He rushed in, arms laden with suitcases and bags floating on a cloud of humid, sweat scented air.
“Come on in,” I led him toward our sparse dining room. “You can set up here,” I offered as he royally scanned the area. “Will this work?” I hesitantly asked. A guarded sigh was followed by, “Yes, I guess it has to.”
We called Magnificent Michael on a whim. We wanted to add something special and maybe even weird to a routine Friday night party with friends. In our 20’s, we fancied ourselves on the cusp of greatness. Record deals, promotions, graduate school opportunities and art shows were just around the corner. Our big futures were palpable. We waited for the next big thing while living in a Southern town depressingly stuck in the past. In the liminal space between reality and our dream lives, we play-acted the parts we wanted. My boyfriend David and I gathered up $80 to hire Magnificent Michael and hoped to allay another boring weekend where the highlight could easily be dressing up and going to dinner at Chili’s.
I found Magnificent Michael in the yellow pages listed under entertainers. Our choices were limited to him, traditional clowns and strippers. We had no other ideas of how to find someone outside of our circle of friends, whose bands we had already seen perform countless times. We were so hungry for more. Of anything. So we tried everything.
The southern town where I grew up still had the KKK marching around downtown in broad daylight just a decade prior. The locals thought Lakeland to be a pretty grand place; our county name was even preceded with the lofty title, “Imperial.” A major regional grocery store was born in our town, and its royal founding family, billionaires now, pumped money into parks, hospitals and college dorms. Everyone clamored for jobs at Publix headquarters where employee stock options could transform truck drivers into millionaires. Gorgeous parks and pretty facilities belied the fact that schools, libraries and cultural events were subpar. There was a collective hypnosis around the imagined success of the city, limited as it was.
Becoming an adult in the pre-internet deep south was a struggle. I felt a constant hunger that could never quite be articulated. The deep awareness that there was substantially more to the world and the feeling that I could never quite cross that threshold cast a shadow on all my endeavors. I always sought magic, thinking that my creative intentions could emanate into the world and return to me with a magic carpet to shuttle us away. Although I could not figure out how on my own, I thought my destiny was so great it would happen no matter what.
Our phone conversation was awkward.
“What kind of party is this?”
“Just Friday night, friends and drinks. We thought entertainment could be fun”
“How much drinking?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. This isn’t a rowdy bunch.”
“I need to know there won’t be any problems or unruliness. I usually don’t do shows where there is alcho…”
“No way. This is a cool group. There are very arty – musicians and artists. They will love it!”
“Arty?”
“Yeah! They’ll totally appreciate your show. They’re artists too.”
“You think they would like a scarf dance I have been working on?”
“Um, sure…”
“I’ve been working on some concepts. This might be the crowd that’ll like it. I can try it out?”
“Sure, whatever you think. They’re super creative, so I am sure they will like whatever you do.”
“OK, I’ll do it. I’ll be there Friday at 7.”
Magnificent Michael was at least 20 years older than us, which alone made him instantly pathetic in our young razor-sharp eyes. He was tall and bald except for the straight black hair circumnavigating the base of his head. He wore a black and gray goatee and had a paunch that struggled to free itself from the tight cummerbund he wore. His tuxedo looked a little shabby but was spiffed up by his bright red bow tie. His eyes were small, dark and furtive.
One of his suitcases opened like origami, with flaps and poles and more flaps until transforming itself into a tall rickety table. An instant performance space! At Magnificent Michael’s request, we cleared off another table for him to set up all his accouterments. He had a lot. Boxes and bags and cords filled the table. So did a 44oz Big Gulp whose styrofoam was dinged and dingy, suggesting it had been used repeatedly.
Friends drifted in and fidgeted on chairs, laps, and the floor. Their faces wore looks of anticipation, amusement and even slight annoyance. What sort of event was this, they wondered. We were always trying to come up with new ideas. Once we had a candle party where everyone brought a candle and that was the only light allowed. Another time we tried to host a wine tasting, but as we were young and cheap, all the wines brought were from the bottom shelf of the grocery store. We quickly ditched the little rating sheets I had made and got drunk instead. But we always felt like renegades inventing the entire world from our little bungalow. Who else was hosting anything like this? A typical night in Lakeland would be going to a movie or Kau-Kau Korner bar. But in our circle we fancied ourselves art patrons.
Some weekends, David and I would buy last minute airline tickets to NYC and just wander around trying to soak up the knowledge, searching for keys to the languages of the worlds we wanted to enter. We walked around NYU, snuck demo tapes into record company bathrooms, and rented limos to drive us around the city. Looking tough, trying to fit in, and then returning to the humidity of home not sure what the next step should be, we thought a magical clue would present itself when we were ready. We traveled to Europe and brought back sugar packets and match books using them all year round to infuse daily life with something foreign, not realizing that they would just melt away or burn up. These trips brought us closer to the energy we wanted to live in, but at the same time we mistakenly accepted the ideas peddled to us by our kin to reel us back in. It would be irresponsible to give up the steady job that David had with a decent paycheck and benefits. When I was accepted to a prestigious graduate school, my father told me if they really wanted me they would pay me to attend, otherwise they were just using me for tuition. We remained anchored in a town we came to loathe. Our imagined abuses and the grudges we felt were psychologically debilitating.
Magnificent Michael pushed a button on his dual tape boombox and a classically orchestrated, heavy metal song began to play. He pulled himself tall and began to prance around the “stage” area dramatically gesturing to his props. We sipped our Rolling Rocks in anticipation.
As the music faded, he reached over to turn it off with a loud click.
“Welcome! Ladies and Gentlemen. I am Magnificent Michael. A professional magician. Prepare to be amazed, astounded, and intrigued as I perform daring magic tricks for you!”
Claps. A random “woo hoo!” because well, the South, and a dramatic bow.
“David and Anne (wrong name) told me that you are an arty bunch… (people look around at each other, raise eyebrows) so I’ve prepared an extra special show for you!”
Another little bow and forced applause.
Clap, Clap, Clap.
My life’s work rarely earned me any applause.
I did receive a standing ovation once in my life. In the first weeks of junior high, I carried my lunch tray across the long expanse of the lunch room, quickly scanning the crowd for a friendly or familiar face. That day we were having peas and little square carrots from a can. I am not sure who ate those. I did not, preferring the empty carbs of chips and soda that an adolescent metabolism so often forgives. I stepped on one little vegetal morsel and my new Sam and Libby silver flats shot out from under me, my tray was propelled high in the air, hit the ceiling and rained down food as I fell straight on my butt. After a nano-moment, I caught my breath and laughed a little to myself. As I raised my eyes, the entire assembly was laughing and clapping and slowly, one by one each student stood. I often wonder how things might have been different if I did not laugh myself. Two years later I was voted class clown, an award that made my parents roll their eyes. As the applause died down, the lunch lady handed me a mop with a nonplussed look on her face. I went to work.
Despite the fact that I went to the same school district my entire life, in high school I met people who thought I was an exchange student. I so obviously did not fit in, the only reasonable explanation seemed to be that I was from a foreign country. “Where are you from” they would ask, “no, really?”
Magnificent Michael started with a few standard card tricks. The kind where you guess a card and he magically finds it: in the deck, in a book, under his hat. His face was screwed up in concentration and his efforts were so obvious and clunky we felt like we were in on the trick. There was not a lot of magic going on.
“Who drinks wine,” he asked no one in particular as he moved on to a new set of tricks. “Well, then you might want to watch this feat closely as I will show you how to make wine appear and disappear.” He tilted his head to the side, attempted a sly smile and opened his eyes a little wider. The “elegant” wine glass he produced appeared to work similarly to those toy baby bottles kids play with. They are filled with white milk or orange juice and when you tip it up the liquid vanishes. Really it just slides into another chamber. It is still there.
Maybe because we were sitting so close or maybe because the dining room light was bright and everything was clear, but we could see it all. All the tricks. All the tools. All the sweat. It was so bad, I looked around at my group and made a slight faux frown face to show I was disappointed in the quality performance.
I scanned the walls to keep my eyes off Magnificent Michael and temper the laughter that was threatening to bubble up. On our walls, we hung big ornate frames that we had bought at Goodwill. They were empty, just framing the air and wall, waiting for us to create something worth framing. My eyes settled on the white, cracked plaster wall inside the frame and felt a niggling thought: was this “art” really clever and ironic or just plain lazy. I could never decide.
Things heated up when he performed tricks with a live rabbit, we were all on the edge of our seats. He held the rabbit high in the air by its ears and then placed it in a box, attempting to make it disappear. While it is true we could not see the rabbit, thanks to a secret wall, we could hear the rabbit rhythmically thumping against the shrinking cage. Thump. Thump. Thump. Magnificent Michael just spoke louder, trying to distract our attention. When the box started shimmying across the floor, threatening to fall over, Magnificent Michael calmly put his hand on the box to hold it in place and kept on with the show.
We tried to stifle our laughter and by extension our young superiority. In the process of breaking my heart a little, Magnificent Michael did enact a little magic that night that was real and subtle, the way I think good magic should be. He shifted my attitude, which at that stage in my life was a pretty difficult feat. I started the evening feeling self-important and a little proud of this antic, but by the end of the night I came to appreciate Magnificent Michael’s ability and stamina. He did not give up, even when things were horribly unraveling. He believed in his work. And he was the one creating, performing and earning money for his act. To this day, I always side with the one on stage and pay little attention to the audience. One is creating and one is consuming. We, smug little shits, were consuming and thinking we were better because of it. While we waited for the magic to find us, this guy was creating his own, one failed trick at a time.
Magnificent Michael’s final piece was the scarf dance he mentioned on our phone call. Despite the show’s questionable success, he was ebulliently ready to share this final act with us, his arty crowd. Concentration and commitment set into his face as he once again clicked his boombox; the room filled with classical music, Vivaldi maybe. The colored scarves moved through the air while he lunged from side to side in a choreographed dance.he threw scarves up in the air only to watch them fall with a dramatic expression in his eyes. He moved in such a hulking and gawky way, like a crane, sort of beautiful in its ugliness. He was all in. I found myself holding my breath and rooting for him. Each heartbeat was like a prayer, willing him to get this right and to impress his audience. As he heaved around the dining room, my perception of the scene slowed down and was thrown out of focus. All of a sudden, I was filled with the intense desire to tap into exactly what Magnificent Michael had found. He embodied the saccharine quote, “dance like nobody’s watching” as a morality play updated for my confused and lost self. My breath got caught in my throat when his cummerbund finally shifted up and his unbuttoned shirt gave us a view of his hairy stomach.
Amy Bowers is a Florida native. Her writing explores domestic culture, insect and natural worlds, and manufactured s/places. She has work placed in [PANK], Washington Square Review, West Trade Review, Assay, and LA Review of Books. Her essay Manual is anthologized in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays.