Chapter 56

The summer of eighty-nine had now begun. Even John was wearing T-shirts under his greasy Carhartt overalls revealing his tree trunk sized arms. Janet hadn’t been exaggerating about the new barmaid. If there was such a thing has a hidden master she was one of them. I didn’t fear her. I knew by now, as the poet Jimmy Carroll said, I had allies in heaven and I had comrades in hell. But I knew she was a venomous snake and I knew from reading about how most of the herpetologists who studied venomous snakes ended up its best to avoid them even if you do find them fascinating. John had no such reservations. She was a little heavyset and very arrogant, just Johns type. He settled up to the bar at Gaslight and ordered a Wild Turkey. He said “so you know about Crowley I hear. What else do you know about, the hidden masters? There are those who serve Set and those who serve Horus and his prophet four one eight. There are no real masters. Who do you serve?” She said “why don’t you find out about me? How about I do your tarot cards? When I am done you will know all there is to know.” John smirked and said “your place or mine?” She said “my place after work.” They left in her car after the day shift ended and I went home early. I was told the next day that John showed up back at the Gaslight about 2 AM wearing only his underwear. He took his truck and left. The girl never came back to work again. When I asked John what had happened he would only say “she started doing my tarot cards and she just knew too much about me. She knew stuff that nobody should know. I had to get out of there. She lives right in Babylon so I just jogged back to my truck.” Right down Sunrise Highway in his skivvies as I found out in the ensuing days. I didn’t ask any more questions. I knew better. Red and I were walking into an afterhours club in Babylon a month or two later and she was the barmaid. As soon as I walked through the door she produced a camera and snapped my picture. Red freaked out, he probably thought it was a mob thing. He went behind the bar to take the camera from her and I said “no. Let her keep it.” They would make me pay for my overconfidence in the ensuing months. I still did not know Gods Hebrew names.

Nietzsche said “Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.” I had no intentions of casting my demon out. I let him drive. The first few months of the summer of eighty-nine were like the golden age. Sooner or later it would have to be Dianne. It could only be Dianne. Anything less was to condemn myself to wander the earth in perpetual hunger. But I was having too much fun with Michelle and everybody else. I just didn’t know how little time I had left. I also didn’t bargain that Dianne was just as cruel as me.

Patty Esposito started coming around regularly. I didn’t think much of it when they gave him the agency. Phil should have just stayed and kept it. I didn’t want it, that’s for sure. Geir always called Richey “a whore monger!” I tended to agree with him. Richey was giving me money hand over fist and my landscaping business was doing well. I wasn’t about to go into the pimp business.

I couldn’t listen to anymore of Michelle’s bullshit about me taking her car ‘to go see Dianne so I rented three or four cars. Actually it was four but I lost one when I forgot where I parked it. It seemed like it became legal for clubs to remain open in Babylon after hours that summer. We no longer went to Diners after work. Usually everyone went to the Third Rail, a bar over by Babylon train station. There we would party till the sunlight became offensive. All the ‘gangsters’ went there. It was my new place to hold court and now I had a queen. In Richey’s clubs we rolled Richey’s customers whenever we could. One time Red got over two thousand in twenty dollar bills from a drunk sleeping it off in his car in the parking lot. The bills were so new I couldn’t even count them. Guys used to come around and sell the dancers high end designer clothes. I determined who came around by how much of a cut they gave me. I don’t know if I was drunk or the guy really shorted me but I had Blockhead thoroughly clean this guy’s car out one night. There was an Arab Bazaar at the Third Rail later on. Of course Michelle was taking the best stuff for herself. This guy we used to call ‘hello I’m Sal I’m somebody’s son’, because that is practically the way he would introduce himself, comes over and asks me if he could buy one of the outfits for his girlfriend. Unfortunately for Sal it was an outfit Michelle had already picked out for herself. She didn’t even let me answer him. She physically threw him into a fifty gallon garbage pail. Only his legs were dangling out of it.

Chapter 57

Jim didn’t work for me that year so I hired my cousin Andrew to be my foreman. Andrew was built just like me. He’s the same age as my younger sister and they were inseparable, had been since college. I started spending a lot more time with my family, at least the ones that were worth spending time with. My younger sister was getting tickets and free passes for all the concerts in the tri state area courtesy of her music critic boyfriend so Michelle and I attended a major concert every week that summer. The best one was Melisa Etheridge in the gymnasium of Hofstra University. I was standing twenty feet away staring into her eyes, the favored daughter of the Queen of Night by my side, when she sung Similar Features. I wondered if she knew she was performing for her own muse.

If there were any doubts in my mind as to who and what Dianne was they were only because I was trying so hard not to pay attention. If only I had listened to the music. Morrison had even given me a memo in When the Music’s Over when he said “Music is your only friend.” I don’t know if I was intoxicated by the pain I was inflicting or the pleasure I was consuming but I was blind. In Late September Dogs Etheridge did everything but spell out that it would all be over in September. She also tells her lover that she has spent hours with the Devil to understand just what they need. She pleads with them saying “the spear in your side is me.”

We went to see Cher in concert at Jones Beach and she sung three songs one of them her new smash hit which had resurrected her career; If I Could Turn Back Time. The song said she didn’t know why she said and did the things she did. Repeating the by now familiar theme Cher, perhaps the greatest female vocalist of the twentieth century, sung ‘words are like weapons and pride is a knife that cuts deep. I didn’t mean to inflict the pain that I did. I was too strong to tell you I was sorry and too proud to tell you I was wrong. I would give anything to go back in time and take back those words. Then you would love me like you used to.’ Cher delivered Dianne’s message. It took about ten minutes and then Cher was whisked away in a helicopter leaving the sellout crowd ripped off and ready to riot.

Dianne was coming at me with all the power of Isis, a power that could override even God himself but I was unmoved. She could resurrect Janis Joplin to apologize for inflicting the wound of Aforteas on me and fly in the greatest living female vocalist to tell me she was sorry but Joan of Arc herself wouldn’t have moved me. Nothing less than the words coming right from her incarnated lips were ever going to move me at that point. I, in flesh and blood, had burned down the Mafia and the most powerful motorcycle gang on the east coast just to hold her hand. She could speak two then three words and until she did I was going to take whatever pleasure I could with My Michelle, a title from the album Appetite for Destruction and my lover that didn’t throw needless complications into what was all very simple.

The Who in the Meadowlands was a classic, not for the way they played. The Who themselves were disappointing. But the event was the perfect date. We took my sister, Andrew, and a few of their friends, in one of my rentals. We stopped to get something to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken in North Amityville since Michelle and I had only left the Third Rail long enough to go home shower and get ready for the concert. While we were at Kentucky Fried Chicken Michelle had a fender bender at the drive through with some loud mouthed Black girl. While this girl was jawing Michelle was taking off all her jewelry. When she was done she pulled off her stiletto heels and got out still brandishing one of them. Without saying a word Michelle in a matter of fact fashion permanently disfigured the girl’s face with her high heeled shoe. Michelle never even messed up her makeup. The other girls lip was half hanging off and the rest of her face was a gory mess. I ended up knocking out her boyfriend but he was pretty tough. He got back up after convulsing on the floor for a couple of minutes. His gyrations on the pavement saved him from my usual sense of fair play where I would kick him into a bloody hamburger. I was quite surprised when he got back up and resumed fighting. Andrew lent me some assistance in making sure he stayed down the second time. Then we had to leave because Blacks were streaming from every building. We still hadn’t eaten any food yet and we were hungry when we got to the Meadowlands. Everyone was barbequing in the parking lot so we traded Andrews sister’s best friend for some hamburgers for Michelle and I, sausage’s for everyone else. We didn’t see the girl for the rest of the night. When we left the concert Michelle must have run over every cone in New Jersey. We weren’t waiting on any lines. The bumper was already hanging off the car anyway. Somewhere there’s a picture of Michelle and I kissing against the brilliant red sunset that evening. It’s easily the best love photo I have ever seen that wasn’t staged.

Michelle and I continued to explore the deepest darkest corridors of sexuality but “When sleep at last has come on limbs that had run wild.” I lay on the left side of the bed, on my left side, the pillow pulled tight to me. I would shut my eyes and the pillow was Dianne. I never told Michelle I loved her. She probably didn’t need Lilith to tell her what was coming. When she worked at the Rainforest and I worked with Dianne Michelle was almost guaranteed to walk out before her shift was over. One time Doxie haltingly informed me that my clothes were strewn all over the parking lot of Bogart’s. I went outside and sure enough they were.

She wasn’t like that all the time. In fact if Dianne wasn’t in the picture she didn’t care what I did. One night she encouraged me to go hang out with some girls that were recruiting, on Long Island, for a female chapter of the Hell’s Angels. The only thing that could be more insulting to the Pagans was if some guys were recruiting for a male chapter of the Hells Angels on Long Island. The clubs were blood rivals and Long Island was the Pagans territory at the time. But the girls were a lot of fun and everyone knew them so they were letting them do it. We actually ended up staying over by Farmingdale in some biker bars that were the last strongholds of the Pagans. They were buying me drinks all night and I took about twenty hits of some ‘good’ acid the girls had. By the time I got back to Bogart’s at about 3 AM on the back of a bike I was as inebriated as anyone still standing can get.

Bobby and all his Cretins were there but hardly anyone else. Michelle stubbornly refused to close the bar early so she could take me home. I went behind the bar and I grabbed the Wild Turkey. I broke the top of the bottle off on the bar and started guzzling it from the jagged glass just like in the movies. By the time I finished the bottle she had all the meticulouslypolished glass’s neatly stacked in pyramids on each side of the bar. She was taking her sweet ass time, deliberately antagonizing me. She still hadn’t even called last call. I broke the empty bottle on the floor and picked up a bar stool yelling “The bars closed!” Then I broke every glass on the bar. Some guys were sitting in the corner covered in the shattered glass and I staggered up to them still brandishing my trusty bar stool. I half sneered half slurred “didn’t you hear? The bars closed!” One of them had the balls to actually deck me, either that or I finally passed out. But I heard that he ended up taking quite a beating from Michelle and the Cretins. They took me to my mother’s house and put me in the guest bed down in the converted garage. When I awoke, around noon the next day, I was peeing five feet straight up in the air and back down on Michelle and me.

Richey tried to get cute again after that. By this time I didn’t need John to tell me how to deal with him. When I saw he had cut Michelle from five days to four I went right in his office. I showed him the schedule and said “why does Michelle only have four days on here?” He starts sputtering “she never even finish’s those shifts at the Rainforest. She’s the only girl that even does five shifts. That’s too much. She’s gonna get burned out.” I slammed my forty-four onto his desk with the barrel pointing at him. I don’t believe in leaving the chamber over the hammer empty. I said “Richey! You see my new gun? It’s bigger than yours.” Richey quickly said “I don’t care how many days she works. Tell Red to put her on the schedule seven days a week if you want. I was just looking out for you. You gotta live with her.” He was right too. I didn’t need the money and neither did she but we just couldn’t let him get away with something like that so I said “tell Patty that Bobby will be booking some girls too for now on.” Bobby had about three or four already that Marlena and him had cultivated from dance clubs. By the time Bobby’s list had twenty five girls Phil would reappear and Mark would be unable to attend a meeting with me at the Crazy Clown because someone had shot him in the back of the head in the parking lot before I got there. The rest of the owners, except Richey, would go into hiding. Joey Massera and his whole crew were going to become history. Richey would be the only man left standing. He knew how to play his cards with us. He shut his mouth.

Chapter 58

It couldn’t have been very far into the summer when I was standing at the door of Bogart’s and someone grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn around to know who. She had a way of touching me that nobody ever had before or since. I guess it was the same way I held my forty-four. Dianne had a warm yet apprehensive smile on her face. I hadn’t seen her smile at me in months. In fact we hadn’t even talked in over a month. She had been beaten up by some firemen while doing a private party. Vinnie had taken her there. I wanted to kill him and I wanted to kill him real bad but I knew that would seal everyone’s fate forever. So instead I figured the best thing would be for Dianne and me to stop talking to each other.

She said “I have to talk to you.” I said “where’s Prince Charming?” Her eyes shifted down from mine and she said “we’re not getting along but that’s not why I need to talk to you.” I said “what a shame. I was hoping you would ask me to kill him for you.” Her hand was still on my shoulder and she began kneading my muscles with it. She went on “I live in the basement of my mother’s house and every time it rains the walls have been leaking like a sieve. I had some guys from here look at it and one of them said the foundations cracked and the other one said I just have drainage problems. Can you take a look at it for me?” I said “if the foundations cracked there’s not really much you can do about it and that’s not my field of expertise. If it’s the drainage I’ll fix it but you got to pay my costs and my labor. Believe it or not Geir actually does get paid.” She laughed and I felt that old familiar feeling in my groin. She said “I don’t expect you to work for free. I plan on paying you.” I said “I don’t want to be running into Vinnie while I’m there Dianne. If I do then I’m not responsible for what happens.” She giggled uncertainly and said “I haven’t even seen him in a week. When can you come over?” I said “tomorrow afternoon.” She told me where her house was. I had known where it was two days after I met her but I played along writing down the directions.

The next day I went over there. She lived in one of those Levitt house’s behind the hospital in East Meadow. I had always figured the girl had never had a chance since the day she was born. But then who does? She looked really happy to see me when I got there and all I could think to myself was I had to be careful and not throw away my co-op in Lynbrook with the doorman who knew my name for a temporary home in a damp dingy basement in East Meadow. I would get her out of there and off that stage but when I was good and ready. That was the way she wanted it. Wasn’t it?

She had three big dogs and they were using the area directly in front of the foundation in the backyard as a run. The grade was lowest right by the house where the soil was hard packed by the incessant prancing of the dogs. I thought to myself; and I hate the parrots? I said “Dianne you can’t just let the dogs run up by the house like this. The soils become hard packed and your gutters are draining right into it. Of course waters coming into your basement. Where else is it gonna go? I have to till this soil and regrade it. Then we need to run those gutters out from the house. If you want I’ll put some sod in.” She asked me how much it was going to cost with the sod and I said “six hundred dollars. But I have to do it in the afternoons after work.” She said that would be fine. Yea for her. It was gonna cost me money to do the job and Geir and Andrew were not going to like their new hours. I couldn’t run a full crew there. I was losing money as it was. I told her I would start it tomorrow. At the time I thought she really needed my help but in retrospect that foundation had probably been leaking like that for years. I don’t know why this girl just couldn’t speak her mind. All she had to do was state the obvious and say I’m sorry and I love you. I would have broken down in tears right on the spot. Why did I have to find out from Melissa Etheridge and Cher how she felt about things?

She was making her big play for me. The one I should have been ready for. The same one I had been telling myself would culminate with the redemption of the Gods. Now I thought I was on a landscaping job. It would have been better if I had been born with a little more understanding of woman and a little less Fire and Force. But who am I to second guess anything. I had my chance and I failed miserably.

I showed up early on the regular job and I worked like an animal to make enough time to do Dianne’s job. I think I still had to take a separate day to lay the some thousand square feet of sod. Cut sod doesn’t keep well and it was already hot. I remember Andrew and I were working with our shirts off. I wasn’t trying to impress Dianne. If there was one thing I knew I didn’t have to do with her it was prove my virility just that I had a heart even a tiny one. Again, I failed miserably.

Her friends from East Meadow kept coming over. I guess she was showing me to them. I think I remarked to her how ugly they all were and didn’t she have anything decent for my cousin. One guy asked me if I would be using lime. He looked like the town drunk. Him I told “I don’t need any lime. I’m gonna go back to the yard and get the chipper. We can feed you into it. We’ll just spray you all over the topsoil before we lay any grass. You’re organic! We won’t have to worry about the PH!” I’m sure I embarrassed the shit out of her. That was my intentions. It cost me more to do the job than she was paying for it and I was going to get my money’s worth. Dianne had gotten me started long ago and unlike my hapless victims at the bars she had no one to drag me off of her. If only she had just went out with me after she broke up with Charlie. I still loved her just as much as I always did but I couldn’t show her or tell her anymore. In fact I had become afraid to.

She wanted me to come back after the first day and hang out with her and her friends in some parking lot on Hempstead Turnpike. I said “Dianne I haven’t hung out in a parking lot since I was seventeen years old.” And really I hadn’t since Tanner Park. She said “does it really matter where we hang out. I’m gonna be there! You’ll have the best time of your life!” Then she scrunched up her face to a little girl war hoop. I told her I couldn’t come because Michelle was expecting me home and she said “Fuck Michelle!” I said “yes. I have over and over again. All night every night and I am already having the time of my life.”

Dianne was wearing baggy grey sweat pants and dirty sneakers most of the time I was there. She explained to me without me asking “this is the way I dress when I’m not around the clubs. I know it’s a little grungy but this is the way I’m comfortable. You seem to think I wear that stuff I wear around the clubs all the time. I never wear it when I’m not in the clubs.” I couldn’t tell her. She already had me scared to say what was really on my mind. But without the leather and chains, in her baggy sweat pants and dirty sneakers, she was the most adorable thing I have ever seen.

I had to pick up the balance when I was done. She made me go into the bedroom and she shut the door on her friends who were sitting around the kitchen. We sat on her bed and looked at all her old photo albums. Really, it was the most romantic thing she could have done after making herself so inaccessible for almost two years but something had hardened my heart. I had already determined that I was not going for this at least until the end of the summer. So when she leaned in to kiss me and stuck her tongue in my mouth I pushed her away. I can still taste how sweet that tongue was, even though it was only a fraction of a second and I can still see the look of hurt in her eyes when I pushed her away. I had no right to do that. I had tried to kiss her some two dozen times. Not once did she ever even come close to pushing me away.

I still wasn’t satisfied with the damage I had done so I made a little speech, easily the stupidest things that have ever come out of my mouth. I said “where’s Vinnie Dianne? What am I gonna kiss you back? Then I’m gonna make love to you on the bed you grew up on. I’m gonna break up with Michelle. I’m gonna lose my co-op and my self respect. Then Vinnie will show up at the backdoor.” She said “well what do you want guarantees? I wasn’t ready before and I told you that a million times.” She was right. What was I, Richey examining his stock options?

I had been telling myself all along that it was so important that she should know that we were giving ourselves to each other for eternity but she already knew that better than I did. She knew it in her subconscious where the Goddess dwelled. It was me who still didn’t want to admit to myself that this was all real. Even if it was impossible that was inconsequential. There were those who believed it was possible, those with the power of Gods. Their rules were we had to die upon the consummation of our love. There is no turning back from death but sometimes you have to let nature take its course. Like the Rosarium philosophorum says when the Great Work begins at stage two, as it was about to do right then and there,“you should employ venerable nature, because from her through her and in her is our art born and in naught else: and so our magisterium is the work of nature and not the worker.”

I left without ever even apologizing for pushing her away. Now it was me who knew subconsciously just what I had done. It ate away at me for the rest of the summer like a malignant cancer. Now I hated myself more than I had ever hated anyone else, even God himself.

Chapter 59

Michelle had what looked to be a very heavy, very old, elongated oval door mirror propped up by a chair at the left foot of the queen sized bed. It was framed in wood that was painted gold. I was told to never touch that mirror. Further back beyond the foot of the bed were the dresser and a large single piece mirror that hung above it on the wall. The walk in closet on the right side of the bed also had mirrors on its sliding doors. There were polished brass lighting fixtures placed around the room randomly. The polished brass would reflect the images in the mirrors. The brass would sometimes show the wrinkles in the bed sheets reflected from the mirrors in the likenesses of Austin Osman Spare paintings. Hideously misshapen creatures engaged in orgiastic revelries and struck fantastic poses. If you messed the sheets up the polished brass would reveal different images. Many of the images were clear enough to have taken photographs of although I never did. There was nothing ambiguous about them. Some of the reflections in the brass were as detailed as Spare’s paintings themselves.

Up to a quarter of Michelle’s hair would at times rise straight up like something was gently lifting it. Sometimes a network of tiny blue sparks would appear in the hairs that were standing. Her hair would usually rise during intercourse particularly when she was on top facing and straddling me from a kneeling position. It usually occurred at night when we had ingested cocaine but not always. Whenever this phenomenon would occur Michelle exhibited praeterhuman intelligence. When it happened sexual sensations were amplified and my ejaculation increased. It was as if something was draining me, prolonging my orgasm. These manifestations would last for hours and Michelle would say personnel things about me that no other human would know. She talked about having met my father and being sent to me by him. Some of what she was saying was outright bullshit but much of it was true. She seemed to know every sexual fantasy I had ever had and she would talk about them in detail as she tried to reenact them in the bedroom. She did not know about Rosarium Philosophorum or any of the death and orgasm parts. Those seemed to be blocked from her and she knew she was missing information. She would become frustrated, frequently interrogating me while we were having sex. Sometimes she would get angry and conduct furious conversations to the mirrors complaining about having to be with me.

She had little memory of any of this during the light of the day except if we were still having sex from the night before. If the orgasmic succession remained unbroken the phenomena could occur at anytime of the day or night. Sometimes I would try to trick her into revealing the origin and intention of the praeterhuman intelligence. She always maintained it was Lilith. When I tried to question her as to her childhood and her experiences with her mother her memories seemed jumbled and she was evasive. She talked about a staff engraved with some kind of letters that she said resembled Masonic ciphers that I had showed her from Manly Halls ‘Big Book.’ The staff made her mother very powerful within her coven. She also told me that when she was young she had been drowned to the point where she washed up on a Florida beach lifeless and had to be resuscitated by emergency personnel. After the incident her mother had become furious with her and beat her.

One afternoon the sun was shining through the windows on a brilliant summer day but the room appeared to grow ten times brighter than it already was. Michelle scrambled over me and jumped out of bed on the left side. She had a panicked look in her face. With her palms upturned and her arms slightly extended in front of her toward the mirror on the floor she said “But I didn’t tell him anything!” The light in the room grew even brighter and she fell to the floor naked. Her eyes rolled back showing only the white. She began to froth at the mouth. I jumped out of the bed to help her. All the while the light grew blindingly bright. I was suddenly overcome with overwhelming fear.

I ran out of the apartment and down a flight of stairs to another apartment door on the third floor. I banged on the door and a woman about my own age answered. I was still naked which did not at all seem to surprise her. She ushered me in. She opened the door to her bedroom and went in shutting the door behind her. She came out repeating the procedure of closing the door behind her in reverse and gave me a pair of sweat pants. She asked me what had happened. I told her my girlfriend was having a seizure. She went in her bedroom and closed the door. She came out a couple of minutes later, closing the door behind her again, and told me she had called the police and they were coming. She told me to just wait there. She then went back in her bedroom and shut the door again leaving me in the living room by myself. I knew the answers to all my questions were behind that door but also knew that I should not open it. The whole situation unnerved me all over again and I ran from her apartment too.

I ran down three flights of stairs and into the street and began running north on Peninsula Boulevard. I jumped on the roof of a car that was passing me and held on. The car accelerated up the road till it came to a light where it had to stop. I jumped off and kept running north. I repeated the procedure a few more times till I passed Southern State Parkway, about four miles north of where I started. Finally a van style ambulance pulled up with a six man emergency crew. The guys convinced me to let them take me to Mercy Hospital right down Peninsula Boulevard. On the way there they complained of being interrupted from their weekend barbeques. They told me my condition was the same as they had seen in some Vietnam Vets. I said “I’m too young to have ever been in Vietnam.” One of the personnel said “let us just put this wet wash cloth over your eyes. We have found that light exposure will trigger the panic. It will relax you.” They put a warm wet wash cloth over my eyes. Having the light shut down from my perception relaxed me a great deal. They took me from the ambulance by gurney into Mercy Hospital to a small emergency room where I was the only patient. They repeated the same procedure with the wet wash cloth. I heard a voice saying “does anyone know who was with him when this happened.” A frantic effort ensued in the seemingly make shift emergency room to locate my point of origin. In about a half hour Michelle arrived. She was dressed very sharply. She walked in like she owned the place and said “Lick. Oh there’s my Lickster. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Then she turned to the couple of doctors that were there and said “is he alright to go?” They answered in the affirmative and we just left. I never saw a cop. When I got in her car I said “I thought you were having a seizure. What just happened and why were there no police involved? You can’t just do the kind of shit I just did without the police getting involved.” She said “the police came but I was fine. I don’t remember having any seizure. I might of. I used to get them when I was a little girl after I drowned in Florida. They left and I have been looking for you ever since.” I said “there were lines all over the dresser.” She said “I threw them away before they got there.” I said “how did you know they were getting there?” She said “you were gone.” I asked her the rest of the obvious questions. She had an answer for everything, none of them very plausible.

Chapter 60

A couple of nights later Bobby and Marlena came over. Michelle and Marlena started having a conversation about what had happened and all the flack from the board that Sal’s family had been catching lately over our antics. There were guys and girls stopping in at all hours of the day and night, a few weeks before Geir and I had come up there past midnight. When I used my key I found Michelle had chained the door. I was banging on that door for a half hour yelling her name into the darkened apartment. Everybody on the fourth floor came out of their apartments. I got no response from inside. Figuring somebody had to have called the police by now we threw our guns through the opening that the chain allowed in the door, locked it, and left. When I called her from my mother’s Michelle said she had been sleeping.

Michelle and Marlena’s conversation took on an unnervingly business like tone. I had heard Michelle talk like this before, usually when she was Lilith, but never Marlena who almost always stuck to baby talk. The content of the conversation was innocuous enough but between the both of them they must have said Old Ones at least a half a dozen times. By now I more or less knew what was going on. I had read H.P. Lovecraft. In his famous Cthulhu mythos Lovecraft said ‘the Old Ones were sleeping on the bottom of the oceans and biding their time till the right astral alignment when they can once again walk the earth in their terrible reign. They were a race of monsters from the far off stars who had once ruled the earth as Gods feeding on human pain and depravity. They were served by a secret priesthood of Gods, humanoids, and magi, who awaited their return and worked tirelessly to bring it about.’

The Old Ones of HP Lovecraft, the Titans of the Greeks, and the Dragons whose heads are broken by the waters in the Zohar are one in the same. As Jung noted in Rosarium philosophorum the king and queen are sometimes depicted as dragons. In The Zohars Book of Concealed Mystery Leviathan is the king dragon whom the God of Abraham has banished to the great sea. The Book of Concealed Mystery goes on to say that the king and queen dragons were two but they have been reduced into one. Mathers pedantically explains that passage by saying ‘God has slain the queen dragon lest they should mate and their judgments against man multiply.’ But as Crowley knew all too well Mathers was a fool. He refused to accept that there were hidden masters that knew far more than his moldy old manuscripts. I was among them now, the witch’s and sorcerers, the most ancient of the Magi.

In his boundless hubris the god of Abraham boasts in the Book of Job 41:10: “No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse Leviathan; who then is he that can stand before Me?” But he has already said In Job 3:8 that there are those who curse his days, “Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan.” The Abrahamic God has contradicted himself once too often. It is he who is the real devil and as the Jesus says in John 8: 44 “a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” We as men know that when faced by a tyrant there are those among us who are fierce enough to do whatever it is going to take to defeat him. I was one of them. In fact to them I was Leviathan or at least one half of Leviathan. Nobody ever will say it better than Jim Morrison “I am the lizard king.”

Michelle had been telling Marlena that the old ones didn’t want us there anymore. I said “how come you both seem to need to use the words Old Ones with every other sentence? If the Old Ones don’t want us here anymore we will move.” I was feeling hostile and alone when I said “I don’t need Sal’s co-op just like I didn’t need his Uzi. I don’t need anything from them and you can tell them that for me. He can have his hand carved dining room set back but I’m keeping the forty-four. You said it was yours. We’re moving! Find us a new place.” Michelle looked at me and then she looked at Bobby. She said “Bobby can you two take a walk outside for a while. I think he needs some fresh air.” I said “yea maybe I do need some fresh air.”

When Bobby and I got in the elevator I said “Marlena’s one of them.” He looked at me with his perplexed rat face and said “one of who?” I grinned and said “more like one of what.” He said “I’m not following you but I understand you’re trying to say something important.” I said “no Bobby I can’t just say it. It’s for you and the rest of the sub creatures to find out. Let me just say this. Have you ever wondered why the likes of John, Phil, and me, are in Richey’s topless bars toying around with biker gangs and mobsters? It’s like using a howitzer to shoot squirrels.” He said “yea to tell you the truth I wonder about that all the time.” I said “I can’t tell you why Bobby or I probably could but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. All I can tell you is everything is not what it appears to be. Believe nothing that you’re told and only half of what you see.”

The panic attacks continued whenever I did cocaine. I did not run out of the co-op anymore naked, nor did Michelle have anymore ‘seizures’ but sexual arousal could turn to unrestrained terror within me in moments. Michelle, Lilith, and I, checked into the Sayonara Motel one night in Amityville and by 9AM I was running north up Route 110. For some reason it was always towards Dianne’s house. This time I had put my clothes on before I ran out of the room. A paramedic van arrived once again this time in only a few minutes. They whisked me off to Brunswick Hospital where Michelle picked me up after a half hour, again like it was no big deal that I was running through traffic jumping on the tops of moving cars.

I told Michelle what had happened between Dianne and I. Lilith could not see what Dianne was doing. Lilith is an insect as compared to Hecate. Michelle was taken completely by surprise. She said “how come you weren’t with her that’s what you want isn’t it? It’s what everybody wants accept me.” I said “I don’t know what I want anymore Michelle. That girl played head games with me for two years when she had no fucking reason to whatsoever. Now all of a sudden I’m with you and she wants me. Maybe I like being with you is that so impossible?” Michelle really didn’t take it that badly only when I told her Dianne had went through her old photo albums with me. Then she began to cry.

Chapter 61

A few weeks later Whitehead and I went to Cypress Hills. When we came back we went to Geirs apartment. I needed some space from Michelle. I needed to think about all this but cocaine sure wasn’t going to help me think. I had another panic attack in Geirs apartment. I was screaming and yelling and I broke one of his windows. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and they wrestled it away from me. I accidently got stabbed through an artery in my bicep. Unless pressure was applied to the wound it spurted blood three feet out every time my heart pumped. We wrapped it up then I continued with my insanity. The fact that neither one of them ran out on me attests to a super human fortitude on their part. The police never came and the landlord that lived right downstairs never said anything to Geir that he had a crazy man up in his apartment. Every time they got me calmed down I would do another huge line and start all over again. Geir kept saying “did you ever think that all those things were really here and they’re just waiting for you to die so they can get to you.” I said “Geir on the day my soul leaves my body they will be running to the furthest reaches of hell to hide from me. You just don’t get it. I want to die. This way I can get even with them and I don’t have to deal with these two bitches anymore!”

There was a knock at the door and somebody came up. I do not know why but for some reason I could not see who it was. They put a wet wash cloth over my eyes and whoever it was held me from behind. They were much stronger than Geir and Whitehead combined. They were stronger even than me. Sometime during the night, even though I was wired out of my mind on cocaine, I must have passed out. When I awoke that morning sunlight was streaming through the window. Whitehead and Geir were both passed out sitting up on the sofa. I woke them both up and asked them who had come over to help them last night with me. Neither one of them would answer. Geir said “does it matter? That’s the best friend your ever gonna have. He’s the one who looks out for you. Always!” I said “Geir you have just become coherent this year after being a babbling idiot for seven years. Your now fucking one of Richey’s best looking dancers.” He was; Lauren, she was an opera singer and she was hot. I would have been sleeping with her myself if I didn’t have Michelle and he wasn’t. I continued “that’s because of me Geir. Don’t make any mistakes about that. This is my world you are in. Please stop playing at being a hidden master. We have enough of them around here already. Now take me over Johns. Me and him have to talk.”

When we got to his house in East Islip he was playing with his ‘new’ plasma cutter which he had set up in his garage. He said “it’s one of the first ones ever made. I think I can even get it to work.” I said “yea it’s the coolest old piece of shit I have ever seen John. Aren’t you tired from last night?” He didn’t answer me and Geir just stood there with a stupid look on his face too. I said “John I’ve pretty much got it all figured out. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m Aleister Crowley ain’t I? And Dianne Rodney; Roddie Minor the Scarlet woman in the Amalantrah Working? Cute. Maybe I should just call her Rodney Major. The Amalantrah Working worked. He was able to incarnate the Sun into his own soul. That’s what Ipsissimis means. He no longer needs the Sun God. He is the Sun God. Same thing with her, she was able to incarnate the Moon into her soul too but they had trouble then and they’re having trouble now. Did I really think we could just bring them both together and all would be forgiven? That was pretty stupid of me. Their trouble with each other started even before time began. If she left him she left him for a reason.”

He just looked at me stone faced. I continued “There are far too many” I paused looking for a label but there were none “whatever they are; involved in this that are taking their directives from moldy old manuscripts. The Nazi’s, the CIA, the Mafia, the Witch’s, and let’s not forget the Astrum Argentum and their Free Masons, and those are just the incarnated. By the way which one do you work for or is it all of them? You already told me that they told you their all the same thing. Remember? Jesus, or shouldn’t I say that? How long have you known? At least since we were twelve and you took me to that island and they used that tortoise to put Jim Morrison’s soul in me. That’s how it’s done through changelings. I’m honored but when, exactly, did I acquire Crowley? My guess is when I had that dream when I was a kid. I guess Dianne had the same kind of dream or did she drown too? Or maybe she just died from the hepatitis. Was I just killing time when I was Morrison? Did I really need to spell it out for the sub creatures? Or was that all just for my own personal consumption?” He wouldn’t answer me. He just kept saying “I don’t know. Maybe. It sounds right.” I said “c’mon John Celebration of the Lizard “sun sun sun burn burn burn moon moon moon I will get you soon, soon, soon!” Yea soon, soon, soon. Meanwhile I’ve got a gaping hole in my heart, probably her too. I’m a Changeling John. See me change? When did Crowley first come into me? Was it when I had that dream or was it when I seen the Devil in my mother’s kitchen, just like he did? No that couldn’t have been it he was already in Morrison. But that’s right you said he could be in more than one place at the same time. In Celebration of the Lizard Morrison talked about playing strange games with the girls on the island. Crowley played his strange games on the island of Cefalù. I play mine on Long Island. And I’m gonna keep playing them John till you think of something else. This shits not gonna work. It’s all fucked up and you know it! She’s an unrepentant pig and that’s just what I’ve become too.” Suddenly the lights in the garage went out and we were in pitch black darkness. There were no windows in the garage. I figured maybe one of them was going to shoot me in the head and we were going to try all over again with the next incarnation. When nothing happened I walked out into the sunlight followed by John and Geir. For the first time in his life John looked like he was afraid. I said “what’s a matter John? Having trouble with the electricity?” He stammered “that’s never happened before.” I said “where gonna have to figure something else out.”

Geir and I went to Gaslight after that and I was in the back room contemplating whether I should write my name in blood on the wall, for Dianne to see, with my severed artery. I decided against it so instead I had Geir take me back to Lynbrook. There I told the demons to heal the artery. There was a tingling sensation all around the wound and when I took the wrap off blood didn’t spurt out anymore. A couple of days later I went to a hospital and had them put a stitch in it but it was already healed.

Chapter 62

When I had told Geir I wanted to die I wasn’t exaggerating. I just didn’t care about anything anymore. I was walking death. I was drinking a couple of quarts of whisky and making two trips into Cypress Hills every day. I would start in the morning with one of Sal’s collector’s edition bottles then I would have someone take me to Cypress Hills in the afternoon. By evening I was repeating the procedure all over again. There was a liquor store right on the corner and after Sal’s whiskey finally ran out I remember standing in front of it at 9AM in the rain wondering when it opened. I was still on probation. Somehow I never got a dirty urine, probably courtesy of the Astrum Argentum and the Free Masons. Every time I tried to sober up all I could see were Dianne’s eyes staring into mine with that look of hurt I left her with.

We moved out of the co-op and into an upscale apartment complex in Deer Park on the outskirts of Babylon. I remember when Andrew and I moved all me and Michelle’s stuff. It was a brilliant summer day not a cloud in the sky. No sooner did we pull up Peninsula with my International fully loaded than it started to rain from a clear blue sky. Andrew stuck his head out the window looking up and said “I never seen anything like this before. There’s not a cloud in the sky and the sun is shining. Where is the rain coming from?” I didn’t say anything. How could I tell my cousin the Goddess was crying?

I wasn’t working for Richey anymore. I didn’t want to be in the bars. I would never be able to bear seeing her face again without getting on my knees. I didn’t work for myself either. I told my mother to keep all the money. I figured I had more than enough money to kill myself. Sometimes I would stop at Bogart’s and Gaslight at four AM when I knew she wasn’t going to be there. One time I went in the Gaslight and Doxie couldn’t get this bachelor party out even though there were no more dancers left on stage. I went out to my car. When I came back in I had my three hundred Savage. I pointed it at the bachelor party chambered a round and yelled “the bars closed!” They trampled each other getting out of there. Another time Richey called me and asked me if I could beat up a drug dealer for him. I said as long as Dianne’s not there. He told me she wasn’t so I went down to Gaslight. When I got there Richey was sitting by the bar with Doxie and some four hundred pound slob was stomping around claiming Doxie owed him money. Shocking. I knocked him out right in the bar but he was too heavy for me to move by myself so Richey and Doxie helped me drag the whale out onto Horus’s alter. When we got him to the curb outside he regained consciousness and flopped to his knees. I nailed him with my Doc Martin, a kick Richey later told me looked like it was choreographed for the movies. It picked him up off the ground and blood and teeth went flying in all directions. He landed on his back with a resounding thud. His shirt had slipped above his huge belly as he hit the ground and his hairy stomach oscillated like a bowl of Jell-O in an aftershock. I left before the ambulance and police got there as was my custom.

Chapter 63

Our apartment in Deer Park became ground zero for the next twenty some odd years of perversion that the human race would defile itself with. There were times when I was blind folded and my hands were tied in the darkness. I could actually feel Lilith’s talons raking my ass. Later when I would ask Michelle “what was that you had on my ass?” She would say “my foot.” It was no human foot.

I knew what I was doing and I would have my war with God even if I could not win. I was going to go down just like Ahab stabbing at the brute with my harpoon even until my finale breath. Lilith would come into Michelle every night taunting me “why don’t you just go to your little whore? You don’t want to be here. You want to go look at more pictures of her when she was a little baby stripper. Go to your little whore. The two of you are meant for each other, a pair of losers!” Her sexual appetites grew more and more sadistic and frequently I would have black eyes for days. Michelle was nothing like this when she wasn’t under the influence of Lilith. She was fun loving and wanted to please me to the point of being demure. It was me who was now conjuring up Lilith not her. All my friends loved Michelle even John. One night Geir, who was sleeping over on the couch, snuck into our bedroom and sprinkled rose pedals all around the bed while we were sleeping.

Geirs sentimental intentions aside I knew in my heart that Michelle was never supposed to have stayed with me. She was supposed to have backed way off when the time came, she probably even had a boyfriend stashed somewhere. I didn’t believe her for one second about being asleep when that chain was on the door in Lynbrook. She had been fighting with her mother since the summer began about being with me. Michelle claimed it was because her mother didn’t like me. I had never met her mother nor had I ever spoken to her. They weren’t speaking anymore and they never would again. Michelle was falling in love with me. It was inevitable and they should have known. Fire and Force carry’s over almost seamlessly from the battlefield to the bedroom. Every time we partied and engaged in marathon sex we would fight and either she would leave or I would throw her out. But she would always come back in a day or two. All her stuff was there anyway.

I began to really resent Lilith and her filthy habit of putting her hands on me. She was truly malevolent towards me and she had the ability to get inside my head when my resolve was weakened by cocaine. She is the God of Abrahams whore and the fact that she really wanted to kill me is what turned me on about her. One night when Michelle’s hair was standing straight up I kicked some holes in the wall around her head and told Lilith to leave. She said “you can’t hurt me!” And I said “I can purge you from the face of the earth forever by using fire to burn this place to the ground. You think I care if you and I die? You think I care how many sub creatures I kill?” Michelle’s hair collapsed in conformance to the laws of gravity and she made no more references to or by Lilith for the rest of that night.

It was not long before Labor Day when Andrew threw an end of summer pool party over my aunt’s house in Ronkonkoma. At the time I was the only one who had money in my family so it was one of those above ground pools. Andrew, my sister, and all their friends were there. Ronkonkoma, just like East Meadow, is a solid White working class town. There were no rich people at this party and no cocaine. We ran out of liquor and I was sending Michelle and my sister up to the store to get some when Andrew said “I got booze.” He opened up his bedroom closet door and he had commandeered the entire bar from Beefsteak Charlie’s. He had been the night manger there before he worked for me. The chain had gone bankrupt but Andrew certainly had gotten his ‘golden parachute.’ He had never said a word till we ran out of the booze I had brought to the party. Andrew would go on to become a very wealthy man.

Maybe it was because I wasn’t doing coke but all I could think of that night was Dianne. It was a crowd that was the same age as her and the same economic status. She would have loved the absence of hard drugs, the absence of airs of self importance and the splashing around in the four foot deep swimming pool. She probably couldn’t swim anyway. What was I thinking and why did I do this to her? After courting her like an obsessed troubadour for almost two years she had offered me her hand and I had bitten it and walked away. I was just a very tough guy with some very tough and strange friends. I was making far too much of it. She and I weren’t Gods Nemesis. I was making UFO’s out of swamp gas. We could have a long and happy life together. Richey had offered to sell me the busiest topless bar on the east end of Long Island; the Crazy Clown. My uncle was going to finance the deal with me. I would get her a strip club to run to satisfy her Napoleon complex and I would hold her close every night in the darkness of our bedroom. Neither of us would ever be lonely again. She would make me feel just like when I held her close in the clubs. ‘Lilith’ was right about one thing and one thing only Dianne and I were meant for each other.

When I pulled up to Bogart’s that day I thought everything was going to be alright and I’m never optimistic. She would be mad at me and she had every right to be. I hadn’t even seen her in over two months. I knew she probably had gone back with Vinnie. I would compete with him for her affections like a gentleman. Why not? It was a foregone conclusion that I would win. I had kicked Michelle out and straightened up for a couple of days. If Dianne wanted me to quit doing cocaine I would. I liked cocaine. I loved her. She was up on stage when I walked in and she looked at me kind of funny like she had been waiting for me. She always looked like she had been waiting for me but this looked a little different. She looked like a gluttonous fat man whose diner had finally arrived. I spoke first almost breathless because I was so excited to see her. “How did the grass take? Have you been keeping water on it? I’m sorry I haven’t seen you lately but I’ve been really busy. I don’t even work here no more. Is the water still coming in through the wall?” She said “there’s still a little water coming in but it’s much better. The grass is fine. I water it every day. Have you heard?” I said “heard what?” She jutted her jaw out at me and said it like she was relishing it “I’m pregnant. It’s Vinnie’s. I’m gonna have it. I just found out a couple of days ago.” Twenty guys who were sitting at the tables got up in unison, chairs clattering as they fell to the floor, and hastily left the bar. There was once again only me and her staring through eternity into each other’s eyes. I just looked at her. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I remembered Melody telling me she wanted to look in my eyes as I died. Dianne was.

Chapter 64

A day or two later I met Michelle down by Amity Harbor beach. She had been staying with my mother. I asked her why she had made no attempt to move on yet and she burst into tears saying that she needed me. I looked at her face with the morning sun shining on it and saw that she was still an extraordinarily beautiful women in spite of her presently semi hysterical condition. Her loyalty to me was now unquestionable and she was a lot of fun to have around. If I was going to have a companion for the rest of this charade she might as well be the one.

Don Henley was playing Jones Beach for the Labor Day weekend. I could think of no better way to end the abased eighties than to hear Henley perform Building the Perfect Beast. It had been their anthem now it would be my eulogy. There were thousands of people at the concert but I was probably the only one that knew what he was talking about when he boasted that they knew the secrets of eternity, they had found the lock and turned the key. As a sly aside he said Pandora’s not going to like it. All I could think to myself was if you’re going to open Pandora’s Box you better know what’s inside. Henley went on with his salutation; the day had come, soon he would be released, hallelujah they were building the Perfect Beast. I wondered where he was getting his information. He had better find a new source. I guessed those were heady days a few years ago when that song was written. Now that we had finished abasing the eighties we had finished ourselves in the process. The eighties were so abased that marriage vows before consummation was never even an option. If I had told Dianne we had to get married before we could have sex she would have thought me insane for real. Henley finished his tome by saying that they were going to take Olympus in an all or nothing attempt. No doubts the Titans would strike back but where did they think they were going without Hecate, nine out of ten times in chess when you lose your queen you’ve lost the game.

When we got back from Jones Beach that night Andrew called the two Arab attendants in the Seven Eleven next door to my apartment complex Sand Niggers. One of the Arabs responded by pulling a pistol. I was outside the store so I didn’t see it but when I heard about it I went to go get my AR15. I figured shooting an Arab for no real reason had worked for Camus’s character in The Stranger and it would work for me too. On the way back to the apartment a drunken Geir slipped on the wet grass and started trying to swim through it. The moment of levity diffused my homicidal intentions.

Late that night when everybody left Michelle and I went into Cypress Hills and got an ‘eight ball.’ When we got back we had an expensive bottle of vodka lying around and hours before the dawn. When daylight began to show through our window Lilith was with us and she seemed more powerful than she ever had before. Michelle was in a complete trance almost half her hair was standing up on end. Shadows appeared all over the walls, everywhere you looked. They began to move around the room with great rapidity independent of the wall. When I started feeling hands all over me I began to feel threatened and I was in no mood to run. I went into a red out. The next thing I remember is blasting away at them with the sounds of the gunshots ringing in my ears.

When I came too in the emergency room there was a cop there who looked a lot like some old pictures of a grandfather I had never met, my mother’s father. He was a high ranking Free Mason, the only one in my family. In the operating room I was refusing the blood transfusions that the doctors told me were necessary for my survival. I kept saying “no just let me die. Why bother? I’ll be going to jail for life. How many people did I hit?” The cop kept telling me in a soothing voice that I didn’t hit anyone and that I would get off with a couple of years. There seemed to be this bright light behind him and he was soaked in my blood. He finally convinced me to take the hospitals blood. I never saw that cop again. From recovery they wheeled me up to my room in a gurney accompanied by four cops. The elevator stopped on the way up and Dianne got on. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform. She asked the orderly how I was doing. He told her I was stabilized then she looked at me and said “everything is going to be alright I’ll be right on the next floor.” She got off on the floor right below the one they were taking me. The lighting around her seemed unnaturally bright and I watched the elevator door close behind her. I tried to call out to her but I was unable to speak. As Jimmy Carroll had said “my lips were chained they were filled with empty wonder.”

By the time Jack was fourteen he’d spent most of the last four years of his adolescence one door down from what would come to be known as the Amityville Horror. He was more than acquainted with all those involved. There were stories but by then he’d been interacting with things no man, let alone child is ever supposed to see. It was all perfectly normal. Since he was old enough to remember the darkness was never far behind him. In his late twenties, after being convicted of a felony for his attempt at whistle blowing with Geraldo Rivera, he finds himself surrounded by mobsters and a notorious outlaw motorcycle gang rooted deeply in the occult. He is the right-hand man of a wildly aggressive Long Island strip club impresario. There in the strip clubs across Sunrise Highway from Babylon town hall he finds himself hopelessly in love with a girl who could be Lilith herself. The darkness had finally caught up to him…Buy his book now to begin a journey from which there is no turning back.

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