Houdini and Me

by Dan Gutman

  “Are you okay, Mr. Houdini?” asked the guy in the uniform. “You look a little…under the weather.”

  “I need to sit down for just a moment,” I said. “To catch my breath.”

  “Get Houdini a chair!” barked the guy in the uniform.

  Somebody rushed over with a wooden folding chair.

  I sat down heavily and put my head in my hands, trying to clear it. How did I get into this? And how was I going to get back home?

  As I was looking at the ground, I noticed a sheet of paper beneath my feet. I picked it up and flipped it over.…

  Oh no.

  This was bad. This was real bad.

  You may not even know what a straitjacket is. Houdini got his start by escaping from handcuffs and manacles. But after a few years people got bored watching that. They wanted something more exciting, and they didn’t want to sit around for an hour waiting for him to open the handcuffs. So he started dreaming up other escapes. He was constantly trying to top himself to keep the public interested.

  At some point, Houdini visited an insane asylum and saw inmates constrained in these heavy canvas “jackets.” He knew immediately that could be his next escape.

  A guy holding a big white megaphone addressed the crowd.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “Thanks to the good folks at the Kansas City Star, I would like to welcome to our fair city the king of handcuffs, the master of manacles, the amazing Harry Houdini!”

  The crowd erupted in applause and hat waving.

  “For your entertainment and amazement,” the megaphone man continued, “the great Houdini—who will be appearing at the Orpheum Theater tonight and tomorrow night—will perform—for free—for you—a feat which at one time was thought to be utterly impossible—that of escaping from a regulation straitjacket. Do you think he can do it?”

  The crowd hollered back a chorus or yeses and nos.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” the megaphone man continued. “Stay right where you are. You will not want to miss this. Here is the greatest escapologist in the world, the man who makes the impossible possible. The one, the only, Harry…Houdini!”

  More applause and hat waving.

  I have to admit, it was kind of cool hearing all those people cheering for me. I had never experienced anything like it. I felt very alive.

  “Take a bow, Mr. Houdini,” the guy in the military uniform whispered in my ear.

  I stood up, bowed, and waved to the crowd. That made them cheer even louder.

  But I was scared. I was also mad. Houdini never told me I’d have to do an escape as my part of Metamorphosis. He just said I would be the most famous man in the world. And now there was nothing I could do about it. It was a classic magician’s misdirection.

  The three guys helped me take off my jacket and tie. Then they picked up a straitjacket and draped it over my shoulders backward, with the opening behind me.

  “This is all a big mistake,” I protested. “I’m not really Houdini. I’m just a kid.”

  “Hahaha,” laughed the guy in the uniform. “You are a funny man, Mr. Houdini.”

  The straitjacket was made of very heavy brown canvas, with a leather collar and leather cuffs. The sleeves were about twice as long as regular sleeves, and sewn up to close off the ends. It was like putting your arms into two cloth sacks.

  The sleeves were overlapped so that my arms were crossed in front of me. At the end of each sleeve was a leather strap that wrapped around my body so the two sleeves met behind me and buckled in the back. Another strap was passed underneath, between my legs, and also buckled in the back. There were rivets at various points to prevent the fabric from being torn.

  I was in big trouble. The only good thing about this escape, I suppose, was that I wouldn’t have to pick a lock or hide a key inside any part of my body.

  “This is all a mistake!” I said as two of the guys grabbed me in a bear hug while the other guy stuck his knee against my back so he could pull the straps as tight as possible. “Let me explain!”

  The three of them laughed.

  “Come on, Mr. Houdini,” said the guy with glasses. “I know you’ve done this a hundred times before.”

  “But…but…”

  I was wrapped up tight. This couldn’t be happening! I had read a little bit about how Houdini escaped from straitjackets, but I never thought I would have to do it myself. How could I possibly get out of this situation?

  While they were buckling me up, another guy came over lugging a long cable with a thick padded length of cloth at the end of it. He wrapped the cloth around my ankles and tied my legs together with it.

  “What are you doing that for?” I asked.

  “So we can hoist you up in the air, of course!” he replied.

  “Wait. What?” I said, my voice rising. “You mean I’ve got to get out of this thing upside down?”

  “Of course!” the guy said. “How else could all these people see you?”

  “But…I’m afraid of heights,” I said.

  “Hahaha, very funny,” said the guy in the military uniform.

  “You know the drill, Houdini,” said the guy with glasses.

  I actually did know the drill. I had seen videos of Houdini doing this stunt on YouTube. Usually, he performed his escapes behind a curtain so the audience couldn’t see how he did it. The straitjacket escape was the only outdoor stunt he did in full view of an audience. It was his brother Hardeen, who was also a magician, who suggested it would be more dramatic if the audience could watch him struggle.

  Oh, they were going to see a struggle all right.

  “Maestro,” shouted the guy with the big megaphone. “A little music, please!”

  Somewhere, a band started playing. The guys lowered the upper part of my body down so I was lying on the ground. Somebody gave a signal, and the cable started slowly pulling my legs up.

  The cable must have been attached to a pulley on the roof of the building. A guy down on the street was pulling me up. As my legs lifted off the ground, the guys held my upper body so that all my weight would not be on my head.

  I closed my eyes. I was upside down now, being pulled up in the air. As more and more people could see me rising up, the crowd roared its approval.

  “Help!” I shouted. “Help!”

  People were laughing.

  “I’m not joking!” I shouted. “Get me out of here!”

  I could feel myself rising higher and higher. I could already feel the blood rushing to my head. When I opened my eyes, I could see windows of the office building filled with people.

  I was about the same level as the Kansas City Star sign, nine stories up. That was on purpose, I’m sure. Photographers were leaning out of the windows, trying to get a shot of me with the sign in the background. I was just hanging there.

  That’s when I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. It just came over me. I don’t think the people below could see it. But I was helpless. Useless. And scared. I couldn’t even move my arms to wipe the tears away. They collected in my eyebrows.

  I tried to remember some of the things Houdini had texted me: “We are all afraid of something. You cannot get past fear unless you confront it. If you can do that, you can accomplish what appears to be impossible.”

  I looked down. There must have been thousands of people below, craning their necks to look up at me. They were standing so tightly together that none of them would have been able to sit down if they wanted to. I could also see lots of old old-time cars and trolleys, plus a few horse and buggies scattered around the blocks surrounding the Kansas City Star building. People were leaning out of windows waving, perched precariously on ledges, and wrapped around telephone poles.

  I remembered something else Houdini had texted me.

  “If I can escape,” he said, “people feel they can escape from the thing they fear. I gave people hope.”

  Snap out of it, I told myself. I had to get past my fear of heights and face i
t.

  It was time to get to work. I knew from reading books that one of the ways Houdini got out of a straitjacket was to intentionally dislocate his shoulder. Well, I wasn’t about to do that. I was going to have to get out of the thing on my own.

  I pushed my arms out against the straitjacket as hard as I could, grunting from the effort.

  Nothing. That got me nowhere, as expected. The straitjacket was wrapped pretty tightly. But even so, there was just a little slack in the cloth. That, I knew, was another one of Houdini’s secrets. As they were putting a straitjacket on him, he would take a deep breath to expand his chest as much as he could. At the same time, he would hunch his shoulders and hold his arms just a little bit away from his sides. That gave him a tiny bit of slack to work with, and that was all he needed.

  Instinctively, I had done the same thing when they put the straitjacket on me. So when I expelled all the air in my lungs, there was some slack in the cloth. Using as much power as I could muster, I pushed my elbows down against my knees to get a little more room to allow me to lift my arms up.

  I jammed my right elbow upward until it was closer to my face. I figured that if I could get one arm near my head, I might be able to unbuckle a strap with my teeth. I was already sweating and exhausted from struggling.

  “You can do it, Houdini!” somebody shouted from below. “You can do anything!”

  It occurred to me that being upside down may have actually been an advantage. Gravity made it easier for me to push my arm above my head. I somehow managed to force one elbow to the top of the straitjacket. Once my wrist was close enough to my face, I got to work loosening the buckle with my teeth.

  It wasn’t easy. The rope was twisting while I was thrashing and bending from the waist. I knew I was running out of time. I could feel the blood rushing to my head. Soon, I knew, I would become unconscious.

  I was grunting, sweating, and flailing as I worked on the buckle with my mouth. The crowd below was loving it, yelling and screaming and urging me on. They seemed to enjoy watching me struggle.

  I remembered what Houdini had texted me about escape. Everybody wants to escape from something. Human beings all want something different than what we have, something better. I guess that’s what motivated us to send a man to the moon, to cure diseases, to invent new machines, or simply to get a better job and earn more money to make our lives easier. We all want to escape from who we are. Then we get to a new place and want to escape from there.

  I managed to get the first buckle open with my teeth. But the wind was picking up, which caused the cable to sway back and forth like a pendulum. On each swing, I was getting dangerously close to a concrete window ledge. My head almost banged against it. The crowd gasped every time I swung close to the edge.

  Houdini probably loved when this happened, I figured. Me, I hated every second of it.

  I kept on grunting, sweating, and flailing around wildly as I worked to free my arms. Finally, after what felt like twenty minutes but was probably closer to ten, I was able to jerk my head and neck to get my arms out of the jacket. At that point, I could reach my back. Even though my hands were still trapped in the sleeves, I was able to feel through the sleeves to work on the other buckles. One by one, I got them loose.

  That was it! I ripped the jacket off my body and held my arms out on both sides like a cross. The crowd went nuts.

  Finally, with a flourish, I dropped the straitjacket into the crowd below. There was cheering like I had never heard in my life.

  I don’t remember what happened after that. I must have passed out.

  METAMORPHOSIS, PART II

  Then I had a dream. I think it was a dream, anyway.

  While I’m hanging upside down in Kansas City, Houdini has pulled off his end of the Metamorphosis. He’s alive. And he’s me, an eleven-year-old boy in New York City—my town—and in my century.

  Houdini is in the middle of Times Square—Forty-Second Street and Broadway. You know, that spot where they drop the ball on New Year’s Eve? The center of the universe.

  Houdini opens his eyes and gazes up in wonder. He’s been to Times Square a thousand times, but not in the 21st century. He’d seen a few skyscrapers, but nothing like the ones we have today. Now they’re gigantic, surrounding him in every direction. And they all have huge signs on the side advertising movies, TV shows, and the latest Broadway musicals. Most of the signs are video screens. Houdini has never seen a video screen in his life.

  Then he looks down at himself.

  “I’m a boy!” he says triumphantly. “I did it!”

  The streets are teeming with thousands of people, just as they are in Kansas City, yet it’s so different. The men and women aren’t wearing hats, as just about everybody did in Houdini’s day. Some of them are wearing baseball caps, even some women. And they’re wearing strange clothes. People are posing for pictures, but nobody is holding a camera. Or at least they’re not holding the kind of camera Houdini is used to.

  People are walking around dressed up like cartoon characters or giant human robots. There’s a statue of the Statue of Liberty in the middle of the sidewalk. Oh, no, it isn’t a statue, Houdini realizes. It’s a lady dressed like the Statue of Liberty who is standing so still that she looks like a statue. Her face, arms, and legs are painted green. A man is playing a guitar and wearing nothing but underpants with NAKED COWBOY written on them.

  Houdini just stares. He’s as out of touch in my century as I am in his.

  So much has changed since he was last in New York back in 1926. But the streets are the same, and he knows his way around. He knows where he should go. He walks east one block on Forty-Third Street. Strange-looking cars and double-decker buses clog the streets. Weird smells waft over from pushcarts with foods he’s never tasted.

  When he gets to the corner at Sixth Avenue, he realizes that the elevated train tracks he remembered aren’t there anymore. He looks across the street for the Hippodrome, a theater where he performed so many times.

  No Hippodrome! The giant building, which once took up the whole block, is gone.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Houdini says politely to a lady passing by. “Where is the Hippodrome?”

  She brushes past him without making eye contact.

  Houdini assumes the lady is hard of hearing. He stops a man and asks him the same question, but the man is attending to the cell phone in his hand and barely notices anyone else. The next passerby barely slows down when Houdini approaches him.

  “Sorry kid, I don’t have any spare change,” the guy mutters.

  “I don’t want change,” Houdini replies, “I just want—”

  But the guy walks past without turning around.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says to the next lady, just a little more assertively. “Where is the Hippodrome?”

  “The what?” she replies.

  “The Hippodrome,” he repeats. “It was one of the largest theaters in the country. It used to be right across the street. Did it move?”

  “How should I know?” the woman says brusquely before moving on. “Ask your mother. Or ask a cop.”

  Not a bad idea. Houdini walks down the street until he finds a policeman in the middle of the block.

  “Excuse me, officer,” he says, bowing slightly to show respect. “Can you direct me toward the Hippodrome? I assume the location has changed since my last visit to the city.”

  The policeman looks Houdini up and down carefully. All the likely possibilities go through his mind. Runaway? Lost? On drugs? Mentally challenged? Psychotic? Oddball? The boy did look a little out of place. But he didn’t look threatening. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t threatening. A lot of lunatics look perfectly normal, until they do something violent and crazy.

  This personality evaluation takes about a second and a half. Finally, the policeman decides the boy in front of him is just an innocent kook.

  “I heard of the Hippodrome,” the cop says. “But it hasn’t been here in a long time.”

>   In fact, the Hippodrome closed in 1939. Houdini was right. It had been one of the largest theaters in the world. The stage alone was so big, it could hold a thousand performers at a time. In its heyday, the Hippodrome was home to just about every form of popular entertainment: vaudeville, silent movies, talkies, plays, opera, boxing, wrestling, and the circus. In 1918, Houdini himself made a ten-thousand-pound elephant vanish before the audience’s eyes, right on the Hippodrome stage.

  Sadly, the Great Depression drove the magnificent theater out of business, and it was demolished. More than ten years went by before it was replaced by a much less glamorous twenty-one-story office building.

  Houdini is sad that the site of his past glory is gone. He doesn’t even notice the name of the office building that took its place.

  Or the plaque right next to the reception desk inside.

  Harry Houdini is not the kind of person to wallow in self-pity. He’s an optimist, and he has a constant desire for adulation. If the people of the twentieth century loved him, he figures, so will the people of the 21st century. He’ll just have to start all over again from scratch. No fancy props. No fame. He’ll have to prove himself again. He will persist, and he will persevere. And he welcomes the challenge.

  The Hippodrome isn’t the only game in town. It is in the middle of the theater district. There are sure to be plenty of places for him to perform.

  Houdini walks back down Forty-Third Street to the first theater he comes to—Henry Miller’s Theatre. He’s relieved to see it’s still there, even though the big sign in front has a name he has never heard of: Stephen Sondheim. Houdini strides boldly into the box office.

  “Excuse me,” he says to the woman behind the window. “Who would I speak to about booking acts?”