Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [15]
Off the back of the house was a large balcony patio that was perched high over the club and looked out over the city. On mornings after long, sleepless nights of partying, some of us would piss over the balcony as the sun rose through the haze above Los Angeles. It was a glorious declaration of that strange feeling of victory that comes after surviving a night of indulgent insanity.
From here on in the story, I will be referring to the drug cocaine as “magic powder.” I don’t want you to judge me. I don’t want you saying, “The book was interesting, but he had a drug problem.”
It wasn’t a “drug problem.” It was the research and rituals of the religion of my choice. I was a high-level Beat adept doing deep inner-space exploration. I was journeying to the outer regions of the soul, out there where wrong lives.
At The Comedy Store I met many people with the magic powder. These weren’t the young, shiny, upper-middle-class white kids I knew in college. No. All I’m saying is that when you’re doing a lot of magic powder, generally you’re not hanging out with winners. My new friends were the dignitaries of Hollywood’s underbelly: Satanists, porn stars, hustlers, pirates—actual pirates—wannabes of all kinds, washed-up child actors, drug dealers, bikers, rock stars, and evil Buddhas. Sam Kinison was the reigning king of comedy at the time. I looked up to him (I always pick the wrong Daddy figures). This wasn’t a Bohemian crew. It was more like a coven of witches, or maybe the Manson family.
The first time I met Sam Kinison was at the club. I had seen him on television, but I didn’t think he was that funny. Sam had heard that I was a potential initiate from his friend Carl, who I had met days before. Carl told me that he and Sam had both been doormen at the Store. Carl took a liking to me when we met, and took off his watch and gave it to me as a gift, an offering, an invitation. When I met Sam, he knew I needed to be tested. We went back to Cresthill and went one-on-one for hours. I pulled the framed photograph of the cast of Freaks off my wall and Sam pulled an eight ball out of his pocket. He poured the magic powder out onto the glass that covered the image of the likes of Zip the Pinhead and Johnny Eck, the legless wonder. We sat at the large dining room table with a bottle of vodka, and Sam told me the history of Sam. He had intensely focused, beady eyes. At any point during the conversation, if he thought my attention was drifting he would say, “Look me in the eyes, Maron. I like a man who can look me in the eyes.”
Sam fancied himself a combination of Jesus, Elvis, and Satan. They were his heroes. He was a lapsed Baptist preacher with a bone to pick with God. He thought of himself as the Beast. You really had to see him live to get the full effect. He had the charisma and momentum of a human meteor. He was the comedic equivalent of pure rock ’n’ roll. He elevated the frustrated suffering of the brokenhearted mortal man to anarchic hilarity. He could push an audience over the edge of their own moral parameters, throw them a line, pull them back, then push them farther off the second time. This was the technique that most interested me. It was the reason I became an aspiring adept in the Sam school. I wanted to hone the antisocial part of my personality into a craft that could earn me a living.
After about five hours of looking Sam in the eyes and listening to his bullshit, there was a lull in the conversation. So, he pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and asked, “You ever