Of course, I also had all the qualifications for getting stuck in this stage. I was a fat, four-eyed kid with a speech impediment. And magic served the purpose of helping me function a little bit in the world. Not a lot, mind you. (Laughs.) Maybe it just kind of made my socially awkward childhood more interesting. In any case, I never expected that it would be my profession.

After college, I went straight into business and, for a long time, magic was just a hobby. It kind of came and went in my life. I spent a decade in the pet and aquarium industry and then I was a partner in a private telephone systems company in Manhattan for a few years. But when I was about twenty-nine, I got re-involved with my hobby in a pretty serious way. I began to work with some professional magicians I knew as a technical advisor, then as a script writer, and I began to see that it wasn't easy, but you could sort of make a living at this.

So I started to think about doing a career change. The problem was, the way I was raised, it was encouraged to be involved in the arts and such things, but nobody thought about being an artist for a living. I mean, that was a dumb idea. But I thought, you know, I had better try this now because otherwise I'm always going to wonder what if? I'm sure you've heard that line before, but it affected me, and I sold my interest in the telephone company.

Quite frankly, I never could have changed careers had I not had the support of my then-wife. She was a professional and she said, "Why don't you take a year off and do what you have to do and I'll support you?" So thanks to her, when I first made the change I didn't go right out and start performing. I actually took a year off and kind of locked myself in a room and practiced. I wanted to do what's called "close-up magic," which is intimate magic at close quarters for small audiences--so I just worked at that and developed a routine.

When that year ended, I went to bartending school. And then I got a succession of bartender jobs around Manhattan until I found a place where I could tend bar and also, when it was slow and between pouring drinks, I could do a little magic for the customers. You can't learn performance in your head, and that was a really good way to learn. It also like doubled my tip cup, you know?

Anyway, I did magic in bars for a couple of years. I also started hustling some private gigs--private parties and corporate events--especially around the holiday season. Then, in 1985, I kind of got a break. There was this all-magic specialty club in Chevy Chase, Maryland--the suburb of Washington, D.C--and they wanted a feature performer to work at the bar five nights a week. I went down there and auditioned. And to make a long story short, I got the job and my wife and I moved to D.C.

By getting that job, I exceeded all the goals I had set for myself in this field. I mean, I had already made a very decent living in other businesses, and I knew becoming a magician wasn't so much about commercial rewards, I just wanted to enjoy my work. And so I certainly didn't set out to gain any recognition around the magic community, or any visibility, or prestige, or anything like that. But when I got that job, all of that happened. It was kind of a plum of a position. It also gave me the opportunity to perform non-stop for five nights a week for a year, and I got pretty good.

But then my wife of ten years left me. And I was sort of stranded in this foreign land called Maryland. (Laughs.) I had become a good performer, but that was it. I'm from Brooklyn. I had no family or friends or anything down there--just a job. I stuck it out for a few more years, while I struggled to rebuild my life and continued to develop my career. Then I moved back to New York City. That was the beginning of 1992. I've been here ever since.

These days, I do many things related to magic to make my living. I've been a consultant to Penn and Teller and to a PBS documentary that I'm featured in called The Art of Magic, and I've done a good bit of writing and consulting on films and books and so forth, and I give private lessons occasionally to select students. But first and foremost, I am still a performing magician. I work just about every possible venue--from cruise ships to comedy clubs to trade shows to private parties to bars. Most of the jobs are for corporate clients, but starting next Saturday, I am going back for a return engagement of five weeks at Caesar's Magical Empire, which is a magic-themed feature attraction at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

I don't use an assistant--it's just me. Even when I'm in a big place like Vegas, I do close-up, intimate magic. Sleight of hand with ordinary objects. Cards and coins. I am an intimate, interactive performer. My hair is not blown dry. I do not use boxes. I do not do unnatural acts with women in skimpy outfits. (Laughs.) I do not play with endangered species, okay? I am a sophisticated man of the world.

A lot of people like the stage stuff--the woman in the skimpy outfit and the box, the pageantry of it. And that's perfectly fine. You want to go see Siegfried and Roy? Great. Mr. and Mrs. America out for something that passes for a big splashy night at the theater? I have no real problem with that. But I find it kind of boring. It's like, very often, after I do a show, someone from my audience comes up to me and says, you know, "It's okay to watch that big stuff, but you kind of get the feeling that it's got a lot to do with the box." (Laughs.) And I think there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, to an intelligent person, the boxes and smoke and all that are just obvious signs of trickery and fakeness. It's alienating and dull.

I think it's much more interesting when, at very close quarters, you take out an ordinary object, or you borrow an object from someone, and you proceed to violate the laws of nature. I mean, for sophisticated inhabitants of the planet earth in fin de siecle America, it's an interesting thing to think that you know all about how the universe works and then watch some guy screw it over in front of you. At least, that's what I want from a magic show.

In retrospect, I think that one of the big reasons that I have come to do this is that I'm very much a solo operator. I like to do my own thing, my own way, by myself. I have some friends who are actors, and that collaborative thing they go through would make me insane. When I walk out on stage it's me, baby. I am my own producer, director, promotor, writer, technical person. I'm it. And the trick works or it don't work. And if the trick don't work it feels like, you know, you've been shot in the heart by a sniper. It's like dying with a comedy act, but even worse.

With a comedy act, you can do percentages. You can go out there and ten percent of your routine can kind of suck, and it doesn't matter. With magic, you make one mistake, that's it. You suck. It doesn't matter if all the other tricks work. You do one bad one and you've blown the whole mood for the audience. You've completely demolished their ability to suspend their disbelief. That's the most terrifying about performing, but it's also very exciting, very energizing. I get a big rush from my shows.

Unfortunately, I rarely get to perform for the interested public, because there aren't any major venues for close-up magic in New York right now, and in the corporate setting where I do most of my work, the audiences don't know that they're about to see me. I mean they show up for a trade show and I'm there--but they came for the trade show, not the magician. You can really make a good buck at these shows, but I would never want to specialize in them exclusively, because it's a very constraining form. You're tied to mixing this corporate message in with your act and you can't talk any shit or be loose. And you're doing a fifteen minute routine eighteen times a day, so your voice disappears. It's kind of like working in an upscale side show. Still, corporate work is the best money I make.

I'm forty-five years old, and everybody I know who's my age who's not in show business is refinancing their second home and I'm trying to keep my little one bedroom apartment near Times Square. It would be nice if someday I got to the point where I could plan more than a few months ahead in my life, or maybe even got a retirement plan. But I'm not particularly after fame and fortune. I would love to be able to make a more stable living, but you know, ideally, I'd probably be just as happy if I could perform more for the public on a regular basis. That's one of the reasons I'm so excited to go back to Vegas--I'll have a chance to do magic for people who bought a ticket to see a magician.

In the end, I'm doing what I want to do, and if it's not so steady it's because, you know, that's the price I pay for taking an alternate path. The path less traveled, you know? I realize that sounds kind of ridiculous, and I think it's bullshit to say, oh, the job of an artist, the function it serves to society, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I have no illusions about that. But I think it matters whether your job is important to you. And this job is important to me. Whereas previous jobs were sort of ways to pay the rent for the rest of my life, and accounts for the rest of my life, they never really mattered to me that much. But this matters to me, and that's what counts.

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TO ARCHIVE