Once I'd decided that I wanted to learn sword-swallowing, the immediate difficulty lay in finding a competent and available teacher. Professional sword-swallowers are vanishingly rare, and those that were local were either unwilling or unavailable to teach. As suggested, my best bet was to attend Sideshow School, a series of classes hosted over the course of a week in Coney Island, New York. I'd never been to Coney Island and only knew of it by reputation as a fading icon of American culture, well past its heyday.
Sideshow School had several compelling advantages: It was hosted by Todd Robbins, the same man whom I witnessed eat a crushed light bulb in front of a shocked, impromptu audience at the Palace of Wonders a year earlier. Besides sword-swallowing, the advertisements for the School promised "fire eating, the human blockhead, glass walking, magic and other famous sideshow acts." The cost for the course was $600: expensive enough to weed out absolute dilletantes, but affordable considering the scope of the acts to be covered.
In November 2007, I drove to Coney Island to attend two weekend sessions, each three days apiece. Unfortunately, Todd Robbins wasn't available to teach, but stand-in guest teachers Adam Rinn and Donny Vomit were fantastic substitutes. I was clearly a bit out of my element; I hadn't even considered the performance angle, which turned out to be the hardest challenge I encountered throughout the courses.
The structure of Sideshow School was simple enough: Adam or Donny would demonstrate an act, explain the principles behind it, and then hand us the necessary tools and have us try it out. By 'us', I mean myself and the other two students for the weekend sessions - we were a small class.
It was some of the most fun I've had in my adult life! There was a profound sense of being part of a little-understood tradition of weird entertainment, and a thrill in seeing skilled performers gamely pitch acts such as the human blockhead (thrusting long nails, spikes and even live drill bits into the nose), the Elektra routine (incorporating high-voltage lightning tricks into a stage performance with audience members), walking on broken glass (relatively) unscathed, lying atop a bed of nails and enduring the weight of other people, 'eating' fire, and even handling enormous serpents. Unfortunately, the one act that I was determined to learn was the most difficult, most impassable (literally).
We practiced daily by attempting to swallow a bent coat hanger. It seemed impossible at first; the most any of us accomplished during our time at School was to develop a constant sore throat and gag horribly as we tried to coax our epiglottis into allowing the foreign twist of copper to pass smoothly beyond the pharynx. I was proud of other achievements, though: I left knowing I could tolerate fire in my mouth and on my skin, and for a final recital, I had a blockhead routine that was funny and a little gross, and had been the hardest act to write for, since I felt it was the silliest.
Above: The author being crushed atop a bed of nails. What endurance!
I left Coney Island with a sense of accomplishment, but also a sense of dread. I'd known instinctively but hadn't really considered the implication of my completion of Sideshow School. Why had I gone, if I hadn't wanted to perform? Even if I could have swallowed a sword then, I would have only overcome one small challenge, since what point was there in keeping a performance art to myself? I'd have to start thinking about how I wanted to show off my new talents to the world. There was one intermediate challenge, though, before I even considered my performance style: I had to actually swallow a sword.
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