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Beach Boys (2 page)

BOOK: Beach Boys
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“Ditto and then some.”

I was lying in his arms, the top of my head tucked under his chin. I felt the upward tug of a grin on his face and he chuckled. “Yes, but I don’t just mean you’re good in bed—you have flair.” His hands smoothed my chest. “You’re better than any of those other guys they have on stage.”

“Huh.”

“Seriously,” he said, sitting up and shifting me so he could hold my face between his hands and make me look into his deep green eyes. “I know. I can tell.”

“You’ve never seen me dance or heard me sing —”

“I know because it’s my job to know...I can tell because I’m a mentalist. If I couldn’t read people instantly, my act would be about as exciting as cold oatmeal.”

I didn’t know where he was going with this, but I was listening.

“I work out of Vegas...occasionally I take gigs in New York or L.A. and about six months of the year, I cruise. Different lines, different ships,” he said. “You get to my level and wherever you work, the pay is good and the perks are better.” He tapped his finger playfully against my lower lip, then went on. “I’m working alone now, but I could use an assistant.”

I waited. He probably had fifteen years on me, I guessed he was in his early forties, and I was drawn to the combination of maturity and youth he projected, but I couldn’t see myself as some kind of half-assed valet or prop master—

“You don’t get it,” he said. “You think I want some glorified secretary, but I’m talking about training you and getting you onstage every night and under the spotlights.”

Vague memories of Tony Curtis playing Houdini rose up inside my head.

“Isn’t it time for your star to shine?” he asked. “And personally, I think you’ll look a thousand times better than Janet Leigh in the costume.”

* * * *

I was learning a lot. Maybe more than I’d ever learned in a book or a classroom or even the first time I had sex with a guy and, after years of fantasizing about tons of boys and men, I finally felt my cow town college roommate’s hands on my cock, his lips twitching against mine. I’m trying to say that even if I’m only twentysomething, I realize there is learning out there, knowledge that only comes from experience, and some of that experience is beyond what you can imagine, no matter how savvy you think you are. It’s not like I never wore drag before and I’d be the first one to say I liked the silver sequin gown and I looked good—no, fucking great—in that clinging mermaid’s sheath, but what happened with Ferradini took me to a new place.

And like I said before, everything is a trick.

* * * *

“Ladies and gentlemen, SevenSeas Cruise Line is proud to present the amazing”...the emcee’s voice drops to a whisper, then a hush, even on the mic: “…Fer-rr-r-ra—din-iiiiii...”

Smoke billows onto the stage and, when the clouds disperse, they see him in that elegant custom-tailored tuxedo, his tall body tigered in stripes of blue lights and floating three feet off the stage.

I walk out in the blinding silver dress, my blond wig tipping the curves of my bare shoulders, my left arm held out to the audience, long maroon fingernails glinting. Before I’m a quarter of the way on stage, more lights flare and bulbs scream and a sign as big as a Broadway marquee that says Ferradini and Minerva seems to explode, rising from the stage apron, then hanging mid-air in front of the magician to flash madly for two seconds.

The audience applauds.

Ferradini gently descends and walks upstage towards the audience.

The lights glow the color of hot magma. He turns and points to me.

Now I am standing where he was, three feet off the stage floor.

Applause.

It was pledge, turn, and prestige all in one smooth opening: our hook. From this point on, we’d already bought the audience.

Next Ferradini would do a bit of minor mentalism that called for no more than asking the audience to write down the Q and A type slough while I promenaded and he used what we call a swami trick or nail writer.

Doesn’t matter if Jesus Christ comes down to participate—here’s the kind of astonishing stuff Ferradini throws out: “Think of a number, the name of a country, pick a color, the last four digits of the topmost dollar bill in your wallet.”

I was a distraction, but he didn’t need me for this part of the act: the answers are written on the card or envelope or whatever he uses that appears sealed up, cast in stone or flies down from the ceiling. He’s using a bee-stinger-sized lead pencil or felt tip glued under his thumbnail which is undetectable and even without me, he could write the answer in his pocket or from under his tuxedo lapel or in mid-air. No shit. And any halfway decent mentalist can do this in an instant. Ferradini just liked having the cachet of a bombshell assistant, as if he were fucking Houdini.

Ditto when you come on stage and he asks you to scribble a doodle, any image you want onto a large white poster-board type card you hold up to your chest to work on while he stands thirty feet away. I don’t even have to signal Mr. Magic; he watches your hand move and he guesses and he’s right. You’d be surprised how many people—given a thick black magic marker—draw a dog, a cat, a house, a tree, or a flower.

We move on, I can feel delicious sweat collecting just above my top lip and between my thighs where it won’t show. But it’s not the lights and it’s not the crowd, it’s the thought of fucking him when the act is over that has me licking my mauve lipsticked lips in anticipation.

Blindfold time.

There are a couple of ways to handle this and we vary them, as much to entertain ourselves as to keep the audience and any smartasses who might be in the crowd guessing. One method is the reverse blindfold: you look through it, you see nothing. I crease it and fold it and give it a spin with my tits shaking, and when it’s reversed,
voila
. He can see through the pinprick holes you could not see before it was creased and reversed.

Another variation of this is when I stand on stage, banter passing between me and Ferradini, my ass swaying, and I invite you and you and you with your arms raised high and waving to come up and blindfold him.

Up you stride and whether you realize or not I’m in drag—and let me tell you, even the straights want to cop a feel—what I’m really about is making you think you’re some hot shit like Bruce Willis suddenly up here in the limelight.

So now, to prove just what a bunch of he-men the three of you really are, you conference and do an extra special kiss-my-ass Ferradini job of tying on the blindfold.

Tight as slinged tits, corralled like cock in a jock.

And this one is a real blindfold.

We don’t use “plants.” We don’t know any of you from Adam. And it’s always better if one of you turns out to be a cop or a doctor. Cops can nose out bullshit, and doctors are skeptics. Former Eagle Scouts and Marines are an even bigger bonus.

We might give you guys five yards of black silk or a bag of sterile cotton balls or a page from
The Wall Street Journal
folded and compressed to the size of a quarter so you can pad his eyes before you bury the whole deal under layers of mummy gauze and a roll of duct tape. You win. Right?

Wrong.

The tighter you tie the blindfold, the easier it is for Signor Ferradini. While you’re trying to devise knots that would baffle Confucius, he’s squinching up his eyebrows so there’s just enough slack.

Then we segue into the part of the act when you macho guys (and if you collect the stuff, the audience is one hundred percent more stunned than if I passed the hat) go collect shit from
the rest of the audience: wallets, rings, keys, foil-packeted condoms, handkerchiefs with the initials BJB. You place the tray on his lap while I stand there looking like an all-expense-paid trip to Oahu, and sometimes he and I banter, sometimes he hesitates, but dimmed stagelights or not, in the end he guesses every item down to the last detail, including those initials from your aunt Bobbie Joe Burke’s monogrammed hankie. Ferradini may look like the top of his head has been transformed into a twenty-first century hornet’s nest, but behind the knots, and bandages, he can
see
every goddamned thing on the goddamn gold tray. Of course, he gets it all right.

* * * *

What’s that old song? Damn I hear it enough in the bars on shipboard—oh yeah,
The Pilots
:
It’s magic, you know...never believe it’s not so...

Oh man, you’re thinking, and I hear you),
I don’t want to know this is all tricks and mice. Just bullshit. Smoke and mirrors. Double goddamn motherfucker. Shit...

I didn’t want to know it either.

But like all consummate magic acts, Ferradini saved his best for last...but then, I suppose, so did I.

* * * *

We’re in bed.

Ferradini said, “Things are changing now.”

“Yeah-h-h-h.” And it’s just so fucking great between us. I feel like I climb inside his skin when we’re all over each other. I always know exactly what he wants and I give it, but I clarify and say, “Yeah, I like change.”

“Oh yes and it suits you...like magic,” he says and his right hand is loving, smoothing back the shock of blond hair that always takes a dip and hangs over my forehead.

There’s a mirror directly across from the bed, behind the double glitter of flickering candelabrum flames I see us entwined. Ferradini’s eyes track my stare. “You’ve seen it, too, haven’t you?”

“Seen what?”

“I know you have.”

Then I caught it, or thought I did. I tried to tell myself,
maybe it’s the cognac or the candlelight
. My eyes seemed greener, there’s a faint hint of mustache—like the first tentative line in a charcoal sketch—above my upper lip. And yes, stretched out, I appeared nearly as tall as he did.

“I loved you too much.” He looked at me carefully, then sighed. “It’s always like this, but never so profound.” He sounded sad. “Even the dresses don’t seem to help. I wish they did. But they don’t help at all.”

* * * *

I clearly recall the last moments of the act on the last night. Anyone would. Our pacing was magnificent, a graceful run that dazzled the audience, just like watching dolphins arc through sapphire water and race alongside a cruise ship.

We used the elaborate memorized codes that pass for mental telepathy.

I might say, “Please tell me what the gentleman is holding.” Ferradini would instantly know that meant a fountain pen. If I said, for example, “I’d like you to tell me the next object,” he knew it and would respond, “It’s a key.” The patter is so benign, so innocent-sounding, the audience never tumbles to the fact that we’re conveying codes. You can look all this up if you don’t believe me. After enough practice, I could go through the routine on autopilot.

I already knew that when the ship docked, there would be no Las Vegas or New York for me. A little judicious snooping in his luggage and among his journals let me know that he’d hoped it would be different, but each time he’d brought an assistant to his act and his bed, over time Ferradini’s telepathy…changed that man. But never, I thought, as much as I had changed. Cabin boys—had he tossed them into the sea or, since so many crew members jumped ship at port, had no one bothered to really look for them?

“Glasses.”

“Correct. And now, see if you know what this object is...”

“A jewel...a ring, I believe....”

“And this?”

He kept telling himself if he dressed me as a woman it wouldn’t happen this time. And what scared him more was knowing, that as I began to look more like him, I was usurping his genuine psychic ability, pulling his talents into my own being.

“A book...but it’s not mine, dammit.” The audience laughs.

* * * *

Acts have full circles and at the end of ours we switch places—but more dramatically than during the opening—yet again.

Smoke poured over the stage.

My heart pounded. My head roared.

I don’t think the audience knew it, but when the lights flashed and we took our final bows, it was no illusion.

I was taking his bows, doffing the tall magician’s top hat, the mustache tickling my upper lip. Looking at the audience through heavy-lidded green eyes as bright as jewels.

Ferradini looked small and frail wearing the silver sequins, his narrow heels pressed together while he spread a thin shapely white arm that quivered. He was frightened as a bird.

It was a trick that was no trick, but this time there was no way to turn it back.

Let The Chips Fall

by Brandi Woodlawn

 

When my best friend, Kyle, told me we’d be able to earn enough money to cover our grad school expenses in eight weeks, I didn’t believe him.

“We’re in our prime,” Kyle said. “The men who come here have money. They’ll pay top dollar for two studs like us.”

“Is that where the motto came from?” I pointed to the poolside sign. It said,
Welcome to Atlantis. Take care of the staff and they’ll take care of you.

“Probably,” Kyle said. He looked at his watch. “The poker tournament is almost over. Our guests should be arriving soon.”

My hands were sweaty. Kyle was making me nervous.

BOOK: Beach Boys
11.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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