Alex Steadman, Stage Magician

This guy is perfect as a High Priest. He appreciates what I do in a way that he doesn’t even realize, and he gives my gifts to others. Sadly he doesn’t have much motivation or drive. He also has all the morals of a bobcat. Course that’s actually kinda what I’m looking for too.

Now how to approach him?

Steadman

Wake and bake. Story of my life. I get up. Get high. Walk to my crappy job ringing up groceries. Get high. Ring register for four hours. Get high. Ring register again. Clock out. Get high. Walk home. Check email to see if anyone wants to hire me for my fun job. Get really high, usually with my roommates. Go to bed. Except on Thursday. That’s payday and I get drunk before going to bed. Of course I also get high.

After I dropped out of college a couple years back after one semester (with a record low GPA of 0.8... that’s what ya get for majoring in girls, beer, and the internet) I did what every kid dreams about. I ran away to join the circus.

A carnival really.

The Winston-Speigle Traveling Show, Cabinet of Curiosities, and Oddities Emporium was one of a dying breed. One of the last real mud shows on the East Coast, our circuit was from Erie PA to Key West and back again, wintering in Sarasota just like every other carny throughout the history of this fair country, launching our season with Mardi Gras in N’Awlins, then head north for Erie again.

I joined as a roustabout, setting up tents, manual labor, that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest I was ecstatic to get away from the academic world and would have quite happily spent my days cleaning sewers, so the honest sweat of just lumping things around was a refreshing break from computer monitors and boring lectures.

About three months in my natural showmanship was recognized by Eben Craig, (or The Amazing Ebenezer as he was known on stage) and honest work turned into dishonest work as I was taken under his wing and began my apprenticeship as a stage magician and mentalist.

Eben was a smooth old bastard in his seventies. He needed a cane to walk, but his hands were just as agile as anything. My tutelage started out with just maintaining his equipment, learning cold reading, and card forces, but I’ve always been quick on the uptake, and soon I was designing new illusions for him and developing a line of patter that rivaled his. My hands were never as fast as his but in this game verbal misdirection is almost as good as visual.

Still it came as a surprise when I got back from the final wrap party to find the keys to Craig’s RV in an envelope with a letter telling me that he was retiring and that the act was now mine. He’d already made arrangements with Old Man Winston. Apparently he’d received a diagnosis of terminal colon cancer just before I joined up and he very much had a ‘The show must go on’ attitude.

He and I perfected my act over the course of the winter as his condition degraded. I took responsibility for his care and in February took him on the road trip to New Mexico where he opted for the Kevorkian option. His **** was peaceful. I was his only heir. The terms of his will dictated that I was to continue his act until such a time as I could return to school, whereupon the trust fund that he had set up without my knowledge would pay for a four year college.

I left the show when we got back to Pittsburgh. I’m enrolled for the next fall semester, and I’ve grown up enough to actually know what I’m doing now. In the meantime I’m still a stage magician on a freelance basis and, like I said, I get high.