Truth is Never Told During the Nine-to-Five Hours

I'm too gutted, been fighting tears all day, at this morning's horrifying news to do much by way of tribute to Hunter Thompson. He'd probably rag me mercilessly for my weakness, but there you have it. I'm not him.

Let's say this: I haven't taken acid in 25 years, but when I did, it was his voice that narrated the trip. Not Timothy Leary, not Ram Dass, none of those running dogs of icky hippie sentimentality. No, on a Thompsonian acid trip you weren't out to complete your soul or come to the realization of the Fundamental Oneness of All Living Beings or any of that Girl Scout shit: You wallowed in your alienation, you wore your rage like a cheap clown suit, you welcomed the terminally weird as a long-lost brother, you ripped the needle off "Birth of the Cool" and cranked "Trout Mask Replica" out the window: "You hear that, you boozhie motherfuckers? That's MY HEAD! That's going on up in there RIGHT NOW, and if you want it to stop, you're going to have to come up here and KILL ME!" Followed with a cackle of maniacal laughter and a hurled bottle smashing in the street.

Well, I guess we know where that leads, eh?

But I just can't get over the timing of Hunter's surrender, in these Days of Darkness in the Year of the Pig. I know who I blame, and I'm gunning for your asses....

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

I was able to find this anecdote at an Esquire site, it's from Gene McGarr, a buddy of Thompson's when they were young:

Hunter came over one night. I was out working. I never bothered locking my door, because anybody who wanted to climb five flights of stairs and rob from me, they were welcome to. This was a hot summer night. All the windows in the block were open.

Hunter, apparently feeling a little frisky and being bored waiting around for me and not knowing when I was coming home, went into the front room, the windows opening out on the street, took off his belt, and started whipping the wall. You know, this loud thwack! Every time he'd thwack the wall, he'd yell, "Ahgggh!! Ahghhh! Aghhhh!"

Then he'd stop the thwacking and in another voice would say, "Do it again. Do it again. Keep doing it." And then this thwaaaack! So apparently there were people hanging out of windows yelling, "You son of a bitch! You can't get away with that...!" Then Hunter put his belt back on and sat down.

Well, about five minutes later there were the thundering hoofbeats of two New York City policemen, who by the time they had climbed five flights of stairs were truly apoplectic. They banged on the fucking door.

Now Hunter sat with, you know, his cigarette in hand, beer in the other and said "Who's there?" Two cops came in. They wanted to know what the fuck was going on. They had heard the complaints. They wanted to know, where were the bodies. They made Hunter take his shirt off. To show that he had no whip marks on him.