’NAM: HUNTER ARRIVES
In January 1975, Vietnam began to come apart. Loren Jenkins was in Nepal working for Newsweek. When the shit hit the fan, he was transferred to Saigon. On April 28, 1975, Saigon fell, and it was over. When things went south, they went south fast.
In early February of that year the provincial capital Boun Me Thuot was overrun, and at that point it was clear to all that the end was near. A month later Hunter called Loren and said he had a job covering the war and wanted to know what it was like over there. Loren illuminated him: “It was what it was, the end of a war.” Hoping for some more useful details, Hunter then called Loren’s first wife, Nancy, who was in Hong Kong. After a lengthy conversation, he concluded that it was what it was.
In late March, Hunter flew from Aspen to Hong Kong. He allowed himself three days in Hong Kong to buy “equipment” before heading to Saigon. During that time, Loren called him and asked that he stop by the Newsweek bureau and pick up some cash. Loren had a staff of fifteen: five Western correspondents and the rest locals. They had to be paid, and there were operating expenses. No one was taking checks at that point. Loren wanted Hunter to grab forty thousand dollars in cash. He said, “Don’t put it in your bag. You have to tape it to your body.”
When Hunter got off the plane in Saigon he was perspiring heavily. The shock of the tropical heat after the air-conditioned airplane messed with his chemistry. He was dressed exactly like Hunter S. Thompson: Aloha shirt, Bermudas, tennis sneakers. While this was acceptable vacation wear back in the States, it wasn’t exactly normal in Saigon at the end of an ugly war. It was also terrible camouflage for someone smuggling forty thousand dollars in U.S. currency. Hunter spotted a sign declaring ANYONE CARRYING OVER $100 IN CASH WILL FACE PROSECUTION. This produced an entirely different kind of sweat. Hunter was sure that he could smell the difference, and that everyone else could, too. Even the finest duct tape wasn’t designed to hold up against this sort of nervous perspiration. He became displeased with his friend Loren Jenkins. He became edgy. But he persevered.
There were two hotels in Saigon preferred by the foreign press, the Caravel, a slick modern edifice where the TV types stayed, and the Continental Palace, a fine old colonial building, the hotel of Graham Greene, where the print journalists holed up. When Loren returned to the Palace that afternoon the manager rushed up to him. “There was an American here looking for you…. I think he’s CIA.” Loren asked what made him think that. The manager’s reply suggested that the fellow’s odd dress and strange behavior could only be explained as that of an inept American spy. “He wanted a room. I told him we had none. I can find him one if you like.” Loren told the manager that he was pretty sure he knew who the gentleman was, that he wasn’t a spy, and that, yes, he should be given a room. He then headed to the bar. Shortly thereafter he was confronting a fairly agitated Hunter Thompson. “I’ve been ripped off.” Loren felt dizzy, assuming the worst. “My forty thousand!”
After being turned away from the Continental Palace, Hunter’s keen instincts had somehow led him straight to Tu Do Street, the center of sin and vice in Saigon. The district was clogged with prostitutes, beggars, and grifters of every shape and form. There was a thriving black-market business exchanging U.S. dollars for piastras. There was also a common scam involving that business.
The black marketeer would offer the “mark” a good exchange rate, usually on a hundred dollars, and as he was handing the gringo a roll of Vietnamese currency, he would look over the mark’s shoulder and say the Saigon equivalent of “Cheese it, the cops! Split up. You go that way!” The two would take off in opposite directions, and when the mark stopped running and stepped into a bar or restaurant to count his money he’d find one small denomination note wrapped around a roll of paper. This is what had happened to Hunter. Loren was profoundly relieved: a hundred dollars of Hunter’s own money was an acceptable loss.
Loren’s relief was short-lived, as Hunter immediately launched into a rant about the awkwardness at the airport, which he perceived as a setup and betrayal. In a brilliant flanking action, Loren interrupted and mentioned that he’d procured a room for Hunter, but that the manager thought he was with the CIA. This insult bored directly into Hunter’s dark heart, and as he started sputtering about the great pride he felt at being on Richard Nixon’s enemies list, the little “thing” at the airport was instantly forgotten. There had been no incident at customs anyway. Hunter felt that his press credentials had gotten him through; Loren secretly thought that the authorities probably figured that no real smuggler would ever be that obvious.
Loren got Hunter checked into a room and they agreed to meet an hour later. The Continental Palace had a lovely courtyard, bar, and restaurant on the ground floor. Because of the 9:00 P.M. curfew in Saigon, this was where the press corps spent their evenings. The journalists would file their stories from their rooms, do whatever they had to do on the streets, and be back in the bar by nine. Hunter and Loren met in the courtyard, and Loren introduced Hunter around to the assembled press, about half of whom were pretty excited to meet him.
There was also a Mr. Chu, well known at the hotel but not a member of the press corps. Mr. Chu and his Samsonite case would turn up at the hotel sometime around the dinner hour. Several journalists, Chu, and the case would often retire to one of the reporters’ rooms. In the case were pipes, lamps, and opium. Opium was the drug of choice in Southeast Asia. Graham Greene favored it. A subtle, old-school drug, opium is usually associated with peaceful ruminating, a clear head, and perfect recall the following day. Hunter Thompson was invited upstairs with the fellas. Later Loren Jenkins was told that Hunter had two or three pipes, a large dose.
The gang returned downstairs, and Loren joined them for dinner. It was a fairly large group. Well into the meal, Hunter excused himself and headed to the men’s room. The doors to the bathrooms were separated from the dining room by only a large bamboo screen, which Hunter disappeared behind. Minutes later blood-curdling screams were heard coming from that direction. Every head in the dining room snapped around. “LOREN, LOREN, HELP!”
As Loren sprang to his feet, Hunter came crashing through the screen, sprawling onto the dining room floor. He was hyper-ventilating, panicked; they almost called a doctor. Hunter’s drug Achilles’ heel had been discovered. The next day he admitted to Jenkins that he had actually done opium once before, with the same effect. You’d think he would have remembered that beforehand.
’NAM: SAIGON FALLS
The North Vietnamese Army was pushing south. Quang Tri fell, then Hue. The conversation in the courtyard of the Continental Palace centered on what the journalists would do when the North Vietnamese got to Saigon. Bug out? Stay and report? Stay and fight? There were many loony scenarios. Some of the macho types thought they should arm themselves. Jenkins and the old hands felt this was a lousy idea; their neutrality was their only real defense. The gung ho cowboys were asked to find a new place to live.
At this point Hunter had been in Saigon for four or five days, and he announced that he was going to Hong Kong. Loren was incredulous: “You’re here to write Fear and Loathing in Saigon, not Hong Kong.” Loren was deeply disappointed, Saigon was as crazy as a place can get, and being a great admirer of Hunter’s writing, he truly felt that Doc was the perfect person to report it. Hunter insisted that the trip was absolutely necessary, claiming that Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner had canceled his insurance before he had left the States and that he had to get that situation cleared up before he faced any more unreasonable danger. Once again Loren was incredulous. It seemed that Hunter only liked danger when he was the most dangerous person in the room. The situation in Saigon was far beyond Hunter’s, or anyone’s, control; it was an entirely different sort of danger. In any case, Hunter spent six days in Hong Kong and then returned to Saigon. Loren was pleased to see him but mildly concerned about the huge footlocker he was traveling with. Anything could be in it.
It turned out that Hunter had decided to or
ganize the press corps. The footlocker was full of high-tech equipment: tape recorders, walkie-talkies and all manner of sneaky electronic devices. He wanted to wire everyone; there were code words and passwords. The international press corps, jaded war correspondents, were about as cynical as you could get. They had no idea what to make of Doc’s efforts.
All this time, he hadn’t written a word. Since this certainly wasn’t Hunter’s first rodeo, he knew how to hedge his bets, so he had a large top-of-the-line reel-to-reel tape recorder and was recording everything as events unfolded, in case he ever did decide to write. When Loren got a 3:00 A.M. phone call from the New York office (post three-martini lunch, New York time), Hunter was there recording. When Loren patiently explained that, no, he couldn’t get a photo of the presidential palace with a tank in front of it and a hot chick standing in front of the tank, because there were no tanks or hot chicks in front of the palace, and because he didn’t stage photographs, Hunter got it. When Hunter was out in the field listening to a speech given by an American colonel to his troops indicating that they were going to fight to the last man, Hunter got the speech—and, in the background, the sound of a chopper as it approached, landed, and swept the colonel off to safety. This was good stuff.
One week before the fall of Saigon, Hunter announced, “I gotta fly to Laos.” Loren, again, couldn’t believe it. This was it, the big show, surely the most significant event in Hunter’s journalistic career. Saigon was where the story was. Hunter was adamant. “I have to watch this thing from Laos.” He flew to the sleepy town of Ban Dien and stayed there as Saigon fell. As near as Jenkins can remember, the only writing Hunter ever published on the fall of Saigon was a cable he shot off to Jann Wenner bitching about the insurance situation and asking for more expense money.
The night before Hunter left for Laos, he and Loren were chatting about what would happen next. The only “next” that Loren was interested in was his own, not Vietnam’s. He told Hunter about a little thatched hotel on a beach on the island of Bali. That was his “next.”
Loren had told the American ambassador to Vietnam that he wasn’t leaving the country until the ambassador did, so he was on one of the last choppers out of the embassy compound. From there, he flew to an aircraft carrier, where he spent four days as it steamed to Subic Bay. During his time at sea he filed his final dispatches on the fall of Saigon and the end of the United States’ Vietnam adventure. Loren’s editors told him to take as much time off as he wanted, and he soon found himself in a bungalow on the beach at the hotel Tan Jun Sari on Bali.
Loren Jenkins on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, waiting to be flown to the carrier.
The decompression process after months of covering combat is a difficult one. Sleep doesn’t come easily, one remains wired, the blades on the overhead fan are the rotors of a gunship, unexpected sounds suggest danger. On his second morning on Bali, Loren was startled awake at 4:00 A.M. to the sounds of battle. Was it in his head? No, it was in the room. There was Hunter, standing by the door with one of his high-tech tape recorders playing, at full volume, the war in Vietnam. Loren was less than amused. Hunter thought it was funny as hell.
Hunter had flown to Bali with a beautiful blonde. In the blonde’s makeup case was a jar of face powder. Not really. The jar was full of organic mescaline; the two look much the same. The three of them spent the next week on the beach consuming it. Hunter had missed the battle but made it to the after party.
Hunter and Loren, more than a few years after their adventures at war.
GRENADA: THE GREAT WRITER, THE HAND, AND THE FIGHT
Loren Jenkins was the only journalist to bring a date to the invasion of Grenada. In October of 1983 he was working for the Washington Post. When the United States invaded Grenada, the Post sent Loren to Barbados, which was the closest you could get to the island after the initial wave of Marines moved in. The navy kept the press away for four days after the invasion, and then would fly in groups on C130s for three or four hours at a time.
The invasion followed the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. The soldiers who invaded Grenada had been heading for Lebanon and were diverted to the island. Loren thought the whole thing was a face-saving move to secure a victory after the tragic loss of 241 lives to Hezbollah terrorists.
Loren Jenkins at the Floridita Bar in Havana, drinking with a statue of Ernest Hemingway—which is not at all like drinking with Hunter, Braudis, and Cleverly.
Still, on October 13 there had been a bloody coup on the island led by Marxist Barnard Coard, who then installed himself as deputy prime minister, with crony Maurice Bishop as prime minister. This didn’t sit well with the Reagan administration, or jibe with its war on communism. When improvements were started on the Grenada airport, the administration decided that the airport was being brought up to military grade, that the Grenadan government wasn’t just trying to improve tourist capacity. There was a Cuban military presence on the island, and some engineers, not to mention a thousand U.S. medical students. That was good enough for us.
The result was operation “Urgent Fury.” Twelve hundred Marines stormed the island and initially met with heavy resistance. By the time our force reached seven thousand, the resistance had dissolved, and whatever fighters were left were fleeing into the mountains. When the press corps was finally allowed to occupy the island, most stayed at the St. George Hotel in the capital. When Loren realized that he’d probably be there for three or four weeks, he called Missie and urged her to join him; the water was fine. Hunter got wind of the fun to be had and convinced Rolling Stone that this was an assignment custom-made for you know who. He left for the island a day before Missie, and arrived two days after she did. Where Hunter’s missing three days went, he wouldn’t say.
A few days later, Loren encountered the great writer V. S. Naipaul, who had just checked into the St. George. When Loren next saw Hunter, he told him that “he wasn’t the most famous writer in the hotel anymore, that V. S. Naipaul was staying there.” Hunter replied, “Who’s V. S. Naipaul?” Later Hunter and Naipaul met and became great friends. Before long, the press corps tired of the St. George and its location in the middle of the capital city, so they, en masse, liberated a small beachfront hotel called Hidden Bay. There they spent their days swimming, drinking, and attending briefings at which the military would try to convince them that they were busy hunting down commies in the mountains.
One day Hunter, Loren, and Missie were driving through a village, and one of them looked down an alley and noticed a garbage can with a human hand sticking out of it. Hunter insisted they stop. With Missie snapping pictures, the guys cautiously approached, as if the thing could become aware. There was a khaki sleeve on its arm. As they closed in on the gruesome tableau, they realized that the hand was a prosthetic. This was even better, and Hunter grabbed the prize. The thing wasn’t just an inanimate lump of plastic; it was articulated. By manipulating the end where it would have attached to the stump, he could make the fingers move in an eerie, lifelike manner. Hunter couldn’t believe his good fortune.
The next few days saw a lot of the kind of pranks that are really funny if they’re not being played on you. Waiters and waitresses, bartenders, people driving cars with Hunter in the backseat, and random victims on the street all met “the hand,” with its grasping, twitching fingers. Hunter created an elaborate mythology surrounding the discovery of the hand, which of course bore little or no relation to actual events. It became an instant legend among the press corps. Unlike its previous owner, Hunter and the hand were inseparable.
Hunter was determined to bring the thing back to the States with him. There was Woody Creek, and worlds far beyond Woody Creek, for him and the hand to conquer. Sadly for Hunter, there was a physician present during one of his performances. He took an immediate interest in the hand and explained how really sophisticated and expensive the thing was. In other words, it wasn’t a toy. Says who? For Hunter this was a really crummy turn of events. The hand was the best to
y he’d come upon in ages. The doctor was adamant, though. The thing had to belong to someone out there who, undoubtedly, would be missing it badly once he sobered up. If not, someone else could make real use of it. Hunter was of the strong opinion that he was making real use of it, but it was hard not to listen to reason. With great reluctance, he relinquished his prize. What followed was a period of mourning for him, and perhaps to some degree for Missie and Loren as well. The rest of the island fell into two categories, past victims of the hand and future victims of the hand. Had they known about Hunter’s loss, I suspect they would have had different feelings on the matter.
The three thought that a trip into the mountains would cheer them up. There was a fine restaurant called Mama’s that was reputed to serve an excellent conch soup. They set out in an open Jeep. About halfway to their destination, after several miles of rough roads and switchbacks, they came to a sudden halt. The road was blocked by U.S. troops. It was a checkpoint to keep the phantom Cuban army from sneaking around the island.
Deb Fuller and Bob at the Jenkins wedding.
Instead of being waved on through as they fully expected, the three were detained. The hood of the jeep was raised and a thorough inspection of the vehicle was begun. Loren Jenkins was displeased. He had endured this sort of thing in countless Third World war zones at the hands of petty military types, and he wasn’t happy to have to take this sort of crap from our own guys. He and Hunter produced their press credentials, with little effect. Jesus Christ, this was the world-famous Hunter S. Thompson. This was Loren Jenkins. You know, with the Pulitzer Prize. This was a beautiful blonde who couldn’t be more an American WASP and less a Cuban spy if she had USA tattooed on her forehead.
The Kitchen Readings Page 5