Magic Mansion
Page 37
Jia Lee spoke next. She’d flown in from Brussels only the night before, but you wouldn’t have known it. Her makeup, hair and cheongsam were impeccable. Women like Rose Topaz, she said, could not expect to rise above the role of magician’s assistant a mere forty years before. If only she were alive today to see how far the art had come. John surreptitiously chafed away goosebumps. In a few of his family photos, Rose did bear a striking resemblance to Jia.
Fabian Swan, rocking his purple tux in the friends and family section, nodded his agreement. Beside him, Amazing Faye shot Ricardo a pointed look that clearly stated, “See, it’s not easy being a woman in this business.” She should try being openly gay. That was a three-ring circus. And not the kind with trapezes and cotton candy.
Finally, it was John’s turn to speak. He stepped up to the podium and looked at its surface as if he was considering pulling out his note cards, but instead he tilted the microphone toward himself, stepped back half a pace so as to resist clinging to the furniture and thus keep full use of his expressive hands, and he began.
“If anyone is responsible for the long and unlikely journey that’s ended in Glenn and Rose receiving their star, it’s my agent, an old family friend, Dick Golding. Along with the producers of Magic Mansion, Dick spearheaded the campaign in exchange for my participation on the show. However, I wouldn’t have been in a position to appear on Magic Mansion at all if it weren’t for…Casey Cornish.”
John paused and took a breath. He’d never been a notorious weeper, not like the rest of the Magic Mansion crowd. But he did, on occasion, find himself choked up.
“Casey’s personality lit up the room. My years with him kept me young. He taught me how to love, and how to laugh. I don’t think he ever meant to teach me how strong I could be. But that turned out to be the main lesson I took away from the end of our time together.”
Ricardo blinked back a sting in his eyes. Faye was dabbing around the edge of her mascara.
“And now, of course, Ricardo the Magnificent can also take plenty of credit for us all being here today. Ricardo and I met during Magic Mansion’s auditions—and the hope that we might meet again was my true motivation for signing on to the show.”
John looked up and met Ricardo’s eyes, and smiled his sad smile. Ricardo did his best to smile back and blink away encroaching tears.
“I wonder sometimes,” John went on, “what Rose would have said about Casey. And about Ricardo.” John collected his thoughts for another dramatically long pause. Not because he’d forgotten the words he’d prepared—but because he was weighing whether or not to deliver the next part of his speech. He considered, and he looked at Ricardo once more…and he forged ahead. “The choices I’ve made in my life mattered to her, not as my aunt…but as my mother.”
The silence that greeted John’s revelation was so profound, it seemed for a moment as if an invisible volume control had been muted. And then, somewhere in the back of the crowd, an indistinct voice rose and fell, and the spell was broken. Cameras flashed, now galvanized anew into action.
“It was a different time,” John said, picking up his narrative as if he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell. “Divorced women were regularly denied credit and housing. Minorities were required to pass literacy tests in order to vote. Unwed mothers were coerced into adoption, whether they wanted to keep the child or not. And even in Hollywood, lifelong gay partners were referred to as ‘bachelors,’ or worse, set up with a fake wife by their studios or their managers. Glenn Forrest gave Casey and me his blessing before he passed away, but my mother died in 1973 without ever acknowledging my sexuality. In my mind, she never would have. But lately, it’s occurred to me that if she were still alive today, she would have had forty years to acclimate to the world’s changes. She would have seen the Internet, and an African American president, and the fight for gay rights…and I suspect that even though she was known for being a tough, stubborn woman, she wouldn’t have been able to deny that my life is infinitely better with Ricardo Hart in it.”
Somehow, Ricardo managed to refrain from out-and-out crying. Good thing. He didn’t want to be caught puffy-eyed, given the way it suddenly seemed like the cameras had reproduced—and over the tops of all the official paparazzi, the fans waved iPhones and tiny point-and-shoots, hoping to snag a photo of him and John that would go viral as fast as the candid shot from Atlantic City. Aside from the blurry picture an undisclosed crew member had snuck of them smooching as the Magic Mansion confetti fell, it was unlikely any new photo of them would cause much of a stir. If anyone didn’t know Professor Topaz and Ricardo the Magnificent were romantically involved, they’d been living under a rock.
There were interviews then, and photo shoots, with the producer orchestrating which camera they should look into, and which reporter they could speak to next. Jia and Faye were glittery and fabulous as always—and evidently they were both willing to consider whatever nastiness had passed between them during their stint at the Mansion as water under the bridge. Jia could afford to be gracious. She might not command as many millions of dollars as David Copperfield, but she was certainly the hottest young magician the industry had seen since Criss Angel. And Faye, who was doing well enough for herself (but not quite that well) was smart enough to know when to forgive and forget.
And finally, when it was time to head back home and get ready for dinner and an after-party, a very young, very gay-looking sound technician, all big Latino eyes and shimmery lip gloss, approached Ricardo with a copy of TV Guide out in front of him like a shield, and whispered, “Can I have your autograph?”
The issue featured a shadowy, dramatically-lit shot of Ricardo plucking an ace of hearts out of his jacket, with John towering behind him looking grim and deliciously tall. The headline America’s Sweethearts? was splashed across them. Below that, Magic Mansion’s Secrets Revealed, and Sue says, “We’re just friends!” in the subhead. Ricardo loved that issue, even if the articles themselves weren’t exactly Hemingway, as John put it. One thing the reporter got right. Ricardo was gay, had been gay his entire adult life, and was totally smitten with Professor Topaz from day one. He pulled a marker out of his pocket to sign it, but the producer stopped him with a grab to the elbow. She looked like she was about to snap off the sound tech’s head with a reprimand for accosting the talent. “No, wait,” Ricardo said, “I want to.”
“Really?” she said. “How about getting back to your limo sometime today—do you want that, too?”
The crowd did seem just about ready to swarm over the velvet ropes. When Ricardo hesitated, John slipped an arm around his waist—and never in Ricardo’s wildest dreams had this stern, taciturn fantasy figure been capable of such effusive physical affection. But Professor Topaz was the fantasy. John the human being not only lived up to the fantasy, he blew it away. He put his mouth to Ricardo’s ear and said, “Listen to your heart. If you want to sign it, then that’s what you need to do. Otherwise, it’ll nag at you all night.” He plucked the pen from Ricardo’s hand and scrawled a nearly illegible Professor Topaz over the cover, then re-planted the marker in Ricardo’s grasp.
“You’re right,” Ricardo said, and signed his own name beneath his likeness—and then on impulse, added the words, Always be proud of who you are. Not necessarily an easy thing to accomplish, for sure, especially when the rest of the world might not be comfortable with the real you. But every day, even every moment, held a fresh chance to begin living from somewhere true.
-end-
FOCUS GROUP VOTE
Which applicant is your choice for the Magic Mansion cast?
Kevin Kazan 64%
Francis “Foxy” West 36%
back to the story…
TWO-TEAM ELIMINATION
Who will you eliminate from the Red Team?
Escape artist Ken Barron 35%
Elvis impersonator Chip Challenge 65%
Who will you eliminate from the Gold Team?
Charity Young and Oscar 61%
Amazing
Faye 39%
back to the story…
METAMORPHOSIS ELIMINATION
Who will you vote off the Red Team following the Metamorphosis Challenge?
Ken Barron 63%
Fabian Swan 37%
back to the story…
GOLD TO RED
Which member of the Gold Team will you send over to the Red Team?
Muriel Broom 34%
Amazing Faye 47%
Bev the Math Wizard 19%
back to the story…
FOUR PROPS ELIMINATION
Who will you eliminate from the Red Team?
Jia Lee 30%
Amazing Faye 70%
Who will you eliminate from the Gold Team?
Math Wizard Bev Austin 39%
Muriel Broom 61%
back to the story…
CIRCUS ELIMINATION
Who will you vote to eliminate from Magic Mansion?
Eliminate Bev and Sue, Jia goes on to the Final Four 60%
Eliminate Bev and Jia, Sue goes on to the Final Four 30%
Eliminate Sue and Jia, Bev goes on to the Final Four10%
back to the story…
About the Author
Jordan Castillo Price enjoys reality shows, though she’s always curious about how the characters’ words and actions have been edited to create a new narrative in post-production. She’s particularly intrigued by the background music that plays behind various situations to manipulate the viewers’ perceptions.
Like Ricardo and John, Jordan has taken a one-day charter flight to New Jersey and back to participate in a game show. It was a very long day, but she did win a new TV.
Jordan writes paranormal thrillers from her home in rural Wisconsin. You can find her on the web in the following places:
Jordan’s Author Site
Official PsyCop Site
Official Channeling Morpheus Site
Jordan’s Web Store
Twitter
LiveJournal
Facebook
About this Story
Originally, Magic Mansion was a 3500-word short story I wrote for a contest, in which Ricardo met his hero Professor Topaz in the flesh during an audition, and they both turned out to have True magic. Then I changed my mind about entering the contest, and my friend Emilie suggested my two magicians should both land a spot on the show…and I couldn’t let go of that idea. It seemed intimidatingly big, though. With my writing schedule being what it was, I decided that if I didn’t make Magic Mansion my newsletter story, if I waited until I had a few months to just focus on it, the darn thing would never happen at all. I’d wait and wait and wait until one day the idea faded and eventually disappeared. And so I took the plunge, wrote four more chapters to start with, and launched it.
My first concern was the size of the cast. I needed to start with twelve contestants. And then some of the contestants had characters who went along with them, such as John’s manager, his late partner…Ricardo’s high school sweetheart…Sue’s icky boyfriend. Plus, I needed some people to represent the TV show itself. I chose to be very stylized and minimal when it came to depicting the crew. Marlene, Iain and Monty are the “name” representatives of the show, and everyone else is known by their job, at least until John calls his stylist by her name to indicate that of course the crew is not a big, anonymous blob in the eyes of the players. Marlene and Iain are a mashup of various job functions: producer, director, editor, props master. I knew it would be hard enough to keep twelve players and their adjuncts straight without assigning additional characters to these crew roles, so Iain and Marlene do a little of everything.
If I was to have twelve contestants, I realized that I would need to make them all very different so that readers would be able to tell one from another. Faye was originally going to be blonde, for instance (I named her for Fay Wray) but I realized if readers thought of her as “the blonde” she’d then get mixed up with Sue. So Faye got her tacky red dye-job. And from that dye job, her personality as a female performer approaching middle age with a bit of panic and a lot of intensity was born.
Three tiers of ages are represented in the contestants: the twenty-somethings are Sue, Jia, Chip and Kevin. The thirty- to forty-somethings are Faye, Charity, Ken, and Ricardo. And the fifty-and-up group is Bev, Muriel, Fabian and John. I really enjoyed having this diverse range of character ages to play with. Initial readers have remarked on the age difference between Ricardo and John being a potential turnoff…and if the age difference were a main plot point solely for the sake of being a December/May romance, I guess I could see the potential for “yuck.” But it was never my intention for the age difference itself to titillate for no particular reason. It was more about Ricardo being star-struck over meeting his idol, and having that idol in a position to reciprocate.
Giving the players different ethnic backgrounds was another easy way that I figured could quickly differentiate one from the other, but it seemed like a slippery slope. A story populated with a group of stereotypes was definitely not what I wanted to end up with. It is typical of reality shows to have a token few minority characters, though, so I went with it, figuring that I would just need to be very aware of not writing cringeworthy stereotypes.
The decision to make John Chamorro was based on his surname rather than the desire to make him “ethnic.” I liked the ring of Topasna for his family’s original surname, researched it, and found it came from a very specific place: Guam. From that particular, John’s whole history unfolded in an unexpected and very rich way.
Ultimately, the theme that emerged was being true to oneself in the face of prejudice. John yearned to claim his ethnicity while his mother, who was spooked by 1940’s Japanese Internment Camps, struggled to homogenize him. Jia took up the mantle of Chinese conjuror because she figured if it was all she could aspire to, she could at least ensure it was done with dignity. Ricardo walked the line of being out and proud without coming off as a parody of a nelly queer. And they did this against the backdrop of a situation where they were being recorded, repackaged and disseminated for public viewing, with no control over how they would be presented. At the story’s inception, I hadn’t consciously put together the theme of identity versus the selective nature of media and viewer-manipulation, but I was delighted by the way the theme and the setting fed off one another so brilliantly. And then I could parallel those differences with True magic, and the way its presence or absence creates its own sort of us-versus-them dynamic.
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