The Jerusalem Syndrome Page 5

  “What happened to your wrist?” I asked.

  “I tried to kill myself,” the woman said.

  “Why didn’t you do the other wrist?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t want to fuck up my watch.”

  Then she passed out on the table and someone dragged her into Todd’s room. The party kept on. Sam got up from the table and disappeared for a while, then came back. Sparky had been out checking around the house, making sure nothing was amiss. He walked up to me and whispered in my ear, “I think the Beast did something weird.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “I think he pissed all over that girl on Todd’s bed,” Sparky said.

  He had. It was getting too sick, too dark, and too weird. Sam was out of control. My conscience was deteriorating. The branded door in my mind had creaked open and the Gray was turning to black. I had the ominous feeling that someone was going to die and it might be me.

  Then the voices started to come. The membrane that surrounds my brain had become some kind of receiver of mystical transmissions. I’m sure you’ve all heard of people who hear voices in their head, but I’m here to tell you that when you do, it’s never one; it’s always many, and you spend a lot of time trying to get them to pick a leader. “If someone’s got something to say step to the front of the head.”

  I was standing out on the patio of The Comedy Store one night and I came to believe that the St. James Hotel, catty-corner to The Comedy Store, was transmitting the voices. The St. James Hotel is now the Argyle, but it was originally the Sunset Tower apartment building. Built in 1929, it was one of the first high-rises on the Sunset Strip. The likes of Jean Harlow, John Wayne, ZaSu Pitts, Howard Hughes, Joseph Schenk, Marilyn Monroe, and Bugsy Siegel had residences there at one time or another. It was a Deco monolith that has looked over Hollywood since the beginning. It had overseen all that had gone on. It saw Peg Entwhistle leap to her death off the “H” in the HOLLYWOOD sign in 1932. It watched Charlie Chaplin’s dwarf-like physique grunt and twitch atop another teenage girl. It saw Elizabeth Short, “The Black Dahlia,” her body severed, in half, left in a vacant lot in 1947. It heard Lenny Bruce’s face smack down on the tiles in 1966. It watched as members of the Manson family drove up through the hills to Sharon Tate’s home in the summer of 1969. It heard John Belushi’s last breath and watched his soul drift up and out of Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont in 1982. It watched Andy Dick drive his car into a telephone pole in 1999. When I was there it was being renovated and it was completely gutted. I thought it was providing a nesting place for the lost souls of Hollywood’s Golden Era and I was picking up their chatter. They needed me. I thought perhaps they wanted me to destroy The Comedy Store so the gate to Hell would be open and they could return home.

  There is a Grecian altar on top of the building. It sits up there now. You might think, Yeah, so? It was a decorative decision by an architect.

  Think what you want, but I believed that the end of the world was to begin on that altar.

  I even knew how it was going to go down. I believed that Michael Jackson was going to drag the sacred red heifer from the Old Testament up the back stairs of the St. James Hotel—you know he has the animal. He’d lay the calf on the altar, put on a very special glove, raise a gold, jewel-encrusted dagger over his head, and plunge it into the heart of the calf. Then he’d do a moonwalk and begin the hundred-year period of darkness during which the illusion wins.

  Okay, maybe I was doing too much magic powder, but who’s to say I’m wrong? Maybe it just hasn’t happened yet. Then again, maybe it’s already happened.

  One night we had a big jam session on the back balcony of Cresthill. Sam brought all his guitars and amps over, and we set them up and played loud, hard rock ’n’ roll to the city of Los Angeles until the neighbors called the cops. Sam had to perform at the club, so we locked his equipment in my room. It was a Monday so the insanity commenced. Well into day two of that Monday night, Dave the Satanist showed up and sat down at the table. Within a few hours the tension between him and Sam built to the point that Dave leapt out of his chair and shouted at Sam, “You’re not a real Satanist. I’m going to report you to Anton LaVey.”

  The vortex was opening as the chaos turned in on itself. Sam had been up for two days, and that was when the valve between impulse and action blew. No one was safe.

  “Fuck Anton LaVey!” Sam said.

  Sam threw a drink in Dave’s face and smacked him. This was Sam’s cowardly method of hand-to-hand combat. I’d seen him do it before. A small scrape ensued, and Dave’s shirt was ripped open, revealing the pentagram on his chest.

  “Get the fuck out of here, freak,” Sam said.

  I told Dave that he should get out of the house, but he wouldn’t leave. He was all shook up. I felt bad for him. I had to go meet my friend Bill, who was coming to Los Angeles for the first time. I didn’t want to deal with the dueling Satanists. I locked Dave in my room so things could settle down. I split to see my friend at his hotel. I wound up crashing in his room. I needed the break. I forgot about Dave.

  The next morning at around eleven o’clock my friend Bill and I walked into Cresthill. We went to my room. The door had been kicked in and all the music equipment was gone. Dave was gone. I couldn’t even imagine what had transpired. There was no blood, which was good. We walked into the dining room, where Sam and a few others were still sitting at the table. I said, “What the fuck?”

  Sam looked at the other people at the table and then looked at me as if he’d been waiting hours to say what he had to say. He screamed, “I pissed on your bed, Maron. You want to know why?”

  “Why, Sam?” I said, surprisingly not surprised.

  “Because you let that freak sleep in there with my guitars.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. I turned to my friend Bill and said, “I told you I knew him.”

  That was the end of my training. I could no longer sleep in my bed because the Beast had peed on it. They were onto me. I had been expelled from the cabal. My paranoia became amplified to a mystical level. I saw everything as a sign connoting a grand conspiracy. I was sure that the evil forces of the universe were now after me in a very intimate and personal way. I had to try to evade them at every turn. I was living in a comic book, but I had no special powers.

  I took a walk down Hollywood Boulevard the next day to assess and integrate my experiences into a life that was rapidly getting away from me. I was looking at the stars in the sidewalk, trying to find a place for their shape and meaning in my elaborate and always unfolding mythos. I cut down the side street where my car was parked. I walked by a small storefront mission church that was half filled with derelicts being preached to by a manic little man with a microphone. Two doors down from the church there was a magic store. Not the kind of magic store with fake doo-doo and coin tricks. It was the kind with candles and amulets. I hadn’t really investigated or practiced Black magic in any organized fashion, so I thought that maybe it was time. I went in to browse. I needed tools.

  There was a counter at the back of the store, facing the door. Behind the counter were shelves filled with jars of herbs. In the display part of the counter there were crystals, trinkets, and the ceremonial hardware of ritual. The smell of incense permeated the air. I was the only person in the place besides the two trolls that were perched behind the counter on separate stools. They had shaggy long hair and blank expressions on their faces.

  There were shelves of books throughout the store. I had never seen those books or heard of the authors before. I pulled Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies off the shelf and randomly popped it open to a poem numbered 23 in some kind of series. It was called “Skidoo.” I read aloud to myself.

  What man is at ease in his Inn?

  Get out.

  Wide is the world and cold.

  Get out.

  Thou has become an in-itiate.

  Get out.

  But thou canst not get out by the way th
ou camest in. The Way out is THE WAY.

  Get out.

  For OUT is Love and Wisdom and Power.

  Get OUT.

  If thou hast T already, first get UT

  Then get O.

  And so at last get OUT.

  I had no idea what it meant in the context of the book, but there are no coincidences. I felt like I was in the eye of a storm and deliverance was upon me. The store was swirling with the momentum of my thoughts. Then, almost as if I had conjured it, the door blew open and a man lurched into the store. He was a very tall person. He had flaming red hair and a frenetically baffled energy about him. His gangling arms were folded tightly over his chest, as if he were trying to stop himself from exploding. His voiced wavered in volume when he spoke. “Hey, wow, this is a really great store. I had no idea it was here. How long has it been here?”

  The trolls behind the counter remained expressionless.

  It felt like that moment when a film sticks in the projector—that split second before the image burns up from the middle.

  A folded American flag slipped out from under the man’s shirt. He grabbed it, retucked it away, and pressed it to himself with his arms.

  One of the trolls eased forward on his stool and said, “Why do you have an American flag folded up under your shirt?”

  The man, tripping over his words in discomfort said, “It, uh, m-m-m-makes me f-f-f-feel, uh, safe.”

  The troll pulled his hair back over his ears, widened his eyes, and focused a gaze on the man that could radiate through walls.

  “You’re acting too weird,” he said. “Please leave now.”

  “Ah, we-we-well, okay.” The man seemed to melt into himself and crackle upon hearing this, and he sheepishly lurched back out the door, holding himself tightly.

  The film regrooved itself. I walked up to the counter and looked in the display case. The speaking troll was eyeing me passively.

  “Hey, let’s be honest here,” I said halfheartedly. “What’s the validity of all this magic stuff, really?”

  He looked at me with the earnestness of a rock and said, “You don’t want to open any doors you can’t close.”

  I felt all my fears congeal around this statement. That was it. I had my special power. I would be the opener and closer of doors. I mean, I was the head doorman. A doorman of the head.

  “Thanks,” I said to the troll, holding eye contact long enough to get a magical jolt from his intensity. “Don’t open any doors I can’t close.”

  I felt empowered as I walked out into the half-hardened gelatin air of the Hollywood day.

  That night I performed the magic powder ritual myself and went down to The Comedy Store. The cabal was there and they were ostracizing me. I was panicky. I felt as if I had no friends anymore. I walked out into the parking lot where Jumpstart Jimmy tried to comfort me. He said, “You just fucked up, man. It’ll be alright in a couple of days.”

  I was coming unglued.

  “No, you fucked up,” I screamed. “You’re one of them. I was never one of them. I came here to understand and learn. To see! You’re just a pawn of the illusion. You believe that Sam’s the Beast. He’s not. He’s just another fucking fat bully spreading hate around. You’re all just sheep on a dead-end path. Fuck you.”

  I slammed the glass I was drinking from down onto the asphalt, and it shattered all over the parking lot.

  Jimmy went back into the club as Hassan drove up in a red convertible. I walked over to him as he was getting out of the car. I was a bit tweaked out, wired, and scared.

  “Hey, Hassan,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  “What can I do for you, Marc?” he said.

  “What should I do? Things are all fucked up.”

  In his eyes lay the real Beast. He looked at me with that cool thousand-yard stare, smiled, and said, “You should go do your own thing. You should get out.”

  23 Skidoo.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Hassan started to walk toward the back door of The Comedy Store. He turned around and shouted, “It’s only rock ’n’ roll!” as he disappeared through the door into the black and red darkness, his home in Hollywood for the last seventy years.

  When the drug dealer tells you to leave, it’s really time to leave.

  At about 3:00 A.M. I was alone in my closet, where I spent a lot of time during the last days of my stay in L.A. The hangers kept the voices at bay and my bed had been branded.

  As some of you know, the first few hours of magic powder are great, but the following eight to twenty can be a little trying. My heart was pounding itself out of my chest. My lungs were struggling to keep themselves fueled with oxygen. I was sweating and scared.

  “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Please slow down. Don’t die,” I said to the darkness. Words were falling and ricocheting around my mind. Images were falling and flashing behind my eyelids like white noise.

  The pristine surface of a gray steel slab appeared and faded into a perspective point far off in my mental landscape. I was on a conveyor, moving like a car on the incline of a roller-coaster. Then came the drop-off. It was like the bad part of the boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, overaccelerated, faces, fragments of scenes, Belushi walking toward me, light for eyes.

  “Hey, John. What the fuck happened to your eyes?”

  Lenny Bruce flying.

  I don’t want to die.

  Fatty Arbuckle as a dirigible floating in the air.

  I don’t want to die.

  The cast of Freaks dancing down the slab toward me at silent-film speed, singing, “One of us, one of us, one of us.”

  I don’t want to die.

  Hassan laughing, pentagrams spinning into the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, Sam turning into a dog and pissing all over space.

  No, no, fuck, no. I don’t want to be at this party. Fuck. How far out can I go?

  Then, in my right ear, a voice that was as clear as a bell loudly said, “You’ve gone far enough.”

  Then the ride stopped. My heart stopped in a flash of white. I gasped the gasp of a drowning man who had just surfaced and sucked life back into his lungs.

  It was the voice of God. God was reaching out to me.

  That was the moment my Jerusalem Syndrome became proactive.

  The following day I packed everything I had into my car and whatever didn’t fit I gave to Steve K. I went by Rick’s and evened up with him and I picked up an eight ball for the trip. I hadn’t slept in what seemed like weeks. I left Hollywood on instructions from God. I was heading to the desert with no plan other than to Get Out.

  As I drove, the sun was beating down and my eyes were squinting. Just outside of Palm Springs I saw the wreckage of the worst car accident I had ever seen. There were cops, ambulances, fire trucks, and covered bodies all over the highway. I saw it as a sign to pull off. I checked into a hotel and waited for more instructions from God. They were not forthcoming.

  That was a long couple of days at the Motel Six in Palm Springs. I walked through the streets thinking I was invisible. It was okay, though. Palm Springs is a fine place to be invisible. That’s sort of what it’s for. Besides, I had doors to close.

  8

  WHEN I arrived in Albuquerque, I didn’t tell anyone I was there. I went and had photos taken and renewed my passport. I had the feeling I might need to leave the country on very short notice. It felt like the world was closing in on me or, at the very least, following me around. It was as if day-to-day reality was a sham and everyone involved in it who saw me knew I was onto them. I believed that I could move things with my mind, that I could tell if people were evil by looking in their eyes, and most of them were.

  I stayed with my parents, who, surprisingly, weren’t evil. I tried to give them the impression that everything was fine and I was just taking a little break. I spent a month at home. I got clean, I bought some cowboy boots, and I had a brief affair with a witch.

 
I went by The Living Batch to see if Gus was evil and I came across Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy. On the cover was the eye in the pyramid, the mark of the Illuminati. I brought the book up to the counter and Gus said, “Why waste your time with such utter bullshit?”

  I thought he might be one of them.

  I bought the book and read it cover to cover. It is a convoluted, satirical novel about magical and political secret societies, the primary one being the Illuminati, and their manifest destiny of controlling the world and the minds of its occupants on all levels. I read the book with no sense of its irony. I believed it and saw it as my Bible, a primer for productive paranoia. There was definitely an evil conspiracy at hand. It had roots in ancient Egypt, Bavaria, and perhaps the lost city of Atlantis. Aliens might have been involved at some point, but that’s really conjecture. The conspiracy had moved through the people and institutions that have controlled the world for centuries. I decided it was my duty to seek it out in reality and present it to the world. It was what God wanted. I could begin to label the signs and hang them on the doors. This would be my secret mission. I moved back to Boston to restart my comedy career, a perfect cover.

  When I got back east, I got a job pulling espresso at a pre-Starbucks coffee shop in Harvard Square. It was a haven for young, confused, aspiring everythings. Faux Bohemians dressed in vintage clothes. If they couldn’t find integrity in their own time, maybe they could find it in the pants of another time. I was the paranoid, bitter guy working the steamer, talking about himself. “I used to hang out with Kinison. I am an outlaw visionary. I can see the future.” A whoosh of steam would cloud my face as I pulled the nozzle out of the frothy milk and poured it into the coffee. “You want shaved chocolate or cinnamon on this?”

  I got a room in the attic of a large house in Somerville, a working-class town next to Cambridge. It was one of those group houses that people who had no idea what they were going to do with their lives passed through on their way to themselves. The room I rented was entirely covered in sky-blue paint. There are no coincidences. Within days of moving in I did some research on the color blue’s mystical connotations in a book on colorology. “Blue is the color of depth, spiritual searching, serenity, change, and moon issues.” Four out of five ain’t bad. I was anything but serene, and I was willing to deal with my moon issues as soon as I figured out what the fuck they were.