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Identity

For My Next Trick: The Magician Who Fixed My Cocaine Habit

A v-necked party monster learns some life lessons from a coke dealer, Britney Spears, and a closeted Vegas magician.
Illustration by Maritza Lugo

"Fuck Britney Spears," Honey* lilted. Britney was a bitch. Britney was worthless. Britney owed her cash. Britney stole money from her fucking purse. "Honey" had a lot of feelings about Britney. She articulated these feelings while cutting rails of cocaine on her kitchen table.

This was January 2007, New York City. Honey was a drug dealer, deeply concerned with her personal mythology. Her stories fit neatly into the timeline of Britney's very public meltdown, a timeline that would, months-later, culminate with Britney's notorious head shaving incident, when the former Mouseketeer attempted to erase her identity with a cheap pair of clippers. To hear Honey tell it, she was an active and proud player in the decimation of Britney's sanity. This detail was a crucial facet of Honey's own character; she was not to be fucked with, she who had so expertly fucked with our fallen pop deity. Her alleged relationship with Britney was a metaphor, a testament to her vampiric appetite for the lost and formless.

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New York party life by May S. Young via Flickr

This made me Honey's ideal customer. I had just moved to New York City from Cincinnati and, like many others fresh-off-the-bus, was in search of an identity. As a recent graduate from one of the top theater conservatories in the country, I expected my acting career to take off in a DiCaprio-shaped skyrocket upon my graduation. My outsized sense of collegiate entitlement was met with an indifferent yawn by New York City, and suddenly I became lost in the very town I was supposed to dominate.

I borrowed a sense of identity from the gay party scene in Midtown Manhattan, and bench pressed my increasingly muscled way toward some semblance of personality. But tequila shots and tank tops do not a life make, and when the party got boring I found myself struggling to find the exit sign. Often on my search for escape, I found Honey instead, ready with an eight ball and a promise of a better night.

I was not an addict—that would imply that my life was organized around a singular purpose. I was just a total zero, duped by my dream city. I had no trust fund to finance my goals and was forced to take a job as a waiter, a gig that ensured my status as bottom feeder in the merciless ecosystem of New York. I auditioned relentlessly and unsuccessfully, wading through room after room of similarly muscled actors all praying for the dubious honor of singing in the chorus of Mamma Mia or How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Musical! Despite the constant grind, I couldn't catch a break. Finding hope seemed as likely as discovering a leprechaun with a ten-inch dick.

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That year, I teetered on the brink of terminal disillusionment. But before bitterness could fully calcify my sense of wonder, I received an unexpected and much-needed dose of enchantment, administered by a rather on-the-nose source: Blake Valentine, The Singing Magician.

* * *

My alias was "Shiloh."

I'd been assigned my false name on the first day of the job. All the waiters had them, it was an unofficial stipulation of the management. The restaurant was a sort of Michelin Star Hooters for gay men, where patrons could consume thirty-eight dollar halibut while sexually harassing muscled servers. Diners always marveled at the elegant, Streisand-white interior; it was all vaulted ceilings, fresh orchids, and beige linens. But the servers saw it for the gay prison that it truly was, and the fantasy pseudonyms only enhanced the brothel-like aura of this Hell's Kitchen eatery. "Shiloh" was bestowed upon me due to my resemblance to the then-recently born Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.

The owner was a homosexual tyrant (and fellow client of Honey's), whose demeanor vacillated between lecherously boozed-up and furiously coked-out. He too had a pseudonym, self-assigned: "Mommy."

If Mommy was happy, he'd tweak your nipples. If Mommy was angry, he'd scream about mislaid salad forks. Mommy had a habit of parading "his" waiters by tables of people he wished to impress.

'Shiloh' soon became a character I played. Shiloh liked a slap on the ass from a stranger, and was happy to provide a little table-side fantasy for a two hundred dollar tip.

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"Shiloh just started working here," Mommy would say to tables of fashion executives or reality TV stars or porn magnates, "feel free to break him in."

"Shiloh" soon became a character I played. Shiloh liked a slap on the ass from a stranger, and was happy to provide a little table-side fantasy for a two hundred dollar tip. Shiloh was initially limited to the walls of the restaurant, but soon began appearing at the gay clubs in Hell's Kitchen. Shiloh was not alone on the dance floor—all the waiters partied together, bringing their aliases along for the ride. There was a transitory urgency to life in the restaurant—everyone was on their way to somewhere else, no one wanted to get stuck. Copious booze, Honey's coke, fake names: they helped us forget who and where we were. "Waiting" was an apt description of our lost boy antics that year: we were all waiting for life, adulthood and identity to cohere.

There were rare instances when I'd introduce myself to a table using my real name, when I felt I could trust diners with more than a disingenuous wink. Blake was one such diner. He appeared on a slow afternoon, and asked for a table for one.

"Hi, I'm Jonathan," I said.

"Blake Valentine."

The manner in which he said his name, implied that I should know it. I didn't. All I knew was that Blake was visiting from Vegas and Jesus had personally supervised the forging of his cheekbones. He was surprisingly short, but where others of similarly petite stature could be accused of possessing a Napoleon complex, Blake's manic and seductive disposition was closer to that of Tom Cruise. As the meal progressed, so did our flirtation.

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"Come out with me tonight," he said over dessert.

"I have plans," I said, omitting the fact that these plans included a coke-fueled BDSM fourgy.

We made a promise to grab dinner that week. I would've canceled the sex party, if I'd known

what was good for me. But in those days, I rarely did.

* * *

Two days later, we had our date. Blake had miraculously secured a reservation at a chic and impossible-to-get-into restaurant in downtown Manhattan, answering the oft-posed question of whom one had to fuck to get a table.

"So…You're a magician?" I asked, divulging the results of my pre-date Google stalk.

"Illusionist," Blake corrected me, with a perfect smile.

It seemed like semantics to me, but to Blake it was the difference between a shitty birthday party and a multimillion dollar Vegas residency.

"My one request, is that you tell no one about this," Blake said, squeezing my knee beneath our table.

Blake Valentine, as it turned out, was Siegfried & Roy's star pet, second in importance only to their white tiger. The German duo had invested millions in Blake's Vegas spectacular, and wanted to ensure that they were not mauled anew by their latest show animal. This meant many things for Blake, the most important of which was the unspoken agreement that Magic's Next Big Thing would not, under any circumstances, publicly reveal his homosexuality.

"There's no point in letting insignificant personal details stop me from achieving my dream."

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Blake's sparkle-toothed charm allowed one to believe that he was living as truthfully as possible, despite willfully obfuscating his sexuality. Apparently, this decision was motivated by an industry-wide prejudice: Vegas audiences did not want to see a fairy waving a magic wand, they wanted a virile heterosexual who could fuck the woman he sawed in half. The fact that Blake sung show tunes during his act seemed like an odd loophole; if performing ballads from Cats during your magic show isn't an admission of gayness, I don't know what is.

"What do you do?" Blake asked later.

"Well…I--I'm a waiter?"

"No, but what do you really do?"

"Well, I—I'm an actor but…" I paused slightly. Blake's infectious ambition gave me the courage to voice a developing uncertainty: "But I'm not sure if that's what I really want."

"Well then what do you want?"

It was a good question, one we discussed at length over dinner. It soon became clear that there was a vicarious enjoyment he derived from interrogating someone so young, someone with potential to be anyone, someone who was not trapped in a professional lie of his own making. I could drop the performance of "Shiloh" Blake was far more interested in Jonathan. As the meal came to a close, we made plans to head back to my date's hotel. And though he never pulled a rabbit out of my ass, Blake fucked like magic all the same.

I began seeing my illusionist during his regular visits to New York. Blake understood me in a way that few people did; our encounters brought much needed injections of ambition and hope. But relying on the affections of others to buttress one's own identity is a shoddy method of construction, and in the extended bouts of separation between our meetings, I felt increasingly unmoored.

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Relying on the affections of others to buttress one's own identity is a shoddy method of construction.

"This is 19th Century France. Do you know what that means?"

Gretchen, our stage manager, considered me with disappointed frown. I stood in my dressing room, sweating in a costume that was more appropriate for a toddler's first trick-or-treating expedition and not an allegedly professional production of Beauty and the Beast. This was, by the way, the second production of Beauty and the Beast I'd performed in that year. I was a Disneyed Sisyphus, eternally shuttling back and forth between low paying regional theaters and my day job at a gay bordello.

"…It means that Britney Spears was not alive then, so please don't sing like her."

I was playing the Beast, and in order to stave off boredom, I'd taken to performing the intro of my first act ballad in different vocal styles. I'd already imitated everyone from the Backstreet Boys to Aaron Neville, much to Gretchen's consternation. But at this afternoon's performance, I mimicked the unforgivable: Britney Spears.

"If this goes any further, I'll report you to the union," Gretchen said, storming out. The cocaine buzz that had propelled me through that particular performance was now gone, replaced by a familiar anger. I ripped off my costume and headed for the gym.

Screen capture of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical

After my workout, I appraised my body in the locker room mirror. My physique felt like the only thing in my life I could control, and therefore the only thing that made sense. My muscular body was my main qualification for my job as a gay waiter, an essential facet of my identity as aspiring actor, and the key to my sexual relevancy on the gay party scene. This vapid existence made me miserable, and it was this misery which turned into rage, and this rage which fueled my workouts, and these workouts that created my six-pack, and my six-pack that served as the foundation for the existence that made me miserable in the first place. I was Pavlov's gay dog, stuck in an instinctual loop, literally swollen with rage.

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Staring at my reflection, it hit me: my body was my only achievement. I burst into tears.

* * *

Britney was bombing. Blake and I watched the atrocities of the 2007 MTV Music Video Awards from the safety of his hotel bed. Room service lay before us, untouched. As Britney stumbled through "Gimme More," my heart sunk. This was to be Britney's post-shave victory lap: blonde locks and former identity restored. Instead, it was an abject failure. Criss Angel was rumored to be lending some magic to the performance, and I wondered aloud why Britney had not included Criss's contributions in her final act.

"Probably because he's a total dick," Blake said with venomous certainty.

Though Britney's magician had failed to bolster her unfortunate comeback, mine was doing an excellent job in pulling me out of my recent breakdown. At Blake's urging, I'd dropped my theatrical agent, and informed him that I'd no longer be pursuing theater. I got an internship at a television production company, while "Shiloh" continued working the restaurant at night. I was taking steps toward becoming a real person, instead of the v-necked party monster I'd become.

"You're better than that fucking restaurant," Blake said. "You're getting out soon." It was something he'd articulated many times, and I was finally starting to believe it.

I was taking steps toward becoming a real person, instead of the v-necked party monster I'd become.

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"…And speaking of getting out—I'm getting out of Vegas."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm bringing my show to Broadway. We're opening in Chicago first for an out-of-town tryout. Then it's straight to New York--and you," he kissed me sweetly.

"That's incredible!"

As Blake vanished to fetch more wine, a text came through on my phone: it was Honey, demanding to know where the fuck I'd been the last couple months. Perhaps Britney's public failure had reminded Honey to reconnect with all the poor, unfortunate souls on her client list. I attempted to craft an answer before I realized: no response was necessary.

* * *

"I wanna take you on a musical, magical journey to a world where music and magic become one."

This clumsy redundancy was the opener to the TV commercial for Blake's out-of-town tryout. Blake expressed a much darker desire over cocktails in the West Village, a week after his show closed prematurely in Chicago:

"I wanna fucking kill someone."

The reviews had been scathing; critics dismissed the production as nothing more than a rotten piece of Vegas cheese. The "showtune magician" gimmick was meant to solidify Blake's Broadway cred—but instead made him seem like an imposter. The advertised "love affair" between Blake and his female assistant was viewed as a cynical charade to "bring heart" to his magic. Without the flattering lights of Vegas, Blake's carefully crafted image crumbled under the weight of his own lies. He played to near empty audiences for a month, before aborting his Broadway dream. But Blake lost more than his pride in this failed gamble, he also lost a significant amount of his own money—a sum that numbered in the millions. The loss had taken its toll and Blake seemed, for the first time, defeated.

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"But how are you?" He sighed, after finishing his update.

I was hesitant to tell him the truth: I was better than ever.

"My internship led to a job. I start next week."

"Shut the fuck up! That's amazing."

Blake's forced enthusiasm fell flat. Normally our discussions were a manic exploration of ambition and possibility, tinged with the promise of sex. But that night, our symbiosis ruptured. I'd figured out the magic trick; I no longer needed Blake to tell me who I was.

"I'll see you next time I'm in town," Blake insisted during our poignant goodbye the following morning. I smiled and agreed, though we both knew it wasn't true.

* * *

Mommy grabbed my face and kissed me against my will.

"Now that was a goodbye kiss!" he laughed.

It was my last shift at the restaurant. Mommy had been shocked when I informed him that I was leaving for a "real person" job. This development did not match the pattern of behavior Mommy had come to expect from "Shiloh." Shiloh was dumb and beautiful, incapable of entering a profession that might require him to do anything unconnected to his biceps.

"We'll see you again…when they figure out they've made a huge mistake," Mommy quipped.

"I'm sure you won't."

I was sad to leave my fellow waiters. We were war buddies who'd endured the same hardships, seen the same atrocities, and been groped by the same American Idol contestant. But I had no desire to join the league of lifers, pretty boys that continued to tend gay bars long after they could be called boys or pretty. It was time to go.

"Make me my coffee," Mommy said with a mock-pout, grabbing my ass, "one last time."

I made Mommy's cappuccino, rehearsing a "fuck you" exit speech in my head. But as I steamed the milk, it occurred to me I possessed a more powerful weapon: spit.

I watched as my saliva melted into the foam of Mommy's cappuccino. Minutes later, I smiled as he drank the entire thing. And that afternoon, as I walked out the restaurant doors, walked out of a life marked by degradation, powerlessness and unshaped identity, I made a silent promise to never return.

"We're gonna miss that ass, Shiloh," Mommy called after me.

"My name is Jonathan," I yelled back, letting the door slam shut behind me.


*Names have been changed