Hunter
02.21.05 (12:03 am) [edit]I never knew him. I only felt his waves.
When he was 9, he stared the FBI down after knocking a mailbox into the path
of a schoolbus. He got away with it. He learned then how to work with and
around the law, and he used it to his advantage for all of his 67 years.
He spent time in the '60s in Puerto Rico, and wrote an alcohol-soaked novel
about that land called The Rum Diary. He travelled with the Hell's Angels.
He lived neck-deep in the shitstorm of the '72 presidential campaign. He
made a living from hating Richard Nixon, then later proclaimed both Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush to be worse.
He went to Vegas and consumed insane amounts of chemicals. For us. He did it
for US. For the children, dammit. He did it so we wouldn't have to, but at
least we can feel like we were there, wishing for golf shoes in a
blood-soaked room full of evil lizards. I remember it as if it were
yesterday, and I was never there. But Hunter was, and he brought the tale
home for me, wrapped it around me like a loving blanket, and made me laugh
so hard I nearly cried.
You never really knew where the facts began and the fiction ended when
reading his work, but it really just did not fucking matter. The SOUL of his
writing, the CORE of it was always cold hard truth, and even if he never
actually left his home during that entire Clinton campaign, I still want to
believe that Carville and Stephanpolous stole his wallet in Little Rock.
His life wasn't one he recommended to others, and it's not one most of us
could withstand. But somebody had to do it. Somebody had to stand on that
precipice overlooking our foul world and turn around and report to the rest
of us what he had seen. A lesser man would have been far less insightful,
and far less funny. Hunter was always funny, even at his most serious, as
all truly great funny people are.
I sat in a theater with my friend Jeff when Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
came out. I owe my Hunter obsession to Jeff. There was one other person
there. We laughed our balls off. I've read the book three times, others
once, and bits of them again and again. Still others I haven't got to yet,
and I feel poorer for it. Not having read those gems before he was gone.
I had just started reading Kingdom Of Fear this week, one of his newest
books. I know what I will be doing this week.
Few people have made me radically rethink my approach to life and to
thought. Those who have had the same kind of combination of soul, humour,
and a manic gift for their art that Hunter had. Zappa comes to mind. Bill
Hicks. Or perhaps one of the living among us like George Carlin. But there
was only, and could be only, one Hunter S. Thompson.
I loved you, Hunter. May the swine be scattered into the depths and the true
lovers of freedom find their holy rewards. You were an instrument towards
that coming day. If there really is a God, that motherfucker ain't gonna
have a CLUE what to do with you on his hands now.
Love,
Dougie