“A funny and sex-addled, fame-intoxicated look at teen magic. Refreshingly honest! I loved it.”
—Will Ferguson, 2012 Giller prizewinner and three-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour
“Mark Leiren-Young is one funny guy, as you might expect from a winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and a great writer, to boot. Driven by humour, hormones and the heart, Leiren-Young takes you on a side-splitting coming-of-age journey that lays bare not only the secrets of magic, but the magic secrets of growing up.”
—Terry Fallis, Leacock Medal Winner for The Best Laid Plans
“Mark Leiren-Young tops his Leacock Award-winning debut, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, with this relentlessly funny and ridiculously honest book. A must read.”
—Ian Ferguson, Leacock Medal winner for Village of the Small Houses
“Mark Leiren-Young is a natural storyteller, a peer of writers like Stephen Leacock, W.O. Mitchell, Jack Douglas and W.P. Kinsella: quietly hilarious, effortlessly moving and always surprising. Like them, he makes it look easy.”
—Spider Robinson, three-time Hugo Award winner, co-author of Variable Star with Robert Heinlein
“Free Magic Secrets Revealed is a very funny story of the adolescent pursuit of love and self-worth through magic, music, and weird comic books. Leiren-Young’s memoir reads like a cross between Wayne’s World and The Prestige—not to mention Marathon Man, for the extremely brilliant yet disturbing facial surgery chapter.”
—Grant Lawrence, broadcaster and author of Adventures in Solitude, winner of the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award
“There is only one thing worse than amateur theatre, and that’s amateur magic theatre, but Mark Leiren-Young’s sleight-of-hand humour leaves you smiling for more.”
—Jackson Davies, Canadian actor, author and honorary Sergeant of the RCMP
ALSO BY MARK LEIREN-YOUNG
Never Shoot a Stampede Queen: A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo
The Green Chain: Nothing is Ever Clear Cut
This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge
(with Tzeporah Berman)
Copyright © 2013 Mark Leiren-Young
Kindle edition copyright © 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
Editor—Barbara Pulling
Print edition text design—Mary White
Poster, page 188—recreated by Tav Rayne
ISBN 978-1-55017-607-0 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-55017-658-2 (ebook)
Harbour Publishing acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
To Dr. Bob Hogg, David L. Young, Hall Leiren and Carol Leiren for all their support behind the scenes (both on this show and in real life).
To Rayne for her ideas and inspiration.
To “Randy” and “Kyle” for all the magic over the years.
To everyone else who was a part of this adventure … whether you want to admit it or not.
And in loving memory of Adele and Ruth, who always believed in our magic.
1
La Lunette
When Lisa saw the blade of the guillotine race toward the back of Randy’s neck, she began to scream. It sliced, then stopped … with a sickening thud. The executioner smiled, satisfied. Lisa started to cry. And her lover’s headless body twitched, then lay there motionless until finally it shouted, “Normannnnnnn!”
The arms of the corpse flailed until two not-so-dead fingers connected with the latch holding its head in place. “That hurt.”
Lisa stopped sobbing, bent over to look at the man she was mourning and scowled. “Your head’s still there.”
“No problem,” said Randy.
“And you didn’t bleed. Weren’t you supposed to bleed this time?”
“I didn’t bleed? Normannnn!”
Lisa poked at the black cloth where Randy’s head was no longer supposed to be and his skull toppled from the lunette—the hole for the condemned’s neck—into the guillotine’s catch box.
Randy’s real head, complete with the long feathered brown hair of a seventies stadium rock star, popped out from the hidden compartment under his fake head.
Lisa turned to Randy, shook her feathered brown Charlie’s Angels hair, and announced, “Smoke break.” Then the seventeen-year-old would-be mourner spun on the heels of her white knee-high boots and walked toward the loading bay stairs at the back of the stage.
“Me too,” said Kyle. The executioner stepped out from the shadows to reveal the face of a rugged seventeen-year-old, and shook loose the feathered blond hair of a seventies TV star, looking like a young Duke of Hazzard.
“Hang on,” said Randy. “I wanna get this right.”
“Maybe we should just use an axe,” suggested Kyle. “An axe would work. An axe would be unambiguous.”
“Really sorry, man,” drawled Norman in the drug-delayed dude rhythms that had made Tommy Chong a millionaire.
Randy called over to the voice in the wings. “Norman, I need some help here.”
Norman shuffled toward the guillotine. Norman was nineteen, like Randy, and had shoulder-length blond hair—it wasn’t feathered, but it didn’t have to be. Norman was a techie, not an actor. He’d done a great job painting his death trap black and silver—from even a few feet away it looked real and dangerous—but up close it looked exactly like what it was … painted wood and carefully folded tinfoil. “It shoulda worked that time. I mean, the blade fell, right, man?”
Randy reached for his sore neck, rubbed it. “Yeah, it fell. But the head didn’t.”
“Musta stuck it in too hard. Maybe if we shave the Styrofoam a bit so it won’t fit so tight? Did the blood bag pop?”
“Does it look like the blood bag popped?”
Norman was thrown by Randy’s tone. Randy lived in a perpetual state of mellow. His mantra was, “Nooooo problemmm,” with the no stretched out to include anywhere between five and fifty extras o’s and at least a couple of bonus m’s at the end of every problem. But as a magician he knew that if the trick wasn’t working before opening night of his biggest show ever, he’d look like an idiot. “We already sold two hundred tickets,” said Randy. “At least two hundred people are gonna see this. Probably more like four hundred. We’re gonna sell out for sure.”