Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [21]
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,