One of the occupational hazards of presenting illusions and telling stories on stage is that I sometimes people believe them. Most of the time, it's a fan after a show who thinks I have something supernatural in common with the psychic they go to, or a corporate executive who half-jokes about training the sales team. When this happens, I do my best to clarify that I am an illusionist, and that the illusions they have seen are just that: illusions. But every now and then I will get contacted by someone who won't believe that the illusions are illusions, or that I am anything other than a real wizard, and nothing I say will convince them otherwise. Every so often these true believers will ask me to use my powers for their purposes. I always say no. Except once, 5 years ago, in the curious case of Red, a man who contacted me to cast a spell to save his marriage.
It all started one cold, foggy summer morning when I woke up to my phone vibrating on my bedside table. This was a common enough occurrence, as I was in the optimistic habit of setting my alarm for 6:00am, hoping that I would miraculously awaken with the vigor and strength of a 50-year-old triathlete but invariably reacting to the bedside table buzz more with the groggy, weak-eyed confusion of a teenager late to school than any kind of breakfast-making master of the morning. This morning, however, the buzz was not an alarm, but a missed call from a 408 area code.
'Spammer,' I thought, rolling over and falling back to sleep. The image of a room full of off-shore talent calling everyone in California to sell timeshares on the moon drifted dreamily through my head.
An hour or so later, with the sun a bit higher in the sky and the morning fog having receded a bit more from the horizon and also my brain, I checked my phone and saw three more missed calls and a series of text messages from a man named Red. He told me that his wife was leaving him, and wanted me to do "black magic" to prevent that from happening.
We all look for ways to control the uncontrollable. How do I get girls to like me? What can I say in an argument to make things better? How can I convince my boss to give me a raise, or my coworker to stop pushing their priorities onto me? I felt for Red. I had been through breakups before. I remembered that insatiable longing for the old time, for happiness, and the need fight against the hard, unbreakable framework of destiny. I remembered the overwhelming sense that there must be something I could do to fix it all, that I wouldn’t hesitate to shoulder the burden of gods to re-weave the vast assurance of consequence into the good, gray blanket of a new fate beneath which I could sleep soundly, instead of the somnambulant torture of the hard tile of the bathroom floor. I remembered the nutty stuff I did when I thought I was going to lose someone I loved. Was texting a magician to see if he could cast a spell to save his relationship any crazier than any of the stuff I did? Well, yes, it was, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I would save Red. It was an imperative of the heart, and also, it seemed like it would liven up my morning. I hatched a plan.
I told Red that there was something I could do, but I’d need his help. Attraction enchantments were spells that happened in three parts, you see. One on the side of the spell-caster (me), and two on the side of the spell receiver (Red), and three on the side of the enchanted (that would be Kate, his wife). I gave Red a list of instructions over the following days. First he was to write in black ink, ideally with a fountain pen, but ballpoint will work (a pencil will not, because it needs to be permanent) an exhaustive list of every reason why he thinks she wants to leave him. Be honest, I said, otherwise it won’t have any chance of working. He was to do this in secret and make sure she didn’t see the list. It was important he not do this in their bedroom, or in any room in which she had belongings. Best to do it at a cafe or bar. Second, he was to overlay a second piece of paper on top of the first, and write a second list, this time a list of things he had learned over the course of their relationship. How he's grown for the better, and for the worse.
I had him fold these two pieces of paper together into a square and place them underneath a small stone bowl under their bed. Inside the bowl he should place any small artifact of their relationship, and a lock of her hair taken from her hairbrush tied into a knot. It was important that they sleep in the bed together, I told him, without any anger. That part was up to him.
On my end, I told him I would be staying up all night spell casting. So I needed some information. Things he admired about her, things that he admired about himself. The basics, where they’re from, what time they first met. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I learned that Red had met his wife Kate when they were both 18, and after years of ups and downs, they were married. She was a fashion student, from out of town, and with all the action of the big city of San Jose to compete against, Red had to work hard for her love. He told me stories of Kate and him treasure hunting in record stores and arcades and of nights spent in bed together in a small apartment on the other side of the wall of a Chinatown karaoke bar where they fell asleep every night to the deep thrum of friends drinking and screaming sad karaoke ballads into the wee hours of the night. They were the happiest days of his life, he said.
Now, three years after their wedding, they seemed to have lost that loving feeling. She had stopped being intimate with him, and preferred to spend her nights watching TV silently. Red told me that she claimed she was unhappy, but she did not want to talk about their marriage or try to work on it. She had become increasingly introverted, and any request to have a conversation would turn into a shouting match. He thought that she was having an affair, or—truth was, he had no idea. Things had changed. She had changed, but so had he. They fought a lot over the smallest things, and infractions such as a dish in the sink would cascade into a competition of relationship grievances. I learned all this through poorly spelt text messages as I laid in bed that morning.
But it was time I got out of bed, so I said I would text him tomorrow, there was another piece of the spell he needed to do.
The next day, I asked how it went. He said he did what I asked and it seemed to be working. The last step, I told him, was to unfold the two lists from underneath the bowl, and overlay a third piece of paper atop the first and second. On this third paper he was to write a letter to Kate honestly accepting her decision to leave him, if she decides to, at the same time as fully embracing his transgressions within their relationship, and forgiving her for his. I said that for the spell to work, he needed to really feel those feelings of compassion both for her and for him. After doing this, he needed to have her read the letter, and then report back how she received it. I said that how it went would determine what kind of spell I would cast the following night.
I don’t know if Red ever did that, because the truth is I never heard from him again, and, assuming he had figured out my extremely transparent and pretty-messed-up-when-you-think-about-it ploy to interject myself into his breakup, I didn’t press the issue.
We've all tried to fight whatever pull there is that drags us into the world of lack and longing, that feeling that there is some way of reaching out and pulling someone back once they slipped through the fingers. That feeling that makes you believe that there is some way of erasing the blackboard, and rewriting the distance between two people, no matter how far apart their points are in space. But the truth is, man is not a canvas upon which every experience leaves no mark; there is no way to erase a footprint once made, nor the space between two people who are afraid to touch. We are all wandering clouds at the mercy of every wind, of every gathering of air, of every combination of temperature and pressure; and while we are not merely the captives and helpless victims of our heredity; we are, in very large part, creatures of our own making.
And there are some things that we just cannot control.
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