Fear and Loathing in America
Page 19
Duke was sitting with Susan at a table across from the bar. They didn’t see me and I stopped for a moment around a corner, standing in a dark spot near a table full of Humphrey delegates with their badges and straw boaters and noisy home-folks chatter … waiting for my head to clear; “nobody gets stoned on Bull Durham,” I muttered. “What’s that?” said one of the men at the Humphrey table. “Bull Durham,” I replied … and he turned away.
Duke was hunched down on the table, with both hands on his drink and talking very easily. She—Susan—the girl with that electric memory, was sitting next to him, watching his hands as he talked … smiling that same vague smile I remembered from … what? Five years ago? Yes—almost six now—in San Juan. She looked thinner, not much older, but her eyes were bigger and her cheekbones were sharp …a woman’s face, no more of that wistful virgin thing. I gave my head a quick snap—an acrobat’s trick, they say, to stop the whirling fluids that keep us balanced in those little horseshoes of the inner ear … and then I advanced on the table, feeling perfectly balanced.
Duke looked up, and for an instant I thought he didn’t recognize me. Then he smiled: “Goddamn,” he said. “It’s about time.” I nodded and sat down in the booth, with words piling up in my head and saying nothing, looking across the table at Susan and smiling, or at least trying to. I felt very obvious—as if everybody in the place was watching me, waiting to hear what I’d say. Susan smiled, “Hello,” and I nodded, croaking out an echo, then looking away and calling for a drink. “Some dope fiend from Berkeley just got me stoned,” I muttered. “I’ll get my head straight in a minute—just ignore me.”
She laughed, reaching across the table to touch my wrist—and I jumped, just as the waitress arrived and I ordered a beer. “What kind?” she asked, but I waved her off: “Any goddamn kind, just a beer, a large bottle, terrible thirst …”
Duke was watching me with a flat, undecided sort of half-stare; I could see it without looking at him, but when I leaned back and faced him he smiled instantly. “You’re a traitor to your class,” he said, “sneaking in here to drink with the over-thirty generation.”
“I’m thirty,” I said. “This is my time, my perfect moment …” And I suddenly felt straight; the THC fog was gone, a bottle of beer appeared in front of me and my world came together again. I looked at Susan and smiled. “I saw you at the Fillmore last year,” I said. “But when I tried to get backstage they threw me out.”
“Oh …” her face was confused. “You should have called me, or told them you were … or something. …” Her eyes flicked up at me, then away, looking down at her drink … confused, like me, by five years of living in different worlds. The last time I’d talked to her, in San Juan, she was hysterical at the airport, waiting for the plane that would take her back home to Connecticut for a rest, a hideout, a refuge—away from that nightmare scene of the beach house and the Carnival and Duke, and even me. … I felt like touching her, to say hello in a better way than I had—but it seemed like the wrong thing to do. Duke was curling down on the table like a cold wire, sipping his drink without lifting it off the formica. The scene was too weird, too heavy—none of us could handle it, too much had happened, and too far apart.
“Well …” Duke shrugged and sat up straight in the booth. “What the hell is wrong with us? Can’t we talk like human beings?” He looked at Susan: “Let’s do it like an interview, sweetie. You’re famous now, and we’re just a couple of rude journalists … where’s your public manner?”
She looked at him, not quite smiling, then turned to me: “Are you as uptight as he is?”
I shrugged, fishing in my pockets for a match. “Yeah,” I said.
HST
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Still reeling from Chicago, Thompson submitted his expenses to Random House.
September 3, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Enclosed is my expense bill for the Demo Convention Trip … and Trip is the word for it. I recall sending you a note of some kind, but I don’t remember what I said—except that I wouldn’t have missed that nightmare for anything. Hubert is right when he talks about a “new era,” but he won’t be part of it. The thing that impressed me most about Chicago was not the crazed violence of the cops (even though I got punched in the stomach with a billy club at one point), but the style of the protesters. That scene in Chicago made all the Berkeley protests look like pastoral gambols from another era. On Monday night I saw 3000 lined up behind a barricade of park benches and garbage cans, beating on the cans with clubs and shouting: “Pigs Eat Shit!” … at a mass of 400 cops, about 100 yards away, chanting “Kill, Kill, Kill. …”
We’ve come a long way from Sproul Hall and “go limp.” No more of that … from now on it’s going to be hell; those freaks on the barricades stood in clouds of tear-gas and fired spray-cans of oven-cleaner (a lye-acid solution) at the cops … they stood and fought, and took incredible beatings. I witnessed at least ten beatings in Chicago that were worse than anything I ever saw the Hell’s Angels do; at one point I stood about 20 yards off, while four cops beat a photographer who was rolling around on the sidewalk screaming “Help, Help!” … and all I could do was stand there, constantly watching around me to make sure I had running room if they came after me. A half hour later I was talking about what I’d seen in a bar when I suddenly started crying … the whole week was that way: fear and tension and super-charged emotions, sore legs from running, no sleep, and a sense of disaster pervading it all.
Anyway, here’s my expense tab. I’m going to write about Chicago, and just see what happens. I think I have a central incident to work with, now, and in terms of the book I think I’ve come out of a fog. Chicago was the reality I’ve been theorizing about for too long; the evidence exists now, I saw it, I was there… and I think I’ll have some pages fairly soon. In the meantime, please cope with this expense tab so I can keep functioning; at $664.86, I suspect Chicago is going to be a bargain.
Thanks,
Hunter
EXPENSES … HUNTER THOMPSON
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, CHICAGO—AUG 25–31, 1968
$168.18
…. six days at Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel
138.60
…. RT flight, Denver-Chi-Denver
24.68
…. Aspen–Denver flight, 8/25 (Vail Airways)
26.25
…. Denver–Aspen flight, 8/31 (Aspen Airways)
307.15
…. total daily expenses (seven days), including all meals, cabs, equipment, entertainment (sic) and other items as shown on attached notes
$664.86
… TOTAL EXPENSES*
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
*receipts and daily expense notes enc.
TO WARREN HINCKLE, RAMPARTS:
A kindred spirit since his first encounter with Thompson early in 1967, Ramparts’ then–executive editor Warren Hinckle would launch the trenchant liberal monthly Scanlan’s in 1969.
September 4, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Warren …
Here’s the proof. Some people say drugs are more powerful than truth, but I survived all that and got away with the evidence you asked for … about what the press people were doing in Chicago, and like I told you before, they were armed. They blew out a whole wall in that hotel I was telling you about; they were all taking that nose-drug—Angina Pectoris90—and a lot of other things, too … and when they got all high and crazy they’d take turns shooting at this target, and then they took pictures of it and threw them out the hotel windows on the cops. Polaroid pictures, still wet … those dirty pigfuckers! I wish I could tell you what else they threw out those windows, but I can’t say it in public. All I can tell you for sure is that those dirty, godless, flagless, wrongsouled scumsuckers were shooting at a target that makes me want to puke just to look at it.
They didn’t care that nobody else in the hotel got
a wink of sleep. Oh no … the press never sleeps; not as long as there’s something to shoot or fuck or cheat. You think the Hilton lobby smelled bad from those stench-bombs … Jesus, you should have smelled those rooms where the press people stayed: drugs, gunpowder, stale urine and fire. They had the target set up against one wall, and they took turns shooting until they all got so excited that they’d begin to bite on each other and break glass and utter strange cries … then they’d call room service for more whiskey and drugs and another bellboy to whip.
They treated the help like most people would only treat niggers: they raped the maids and slit the shinbones of the old men. I only stayed because I wanted the evidence and the hippy hookers they kept bringing in … oh yes, they had regular orgies when they weren’t shooting or taking pictures. And all this went on very close to Humphrey headquarters. I can’t use names, of course, but we both know that well-known persons were involved. They got this way all the time, everywhere they go … but the decent public never knows; it’s kept from them by news managers and slavish hotel owners who don’t care what happens on their premises as long as the bill gets paid. Most of these people are connected, one way or another, to the Red Underground. We all know that; the FBI has their records … and that’s why they act like they do: They don’t give a fuck, that’s why!
So don’t believe anything you read about what happened in Chicago, and remember that the camera, too, can lie—especially in the wrong hands. Goddamn them, they’ll spend all night shooting at a likeness of the Director and then take drugs so they can publish newspapers and magazines and talk their deranged and filthy notions into TV tubes.
Well, you asked me for evidence and by god when people question my sources I go all out. What I’m telling you now is something I never told anybody, God Luv Em, and I went to Chicago with a true-jesus determination to give that stinking evil mob every benefit of the doubt. I tried to be as fair as I could with that scum, but when they pulled Old Glory off the Flagpole … well, I wanted to choke the yellow opium-eaters. And I knew the Red press had put them up to it, so I had to go underground and see for myself.
Which I did, and now I’m sending you the proof. I’m also in a position to offer you the East Coast franchise for Howard Unruh’s Favorite Oven Cleaner …a proven product. And massive sales potential. Unruh’s Oven Cleaner sells itself: witness the enclosed target … the bullet-holes are, after all, just holes … but one shot of oven-cleaner virtually destroyed the target.
Judge for yourself.
Yours in fear and loathing,
Howard Unruh
TO LYNN NESBIT:
Thompson’s business correspondence, particularly with his agent, was taking on the ever looser and more “gonzo” tone that would distinguish the book he was pitching on the next presidential contest—eventually the brilliant Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.
September 9, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Lynn …
I just found the original of my NRA “outline” letter and, despite the mad overtones, it struck me as a decent piece of rambling. Let me know ASAP on the NRA chances, so I can work it into my outline for the book. I want to get 10 or 12 “scenes” sketched out for Silberman & anyone else who cares (like Penguin?), and then start on them one at a time. I suggested several to Jim (in a letter last nite) and asked for his ideas. The NRA was one; another was the notion of spending a week (the first week in November) in Los Angeles, dealing in a very heavy way with about four pre-selected voters—two from a blue-collar precinct and two from a high-white area. Using a title like “The L.A. Vote,” I could try to show why these people voted as they did, who they are, how they live … and why they should all be sent to zoo-therapy … to prepare for their roles in The Wave of the Future.
Oil Shale was another possibility, but the article you sent to Esquire isn’t my idea of what I want to say—NOW—about Oil Shale or the oil people. The article, in its present form, is hung [up] in all the loose ends that come with trying to be fair and informative in too little space. I want to really do the bastards, without having to worry about the LA Times format … so don’t send the article to anyone else—assuming that Esq. won’t deal with it—until I decide how to revise it. As for Ramparts, I think Hinckle would rather have a short piece on the problems of publishing an oil shale article than a full-length fog-bank like the one I did. I’ll sound him on that and let you know. In the meantime, let’s keep the main shot for revisions and possible sale to a rich Nixon/Humphrey–type journal.
Did you, by the way, get any photos in that package from Bellows? Also, did he return a bundle of my first-draft material that I did first as “separate boxes” (his idea), but finally mixed into the main thing. I’m curious about what’s being read, seen or pondered in my name. The article was never really finished, despite Bellows’ effusive compliments and subsequent croaking. I’ll take your word for it that Bellows is “one of the good people.” He seemed that way to me, but then so did Hubert Humphrey. My final talk with Bellows was very sad; I’ll tell you more about that action if I decide to write something on the subject for Hinckle … whom I just sent, by the way, a bullet-riddled photo of Hoover that I found in a Chicago hotel and a psychotic note on the activities of the press people after hours. I doubt very seriously if he has the balls to print it (and maybe that’s not the right word)—but if he does I’ll let him deal with you. I just wrote him, saying I didn’t want my name used in connection with that sickening photo, a copy of which I’m enclosing FYI. They were all over the hallway in that hotel; everybody who saw them wanted to puke, or at least that’s what they said. They were mainly press people, so I couldn’t believe anything they said. Beyond that, my head was a bit fuzzy from tear gas and a billyclub shot in the stomach … so all I can really tell you about this photo is that I picked it up along with all the other press handouts.
Now…. a weird and wholly tentative idea for that “open contract” with Ballantine; I’ve been pondering the long-range view for 1972, the breakdown of current political parties, etc. and I see the Dissident Lineup as sort of like this: The Democratic Anarchists, with no candidate except maybe a symbol like a huge plastic do-nut—and a lot of oven-cleaner to back it up; 2) The Progressive Yahoos, with a program we’ll have to wait for—any prediction would necessarily fall short of reality; 3) The Mystic Conservatives (Peace & Power, Drugs on Approved Credit), a sort of Leary-Maddox91 ticket; 4) The Black Iguana Party, a militant blend of blacks and chicanos, united behind a symbol of sudden death for all human obstacles …and …and …and …
Let’s deal with this later. The idea, in a nut, is a short fantasy on the 1972 Campaign, assuming the collapse and splintering of the Democratic Party—dealing with the remnants: their programs, candidates, weapons, backgrounds, the convention in Las Vegas, run by Howard Hughes instead of [Chicago mayor Richard] Daley …Martin Bormann as chief of security drafted by accident on the 38th ballot, fire and chaos … and the Final Solution. That’s the nut; shall we lay it on Bernard?
OK for now,
Hunter
TO SELMA SHAPIRO, RANDOM HOUSE:
Since directing Random House’s publicity for Hell’s Angels, Shapiro had proven her worth to Thompson as both an informal literary agent and a good friend.
September 10, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Selma …
Your letters are getting very formal: “I thought often of the Sheraton-Blackstone, etc. …” Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that I covered that vicious program as an official representative of Random House—so you had a voice on the floor, or at least from the press balcony, when I repeatedly tried to nominate Martin Bormann during the Wednesday nite balloting.
Right. Jim Silberman did the trick, after much arguing, and when I got to Chicago I was treated as brutally as all the other press people—cursed, pushed, chased, punched in the stomach with a billy club, the whole gig. I wore my motorcycle helmet for four straight nights and
ran so often and so far that my legs hurt for 3 days after I got home. Those pigfuckers were stupid enough to stage one of their numerous attacks in front of TV cameras, but the really horrible stuff took place in midnight parks, vacant lots in Old Town, doorways on Wells St., and places like that. I was terrified all week; it was the worst scene I’ve ever been involved in, and that includes the whole Hell’s Angels gig.
I’m not sure what I’ll write about it, except that whatever I write will be part of the suddenly-active non-fiction book. Right now I’m sorting my notes, reading press comments, and thinking about what it meant—not in the sense of an article on Chicago, but as the death of a whole era that began, for me, one night in 1960 when I was hitchhiking from Seattle to San Francisco and stopped somewhere in Oregon to watch the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in a country bar. A whole generation was driven mad in that interim; I doubt if we’ll ever recover.
Maybe Portugal is the answer, and maybe you’re right about democracy. I’m getting my passport in order and thinking seriously about quitting if Nixon gets in, and he will. Or maybe I’ll stay; we’re heading for a horrible showdown of some kind, and I’d hate to miss it.
Back, momentarily, to Chicago: Your mention of Paul Fanning reminds me that I tried to call him while I was there, but he wasn’t listed. On Monday night I sat upstairs in Mother Blues and made notes until they suddenly closed the place at 10:30 because of the violence outside in the street. Nobody knew where Fanning was … so tell him I tried to look him up. I also tried to locate Studs Terkel for a peaceful drink—but in the end there was no time for peaceful drinks, no time for anything but fear and pills and astonishment and rage and adrenaline.
I’m not sure when I’ll get east. Right now I’m trying to hash out a totally-revised book outline for Silberman. For a while I’d almost abandoned the thing, but suddenly I feel like writing 100 pages a day. The novel remains dormant; the summer has been a fore-shortened nightmare of local politics and low finance—vicious dealing and bargaining over land, house, etc. It’s been so bad that I think I should probably move to a small apartment in Watts. These dirty bastards are going to take us all down with them, when they go. These rich-Okie dealers and landowners—mean scum.