The Jerusalem Syndrome by Marc Maron Read Free Book Online Page A

electric with anticipation. Even the pictures in the hallways looked excited. Sam filled the void between the past and the present. When he was around, the engine of the Hell-driven laugh mill fired on all pistons and the building came alive. He was the Devil’s clown prince.
    I eventually became part of the inner circle. Once Sam arrived, it was my job to get enough money from him to stock Cresthill for a party that could last anywhere from two hours to three days. I would go to the 7-Eleven on La Cienega and get two fifths and four pints of Jack Daniel’s, a fifth of vodka, five or six packs of cigarettes, a case of beer, cranberry juice, and some O.J. I would go back to the house and put two fifths on the table and stash the pints in different places around the house for those who stayed the course. Around two o’clock Sam would show up with the magic powder and a crowd of freaks.
    There were the regulars. There was Jumpstart Jimmy Schubert and his gimp leg that he had crushed under a motorcycle. He was my only real friend. There was Todd L., known as The Todd, a heavyset Jewish guy who was sure he was heir apparent to Kinison’s throne. He had very little of his own material but plenty of everyone else’s. Todd had dated both Samantha Strong and Christy Canyon, the porn queens, so they were around. He broke up with Samantha because she had had sex with another guy, off screen. There was Steve K, who would wander around The Comedy Store asking people, “Was I on yet?” If the answer was “yes,” he’d say, “How was I?” There was Sparky, the angry little red-haired rich kid who had no patience for any of it but still showed up. There was Carl, Sam’s Red West. There was, of course, Rick the hairdresser, until he was expelled when Sam thought he was cutting the magic powder with pancake mix. There was Dave the Satanist who looked liked Christopher Walken. He had a pentagram tattooed over his heart; an eye in a pyramid—what he called “the mark of the Illuminati”—tattooed on his arm, and a “666” tattooed on his hand. He wasn’t a bad guy, really, just annoying. Sam hated him. Hassan, the Arab, replaced Rick. The story was that Hassan had fought against the Israelis in the Six-Day War and then moved to America, was drafted, went to Vietnam, and then moved to Hollywood to sell drugs. Hassan had a deep, creepy charm. He never seemed flustered. He was prone to answering almost every question by saying, “It’s only rock ’n’ roll.”
    There were others that came and went, but they were mostly casualties stopping by on their way down, weekend-warrior types or half-innocent onlookers at the scene of an ongoing accident.
    Physical liabilities aside, the magic powder made me feel
more
special than I already thought I was. Eventually comedy became secondary and the sacred rituals of magic powder became primary. My confidence grew into a mystical grandiosity that was fueled by sleep deprivation. I began to feel as if I had clairvoyant powers, that unseen psychic tendrils were emanating from my head and I could feel the souls of buildings and read the minds of people coming toward me. “Don’t speak. I already know!” I would say to any approaching person.
    I began to believe I had a divine purpose and was working for some unseen mystical force; that I had been assigned to Hollywood to understand the evil that resided there. An evil that was there before the film industry, before the Spanish missionaries. The evil had always been there. It was in the ground, waiting to be born.
    I would stand out on the patio of The Comedy Store and people would walk up to me and I would say, “Have you seen the Hollywood sign?”
    “Yeah,” they’d say.
    “But do you
get
it?” I’d scream.
    That’s where my head was at.
    I saw Hollywood as a mystical Jewish city. It was like the anti-Jerusalem. Think about it. It was built on the same idea as the real Jerusalem. A small group of Jewish kings went into the