A Magician Tried to Kill Me?? *Cringe* NOT CLICKBAIT

Hello friends. My biggest life update this week (this is a lie, in that this week has proven unusually eventful, but the one I have been thinking about the most) is that I finally finished reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I am thinking lots of thoughts about it, which I hope I will not subject you to a spontaneous blog post on, but if I do, well here's your warning.

This week's theme is: Your Most Embarrassing Moment.

I know some people expressed resistance to this topic idea, which is understandable for obvious reasons. But I do hope that this will somehow prove a cathartic experience which brings all of us closer together. Anyway, to protect the identities of the innocent (and some slivers of my own dignity, though most of that has been forked over already), some details and names have been omitted or altered.

This happened in Washington, DC. Naoni is probably the only person who knows the full extent of this story, and I will not go into as great of detail here as I did to Naoni on the phone when I called her on my ashamed trot back from Union Station the night these events unfolded. This story is why even thinking about The Simpsons puts my teeth on edge now.

Basically, to set the scene, I was going on a second date with a guy I met in DC. It was Saturday. I had just finished class at my volunteer shift teaching English up in Dupont Circle. We met at GW, outside his dorm, and walked over to the National Mall. Had a little picnic, walked up to the Lincoln Memorial. That night was his roommate's birthday party. He said it would be okay and not awkward at all if I wanted to come, but I had said that I could not, mostly just because I would feel weird going to a stranger's birthday party with this guy I barely knew, not to mention the fact that I had a very heavy backpack with my English teaching textbook in it and was wearing "teacher clothes."

But he had told me that there was going to be a magician at this party. And I love magicians. I wanted to see this magician so bad. He asked me, one more time, if I wanted to go to the party, and I said "Nah, that's alright. But please record a video of this magician for me." He said, rather fairly, that I should really just come see the magician for myself. The straw that finally broke my back in this case was that he mentioned that a couple people I knew from my program were also going to be there, and this was early in the semester, and these were two people who I think are very cool. Plus, I've kind of adopted this M.O. of doing things if I think it would potentially be a good story later and I figured: there would be a magician, how could it not be a good story.

Anyway, fast-forwarding a bit, I went back to his dorm and met his very sweet roommates. I was quite awkward, which is to be expected of me, but they were very nice. They had this pyramid of La Croix that kept toppling over and they were filling their sink with popcorn from this popcorn maker that one of their moms had bought them I think? Those were the main things i remember. Also these are GW poly sci major types so they did stuff like spontaneously start singing Solidarity Forever and had all these framed pictures of politicians on the walls and apparently they celebrate the anniversary of that time someone threw a shoe at George W Bush every year. Also I used his restroom on a later occasion (it is a miracle he hung out with me again considering the rest of this story) and they had the fanciest toilet I've ever seen, one of those fully automatic Japanese Toto Washlets. I asked him about it and he said that GW installed this really nice $1000 toilet after they had put in a request for an accessible toilet. None of this is relevant but hopefully it adds a little more color.

Anyway, party starts. It's fine, though I feel a little weird not really knowing anyone. Magician is scheduled to arrive. They keep calling him "the wizard" and they're pretty nervous about his arrival, because they think that the magician doesn't trust them. They're a bunch of college kids; he usually does children's birthday parties. He thinks that they're just going to dunk on him and make fun of him basically. And they want him to know that they're actually really excited about his show. But so he arrives. We move to a common room in the dorm, and the show starts.

It physically pains me to write this out, so actually I think I'm going to have to give you an abridged version unfortunately. The magician's show is all in all fine. The crowd is not making fun of him at all, and he's come with material that he figures would be appealing to a college kid audience. But me and my date are sitting right up near the front, so I'm dreading that he's going to call me up for a trick, and of course it happens.

He calls me and this other girl up. It's some trick involving these little yellow balls, which are supposed to represent the Simpsons. I think I'm holding Homer. I've never watched the Simpsons in my life. It is a glaring gap in my popular culture knowledge. And he starts asking me these Simpsons trivia questions which are probably like entry level, 200 on Jeopardy kinda questions but I don't know the first thing about the Simpsons besides the family members' names. So I'm up there in front of a room of GW Sophomores - plus 2 of my classmates, dressed like an accountant, just saying "I don't know" when he asks me a question about "Who're Homer's friends?" or something like that. And when I say I don't know, this 40-something balding magician just makes fun of me, like, "It's only been on-air for 20 years." Which is fair.

But I don't really like being up at the center of attention like that. It makes me nervous. Like hands shaking, voice trembling kinda nervous. Can't-really-think-about-anything-besides-how-much-I'd-rather-be-sitting-down kinda nervous. Plus the fact I don't know any of these people. Plus the fact that, I like magicians, but they always have this kind of quick way they do their tricks that, if you're not right there with them, you get lost. So anyway, he tells me to hold this ball in my hand and close my palm and hold it upside down. And then he starts going on some bit about Homer in a bar and how he won't come out. And he says something like, "Well, maybe he'll come out. Doesn't seem like he's coming out though?" And somehow anyway my wires get crossed and I think he's telling me to open my hand.

So, in a moment that now plays in horrific slow motion in my memory, I drop the ball. Quite literally, I drop the ball. And the audience laughs a bit. And instantly I realize that was not part of the trick. So I bend down, pick up the ball, try to laugh it off and say "sorry about that." And the magician just leans in real close to me and whispers "Follow Instructions." in my ear. So then I just stand there, horrified, until he relieves me of my duty, trying to will my internal organs to fail. And this guy basically just pretends I'm not even up there for the rest of my time there, just talking to the other girl and doing some trick with her while I stand there like a dummy.

Anyway, after that I sat back down and just tried to enjoy the rest of the show. When he finished his set we walked back up to the dorm and my date asked me how I liked the show. I told him it was fun but I was embarrassed that I messed up his trick, and my date just said, "Yeah I felt bad for you," which was an awesome punctuation to the whole performance. I hung out at the party for an hour or so more then made up some excuse to go home.

He was pretty nice about the whole thing, and we hung out one more time after that, so I could pay him back for a meal and we could watch a movie. Then we kinda mutually parted ways I guess, but we still follow each other on Twitter, and I know people who are friends with him and his friends. I think it would have gone that way magician or no, but the magician thing certainly didn't help. But also, like, I knew I couldn't be like, "Hey, I embarrassed myself in front of the magician at your friend's birthday party and now I feel deeply mortified around both you and your friends." So, yeah.

Anyway, I actually almost wrote a blog post about this back when it happened. Which is to say, I wrote out a full blog post (which was perhaps funnier and better written, with the wound still fresh, as it were) and then reread it, and then deleted it because I was still too ashamed. Even now writing this is difficult. I do not know if I will ever enjoy a magician again. I do not know if I will ever be able to hear "the Simpsons" without reliving this night in painful detail.

But it is a decent story, right?