Magic Is Dead, page 7
I went swimming every day, to shock my system. I’d drop down to my knees in the shallows of the coast, the sun beating down on my back, and close my eyes. The undertow would pull the water out, its surface falling from my chest to my thighs just before the wave came crashing down, sending me under, throwing me to the ground. I never brought my phone to the beach—just a book and a towel. I’d leave everything else in the car. One day I stayed out on the sand for longer than normal, reading and sleeping. When I got back to my car, I checked my phone. Madison had sent me a text message.
We have the52 deck in the works, but I don’t want to print it until we have a full deck, with everyone in, so that we can get each person’s name on their related card. I’d love for you to be in. Would you join, and get the tattoo?
“Holy shit,” I said to myself. I didn’t know how to respond. My heart raced. I began to text back:
Wow.
I don’t know what to say.
Of course, I’ll join. It would be an honor.
I’m a little speechless, to be honest. Haha.
So, what’s my new identity? Which card?
Madison responded a few minutes later:
Ha, don’t think too much. Let me list the cards that aren’t taken, and we can choose one. You’ll be a monster of a member, your role in this is bigger than you think. Thank you for being a part of it. Welcome to the underground.
It was settled the next day: I would become the Two of Clubs. Madison told me that no one aside from Laura knew that I was now a member.
“Keep it to yourself,” he told me over the phone. “Don’t tell anyone.”
7
Cheat
Jeremy Griffith called Laura London not long after he picked me up at Los Angeles International Airport. Jeremy had invited me to check out the West Coast magic scene for a few days before driving to Las Vegas for Magic Live, the largest magic convention in the United States. Ramsay planned to fly from Canada and join us for the road trip.
We sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic as we chatted with Laura on speakerphone. She had just started her one-woman show, CHEAT, a residency performance in Edinburgh, Scotland, based on a fictitious female card hustler. For the show, the stage is adorned with a square felt table surrounded by wooden chairs—a makeshift gambling parlor. A framed photograph of Geraldine Hartmann, the female cardsharp character, sits bathed in light from a lamp on an end table off to the side. After the audience takes their seats, Laura enters the stage in a black Prohibition-era cocktail dress embellished in translucent beads and silver sequins, her bright red hair cutting a line just under her jaw. She’s holding Geraldine’s diary. She invites two spectators onto the stage for a game of cards and, as if sitting for a true backroom poker game, embodies Geraldine’s character: a whiskey-slugging cardsharp who can pull aces out of the deck at will and deal winning hands to any player of her choosing.
There are elements of theater throughout the show, with old-timey music and character-driven monologues. It’s a magical twist on vaudeville, a throwback to magic’s golden age. Laura scripted the entire performance herself. The finale, she told us, really knocks the audience on their asses. “The greatest gift in cards is to know what your opponent is thinking,” she said as Jeremy and I drove to his house in Irvine. “So that’s what I’m doing with this. At the beginning of the show I have a spectator think of a card and write it down. And then at the end I call on them to keep thinking of that card and, as I say that, I am dropping cards onto the table one by one, and then the last card I am holding in my hands is the card they were thinking of. It’s great. It’s really, really great.”
It was her first crack at the show, a full-month run, and she was hoping to take it to London and then the States. Laura was clearly excited about the opportunity. In the past, she has held walk-around residencies at numerous high-end clubs in London, including the Hippodrome Theater, a well-respected venue in which Houdini had made numerous appearances. She gets paid well, too, nearly £1,000 per gig, a comparable fee to her male counterparts. CHEAT, however, was a peak moment for her. It was what she had been working toward as a performer; it was definitely harder for a woman to land a headlining show, especially by just doing card magic, and she was beginning to break through the glass ceiling. Sitting in the car, I smiled as I heard the enthusiasm in her voice. But although Laura presented herself as a hardworking magician chasing her dream—and breaking the mold for women in magic—the truth is that she was born a millionaire and had a childhood full of rock-star decadence and luxury before it all fell apart.
Laura’s mother, Pauline, was a dancer in her youth. She toured the world, entertaining British troops in various Middle Eastern countries, including Lebanon, where she met Laura’s father. He was a young freedom fighter, part of a rebel faction on the run from the government. “He was a gambler, he drank a lot, and was a womanizer,” Laura told me later. “I definitely take after him in a lot of ways.” Her mother and father got married and moved back to London. Pauline became a well-known figure in the city’s bustling nightlife scene and, in the late 1970s, she bought Speakeasy, a famous club in town, and renamed it Bootleggers. She had worked there as a hostess before going to Lebanon and told the owner that when she returned she was going to buy the place and turn it into the best nightclub London has ever seen. And that’s exactly what she did.
The club had always been a celebrity hangout, chock-full of London’s most notable musicians and bands, including Ringo Starr, the Who, the Rolling Stones, and King Crimson. Its notoriety held on during Pauline’s tenure as owner, and she became close friends with London’s celebrity elite. She often had to babysit musicians, such as Motörhead’s Lemmy, who always seemed to take the drinking and partying too far. “She once kicked out Phil from Thin Lizzy because he was passed out on heroin,” Laura told me, laughing. In 1987, however, everything took a dark turn. Laura’s father passed away from cancer. Pauline spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment, and even sent him to a cancer institute in Texas. A few months after his death, Pauline’s business partner died in a car crash—two tragedies in one year. Laura was only four years old.
Pauline isolated herself: too proud to ask for help from her posh friends and too traumatized to keep the nightclub afloat. The club was closed within a year, the lease on their penthouse in Westminster ran out, and they were forced to move into a subsidized housing project in Hendon, a neighborhood in London’s grimy North End. Laura had previously attended the same private nursery school as Prince Harry. Now she was hoofing it by foot to the nearest public school. “Pride is a shitty thing,” Laura said about her mother.
Laura’s mother briefly dated an alcoholic clown who, during his gigs for children, performed some magic. “His tricks were really terrible,” admitted Laura, who was eight at the time. “He wasn’t a great performer, but all the kids were having the best time in the world. I have always been able to see things differently, so I could see through the trick and figure out the method. I could do that! I thought. And if I could do that, I could make kids smile. And I loved the secrecy of it all.”
Laura started buying gimmicks and props from magic shops in town, including Davenport’s, London’s oldest magic store, which was founded in 1898 and is still in operation. When Laura was twelve, she forced her mother to introduce her to their neighbor, a man with a curly mustache and a pointed beard who Laura was convinced was a magician. Laura was right: the neighbor was the Great George Kavari, an old-school London performer. He gave Laura a slew of magic books and elevated her knowledge of the craft from sad party tricks to real-deal performance and routine. “That was the first time I saw proper magic,” Laura said. “And it was over after that: Well, obviously now I am going to be a magician!”
Laura became obsessed with magic during her teenage years. She likewise became entirely defiant of authority and rejected the rigidity of school. “I had my own little gang of nerds—the punks and goths,” she told me. She hacked into her school’s computer system and sent threatening messages to kids who bullied her. She was expelled. She never got back into the swing of things at school and, by age sixteen, started selling drugs, ditching class, partying, and practicing magic. She got kicked out of another school and never returned. “It didn’t matter because I was going to be a magician,” she said. “What magician needs to finish high school?”
It’s no surprise that Laura constantly argued with her mother. She would run away from home for days at a time, and eventually moved into a nearby youth shelter. She stepped up her drug dealing; dove into London’s goth, punk, and fetish scene; and kept at magic. She’d perform only for those in her social circle, including her best friend Amber, who is now one of London’s most famous dominatrix and fetish models.*
Laura also became a regular at Slimelight, London’s biggest goth and punk nightclub, and the clubgoers were her primary clientele. Everyone who wanted drugs knew where to find her, and Laura was soon running a robust operation with numerous distributors, until one of her associates was arrested. She was banned from Slimelight.
“It was my life, my everything,” Laura told me about the club. She was heartbroken. Stuck in her flat far away from the heartbeat of her social scene, she practiced magic even more intently. But she had no connections in that community. It’s never been easy for a woman to find her place in magic, especially for someone like Laura, who, at the time, rolled around in a spike-covered leather jacket, a massive mohawk jutting from her head. With her old life crumbling, she decided to go in a different direction. She decided to join the Magic Circle. Formed in 1905, it is one of the oldest members-only clubs for magicians in the world.
The Magic Circle hides on a nondescript brick-lined street in the Kings Cross neighborhood of London. Magicians gather in the lounge, share drinks, and talk shop. There’s a small theater, and the basement houses a musty, low-ceilinged library with thousands of books. An elderly woman, the resident librarian, who normally wears a pink cardigan, can be seen restocking vintage periodicals. On any given day, handfuls of old men in tweed jackets and dark slacks pore through old papers and magazines. Another room houses stacks of vintage posters and props from legendary performers, including Houdini.
Laura walked in for her membership audition. She was a bit on edge, but had practiced her stable of tricks for weeks, and was eager to show the judging panel her chops. They weren’t the most mind-blowing effects, but the Great George Kavari had given her well-known material, and she figured the judges would be pleased to see that she was pulling inspiration from classic routines. Despite her nerves, her audition went off without a hitch and she was granted membership. After being banished from Slimelight—effectively losing the only family she had at the time—Laura hoped she might find a home here, in the world of magic.
Laura started hanging out at the Circle, but no one dared interact with her. She stood out like a sore thumb: the mohawk, the platform leather boots, the outlandish punk gear, the gritty street-kid demeanor. But Laura kept coming back, waiting to break through, to find acceptance. One day, Barbara Astra, an older female magician, saw Laura from across the room. She stomped over and confronted her.
“If you are going to come to this establishment, you need to start dressing appropriately,” she told Laura sternly. Laura looked down at herself. She was wearing her signature black leather jacket, covered in spikes, and her hair was gelled into a mohawk. She was hurt by Barbara’s comment—and angry. She glared back up at the woman, clenched her jaw, and bolted for the door. She felt rejected, the snub made infinitely worse because she loved magic so much.
Fuck this, Laura said to herself as she made her way toward the exit. I’m never coming back here. I don’t need these people. But another female magician, Fay Presto, spotted Laura rushing for the door.
“Hey! You!” Fay called out. “What’s wrong? Why are you leaving?”
“I guess this place just isn’t for me,” Laura told her, on the verge of tears.
“Are you fucking kidding me? They’re all a bunch of assholes!” Fay responded. “But I’m the rebel here. You couldn’t have bumped into a better person.”
“Really?” Laura said.
“Oh, yes, darling. Magic, you see, has never truly accepted the people who want to change the way things have always been done. But you and me,” she continued, placing her hand on her chest, thrusting out her hip, “we’re different, darling, we’re the ones who will keep magic exciting—who’ll keep it alive.” She had a point, Laura thought. Fay was boisterous, unapologetic, and, Laura would come to find out, a real trendsetter: Fay was born a man, and had just recently come out as transgender. Fay had been a magic influencer in London throughout the 1990s, spearheading high-paying restaurant residencies for close-up magicians, but caught a lot of flak when she fought for fair treatment of women in the craft—equal to men, with a fifty-fifty say in where the art form was headed.
“You just stick with me,” Fay went on, taking her by the arm and leading her back into the building. “I’ll show you the ropes, how to navigate this place. I’ll teach you all you need to know. And I’ll make you a star.”
Fay became Laura’s mentor. She taught her new tricks, explained the nuances of routine, and gave her the business tactics needed to gig for a living. Fay kicked Laura’s ass into gear, preparing her not only for life as a professional magician but also as an adult. She championed Laura’s quick wit, but also smoothed out her anger issues. “Fay helped turn me into a woman who could live out in the real world,” Laura said. In some ways, Fay became a surrogate mother. With Fay’s help, Laura performed regularly throughout her twenties, nabbing residencies at some of London’s most popular restaurants and nightclubs. She took much of her act from Fay, who was grooming Laura to take over some of the city’s regular spots. Eventually, Laura was able to charge more than £500 for a single night’s work. “Then I met Daniel Madison,” Laura told me. “And I started seeing magic very differently.”
Laura had been gigging under Fay’s guidance for a few years when she had been chosen to audition for a major television show. She packed her bags and made her way to the production studio. But she was underprepared and flopped. Although she had worked steadily over the past half decade, she became bored with the material she was performing. Much of it came directly from Fay’s repertoire and Laura no longer felt inspired by the gimmick-heavy, old-fashioned routines: ropes and scarves, sponge balls and other props. Her passion for magic had begun to wane.
Dejected by her performance at the audition, she went to a pub down the street with a couple of friends. A few magicians hung around the bar, including a rough-looking guy with black hair and a scruffy beard: Daniel Madison. He started chatting with Laura, but she didn’t know who he was.* She spent so much of her time in Fay’s circle, she didn’t have any insight into the new things going on, and the burgeoning talents behind them, within her industry. To the older magicians Laura had surrounded herself with, the young guys taking the reins were bastardizing magic. But Madison and Laura connected that night and vowed to keep in touch. After Madison left the bar, another magician came up to Laura and said, “Do you know who that was?! That’s Daniel Madison, the creator of all this amazing magic!”* They kept in frequent touch over the succeeding months. Madison began teaching Laura more advanced card tricks and introduced her to the ways in which the industry was changing.
“It was kind of perfect really, the timing of it all,” Laura told me. Madison convinced Laura to alter her routine and focus specifically on card magic. No more props, no more stereotypical patter, no more old-school tricks. He championed a transformation, both in Laura’s brand and skill, and instilled a sense of confidence in Laura as a magician. “I had a great reputation amongst older magicians, not realizing there are these younger magicians that are making far more headway and changing magic. This is what it’s about, and what’s it’s going to be. This is the future of magic,” Laura told me. “It changed everything. I am a completely different person entirely. I love what I do. I got back into loving to practice, loving to read, loving the history again. All of the things I truly wanted to do, I started doing.”
A couple of years later, as they both became more popular, Madison and Laura wanted to collaborate on something big and special, something that would hopefully change the industry, but not necessarily impede on each other’s trajectory: Madison as a creator of magic, Laura as a full-time performer. They wanted to bring all the friends they had met into one space, the ones who seemed to love magic and deception as much as they did, the ones who wanted to forever change the art form.
Thus the52 was born.
Jeremy and I cruised south down the highway, toward his house, and Laura continued to share details about her show. But then, as if she had just remembered something, Laura switched gears.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Ian! We are so excited to have you in the52!”
My heart sank, and I stayed quiet. Jeremy glanced over, clearly stunned.
“Yeah,” I replied, after a beat, trying to reciprocate her excitement. “I’m thrilled.” In reality, I was devastated. Laura had thrown a wrench into my plan.
“When are you going to get your tattoo?” she asked.
“In Vegas,” I said. “I have a little something planned.”
“We are really excited to have you, Ian,” Laura said, before hanging up. “You’re a perfect fit.”
Jeremy and I sat in silence for what felt like an eternity.
“You have something planned?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.
I turned and look at him. “Well, of course,” I said, trying to muster a smile. “I have to make an event out of it, right?”
I hadn’t wanted to just go to a local shop in Brooklyn for my membership ink, and have it revealed on social media. It didn’t seem dramatic enough for what was, to me, a monumental occasion, nor did I want to waste a great opportunity to demonstrate to other members of the52 that I was worthy of the invitation. Moreover, I had wanted to create a moment around my induction—especially since Madison had asked me to keep it a secret. The trip to Las Vegas for Magic Live felt right. I’d be going with Jeremy, Xavior, and, most important, Chris Ramsay. He was the one who had ushered me into this world, and the first to tell me about the52. He should be there when my membership was revealed—he should be the centerpiece of what I had in mind.
