| | | | Hunter S. Thompson and the Temple of Doom
BY CHRIS WOOD I JANUARY 16, 2009
I
It had once again been necessary for me to take a trip for the good of my health. A quick shopping trip to Utah had ended up with me appearing on wanted posters all across the state, accused of the heinous charge 'Drunk and Disorderly in possession of a chainsaw.' Had any of the Utah police found me they would most likely have tied a noose around my scrotum and dragged me to jail screaming behind a pickup truck.
I lit a cigarette and paused for a moment before continuing, rifling through the two hundred odd prophalatics in the glove box. I had been prepared for a certain amount for groupie interest on this tour, and wasn't disappointed. The only trouble is that they came in the form of thirtysomething yuppie reporters (male) from style magazines wanting to know how the outlaw code operates in this foul year of Bill Clinton and his bent cock.
I had therefore laid up rather a store of these objects, and wondered if I could maybe make a few spare dollars by filling them with cocaine and persuading my pig of an attorney to stick them up his swollen Samoan rear. Even though the seventies are long behind us, attitudes to drugs and users are still at the neanderthal stage; and this affects almost all of the substances in question. Cocaine, for instance, is not an addictive substance, and I should know. I've been using it for decades.
Taking a few slight diversions made me pass a road sign with a town I recognised—Baiterville—and I knew a guy who lived there who could probably help me out of this slight jam provided he had the necessary encouragement. I only had 18 guns with me, but I fancied my chances.
He hadn't been there when I arrived, which was odd because I'd called an hour before I was due to arrive and yodelled down the phone that if he wasn't around I'd rip out his backstrap when I caught up with him. However, his wife was on the premises, busying herself with a spot of DIY when I arrived.
"Hey! Stop nailing those goddam planks across the door and let me in."
Eventually the door opened a crack, and I rolled in a mace grenade and yelled through the smoke that I was coming in, and it was up to her whether or not the house stayed up. Soon enough I was sat beside the kitchen stove, a saucepan of marijuana heating on a gas ring and an attached length of rubber tube jammed fast up one of my nostrils. The woman I had seen was not around, but when I wandered out I did notice a trail left by carpet slippers that headed toward the woods. Must be some sort of ritual, I thought. When I returned to the house I did notice her, cowering under the bed as I went through the drawers looking for some unusual clothing items which might serve as a disguise in case I was scrutinised by a cop. I settled on a purple shawl and big lacy brassiere, which stood out slightly against four days' growth of beard, but I reasoned the freak ticket might carry me well should the highway patrol interest themselves in checking either my license—revoked four years ago—or the contents of my kitbag, more on which later.
I felt it may be a good time for a change of vehicle, and the mountain issue 4 x 4 made me a bit conspicuous, especially after being driven full tilt through a number of showrooms. A gleaming red Corvette attracted my attention, and soon I was busying myself with discussions of my plans to stay for a good, long time. Before long I had gotten the keys and was behind the wheel of my accountant's pride and joy, borrowing a few hundred bucks from his wife for 'necessary groceries'—most of which I had dropped or snorted within the first two miles—and the highways once again filled with the sound of spaced out laughter and the vicious driving of a doctor of journalism refreshing his memory of the good old days. I passed a small space ship filled with clones of J. Edgar Hoover all conducting the Chinese national anthem, and waved cheerily as I put my foot down and exchanged shots with passing state troopers.
The ride became quite mundane after a time. I had brought an enormous ghetto blaster with me to distract me while I was driving, but a shotgun round had blown out the left speaker and the rest of the stereo seemed to have given things up. Robbed of music, I decided to fill out the gap by driving with my feet and seeing how far I could get with my eyes closed before crashing.
I must have dropped off, because when I woke up I was driving through an enormous dusty expanse filled with the signs of a withered, dwindling civilisation. "Jesus," I said to myself. "I've been driving all this time and I'm still in Utah."
I pulled over, and tried for directions to the nearest food stop.
"Hey, asshole," I said to a stranger in my best travelling American. "Tell me where the diner is before I shoot your fucking kneecaps off."
The man—a small, bald coloured fellow with a loincloth and a swollen belly—pointed at me with hysterical jabbing motions.
"Aheina! Aheina!" he yelled in great excitement.
"What?" I jabbered. "Have I been here before? I tell you, I never sign checks in my own name. Who the hell are you, anyway? Fuck off."
He stood for a moment, and I cursed myself for not recognising this version of the same old convention. I stuffed a five dollar bill into his clothing and told him to bring me a dead animal and a quart of surgical alcohol.
I waited a time, smoking a couple of reefers and carving the words "Nixon's face" across my butt with a scalpel I had heated in the flame of my lighter. After a time it occurred to me that something was missing, and sure enough before long the absence of room service wore me down and I got out of my car.
I was taking a deep breath of fresh air and trying not to be sick when I took stock of the situation. Now here I was in the middle of goddamn nowhere, looking for my filthy pig-fucking attorney in a whole village full of peasants, none of whom had the decent taste to sell amyls or make decent cocktails.
"A good thing I thought to fill the trunk before I left," I told the town's elders, and I took a bottle of Wild Turkey out of the ice in the back. As I was walking round the side of the car I fell over a large brown lump, which began to spit dust and curse at me like a hellcat with a good thesaurus.
"Who the hell are you?" I bellowed, reaching into my waist band for the pistol which is usually there, but all I found was a banana. Curses! This meant I had left the .357 in the fruit bowl in my accountant's office.
I initially panicked, but remembered that a good American can always ease the tension out of a difficult situation by jumping in feet first, so I began booting the curled figure and yelling abuse.
"Get the fuck off me or I'll sue you, maggot!" yelled the figure in a strangely familiar voice.
It was my attorney, who couldn't be named for legal reasons. I was delighted to see him again, and kicked him viciously in the rear with my Navy boot and sprayed mace in his eyes. After an hour of jabbering, drooling hysteria, during which he accused me of being in the CIA when I had to tie him down to prevent his chewing through the tyres, he had calmed down. Now a good deal less violent, he assumed the guise of near sanity which he used to steer the more polite quarters which look askance at a man of extreme tastes.
"Why the fuck did you show up here?" he griped. "If it's anything to do with blowing up that police station, then as your attorney I recommend you change sex, claim the operation gave you amnesia and warped your personality."
"It has nothing to do with Alabama," I growled at him.
"We need a hotel," he stated, after sniffing at the air and unleashing a stream of gas with an unusual perfume. "It's getting late, and round here you can't tell which are the real jackals when your head's full of medicine."
I didn't like the idea of being cooped up at all, and only ever went along to editorial meetings about my books if they are held in either a strip club or a huge wasteland, where a man can punctuate his opinions by throwing grenades and blowing up machinery.
The recollection of the last such incident came back to me. I was, under great protest, attending a meeting at the office of a top New York agency. The building was right in the middle of Manhattan, and I had some trouble getting in after one NY cop recognised me and started a panic by running off and screaming. Eventually I made it, three days late and clutching a lamppost which I had inadvertently downed by firing a .454 Casull at a moth which settled on my trousers. The leg I would retrieve later.
The trouble with offices is their incredibly narrow space. Even though I would only be there for half an hour, the first thing I did was knock down all the walls and divides to open up the floorspace, even the restrooms. It is an odd experience, seeing a petrified editorial assistant poised on the crapper next to the Xerox machine and water cooler. A good thing my abstemious nature prevents me from showing any shock, else I might have ran around screeching before having to be restrained by a squad of cops armed with cattle prods and the butterfly nets used to capture the criminally insane. Not that I wanted any of that; fuck no, thank you kindly. For as it happens I am not an abstemious fellow, and this is exactly what happened.
The police came when I had just calmed down and put my feet up on an assistant, who was fumbling with a rosary and leaving a small trail of urine from the bottom of his chinos. I dictated a letter to the publishers in my inaudible, slurred voice, and made sure the half dozen secretaries took down my every point. I told them I did not care if they were uncomfortable kneeling, but that was the only way I could ensure covering them all with the Mossberg 12 gauge riot gun I held casually with my left hand while trying to find my nose with my right.
I was told it was illegal to conduct myself in such a fashion, and perhaps I should set up in Mexico if I wanted to behave that way. Come to think of it, that was about the only place it was legal for me to do anything remotely fun, and there the police only shoot it out with gringo bank robbers and drug dealers stupid enough to grease the wrong palms.
Consequently, I find myself increasingly misunderstood.
However, it was getting dark and who knew what manner of depraved wild animals might be wandering around this strange and isolated outback settlement. There seemed no help for it. We jumped back into the sharkfin and headed for the hotel.
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