Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [19]
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.