The guy running the show in Pine Bluff helped me get booked on a couple more shows down here so I called the guy running the Casper show to tell him I was out. Or I called the number where I talked to him before anyway. Someone who wasn’t him answered the phone and said that he never heard of him and hung up. So I guess I’m good.
I get some flack occasionally for working in boxing trunks instead of appropriate tights. What the fuck is appropriate in this business? You work a show where one guy is in overalls and another in a kilt and another in a velour jumpsuit. What’s appropriate about any of that? I feel like my explanation of “they were free” is a great defense of my boxing trunks but no one else does. It got me to thinking about trying a new spell to summon me up some better ring gear.
My smooth ’96 Caprice Classic wagon looks packed with stuff. Which it is. Until you consider that it contains everything I own. Viewed though that lens it’s not much really. Would all your shit fit in your car? And a good deal of what is there is taken up by a trunk that I inherited. Obaluaiye is the guy who introduced me to magic, but the owner of the trunk is the person I really learned magic from. His stage name was Royale Fantastique because in addition to being a real magic practitioner he was also a stage magician in Vegas. I think I should keep his real name to myself.
I met Royale Fantastique when I had gone to Vegas to work a show for a fucking piece of shit that breaks promises who shall remain nameless. I was walking, wandering I guess since I had no money and nothing to do, and I saw a distinguished looking old man in an alleyway getting screamed at by a dude in a letter jacket while a hooker watched and cheered him on. A guy in a letter jacket in HS is kind of douche, a guy right after HS in a letter jacket is a total douche, and a guy in his thirties wearing a letter jacket has definitely raped someone. This guy was the last kind.
Letter jacket made like he was going to pound the old guy, but instead the old guy touched him with a wand – literally a stupid wand from a stage magic show – and letter jacket was knocked on his ass. Old guy then said something to the hooker and she ran away screaming. Before I met Obaluaiye, I would have assumed that I hadn’t seen what I just saw. I would have made myself believe that I just missed the old dude smacking the guy in the letter jacket or the guy slipped or the old man had a stun gun, I would have come up with some explanations. But because of Obaluaiye, I knew what I had seen, and what I had seen was magic. Some people talk about opening their third eye, which is fuckery, but the concept is kind of true.
I walked up to the old man and said that I knew a little magic, real magic, and wanted to learn more. He said that he would be happy to teach me and that was that. A few months after I left Vegas, his trunk showed up sitting by my car – as if by magic. That probably means that he’s dead. He had a lot of enemies and not all of them were stupid jock losers. The trunk mostly has old playbills and props and other not real magic memorabilia stuff in it, but it has some real magic stuff too. I haven’t had time to go through it much yet to figure out what’s what but I would bet that he had a spell for clothing. He was always dressed to the nines and took a lot of pride in his appearance.
I need to make some time to look through his notes and see if there’s anything I can start practicing.
