As a professional comedian I have performed in some very strange venues; including but not limited to a magazine office that only contained dogs. My experience entertaining as a professional magician has lead me into waters that can only be described as heroic. While my specialty is working behind the bar as a close-up magician; I have also found myself in Hollywood producer apartments, A Purim ceremony, a gothic nightclub, television studios, sketch comedy theaters, and on one occasion dinner with Hell’s Angels. I owe my eclectic career to an aggressive style of magic performance that some have called acerbic and others have called, “If I give you this money will you please go away?” Recently I found myself in the most unusual magic performance of my career. This is the story of how my magic got flipped turned upside down and I’m to lazy to finish this refference to the Fresh Prince of Bell Air.
It was 11 O’clock on a Saturday morning. I had a rare weekend evening off. I was planning on getting some serious video game time in. I am prepetualy one third of the way through last year’s Zelda. This weekend I was going to save that god damned princess. That was when the phone rang and I was greeted with the phrase, “Our magician is in the hospital, I heard you are good. Are you available tonight?” I’m certain that this was how Criss Angel was discovered.
We negotiated my lavish fee and the end of the booking process was concluded with the phrase, “Oh by the way, we are a lifestyle club. You are fine with that right?” I had no idea what a lifestyle club was, but I wanted the money so I responded, “Oh yeah! Not a problem. I perform in them all the time. See you tonight.” I won’t disclose my exact fee for this gig, but you should know that magic is an expensive skill to learn. If you had any idea how much time, effort, and money went into becoming as skillfull as I am; you would be surprised that magic didn’t die out as an artform long before Christ figured out you could use a two chambered jug to transfigure water into wine. Let’s just say that I’m expensive. My clients expect the best, and I give them the best. This was gonig to be no exception.
For those who are unaware ‘Lifestyle Club’ is code for, ‘establishment that caters to swingers.’ It was a sex club. Not a place where you could buy sex. It was a place where you could have sex. You could have sex with your partner, someone else’s partner, or a group of people and a combination of partners. I found this out about an hour after I agreed to do the gig. I don’t have any problems with this type of venue, and neither should you. Whatever two consenting adults do behind the closed doors of a former Buffalo Wild Wings is their own damn business. It won’t hurt you one bit. You could also change that previous sentence from ‘two consenting adults’ to ‘forty seven consenting adults’ and you would still be correct.
I arrived an hour early so I could figure out what exactly was going to happen. I have never been employed to do magic in a place where people can have sex without the cops being called. I had no idea what to expect. My host greated me with all the joy of a six-year old that had been given it’s very own box of cupcakes. Not only were they excited to have me, they wanted me to have fun. The best way to have fun was to give me a tour of the establishment I was about to ply my trade in. The main area was a nice bar with a rather fancy dance floor. There was an outdoor patio that had a nice vibe to it. There was a buffet of snacks for everyone to partake in. So far this place was pretty swank.
Then they took me to what I like to think of as the “Jackson Pollack Area.” This place had room after room where you could have relations with people in every concievable position and some that I hadn’t even thought of. There was an honest to goodness porn theater, complete with sticky floor! Rooms with one way mirrors. Rooms with beds. Rooms with walls that you could strap people and things to. Rooms with floors that there aren’t adjectives for. Rooms designed by people who had an engineering degree for putting people inside other people. Black lights, red lights, blue lights, white lights, friday night lights. Couches and hot tubs and showers and toys for all the girls and all the boys. It was like Candy Land for people not allergic to latex.
I want to take a moment to emphasize how clean this place was. There was a code. If you used a surface to exchange fluids on, all you had to do was, “Leave The Signal.” This let people know that someone had done exactly what you thought they had in the immediate vicinity. “The Signal” was a sign for the cleaning crew to attend to this room with gusto. There were teams of people roaming around looking for rooms that other people had fucked in, and they sanitized it in no time flat. These sex juice squeegee squads had everything down to a science. It was like watching a Nascar pit crew drilled by the Bang Brothers. They would change the sheets, scrub the surfaces, and have the smell of ball sweat removed from a room faster than you could say, “Do me harder.” This place was amazingly clean. I have been in hospitals that could take lessons from this lifestyle club. I really want to impress upon the reader that even though there were literally scores of people having every type of sex imaginable you could have done open heart surgery on someone with a compromised immune system. It was impressive.
Following the tour I started doing magic for my new audience. I got set up at a makeshift casino table in one end of the bar next to a door that lead to, “The Jackson Pollock Area.” The first hour went like this.
- People entered the club.
- They would check their liquor at the bar. (It’s a BYOB establishment.)
- A small group would politely ask me to see a magic trick.
- The group would tip me very well and then excuse themselves to go explore each other’s bathing suit areas.
- The group would return covered in a thin sheen of sweat and ask to see another card trick.
- Lather, rinse, and repeat.