Hunter Thompson

Written on February 21, 2005

“I do not advocate the use of dangerous drugs, wild amounts of alcohol and violence and weirdness -- but they've always worked for me."

Hunter Thompson said that, and tonight he killed himself.  Shot himself – which, is, if you’re Hunter Thompson and you’ve got to kill yourself, seemingly the logical way to go.  (He owned rather a lot of guns.)   

First of all, I’m fairly astounded that his internal organs lasted this long.  The thing is, though, I’m surprised he shot himself.  I know I have no business judging the man, but I’m a little disappointed.  I would have much preferred that he go out in a kind of “Thelma and Louise” blaze of glory, gobsmacked on twenty different kinds of substances, car full of drugs and guns and liquor, straight over the Grand Canyon with 78 police cars in pursuit. 

I started reading Hunter Thompson when I was about 13.  I hot-wired my brain that summer, reading him and Joan Didion and Flannery O’Connor (and “Doonesbury” – which contains a character modeled after Thompson) and listening to the Grateful Dead and Joni Mitchell and God knows what else.  There wasn’t a lot to do, summers, in Gerritsen Beach.  I was already regarded a strange child by most of the community, so I figured, what the hell.   

That fall, I went away with my parents and DC37, a labor union here in New York City.  We often traveled with those folks, since my Dad worked for them.  There were always a lot of medium-level politicians around, and also a fair number of medium-level, shall we say, Family guys.  Never a lot of kids around, so I was left to my own devices at a series of medium-level resorts in New York State.  My exchanges with adults mostly consisted of a “how’s school” or a “are you enjoying yourself” here and there, then I faded into the background. 

So, on this particular trip, after that heady summer, I found myself sitting with my parents and a large crowd at the lounge at Friar Tuck in Catskill.  (If you’re from New York, go ahead and laugh, it’s OK.  30 years ago, it was a nice place.)  I was bored out of my skull and feeling somewhat rambunctious, listening to people talking about where they’d like to go on holiday.  Someone made the dreadful mistake of asking me where I’d like to go, and I made the dreadful mistake of answering.  I can’t quote myself precisely because it was a very long time ago, but I said something like this:

“Vegas.  I want to go to Las Vegas.  I want to get in the car and drive there now, straight without stopping, and when we get there I want to arrive in the left-hand lane and pull over all four lanes of traffic in the 4 seconds before I exit.  Then I want to find a bar, and sit all the way at the end of the bar, in the dark, drinking very dry martinis and playing with my hotel room key like it’s an invitation to a dance.  I want to meet some drunken gambler who lives in a house in the desert and go there to live too.  There will be bodies buried in the backyard, though, so there will be trouble, and I’ll have to wear sunglasses all the time and avoid the police. 

That’s what I want to do.” 

By the time I got to the end of this soliloquy, I had attracted a fair amount of attention.  What a scene; every grown-up for miles around was staring at me like my hair was on fire.  (My parents in particular.)  One person said, what the hell have you been reading, and I showed them the book I had in my lap (I carried a book absolutely everywhere when I was a kid) – and the book was “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” 

Well.  Try to imagine the uproar.  A friend of my father’s said “That’s not a kid’s book!” and my father promptly confiscated it.  (Me, faintly, above the roar, saying “but I’m not a kid…”)  He turned to my mother and gave her the book and one of those head motions that indicates “get the kid the hell out of here.”  My mother politely excused herself and if she could have dragged me upstairs by my ears, she would have.  It wouldn’t have been seemly, though.  As it was, I was hauled up, so I blurted “Good night!” and gave everyone a very toothy grin.  They were suitably shocked.  My mom gave me quite a talking-to upstairs, but she went back downstairs quickly enough, plus, she gave me back my book, and some good advice about who to share my reading tastes with.  It was a glorious night all around. 

I go to book signings when the mood strikes me, and twice I’ve shown up to see Hunter Thompson in Manhattan, and both times he blew off the signings.  The second time, I was pretty riled by the time I got there, even, thinking he wouldn’t show again, and of course he didn’t show.  I can’t believe I thought he would.  I wanted to set fire to his book, and may even have done so.  But, that was just him, I imagine. 

So the father of gonzo journalism is gone, by his own hand.  I am sorry for whatever demons finally caught up with him, in the end.  If I was writing his life, I’d be damned if I could come up with a good ending.  I never thought he’d shoot himself – but maybe he couldn’t think of a good ending either, and it killed him.