Pick a card, any card. Don’t worry, you can trust me. It’s just a magic trick, what’s the worst that can happen, right? Let’s see what you have there…
The Jack of Diamonds
A magic shop in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. A room with a giant wooden sarcophagus, filled with fuzzy VHS tapes of the old magicians. The walls are covered in hand buzzers and whoopie cushions and colorful pocket tricks, the kind that you used to see advertised in old comic books. A young magician in a black cap and a pony tail behind the counter: a college kid with a deck of cards and a dream. He’s me, just before the smart phone era.
Also in the shop is the magician’s buddy Mike, hanging out. Mike, an amateur magician and former park ranger, who moved from the Midwest, and slowly adjusting to life in the City. The two are talking shop as Vlad cuts, shuffles and flourishes the cards in his hands.
And into this chamber of secrets – hidden in a back corner of the basement of a huge costume shop – a new customer walks with his young son. Explorers searching for magic. Instead, they find a pony-tailed magician in an oversized black t-shirt, who doesn’t look up from his cards to greet them. He sees them in his periphery, and doesn’t wanna do tricks for the kid. He keeps chatting with Mike as the two awkward ghosts stand with fading smiles.
Man and boy walk out deflated, and an excited co-worker shoots in behind them. Big smile on his face, co-worker asks “how was he? I really hyped you up. He was excited to show his son some magic.”
Magician finally looks up from his cards. “How was who?”
The Co-worker stops smiling: “John Stewart! How was John Stewart? Did he like the magic?” That’s when the magician realizes that a man, his son and a big break just walked out the door.
But this isn’t the story of being a jerk to a celebrity.
This is a story of the butterfly effect, and how one moment put many surprising ripples into my life.
The King of Clubs
Let’s rewind the VCR a few years.
The butterfly first flapped magic into my universe when I saw David Copperfield on TV. This is the era of Duck Hunt and candy cigarettes.
An old CRT TV. The kind you played Nintendo on. Instead the TV is tuned into David Copperfield’s annual magic hour. I’m six years old, sitting with my grandpa, holding a Bazooka Joe comic strip, glued to the screen as a haunted house comes to life. As ghosts fly around the screen and audience members disappear from the stage, I realize that this is special. It’s even cooler than Duck Hunt, planting a seed that will change my life.
Fast forward. Past my first magic set, past David Blaine’s emergence as the street shaman and new face of wonder. I’m now a Freshman in high school. At this point magic is a distant, childhood note. We’re now in the days of AOL dial-up, just after the world lost The Wiz to Best Buy.
His name is Stanley, and he was the drummer in my rock band. And I was gonna be a famous guitar lead, as soon as I learned how to play the guitar. But for now I had a power chord and a dream, a dream for rock stardom and a beautiful girlfriend.
But the dream was jarred when the drummer showed me a card trick.
It was of the pick a card variety. The card I picked was lost then found on the top of a snare drum. And on the top of that snare drum the butterfly flapped her wings again.
I wasn’t just impressed by the trick, I wanted that. The ability to create wonder. It felt powerful and I became obsessed. Most importantly, a shy high school kid found the key to getting his first girlfriend. Magic was irresistible, right?
Shockingly, a girlfriend wasn’t in the cards. But a few dozen books and magic tapes later, I got my first job as a magician. Dressed as a Ninja in a Japanese-themed restaurant, I would walk from table to table doing card and coin tricks. The restaurant was built to look like a medieval Ninja lair, with scrolls for menu’s and Ninja swords on the walls. It was a perfect first job: being well paid to eat free Japanese food, dress like a Ninja and show magic tricks. It didn’t matter how ridiculous I looked, I had a dream job and was untouchable. Until I was fired.
I was making more money than a college Freshman knew what to do with. Life felt easy, hanging in the restaurant scene, making big bucks and going out with the crazy co-workers after. I became reckless, started doing stupid things like sword fighting with the wall decor. Eventually a manager saw my katana battles and an hour later I was packing the spare decks our of my locker. A rug was pulled out from under me.
The Wild Card
I wasn’t the only magician on staff. Cardone, the other house magician and my mentor, felt bad and referred me for a job opening in a magic shop he used to manage. A shop hidden in the back corner of a costume store in Greenwich Village. The same shop where I would be rude to John Stewart. Where I would be friendly with Mike, the Former forest ranger and amateur magician, the unexpected hero of the story.
Just after the housing bubble burst, and put ripples into all of our lives, I quit the shop and went to grad school. Losing touch with most of my magic friends, it was time to get a real job in the real world. The problem was, there just weren’t many jobs in the Great Recession.
A year passes, then two. Laptops now have wifi, but still weigh a ton. Heavy computer in bag, I’m running late to class. In true New York fashion, my train line is cancelled and I’m playing metro-Frogger, hopping between lines, winging an alternate route to my college.
Stuck on a packed platform with fellow Froggers, a surprise comes when my name is suddenly called out from the biomass of sweaty city-folk.
Now, no self-respecting New Yorker calls out to someone they know in a subway sweatbox. But this wasn’t a self-respecting New Yorker. This was a former forest ranger and amateur magician.
This was the first time I had seen Mike in a few years. He looked happy, more settled. He just got a job as a manager for a security company. He wasn’t managing the forests, but he was taming the wild world of luxury loss prevention.
Sweaty and too close for comfort, we awkwardly caught up. I told him about my magic retirement, that I was finishing grad school soon and unsure about my future. He said that he didn’t have much, but if I ever needed a job, he could promise me 15 bucks an hour as a security guard.
Coming out of grad school I was expecting six figures, but the butterfly had other plans. Six months later I was wearing a polyester black suit, matching black tie, and little copper star on my lapel. I was grateful for the 15 bucks an hour in that world.
Watch out criminals, there’s a new security guard on the beat.
The Queen of Hearts
The beat was the 44th floor of a large sloped high rise. A building housing some of the biggest financial companies on earth – the types of places that breed conspiracies about big bankers and fat cat financiers. It was also the home to the French house of luxury, the double-C that gave us quilted clutches, tweed jackets and numbered parfums.
And the house of luxury now contracted a new ronin, with his polyester suit and fresh graduate degree. A former magician with a badge and a dream.
We’re now in the era of Social Networking and online dating. I’m not having much luck with either. There was no way that I’d make any friends or find romance as the night guard, right? Not with my oversized suit, in the house of high fashion.
Remember this: don’t doubt the butterfly.
There’s a girl named Stephanie, and she’s on her own timeline of causes and effects. Her own journey of unexpected surprises. Perhaps the most unexpected surprise was starting a new job at a corporate office in a big sloped building, where her co-workers dressed like vogue models and carried clutches worth more than cars. Where a chatty security guard held the door for her as she walked out after her first day of work. And for many nights after.
A security guard who was once a magician. Who became a magician because he watched David Copperfield with his grandpa, then saw a trick on a snare drum. Who got fired from a restaurant and ended up behind the counter at a magic shop. Then years later ran into a friendly customer on a rerouted train line. The former forest ranger that would become the boss of a former magician. A boss that put him into a fancy office where he held the door for a young woman on her first day of work.
A woman that would eventually ask him out.
Seven years later he’d ask her to marry him.
Maybe magic did help him get a girlfriend after all.
Oh, and the disappearing spoon? That will make sense to you in a few weeks, your own little butterfly. “Your welcome,” she says.
PS – Here’s an audio profile I did on Cardone, 15 years after he helped me get that costume gig.
PPS – While writing this post, I found an old clip from my life in the magic shop:
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