Sonny Q, who would prefer I not use his last name, was telling me about the exorcism he had received as a younger man in Boston, in which he lay in a bathtub while a priest covered him with eggs. "I had a weird spirit on me, he said. "I was struggling, doing bad things and having constant failures. Bad things happening in my life over and over and over again." Stoutly built and bearded, he shook his head sombrely as he recalled the demon possession that had nearly ruined him.
It was early spring, we were on the crowded deck of a private club in Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard, and he was sharing this story by way of illustrating why he particularly valued a passage from the Gospel of Mark-the one in which Jesus casts the demons out of a man into a herd of pigs, which proceeds to rush off a cliff and drown. Sonny lit a joint; the DJ started spinning B.T. Express's "Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)". "I like to think that happened to me," Sonny said. Now, his demons are long gone, and with them his propensity for failure. He is born again, in a manner of speaking. "I have a personal brand," he said. "I want to, like, fuck bitches and live a player life."
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