Don't Marry a Magician
by Vaughan
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Yes, that is my advice to any girl thinking of it; don't.
"Why am I so anti marrying anyone with magical inclinations?" you ask.
The simple explanation is that I did it and count it the single greatest mistake of my life.
You are not convinced; I can tell. So, if you have the time I shall give you the long explanation.
Roger and me first met at high-school. As is the way of these things, at first we ignored each other for a year or so. He was cute but he did not match up to the popular boys or have the power that the class bully had. Gradually the more popular girls paired off with the more popular boys until I was the most popular unspoken for girl. The choice of who, if anyone, to allow to become my boyfriend was fairly straight foreword. I was cerebral without being a computer nerdette, so I did not want to hook up with a computer geek or any of the bully's hangers-on. That left two or three guys to choose from and of these I chose Roger. I did consider the possibility of not finding a guy, but peer-pressure insisted I have someone to take me to the end of term dance, other than my brother. To cut a long and rather tedious story short, I found I actually liked him, once I had managed to get him to suggest that we go steady.
We got on very well. After about four months he introduced me to his hobby; Magic tricks. This suited me quite well as my mind and intellect liked the small tricks that he showed me, because I treated them as a challenge to explain how they were done and on a few occasions I would do the trick for Roger when I had worked them out. I started to read books on card tricks and the like, mainly to learn the techniques Roger was using and so avoid being caught out and, less importantly to find a trick he did not already know and amaze him with it.
Throughout this period Roger had been earning some extra, on top of the allowance his parents gave him, by performing at parties and functions as a magician, using the singularly unimaginative name "Rogerini". I told him that to me it sounded false and amateur, but he said it sounded better than Roger Smith.
After about a year of knowing him well, I finally found a trick that he did not know. I shall not describe it as I feel sure you are not really interested, but what I achieved was to become more than just a willing audience to him, but a fully fledged magicienne in his eyes. After a week of repeating the trick for him, which all the magic books advise against because the surprise is gone and the onlooker can begin to work out what is really happening, he gave up. When I explained it to him he did not seem to fully understand the trick of it and to this day has never managed to do it right. It took him a few more weeks before he asked me if I would like to become his assistant and get some extra money for myself. By this time I was beginning to blossom, although I was not the prettiest girl at school.
It took what seemed like an age, I suppose it was only a month or so, to work out what we were supposed to do to fit me and my trick into his act. He also bought me a dress for the act; it was a maroon satin off-the-shoulder dress that stopped just below my knees. The first time I wore it for the act I felt very exposed, but was soon quite used to assisting Roger wearing it. We also changed the name of the act to "Roger and Mimi". Mimi is not my real name but everyone calls me that since a substitute teacher with a stammer got stuck on it. It was not long before Roger suggested that we buy or build a trick of the grand illusion type; we decided on a head chopper, I am sure you must have seen that one, where the assistant puts her neck in a set of stocks and the magician passes a blade in a frame through doing her no harm. His father also had a cabinet made for him from which Roger would produce me. Over the time until college, we also added sawing me in half and the mismade girl to the act, which meant that the act commanded more money and that I had to become fitter and more flexible.
While we went to college we kept in touch and during breaks we would do the act when we could get bookings, which Roger's father organized. I admit that while I was at college I was tempted to drop Roger, but for the fact that none of the boys I might have been interested in seemed even remotely interested in me.
After graduation both Roger and me got well-paid jobs in the same big city and it seemed the obvious thing to find accommodation together as we were the only people in the city we know. Of course our social lives revolved round our offices and it was not long before we did the act for his office party and then mine and this lead to a chain of engagements. At the end of one such gig Roger to my surprise produced a ring from a silk and asked me if I would marry him. In front of that audience, who were all in favour, I could not say no, but I berated him later for springing it on me in public like that. The following day he asked me if I still wanted to marry him; I still said Yes.
Married life, at the start, seemed just like life had been before except that we slept together and his ex-bedroom became our den of magic. We had minor disagreements, but not about important stuff. This kind of thing gives you the chance to make up after and thus keep the marriage fresh.
Two years later, Roger got sent to India for nine months. This strained the relationship because I felt abandoned, except for the few days every month that he could get off to come back and see me. I did consider giving up my job to go with him, but he, quite rightly, pointed out that I would not get a job in India and to give up my job here was foolish.
When Roger returned from India he seemed changed somehow, but I could not put my finger on it. He soon started talking about auditioning for a talent show run by the local TV station and to that end had me practicing climbing ropes, for no reason I could see at the time. For the audition we did a few segments of our act, but he promised the producers something very special if we were chosen. We were chosen. I pointed out that there was nothing really special in our act; all he said was that he had picked up something India that would blow everyone's minds, including mine.
When it came to the shooting for the talent show, we were give a bare stage and ten minutes in front of the television cameras and an audience. Roger seemed to have decided on an theme for this performance. He was done up in the full swami or fakir's outfit including the turban. He had me dressed in garishly coloured baggy silk pantaloons and a baggy silk blouse in similarly bright colors with tight cuffs just below my elbows. We did a smallish trick each before Roger announce his final illusion would be the traditional Indian rope trick, which he explained he had learnt while in India. I was dumbfounded because I did not know how this effect went, let alone how to do it. I quickly whispered that I did not know this trick and he whispered back that I was to just do as I was told and everything would be fine. This was going to be the first illusion I had been involved in for many years where I did not know what was going to happen and it was the closest I have ever come to stage-fright; I nearly froze on the spot.
While Roger spoke of the ancient tradition of the Indian rope trick and how rumor
of it came to the west, where prizes were offered for the first occidental magician to perform the illusion as described in the myth; I was bringing on stage props I had never seen or handled before and placed them about the stage as instructed by Roger using our private language of hand signals. These props seemed to be a medium sized brass urn of the kind used in India to carry water; a twelve foot length of thick Indian rope, the kind that is quite smooth on the outside; a largish woven basket, which was empty and I showed the audience this fact; and finally a scimitar on a stand, I could tell just by looking at it that it was very sharp, which did not help my mental state at all. I had never performed with anything sharper than a wooden knitting needle, so the presence of this potentially dangerous weapon unsettled me further. It was evident from the direction of the story that Roger was spinning that this effect would be described as we were performing it, which meant I was going to get no notice of what Roger intended to do other than perhaps a hand signal.
Roger first described how he had met a fakir and his boy on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere and how the fakir had offer to demonstrate the world famous effect. The fakir had shown Roger a woven basket that contained nothing; Roger showed the basket and its emptiness to the audience and the cameras. Then the water urn had been brought forward; it was round and shiny with a bulbous bottom and a narrow neck. Roger then described the Indian rope and told how the fakir had put one end into the neck of the brass jar and thrown the other end into the air where it had stayed; Roger suited the action to the description and inserted one end of the rope into the jar and threw the other end into the air, and it promptly fell back the stage floor. It did the same the second time, but the third time it stood up straight almost like a twelve foot pole in a jar than a length of rope. As might be expected the applause followed.
He told how the fakir had ordered his boy to climb the rope to see what was holding it up; I was quite obviously going to take the role of the fakir's boy in this little drama, but I paused to ask if he was sure it was safe and would not topple. He said it was safe as houses; that did not exactly instill the confidence I needed but I climbed. Roger told how the boy had climbed the rope and vanished when he reached the top. When I reached the top I did not feel any different, but the audience burst into awed applause. I wondered why; when I got to she the tape of this performance I saw that I had indeed seemed to vanish.
Roger gave me a hand signal that told me to step to the left, which made no sense as there was nowhere to step to except thin air. We may have a levitation in the act but standing on thin air was no something I believed in. He was now telling how the fakir had called on the boy to come down and made the appropriate gestures, along with the step left hand signal. Roger continued to describe how the fakir had become increasingly angry until he had put his scimitar between his teeth and climbed after the boy. He grabbed the scimitar from its stand and gripped it between his teeth, then started to climb the rope after me. There was certainly not enough room at the top of the rope for both of us, so taking my courage in hand I stepped left and to my surprise floated there unsupported; it was the vertiginous feeling of standing on a see-through floor without the re-assurance of being able to feel anything underfoot.
When he reached the top he told how the fakir, having not found the boy, had swung his sword about in a blind rage. While no-one from the audience seemed to be able to see me, I know that Roger could, because he made eye contact and smiling wanly at me as if to say, "you won't like this, but you'll thank me afterwards". Before I could object he swung the curved sword at me. For a moment I could not believe it was happening, then I felt the blade bite into my leg near the top of my right thigh. There was an explosion of pain in my leg and I looked down to see if he had really chopped into my leg. I was shocked to discover that he had not only cut my leg, but cut it off and as I watched it fell from me to the floor eight feet below. My next surprise was to feel the impact on my toes and then knee as my leg hit the stage. Quite naturally I screamed, but at least one audience member beat me to it. Roger was already by this time into his second stroke, which severed my left thigh. I felt curiously detached about what was happening to me, even though the pain was the worst I had even felt. As I watched my second leg descend, I noticed that leg it was going to join was moving a little, so I deliberately flexed my knee and the knee of the leg on the floor bent, causing the leg to roll over. My curiosity about this was killed in a moment, when I felt the stabbing pain as the bony knob of my ankle struck the hard floor and the weight distribution of my leg twisted my ankle. Roger was already into his third swing; I put out me hand to stop him and he cut off my entire arm and let it fall to join my legs. Then he slashed at my other arm and that fell. This arm landed on top of one of my legs and through the pain I could feel the contact between my inner thigh and the crock of my elbow through the two layers of silk fabric. By this time the pain centers of my brain had overloaded and given up telling the rest of my brain that it hurt, so I was able to wonder what the hell Roger thought he was doing and also how I could feel sensations in my severed limbs. I did not get any time for this introspection because he took a final swing directed at my neck. As the sword passed through my neck I expected my head to go flying, as one might under normal (is that the right word?) circumstances, but my head stayed where it was and I felt a rush of air passed my limbless torso followed moments later by the impact as my body landed among my limbs. I half expected Roger to make another pass with the scimitar and send my head falling to join the rest of my body parts, instead he threw the sword and it landed point-first in my belly and shuddered there. He then reached up and plucked my head from the air and tucked it under his arm and began to descend.
As he stepped off the rope, it sagged and fell. Roger flicked the rope out of the brass urn and balanced my head on its slightly flared neck.
Roger went back to describing the mayhem that the fakir had wrought on his boy, while coiling the rope and placing it in the basket. He then told of the argument he had had with the fakir about murdering the boy and leaving his dismembered body for the scavengers, so the fakir had collected the boy's limbs and body and dumped them in his basket. Roger placed my limbs and then my torso in the basket and finally placed my head in the basket on top of my jumbled parts. I heard Roger describe the fakir covering the basket with his cloak and the light I could see was blocked out when Roger did the same. When the light came back a felt a jump in my consciousness, sort of like a bad edit on TV, I found myself curled up inside the basket on top of the coiled rope as if we had been performing the Hindu sword basket illusion and I ached all over. Roger's hand reached into the basket and took my hand. I uncoiled from inside the basket in the way we had worked out and tried to be graceful, but the moment I put any weight on my left foot I felt the pain of my twisted ankle. I staggered out of the basket and we bowed to the audience and I limped off stage.
When I got to the dressing room I noticed the vivid red stains on the costume where the cuts had been and fainted. I came to in Roger's arms still aching until he kissed me and the aches vanished, except the pain in my ankle. We had a blazing row right there and if could have left him there and then and been guaranteed never to see him again I would have. We came third in the talent show. Roger was livid and blamed it on me.
Things on the magic front became more extreme and we became more distant. I suppose I may have been stubborn, because I was not going to give him the pleasure of having me walk out and he seemed more involved in the magic than in real life, almost as if he did not notice what was happening to out relationship.
If I have time later, I'll describe more of the despicable acts he performed on me, but that, in a nut shell, is why, if I discover that someone is thinking of marrying a magician, I will advise anyone against it.
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