This is a guest post from Caleb J Ross, author of the chapbook Charactered Pieces: stories, as part of his ridiculously named Blog Orgy Tour. Visit his website for a full list of blog stops. Charactered Pieces: stories is currently available from OW Press (or Amazon.com). Visit him at http://www.calebjross.com.
If he’s a magician, he could color himself however he wants. He chose black for a reason. If anything, one should only trust a black magician. A black magician embraces the perceived negative associations of his chosen skin color/profession combo, saying “the world says not to trust me, which is exactly why you can trust me.”
His tricks, too, defy the stereotypes. He smokes Marlboros and drinks sporadically, only for dinner with his wife of twenty years and his two legitimate children. When he pulls a quarter from his child’s ear, he sacrifices the money to see a smile. “Thanks, dad.” But that’s not all. He pulls tailored clothes, CMT, and a steady job from his boy’s ear, too.
He’s been known to call the police when witnessing suspicious activities and kindly declines invites to smoke circles. He doesn’t call them “smoke circles,” though. He uses the terms marijuana or narcotics. Once, after a casino performance, a dread-locked drunk shook his hand and tried to sell him on a backroom toke. “I’ve got a family,” the black magician said. The casino never called him back.
A black magician often guest-posts as a white desk jockey. He tells stories of his own stories’ origins. Here’s one:
“Author Note on Story #4 (The Camel of Morocoo) In Hopes That You’ll Learn About Me Intellectually and Donate to My Pocket.”
The impetus here, I remember well. Dr. Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, my Spanish instructor in college, told his class of the practice of vein letting (he was known for going entire class periods without a single word of Spanish; I loved him for this, but I wish my Spanish was better). “The Camel of Morocco” adapts the idea of drinking camel blood into a story about a man’s collision, literally, with an unfamiliar culture. I don’t often get “worldly” with my fiction; this story may be as close as I’ve ever come. I may do more in the future. I think this story works well. And that it includes graphic depictions of drinking the blood of a dead camel makes the story all that more appealing.
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