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulders to keep her in the seat.
The little girl’s starry eyes and smile evaporated by the time I reached the table. She pushed the top of her head into the armpit of her mother’s corduroy blazer and waited for me to disappear.
I waited while the mother whispered into the little girl’s ear. The father reached an arm across the table to touch her hair. Sweat ran down my spine, and the sound of rushing water from the indoor waterfall was making me think I should have gone to the bathroom before I got into the suit. Catalina came over and wrapped her arms around me.
“Hi Bananas!” she said. “Is this your new friend?”
The little girl peeked out from her mother’s armpit to survey the situation. She gave Catalina a small, tentative smile, then dove back into her mother’s blazer. Catalina shrugged and moved on to the drinks station, and I considered my next move. I scanned the room for another family with kids but only saw adults, none of whom looked my way.
I decided to try to bring the little girl around. After all, she was excited to see me at first, so maybe little encouragement would return a smile to her face. Maybe she was worried that she’d offended Bananas the Monkey. I reached out quickly with a soothing pat on the head. Before my hand even reached her, her shy expression dissolved into a dropped-jaw scream of terror. Water poured out of her half-shut eyes like a faucet on full blast. I put my paws to my mouth in what I hoped was a sorrowful gesture.
The little girl screamed louder and the mother waved me away with her hand. “Time for Bananas to go,” she said. The father pushed back his chair, as though he would forcibly remove me from the room, so I abandoned the jaunty monkey walk and darted out of the Acapulco Room into the plaza in front of El Pokey. My bangs were plastered to my forehead, and the suit felt itchy. I felt like hiding in the caves and never coming out. Fifty cents an hour and free soda weren’t enough.
Apparently, Randy agreed with me. I was never sure if my lackluster performance had been noticed, or if when it came down to it, my height just didn’t measure up to be Bananas. But Randy never asked me to perform as Bananas again, choosing my friend Catalina instead. If I’m honest, it was a relief, and when the offer to become a hostess finally came two weeks later, I jumped at it.
You’d think that wearing a furry costume would be freeing and fun but instead I felt insecure and exposed. Instead of blending in, I stuck out like an orange thumb. My failures to entertain had now occurred on a grand, cartoonish scale. It was isolating, lonely. Small children were excited to see Bananas in the distance but terrified up close. Adults were wary. It’s no surprise that “South Park” episode features no cameo of Bananas. Bananas was part of the magic of Casa Bonita but best experienced in small doses, for children and waitresses. I mean, hostesses.
