| | | | Hunter S. Thompson and the Temple of Doom
BY CHRIS WOOD I JANUARY 16, 2009
V
Some months after the nightmare ended, I was enjoying a glass of petrol with my editor, who was sitting opposite me at a bistro where they'd never heard of me. My editor sat opposite me, talking about how much better he felt since adopting a healthy lifestyle. The people at my publishers are always trying to find new ways of moderating my lifestyle and behaviour. I told them a while ago that I was looking after my health with a new, all acid diet, but all I received from them was a flying saucer which followed me around and tried to loop my head. I waved my arms at it and chased it about, but it felt familiar. I recall I first noticed it in a bar in San Pedro around 1971 ... odd how this shit repeats itself. We exchanged numbers and I gave my attention to the editor once more.
Despite all his talking about bean curd and exercise, I noticed he was twitching a lot and when a waiter announced his presence behind him, the man jumped some four feet out of his chair. After composing himself, he ordered only a simple salad and Evian. I had to repeat my order several times, as I never actually talk in decipherable English unless I'm bellowing abuse, when my speech becomes much clearer but is often obscured by gunfire.
The waiter left, looking back with a mixture of anxiety and disgust. I noticed that diners on surrounding tables were also looking at me like I was a bear with a sore head. I pulled another mace grenade out and rolled it under the table of a woman with a particularly offensive manner, who had been looking down her nose at me. However, major disaster was averted when most of the gas went up her capacious skirt. She was carried off in hysterics, but at least it speeded up the service to the extent where I was actually ducking potato salad at one point.
I turned my attention back to my editor. He raised a glass of water to his lips, but his hand was trembling so much that it was empty by the time he came to drink.
"Water's bad for you. Brings on the shakes—it always does with me," I growled. "Have some cocaine?"
I offered my grinder, not a complicated device. All it was necessary to do was fill it with coke—this I had already done—and twist the device which refines the powder, then stick it up the nose and snort, but the cretinous screw up refused. I regarded his with some suspicion, my eyes about half an inch from his face for around an hour before I spoke.
"You want to get ahead in writing, don't you?"
He nodded meekly.
"Then snort goddammit!" I exploded, and with that the timid little bastard nasally sucked up about an ounce through each nostril. I applauded his performance, and sat back to watch, waiting to see if his head was going to swell. I had a darning needle in my hand in case it did, but disappointingly he only fell back in his chair and his eyes started bulging their sockets.
At about this point in the proceedings, we were moved to a less prominent table. I guess it may have been that the other diners were unusually sensitive, but when a doctor of journalism begins to speak it is imperative he is not restricted. I did nothing that may have been construed offensive, only grabbing the piano player by the scruff of his neck and yell at him that if I wanted to be serenaded by a fuckstained mongoloid I'd have gone to a Michael Bolton concert. And that is fair comment.
After we had reseated, my editor spoke up once more.
"We want you to write a book," he stuttered meekly. I nodded sagely and lit my pipe, puffing slowly as the man continued. "About your difficult experiences in rehab."
I hiccupped on the pipe , such was my surprise, and turned to him.
"Rehab? Hell no, I was kidnapped by a gang of ruthless cut throat swine. I was lucky to leave with my innards intact, thank you kindly. The last thing we expected was to just walk away, even though I was decapitated and my attorney was stabbed with a dozen arrows. Hell, you get burned. Some bums will drive a screwdriver into your heart while stealing your last dollar. That's why I never ran for Congress."
"Well," he began cautiously, " we have it on good authority that for the full duration of the time you went missing you could be observed staggering down an alley and talking to people who weren't there. The sheriff's department tried to move you on but you just placed a huge order for room service and started running up a drainpipe."
I took off my sunglasses and began polishing them with the sleeve of my plaid shirt. My eyes must have rolled somewhat in my head as I spoke, revealing the heinous bloodshot depths from which I was coming.
"My recollection is slightly different," I drawled, and checked the salt cellar for cockroaches.
"Naturally, we'd want it written from your perspective," he piped timidly, and leant back in his chair as if expecting a volley of bullet hits. This suggestion was not bad. After all, from such a bad experience to a ray of glory, I could consider myself fit for that. Taking a couple of crates of beer, a gallon of neat methamphetamine and a diamorphine hydrochloride drip and maybe drive on the sidewalks all the way to Washington, yes there could be some mileage in that. I would call that Samoan pigfucker and tell him uncork himself from whatever underage runaway he had drugged up and get his fat ass down here before I bulls-eyed his testicles. I nodded consent.
"You agree? Oh, thank god!" He seemed genuinely relieved. As this was our first time working together, I felt we had to get some things clear.
"But," I explained, before he could get too elated, "I insist on certain terms and conditions. Total legal indemnity, no harassment from greedheads. None at all. And I also insist on delivering it when I choose. Doctors of Journalism have to work without deadlines. It's an important part of the process." I left that hanging in the air and reapplied myself to the hash pipe, which was producing a steady plume of thick white smoke.
"So that's a complete absence of supervision, and I want Ralph Steadman on call 24 hours a day in case I want to get loaded and spray obscenities on people's property. I need an illustrator for that.
"This'll be expensive, of course. I'll need full expenses, total coverage," I started listing the items I would need to produce a decent piece of work. Unfortunately, and I believe this is due to some nefarious plot, maybe the work of subversive groups or the Chinese Mafia, these all tended to put me at the bottom of any publishers love list. Anyway, I thought it best to go through a complete itinery of my requirements.
"...flak jacket, armoured car, hundredweight of cocaine, four thousand rounds AR-15 ammunition, and goddamit lots of legal advice. Which reminds me."
I got up and staggered over to the bar, walking over and upsetting a variety of diners' tables as I did so. I grappled for the phone and tapped it several times, hard, upon the bar. I explained to the bar tender that this tended to produce a clear line, and even though the end of the phone had come off I started yabbering into it. The owner came round and offered me his cellular phone, which worked perfectly. Anything to stop me
"See?" I asked. "A clear line. Never fails."
When I got back to the table, my editor had been having conversations of his own. There would be, he explained, certain conditions. But I never listen to red tape. In any case, I'd just popped half a dozen screaming laugher pills and was in no mood for technicalities. However, I'd hit a mellow spot in the continuous thirty year high I'd been chasing since getting thrown out of military school for trying to rape the Base Commander, when I'd been under the impression he was a wild bear I had to negotiate with. So I decided I'd let him talk some more, and maybe I'd just drift off. Hopefully when I came back there'd be some notes I could put into reasonably coherent form. Well, I'd never managed that yet, but there's a first time for everything.
But the bastard's face began contorting into an obscene melee of colour. His pale cheeks whipped themselves around and made into an aardvark's snout. I kept calm, used to such perversions, but the cold sweat must have broken loose for when the man started hovering salad off of the table top, I turned sharply and a lot of liquid broke lose from my forehead. And when the waiter brought the check, his fingers had curled into dollar signs. I made to straighten one of them out for him, do my good turn, but he just began snarling and talking about double.
I could just hear that deranged laughing again, and once more reached for the mace.
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