Soon enough the hash, and whatever else may have coagulated its way onto the hash, kick in, and you suddenly become acutely aware the two of you are entirely alone at the very top of a giant turret. Even on a purely non-supernatural level, if a fire breaks out you’re dead. But there is something in the air, you are sure, something … eerie. You decide to start just wandering around, Blair Witch–style, in the various unlocked and vacant rooms of the turret, because, again, this is a great idea for something to do in a haunted hotel in rural Ireland.
So you go around with a camcorder and record a bunch of truly freaky things: creepy taxidermied animals primarily, but also closet doors opening and shutting by themselves, and the sound of dripping water coming from no obvious faucet. Frightened, you scurry back to your room and are about to get into bed when you hear, above you, a thud and a long scrape. And then a pause, and another thud and long scrape. Over and over, like a kid playing ball, or a body landing on the stone ground and being dragged to her grave.
Yes, you’re from Hollywood. And you’re a magician. And a skeptic. You don’t believe in ghosts, you don’t believe in the afterlife, and you’re nothing short of offended by charlatans who claim they can speak to your long-lost grandpa as soon as you fork over five hundred dollars. But there are no ladders going up the side, no way any human being could have snuck past you, and you would be lying if you said that at that moment, huddled in bed, tripping on hash, staring at the ceiling of a thousand-year-old turret and listening to the droning rhythm of thuds and scrapes echoing through the room, you weren’t absolutely sure there was no g-g-g-ghost.
Then David says it must be the flagpole waving in the wind, and you each take a Valium and a half, and you’re once again sure there’s no such thing as g-g-g-ghosts, and go to bed.
The next morning as you say good-bye to the proprietress you recount your story, almost embarrassed. “We were really freaked out last night. We heard a thunk on the roof, like someone was dropping and rolling a ball in the attic. But there’s no attic, haha. So it must have been the flag on the flagpole.”
And the lady looks at us with her one good eye and says, “There’s no flag on the top of the building. It must have been the daughter.”
* * *
Freaky, right? Anyway, go HERE. What? Sometimes in life you don’t get a choice.
* * *
1You will.
Tucked away in Hollywood is a mansion called the Magic Castle. It was once a private residence, but in the 1960s brothers Bill and Milt Larsen decided to turn it into a swanky club for magicians—the kind of place where prestidigitators, illusionists, and their invited guests can hang out, swap Houdini stories, and make one another disappear. Over the years they slowly kept adding new rooms and performance spaces until it grew into a major performance space, clubhouse, and fraternity.
It’s the early nineties, and you desperately want into the junior program. (It’s got to be the junior program. There are a lot of bars at the club, and there are no “backstage secrets” when it comes to the drinking laws: you ain’t gettin’ served.) But to get in, you have to audition. You put together a little act, try out, and are accepted. It’s one of the greatest thrills of your life.
A few months later you’re asked to present an award at one of their banquets. They (unnecessarily) lure you by saying, “If you present this award, we’ll give you a lifetime membership at the castle.” And you say, “Holy crap!” or words to that effect.
The next year you turn twenty-one and begin frequenting the grown-up club. There’s a strict dress code: gentlemen must wear jackets and ties, women dresses or cocktail attire. It gives the place a very classy and retro feel, as if you’re at a ritzy event in 1950. It instantly becomes one of your favorite hangouts. One of your favorite things is the piano. It’s haunted by a ghost named Irma, and she’ll play anything you want, but not like a jukebox: if you talk to her she’ll answer your questions. Tell her what state you’re from and she’ll play the state song. Say “Beethoven’s Seventh,” and she’ll play it. Want her to tinkle some Gaga? Done. It’s fantastic.
Many years later, due to your relative notoriety, the president asks if you want to be on the board of directors. “It’s easy,” he says. “You just show up once a month and voice your opinions about how things are going.” Well, that does sound easy, and when a magician tells you something it’s not as if there’s likely to be some kind of trick involved or anything. So you get on the ballot, and end up on the board. And after a term you’re asked to be vice president, which you are repeatedly assured means absolutely nothing unless the president resigns for some reason. Then the president resigns for some reason.
Hail to the Chief.
You ascend to the presidency—god, does that phrase sound odd—in 2010, when the castle is facing some serious problems. The building is potentially going to be sold by the family to an outside party, which means there’s a chance you could lose the clubhouse altogether. There are also several operational issues keeping the organization from running as smoothly as it should. And so you begin instituting systematic changes you’re proud to say make the castle a much better place. You and your team beef up the quality of the entire experience, from the moment visitors call to make a reservation to the moment they leave. You bring in new valets, put new membership systems in place, and retrain the entire front-of-house restaurant staff. (Well, not personally. But you hire the right people for the job.) You also have to deal with the occasional e-mails from devoted members who, because they are there a lot, have no problem with taking time out of their and your day to inform you that the paint is chipping in a corner of the men’s room, or that today’s lamb chops were a bit undercooked.
Being the president of the Magic Castle is a passion project that puts you in an unusual role—that of producer. You’re essentially the president of a company, and you see the job as an opportunity to learn how to manage people. And you quickly learn not to do it aggressively, because that tends to make people shut down, whereas a more positive approach makes people want to change. So you learn how to listen. (Even to Teller, which, considering he doesn’t talk much, takes a great deal of concentration.) You never pretend you know more than the generations of older magicians who’ve been going to the castle for forty years, but at the same time you don’t shy away from making changes you feel are necessary and appropriate. Some of your bolder decisions divide the membership in two, but in the Land of the Thin Saws, that’s something you hope they’re used to anyway.
* * *
If all this talk about magic is making you want to do some for real, on live TV, in the middle of a freakin’ awards show, go HERE.
If all this talk about magic is making you thirsty, go HERE.
If all this talk about magic is making you horny, go HERE.
And now, more of the literary magical stylings of the actual NPH.
When you get really good at magic, you learn to use your skills at magic to cheat at cards. Really! You can magically control where the cards are in a deck. I’ll show you exactly how that works.
Shuffle a full deck of cards, go through the deck and pull out the four aces. Put them on the table in front of you in a row, left to right. The order doesn’t matter. Just make sure you have four aces, face up, on the table in front of you.
Good. Now turn the rest of the deck face down. I want you to deal a card, face down, on the first ace, then a card on the second, the third, and the fourth. Do that again—deal four cards face down, a card on each ace. And now a third card on top of each ace. When you’re finished, put the rest of the deck aside. You won’t need it again for this trick.
To verify: you should now have four packets of cards in a row in front of you. On the bottom of each packet is a face-up ace, and then three face-down cards on top of each ace.
Now, pick up the packet on the far left and, without turning or mixing it, drop it on top of the packet to the right of it. In other words, you are dropping four of the cards on top of
four more cards.
Good. Now pick up the packet on the far right and do the same thing, dropping it on top of the packet to its left.
Let’s check. You’ve now got two packets of cards on the table. Right?
Great. I want you to mix up the cards so that you know that you’re making random choices. Pick up the packet on the left and give it an overhand shuffle. Or, if you don’t want to shuffle it, just cut the cards and mix them up by pushing some cards in the middle of other cards. Don’t turn more cards upside down; just mix up the order.
Now do the same thing to the other packet. But this time, before you put that packet down on the table, turn it upside down. Did you turn it upside down? Good. Now put it down.
We’re going to reassemble the cards into one packet. Separate the packets a little bit, so you have a space between them. Now take one of the cards off the top of either packet, the left or the right, and drop it face down on the table between the other two packets. Now take the card on the top of the other packet and put it on top of that card. Keep doing this, alternating cards. One from the right, one from the left, one from the right, one from the left. Keep going until you have all the cards put back together again into one packet.
Pick up the big packet and cut it, completing the cut. Do that again, if you’d like.
Hold the cards in your hand. In case you’re wondering, the technical term for this packet is a mess. You’ve turned various cards upside down, you’ve mixed them in your own way, you’ve put them all together again. Yep, it’s a mess.
In fact, I’m going to show you how messy they are. Deal the cards out again into four rows. Deal the first four cards down onto the table, then four more cards on top of that. And then keep going, with all the cards. It will be like dealing out four hands of cards.
As you saw the cards go by, you probably noticed the mess. We turned over aces, and other cards, in a random order. I’m going to have you give them one more quick mix. Listen to these instructions, because this is where the magic comes in.
Pick up the packet on the far left, turn it over sideways like you’re turning the page of a book, and drop it on top of the packet that’s next to it, just to the right. It’s just like closing the cover of a book.
Do that again. Pick up the double packet on the left, and turn those cards over, dropping them on top of the next packet to the right. Perfect. Now do that one more time. Take the big packet on the left, and just turn it over on top of the packet on the far right. Now you’ve just put all the packets together again by turning them over and over.
There’s a technical term for that, too. It’s called a bigger mess. Because some more cards have just turned upside down.
Now here’s the amazing part. Just wave your hands over the packet of cards on the table. You might feel a little foolish doing it, but trust me. I’m a magician. That waving-the-hands part is very important. That’s what accomplishes the magic! (That, and running around your house naked screaming “Ooga-booga.” But that’s only for advanced magicians, and you’re not that good yet.)
Want to know where the aces are? Well, pick up the cards and spread them out. You’ll see that all the cards have turned the right way again, except for the four aces.
It doesn’t matter how you shuffled the cards, dealt the cards, or reversed the cards. All you had to do was wave your hands like that, and they magically went back in the right direction!
Yeah, right.
* * *
If you’d like to take part in another magic trick, go HERE.
If not, return to the chapter where you were before this one.
Unless you’re hungry, in which case go HERE.
On the evening of September 22, 2012, you, Neil Patrick Harris, feel a sudden, overwhelming urge to commit murder.
It’s not the first time you’ve felt it. Not at all. Truth be told, at no point in your life have you not sporadically been gripped by the need, the craving, the hunger to watch the life drain away from a man’s face.
It has taken all the discipline and strength of will you could muster to stifle those cravings and channel those murderous impulses. But you have, and all that sublimated rage has paid off in the form of a successful acting career and a sterling reputation as a genial on-air presence and all-around nice guy.
But you, Neil Patrick Harris, are not an all-around nice guy. Deep in your soul you are little more than a craven hunter of human meat.
And tonight, as you drive home from the set of How I Met Your Mother, you are determined to finally give in to those dark instincts.
And that’s when you see the hitchhiker.
The next morning you’re sitting at the breakfast table.
“Did you see this?” asks David. “They found a headless body just off the road in Laurel Canyon this morning. Isn’t that right on your way home from work?”
“Yes,” you remark. “Freaky. Any suspects?”
“None,” he says. “No fingerprints, no ID, nothing. And no sign of the head. By the way, where were you last night?”
“Oh, I was … bowling.”
“Bowling?” says David, dubiously. “Since when do you bowl?”
“Since last night.”
“Well, I suppose that would explain that new bowling ball bag I saw by the front door this morning.”
“I suppose it would.” You laugh. “By the way, you didn’t, um … open that bag, did you? See its contents?”
“No,” says David, “I didn’t. But congratulations on your new hobby, Neil. Bowling. Maybe you’ll earn yourself another trophy.”
“I already have my trophy,” you respond quietly, chuckling to yourself.
But David doesn’t hear you. He has gone to the front door to unzip the bag and remove its contents …
… an ordinary bowling ball.
Then he returns to the kitchen, sneaks up behind you, and beats you to death with it.
“I hate bowling,” says David. “Almost as much as I hated that guy whose head I cut off in Laurel Canyon last night.”
THE END
You are gay.
You know that you are; you accept that you are; you like that you are; you’re proud that you are. You are totally gay. And now you are totally gay and totally in love, and it’s wonderful.
But love comes with a price; and while some say the hardest part of love is letting go, it is your humble opinion that sometimes the hardest part of love is exchanging frantic e-mails with your agent, manager, and publicist about the best way to word the press release that will announce your sexual orientation to millions of strangers. Which is exactly what you find yourself doing this fine morning in early November 2006.
It’s now been over a decade since you first told a group of strangers at the Landmark Forum that you were “bisexual”—a half-truth, as it turns out; nine years since your first tentative hookups with your cast-mate on Rent; seven since you began having real gay relationships; and three since you met David. (And twenty-nine since you first fell in love with the score of Annie, which probably should have been the tell right there.) After a long internal journey, you now embrace being gay, recognizing it as a wonderful and integrally important component part of the totality that is you.
You are fully out … to yourself. But your status vis-à-vis the rest of humanity is more complicated. One day you tell your parents you are not bisexual, but gay. Your mom is cool and not surprised. It takes your dad a little more time to accept it. He has deep-seated Christian religious beliefs that you respect as part of his identity, and you understand that the truth you are asking him to accept is not easy. That’s why seeing him and feeling him warm up to you and David and the children you will ultimately have together will be one of the greatest joys of your life.
As for your friends and colleagues, they know you’re gay, especially now that you’ve met someone of whom you’re so proud and who is so friggin’ hot. When the creators of How I Met Your Mother hold a meet-and-greet before shooting the pilot, you bring David
with you to the party. You are proud to be his partner, and besides the cast ought to know your status, especially since you’re stepping into the role of a ladies’ man. You and he go on dinner dates with other friends, and it’s completely fine.
You’ve come a long way from the anonymous skulker trolling the AOL chat rooms. But at the same time you’re not shouting “I’m gay!” into a megaphone from the middle of West Hollywood either. And why should you? There’s a great deal of immodesty in assuming the entire world is desperate to know who and what you stick your wang into. You yourself aren’t particularly interested most of the time. And you are not, by temperament, an activist. Despite your love for Les Miz, flag-waving on the barricade is not your style in real life.
But the awkwardness of the situation, the sheer presence of the unspoken truth, grows more palpable and, more important, begins to affect your relationship with David. It’s increasingly untenable for him to continue the empty ritual of accompanying you to movie premieres and other Hollywood events, separating from you as you walk the red carpet and pose for pictures, then covertly rejoining you on the other side of the velvet rope. Untenable, and just plain disrespectful. But that’s exactly what you end up doing for a time. Well versed in the ways of the tabloid press, you feel it necessary: you know all too well how actual fully developed human beings end up reduced to the conscribed two-dimensional public role assigned for them. You don’t want David to just be known as your boyfriend, because he too is an actor looking for his own work and his own public identity as well and should no more be best known as “Neil Patrick Harris’s partner” than you should be best known as his.