The Satanist

Posted by Jack on Jan 11, 2012 in Jack | 3 comments

The night I met Jerome, they took him away in cuffs.

He was in town for a Genitorturers show.  I knew him from message boards. We met for a drink and I tagged along to Dante’s. At some point he wandered into the crowd. Some dummy was trying to start a mosh and slammed his elbow into Jerome.

Jerome broke his nose.

The dummy was a regular who knew all of the bouncers.  Two police cars showed up.  Jerome’s partner was all business. As he sat in the back seat, she talked to the cops like they were about to do some work on her transmission.

A year later, the two of them moved to Portland and invited a few of us over to watch some fights. Their place was hard to find, tucked deep into the west hills. I was wondering if I was at the right address when Jerome answered the door. He looked smooth in a black dress shirt and slacks, expensive but not flashy. I followed him downstairs to the bar.

I never got a full tour of the house, even when—years later—I lived there for few weeks. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a mansion, but it did have separate guest quarters. It also had a walk-in gun safe and an octagonal poker room decked out like Mandalay Bay.

I started going over for UFC regularly. We’d make whatever we wanted to drink at the bar. Jerome usually started with Red Bull. He slept during the day, so he was still waking up at seven. He didn’t work, and I was never sure what he did for money. He told me he invested, and I got the impression over time that he did a fair amount of gambling. He was good with numbers, and he was all about learning the tricks.

After the fights were over, they’d let the dogs out—two stout American bulldogs named Brutus and Loki.  Brutus was a beast, but a big cuddler. He’d get butt-hurt if I stopped scratching his back. Jerome always made fun of him.

“Who’s a killer?…”

We’d hang out at the bar for hours, and Jerome would grind away at some point he was trying to make.

Jerome had strong opinions about things.

He gave a lot of people shit, but I felt like I gained his respect the night he dared me to fight him with shinai on the back lawn. We traded a few whacks and he put a gash in my forehead, but I shrugged my shoulders and we were solid after that.

I emailed Central Office to tell them Jerome was the real deal. Satanists imagine themselves as Basil Zaharoff types—opportunists playing player against player to their own ends. Most Satanists are middle class libertarian atheists who like horror movies. Anton LaVey’s pitch was for the individualist who sees life as a fleeting opportunity to find pleasure in a hard world. The ideal Satanist takes steps to create a “total environment” where he can enjoy whatever pleases him, with minimal hassle from “the herd.”  That’s what a lot of people aim for—they just don’t call it Satanism.

Jerome had an idea of how he wanted to live, and he was living exactly that way—almost without compromise. He did what he damn well pleased. He rode motorcycles, smoked cigars, drank high-end liquor and nerded out on firearms. He took me shooting a few times at a gun club he belonged to, always as a guest. He was the kind of guy who would get insulted if you asked to pay for anything.

Jerome and I fell out for a good reason, but I never wished him anything but the best.

His partner left him. Turned out the house was hers. Maybe a lot of the money, too. It would be trashy to ask too much, and I don’t really want to know.

She called me last week to tell me he was dead.  I asked her if it was an accident. She said, “No.”

I got some more details from a mutual friend. Apparently Jerome had stopped paying his bills, gone out to the woods and shot himself.

I didn’t ask “why?”

I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t see him as a sad or troubled person. He was a guy with a big ego and a clear sense of how he wanted to live. He admired samurai—he owned a sword with a pedigree—and we had argued about the finer points of the Hagakure around his bar. I thought of one of my favorite passages:

Nagayama Rokurozaemon was going down the Tokaido and was at Hamamatsu. As he passed by an inn, a beggar faced his palanquin and said, “I am a ronin from Echigo. I am short of money and in difficulties. We are both warriors. Please help me out.”

 

Rokurozaemon got angry and said, “It is a discourtesy to mention that we are both warriors. If I were in your state of affairs, I’d cut my stomach open. Rather than being out of money for the road and exposing yourself to shame, cut your stomach open right where you are!” It is said that the beggar moved off.

A friend who’d kept in contact with Jerome mentioned that he’d run into some problems with his gambling operations. Maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something else. He was so circumspect about his work that it left a lot to the imagination.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. No one really knows.

I knew Jerome for years, and I know that he was adamantly against serving anyone. He wanted to live life on his terms, or maybe not at all. He refused to tolerate the petty indignities and insults that most of us put up with every day. If he felt like he was going to be forced to take the position of the beggar—which could have meant many things to him—he might have followed the advice of Rokurozaemon.

That’s the truth I want to believe, and it’s the truth that suits the kind of man he was.

I didn’t have much to say at the wake.

His ex had it set up smooth and classy. 5 star hotel. Open Bar. Free cigars. Sinatra playing. It felt like another one of his parties.

She only broke for a moment. Otherwise, she was as calm and collected as she was the night the cops took him away.