Scandal in Malaysia……. Part Seven

View from the Double-Tree Hotel

 

The next day Jay found a two-room suite for the three of us, Jay, myself and Lisa Haze to stay at. We did not check out officially out of the Double-Tree since that room was paid for until March 29, 2012.  Since we were vacating that room Jay left the room key for Ernesto Planas and that solved Jay’s dilemma of where to put Ernesto.

Jay and myself took the bigger room and Lisa Haze was in the smaller room.  The suite was a welcome breath of fresh air.  There was a living room and a kitchen.  I did not feel so much like a bird trapped in a cage.

There was one catch in all of this.  Jay had no money and no money was coming from the show like he thought.  Jay was planning on paying for the room from the airline ticket credits but that money had not started to come in yet.  What were we going to do?  It was about this point when Jay gave me his speech on all of us pooling our funds so that we could get through this.  All of us pooling our funds?!  Well, Jay just showed me a Bank of America account that had $17.00 in it.  Who did that leave?  Yup you guessed it.  That left moi and my bank account.

I had to pay upfront the $770.00 for one week at the hotel—–hmnn it was either that or be on the street which wasn’t exactly in the travel brochure.

No one knew where we were as Jay did not trust anyone at this point.  And Jay’s primary agenda was to get a $15,000.00 payment from the promoter of the show so that he could at least make a partial payment to the artists for the cancellation of the show.

Nothing could be planned as we were at the whim and whimsy of Amir the promoter.

First Amir said he would comply with the contract and give to Jay $15,000.00 US in cash.  Lisa Haze and I were supposed to bring the cash into the US and make a deposit into Jay’s account.   Seriously the idea of traveling with $7000.00 in cash was not so appealing to me.

A meeting was set-up and cancelled via text message.  There were more text messages going back and forth between Jay, Amir and Mahdi than in a room full of teenagers.  Jay was being texted, “Where are you?”  His only response was that he was still in the city.

I would start to witness what is called Narcissistic Injury in Jay.

Narcissistic Injury is, “Any threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist’s

grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent,

omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless

of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof)….Most narcissists react

defensively. They become conspicuously indignant, aggressive, and cold.

They detach emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury.

They devalue the person who made the disparaging remark,

the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the
innocuous joke at the narcissist’s expense.”

http://samvak.tripod.com/journal86.html

What this began to look like is that I started to witness Jay becoming a shell of who he was, or rather I should say who I “thought” he was.  His dark side was coming to the surface. It was now about planning and plotting.  Like I said Jay’s primary agenda was to get payment from Amir to pay the artists.  Jay’s concern was his thirty year reputation in the world of Magic.

But Amir was not making this easy for Jay who jumped through hoops to appease him.  Per Amir, no one was to receive a Merlin Award, no Magician was to do any magic shows under the name of Magical 1 Malaysia.  David, the local promoter had offered Jay a couple of shows but Jay turned them down to appease Amir.

What ensued can only be called “back stabbing” amongst the three men.  Jay point of attack was that if he could get Amir and Mahdi to fight amongst themselves that would put Jay in a better position.  This is called “Triangulation”  ”This is playing the two people against each other, but usually the person doing the splitting, will also engage in character assassination, only with both parties.”—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_(psychology)

Meetings were set-up and meetings were cancelled in the span of hours.  While Jay adhered to Amir’s request Mahdi didn’t. Mahdi continued with the Merlin awards that he was going to receive.  Mahdi was also a no-show at one meeting in which Amir was to give Jay the money for the artist.  Now mind you I was not allowed to go to these meetings so I only have Jay’s word as to what transpired or did not transpire.  It appeared that Amir was not going to budge on his position.  Amir’s main concern being that he was being made to look like an idiot by Mahdi, whose behavior Jay could not control.  At this point I was told that Amir had already put about $250,000.00 into this show/festival and with only three days to go before the show they had only sold 200 tickets.  Jay reasoned that his job was to create the show, they Amir and Mahdi had the task of generating tickets sales.  Neither Amir nor Mahdi had any background in producing a Magic Show/ Festival.  The Jay supposedly was the one with the experience. I would later find out that this was not the case either.  Jay had been part of festivals as a performer but he as far as I know has never produced a magic festival either.  It is no wonder that the show failed.  All three men were blaming each other for the lack of sales and no one was willing to see where their own accountability was.

And then there were the personal dynamics that were going on between Jay,Lisa Haze and myself……to be continued……

 

This picture pretty much captures Jay’s demeanor throughout this ordeal.

 

 

Related articles

• Scandal in Malaysia…..Part Six (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Scandal in Malaysia ……..Part 3 (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Scandal in Malyasia…….Part 5 (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Scandal in Malayasia…….Part 4 (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Scandal in Malaysia…..Part Two (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Scandal in Malaysia……..part 1 (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• The Narcissist and the Psychopath; aka My Parents (roots2blossom.wordpress.com)
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder(NPD) – Powers of a Narcissist. (quotesyou.wordpress.com)