The Jerusalem Syndrome

by Marc Maron

  I was anything but content. I tried to be, but it just didn’t stick. I thought marriage would level me off. I thought money would level me off. I thought being a good comic would make me fit into myself better, but nothing really did. My soul was always itchy.

  When the irritation had become too much, I took a drastic action and enrolled in a philosophy class at the New School. The students in the class were a mix of women senior citizens going back to school and young people who didn’t succeed in real college. The professor was a bald, beady-eyed, spectacled man with an aggressive, bitter demeanor and very little patience. Maybe he didn’t succeed in real college either. He handed out a self-published pamphlet of his writings that was to be the text of the class.

  I still had a romanticized Beatnik idea of what philosophy class would be. I thought we would all hang out and grapple with a collective existential discomfort while bonding together against a cold world. We would solve big problems and perhaps start a movement. A café society of a cranky dreamer, three grandmothers, two dim kids, and myself. I also thought that my propensity toward bad behavior in a classroom situation had dissipated with age, as had my inability to fully understand the tenets of philosophy. Within the first few meetings of the class, I was lost. I would show up stoned and made cracks at the professor’s expense.

  After the fourth class I was waiting for the elevator with the professor. I was wearing a hat that somehow implied I was a comedian; it was a jester’s hat. Actually, it was a baseball cap that had the logo of the New York Comedy Festival printed above the bill. My teacher looked at the top of my head and asked, “Are you a comedian?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you like comedy?” Trying to kiss up.

  “Comedy is fine,” he said. “Are you taking my class for material or to learn philosophy?” He looked at me as if what defined me as a person was riding on my answer.

  “I don’t think there is a difference,” I said. “My head feels pretty full when I leave.” In retrospect, a very stoned thing to say.

  “You can fill your head two ways,” he said precisely, without missing a beat. “You can put new things into it or you can heat up what is already in there so it expands.”

  I chuckled uncomfortably, not sure whether I had been insulted or not. I had. I was an expander. That was the last day I went to class. I had learned enough.

  It was also during this time that I came out as a Jew on stage. I had never really brought it up because I couldn’t think of a way to do it that wouldn’t reinforce the stereotype of what being a Jew was. I can’t stand comedy that trivializes the Jewish type into a set of pathetic behavioral idiosyncrasies, i.e., Jews like to eat, Jews like to whine, Jews like to sit, Jews feel guilty, etc.

  I was on stage in North Carolina. There were three hundred people in the room and no one was laughing at anything I was saying. I was bombing, badly. Sweat was spraying out of my head, which in retrospect might have been why I was bombing. It’s weird when it sprays. Then, when I was right in the middle of delivering a joke, I stopped and said, “You know what? I’m a Jew,” just to see what would happen, because I was down South and because I hate myself. Then, right after I said it, a guy in the front row sitting right beneath me turned to his wife and said, “I knew it.” Like whatever led up to that statement was a healthy mental process. I couldn’t help but push my luck. I was already in the soup. So I said, “You know what? I think the Christians are getting a bad dossier on the Jews. I think there’s some misinformation going around, and I want to clear some stuff up because I’m here to help. Let’s start with holidays. For instance, the Jews have Passover and you Christians have whatever it is you do with the Bunny. Oh, yeah, but we’re the ones with the freaky rituals. Go find the colored eggs, kids, then you can eat a chocolate rabbit. Yeah, the Jews are the freaks. Sit on the fat guy’s lap and ask him for free shit. Yeah, we’re the weird ones.” Then I said, “If you don’t know what Passover is, it’s a ritual dinner where we have a service and then there’s a meal and then there’s a sacrifice of a Christian baby, and then dessert.” Some people laughed; others turned to the person sitting next to them and said, “I’ve heard that. You see what he’s doing? He’s telling the truth and he’s twisting it to make it funny. He’s manipulating the truth like a Jew.”

  I eventually appeared on an HBO half-hour special that Grandma Goldy said “was a little filthy,” which killed me. She died before I could make it up to her. I became a regular on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. Comedy Central even allowed me back. In other words, a career unfolded, slowly. I eased into my anger over time. There is a realization one makes as one gets older. When you’re young you really think you are angry for reasons and causes. As you get older, you realize you might just be angry. It was part of my voice. I still craved a purpose. A grand purpose. I felt that God had put me on hold.

  11

  ONE morning the purpose arrived. I got a message from my old friend Jim. I hadn’t heard from him since my wedding. “Marc, it’s Jimmy. I’m in Israel, man. I got a job out here working for the ambassador. I’m engaged to an Israeli girl named Oriella. You and Kim ought to think about coming out. I got diplomatic plates on the car. We can go anywhere, man. Oriella speaks Hebrew. You guys can stay with us. We’ll take two four-day weekends and see the whole country. It’ll be beautiful. So, if you can, man, swing by.”

  What I heard underneath Jim’s invitation was God reaching out again. God was using Jim and my Panasonic answering machine as conduits. That’s when I was infected with full-blown Jerusalem Syndrome. I had had symptoms before, but had thought, Israel, Jim, how clear does it have to be? There are no coincidences. I’m Grandma Goldy’s number one. I’m the Kol Nidre kid. I had gone too far. This is the further instruction I was waiting for. Finally!

  I believed that if I were to go to Israel, there was a real good chance that God would assign me a task of a biblical level. He would pass on some information that I would bring back to the people and possibly change the course of the world. I’m serious.

  I didn’t know how it might happen. Maybe stone tablets in the Sinai; or perhaps God keeps up with the new technology and I would be delivered a divine disc. As long as it wasn’t Mac, I could run it.

  It didn’t seem unreasonable to me. God used to talk to people all the time. Hell, he’d spoken to me before, just not recently. Read the Old Testament, the New Testament: Every other day it’s “Abraham, this is God. I need you to do something for me. I need the kid. Thanks, I knew I could count on you. Bring him to the mountain, that’s it, lay him out on the altar. Good. Raise the knife up. Good, good, now—wait, just kidding. Just testing you, Abe. Thanks for playing along. You’re okay by me.”

  Who’s God talking to now? I don’t know. Once when I was walking through Times Square, I thought maybe God is talking to those guys you see roaming the streets talking to themselves. You know, those guys that are throwing their arms up in the air, screaming, “I can’t! I can’t, you bastard. No, I can’t.”

  Maybe the other side of that conversation is God bearing down on them, saying, “You’re the new leader.”

  “I can’t. No. I can’t!” they scream.

  They’re not crazy. They’re reluctant prophets. Better give them a quarter.

  God has chosen bad Jews before. Weren’t they all a little bad? I mean, Noah must have done something wrong to get that job. Forty days and forty nights on that boat walking around saying, “It smells like shit on this boat! Not just shit! Every kind of animal shit. Times two! Look, I’m sorry I fucked her. Can we dock this thing? Soon? Please?”

  I believed God had chosen me.

  Of course, I didn’t tell my wife this. There are some things you just don’t tell your spouse. If I had said, “Honey, we are going to Israel and there’s a real good chance that God is going to choose me for an assignment of some kind,” I know what would’ve happened. There would’ve been a long conversation about medication, and I did
n’t need it. So, I just said, “Honey, we’re going to Israel. Won’t that be fun?” She was excited. She’s a little Jewier than I am.

  Everything was confirmed the night after I talked to Jim. I had a vision. An honest-to-God, kicking-it old-school biblical-style vision. No magic powder involved. That was behind me.

  I bolted up out of sleep, covered in sweat. My heart was pounding, and I was breathing fast. There was a strange white light filling the bedroom. There it was, floating over my bed in a swirling blue mist, about the size of a small car, turning slowly around: a giant camcorder. Floating next to it was a very old man with a long white beard wearing a pointed hat and a coat of stars that seemed to blend in with the sky. He was presenting the camera with his hands, as if it were a prize on a game show. He was rocking his head back and forth, sort of singing, “Good, love, good, love, good, love,” in a droning repetition.

  I knew at the time that it wasn’t a commercial. They don’t have that technology—yet. I didn’t wake my wife up because, again, there are some things you don’t tell wives. You don’t wake your wife up in the middle of the night and say, “Do you see the giant camcorder, honey?” If I had done that, I would definitely be on medication.

  The old man was laughing and singing when the vision disappeared, and I heard my wife saying, “What’s the matter? Why are you up? Are you alright? Did you do drugs?”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

  But what did the vision mean? What was God trying to tell me?

  I went back to sleep. When I woke up, I walked into the living room, where my wife was reading the Sunday paper. I leaned over her shoulder to give her a kiss, and when I looked down at the paper, right in front of me was an ad: Sony camcorder on sale, $850, at The Wiz. It was the camcorder from the vision. There are no coincidences. The Wiz was the guy in the dream—come on, it was a sign. My wife saw it as a sale, but that’s really semantics. It was better that she didn’t know.

  It was finally clear to me. I was going to travel to Israel and God was going to show me his face and I would get it on tape. I was going to make the most important documentary ever. I needed that camcorder.

  A couple of hours later, my wife and I walked into The Wiz. I don’t know if this happens to anybody else, but when I walk into a place like that, I get that immediate sensation of “Hey, am I going to get fucked?”

  I don’t know if it’s all the complicated electronic equipment or if it’s the way the creepy sales staff is perched at the counter waiting to pounce. They don’t hire people at these places, they cast them.

  There’s always the one older guy with a potbelly, slicked-back hair, tie, and a pocket protector. He’s a heart attack waiting to happen. He looks like my Grandpa Jack. He’s been selling air conditioners for twenty years. You are sure there is a picture of him in a photo album somewhere with a lei around his neck and a hula girl at his side from an appliance junket to Hawaii in the seventies. He’s there to accommodate the old school.

  “I’m Frank, the manager. How are ya? What can we help you find today?”

  There are also always the younger, groovier guys to accommodate the younger, groovier people. Maybe they have a ponytail and a goatee. They also have assorted ethnic types to deal with the assorted ethnic types that come in. That number will be smaller or larger depending on the ethnic profile of the neighborhood.

  Kim and I were looking at the cameras, and of course Groovy Guy ambled up. “Hey, you two. Checking out the camcorders? Right on. If you have any questions, I’ll be right here behind you. My name is Scott.”

  “Scott, is this the one on sale for eight hundred and fifty dollars?” I said like a person who knows what he needs.

  They always say the same thing. “No, that one you’re looking at is a hundred thousand dollars. We’re out of the one on sale.” I was devastated. “What? We just saw it in the—” Kim cut me off.

  “Marc, come here a second.” She pulled me aside. “That’s a bait and switch. He can’t do that. It’s illegal.”

  “What are you talking about?” I whined.

  “I saw it on Sixty Minutes. It’s a bait and switch. I’m going to say something. It’s wrong.”

  She was going in. I could see it in her eyes. She was going to make things right. She did that sometimes, and whenever she did I would usually go elsewhere in the store until the problem had passed.

  Kim walked back over to Groovy Guy and locked eyes with him. “We saw a Sony camcorder in the paper advertised for eight hundred and fifty dollars, and now that we’re here, you say you don’t have it and are trying to sell us a more expensive camera. That’s a bait and switch, and that’s illegal.”

  “No, ma’am, we’re just out of the other camera.” He still thought he had a chance.

  Kim stepped closer and upped the intensity of her gaze. She’s like a cobra. She’ll lock you in and hold you there until you do the right thing. I’d been locked in it for almost ten years.

  “I don’t think you understand,” Kim emphasized. “I will take you down if you don’t find me one of those camcorders we saw advertised.”

  I was watching the scene unfold from behind the camera-bag rack. Groovy Guy stood his ground for about seven seconds, then buckled. “Uh, I think I might have one more in the back,” he said, and disappeared into the stockroom.

  I ran out from behind the bags and hugged Kim. “Good job, baby. I knew he had one back there.” I didn’t know any such thing. I was ready to buy the expensive one.

  “Yeah, we got him,” she said, satisfied with herself.

  He brought out the box, set it on the counter, and said, “Here’s the Sony.”

  “Sony,” I blurted. “It’s good. It’s love.” I shot a smile over to Kim.

  I looked at the box as if it solved all my problems forever. I thought there should’ve been a chorus of angels, but there wasn’t. Just Groovy Guy, and he said, “I need to ask if you want the in-store warranty. If something goes wrong with the camera within the first year, anything, we’ll fix it or replace it for free—for a hundred dollars more.”

  I thought about it for a second. “The math doesn’t really work out on that, does it? Doesn’t it have its own warranty?” I said. “It’s a Sony. It’s good. It’s love.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Kim whispered, embarrassed.

  “I don’t know,” I said to her. “Look, we don’t want the in-store warranty,” I said in a finalizing tone to Groovy Guy.

  “You don’t want the warranty?” he said, suddenly exasperated for some reason. “Really? Okay, I have to get my manager.”

  “Okay, whatever you have to do,” I said.

  “Frank!” he screamed.

  Then air conditioner guy came over.

  “Yeah, what? What’s the problem, Scott?”

  “They don’t want the warranty.”

  Frank looked overly surprised. Then it started to unfold like a poorly rehearsed play. He actually said, “No warranty? Hmm, I’ve never heard of that before. No warranty?”

  “Nope,” Groovy Guy said smugly. “They said they didn’t want it.”

  “Now, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want the warranty,” Frank said earnestly. “Hang on a sec. José! Leroy! Achmed! Come over here. This guy doesn’t want the warranty. Maybe you guys could help me understand this.”

  Then this multi-culti cabal of appliance salesmen assembled before me in what looked like a dance line. It felt like the end of a musical.

  Leroy says, “No warranty?” in a hip-hop tone.

  Achmed says, “No warranty?” with an Arabic accent.

  José just says, “No guarantía?”

  They all join together singing, “No warranty! He doesn’t want the warranty!”

  My voice rises above them in a crescendo and stops them. “No, I don’t want the warranty. It’s SONY. It’s GOOD. It’s LOVE. It’s bigger than all of us, and it’s MINE. It’s OURS. Good-bye, we’re off.”

  Finale. C
urtain. My wife and I walk out.

  Next stop was Niketown. Kim wanted to get some shoes. I didn’t want to go there. I don’t really like Nikes. Their politics bother me. Sweatshops? Who wants that karma on their feet? She went to the women’s department, and I went browsing up in the hiking area. I was passively looking around when I saw it, the vision of shoe illumination. The perfect sneaker/hiking boot hybrid. It was sitting on a shelf, alone, glowing, resonating, like the burning bush. I knew then that it was what God wanted me to wear in Israel. I ran up to the shelf and pulled it down. I thought, I don’t care if they’re held together with Third World spit. I am meant to have this shoe. I ran up to the salesclerk, held the shoe in front of me and asked, “Do you have these in a size twelve?”

  He said, “Calm down. I’ll check. Please get out of the stockroom.”

  He came out with the box and pulled the perfect shoes out of it and put them on my feet. I started to walk around. I said, “These are amazing. I feel great, whole.”

  “They feel alright?” he said.

  “Alright? They feel amazing. I’m never taking them off.” I started stomping around the store.

  “Sir, could you please take it easy? You’re making the other customers nervous.”

  “These are the most powerful shoes I’ve ever had on. They should come with a cape,” I said proudly. “I’ll take them.”

  “You want to wear them out, sir?”

  “Wear them out? I’m gonna wear them to sleep,” I said. “You can throw those other shoes away.”

  I walked around and found Kim. I showed her my shoes, beaming as if I were ten years old. She hadn’t found anything for herself. I took the camera out of the box in the foyer of Niketown. After we left the store, I swear people were parting as we walked down Fifty-seventh Street. In retrospect, it might’ve been because I was skip-stomping down the sidewalk like a hyperactive child, in my pretty new boots as I watched people passing by on the little screen that winged out of the side of my camcorder.