I drove back very slowly, recovering from my terror and let him out at the house. I parked the car back in the garage and gave Anita the keys and told her it would be a while before the Doc could drive. It was.
Bob Describes a Mishap on Assignment
I told Hunter not to go to Honolulu. He’d been invited there to be the celebrity host for a marathon on Oahu, but he was still recovering from spinal surgery. His gait was unsteady and unbalanced. Hobbling from the kitchen to the bathroom was a fifteen-minute round trip. I often watched him discreetly piss in the kitchen sink with his back to the crowd in order to avoid the trek. Sometimes he asked me to stand behind him as a human cloak. Oh yeah, you gotta love the stench of urine on dirty dishes. Juan, much later, confided that his father had done this even when he was healthy.
Nonetheless, the packing of suitcases commenced. Five-star digs, Pacific Rim hero worshipers, Gollywood stablemates, sun instead of ice, wanderlust, and grins trumped my Jesuit logic and intuitive concern that argued against this postsurgical maiden voyage of Hunter, the shipwreck that I loved and worried about. His medical crusade was boring and draining, and respite was worth the gamble. And gambling man he was. An audience broader than the kitchen, a reaffirmation of his cachet, and the challenge to show us that transoceanic travel was still an arrow in his quiver kicked him into gear and he spurred his gang of sherpas onward. In the end, paranoia was the only serious threat to his journey, and paranoia lost out. With baggage more properly suited to a nineteenth-century steamship circumnavigation, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson left for the islands.
The first phone call evoked a flood of “why didn’t I put my foot down?” guilt. Hunter had snapped both tibia and fibula, just below the knee, in a slip-and-fall on the marble floor of his tropical paradise bathroom and he was being put back together and encased in plaster in the orthopedic section of the Honolulu Valley Hospital. Setback? Understatement.
I like facts. I like to garner facts. The facts are neither sad nor happy, they just exist.
Hunter wanted a microwave oven in his suite. The major counter space was in the bathroom, with deluxe slick marble floors. At some ungodly hour of predawn, Hunter craved Top Ramen soup. He nuked it, reached into the oven for it, grabbed it, burned his hand on it, dropped it on the floor, took a step, went upside down, landed without grace, snapped two bones, and never got any soup. Just the facts, ma’am.
Anita provided the play-by-play. “Bobby, we’re flying Honolulu to DIA, then to Vail and the Steadman clinic. I’ll call you from there.” But Anita’s next call came from Honolulu. She recounted the checking of baggage, pre-boarding the United jumbo, first-class seats, row 1, A and B, Hunter’s failure to find comfort and his insistence on deplaning. Post-9/11 stomach acid for UAL and TSA. The baggage went round trip to Denver and back.
A few days later, Anita, thinking logically, booked six seats in the center section of a wide body. Hunter could lie down and find comfort. One problem, the FAA says you cannot lie down during takeoff and landing. Scratch plan B. Plan C was an air ambulance dispatched from L.A. and guaranteed by Sean Penn’s Gold Card. The flight crew loaded Hunter and Anita aboard the jet and headed east toward the Vail airport and the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic.
There was trouble mid-Pacific. Hunter was not comfortable and chucked water bottles and sandwiches into the cockpit. That sort of thing is verboten in the world of Learjet jockeys; those guys aren’t used to having stuff thrown at them in mid-flight. At a scheduled refueling stop at Van Nuys, the crew told Anita that Hunter was going to be dumped out of his stretcher on to the tarmac for his horrible behavior. He could find his own way to Vail. Anita begged the crew to relent. The pilots took pity, and the flight continued.
Meanwhile, I was on the phone with Juan, who was en route to Vail. I said I’d meet him at the clinic. Anita had been up for five days and once Hunter was settled in at Steadman-Hawkins, she checked into a ski lodge for a well-deserved nap. I met Juan in the clinic lobby. You could hear Hunter clear down the hall, and it was agonizing. Acknowledging that the goal was to get Hunter to Owl Farm when the orthos were done assessing his condition, Juan, with a real life and a real job and a very real family, sought my permission to return to Denver. I would stand watch and coordinate from Vail to the farm. There was no sense in both of us watching NFL games in the lobby all Sunday afternoon.
Juan gave me the phone numbers of Anita’s lodge and a limo service and went back to Denver. The staff at the clinic told me that X-rays of Doc’s break showed clean fractures, no dislocation and no need for surgery or admission. They sedated him and recast his leg from ass to toe with thirty pounds of plaster. Later, during the second games of the afternoon, I was told by the staff that Hunter was ready to go, and that they were ready for him to leave. Those who had to attend to him would shed no tears. He would not be missed. As he emerged from anesthesia I could hear him shouting from his room. I walked down the corridor and went in. His mood was foul, and the staff was the target of his invective. I told him to behave and that I’d get him home.
I called the limo service and arranged a pickup at 5:30 P.M. I called Anita, awakened her, and picked her up at the lodge. The “luxury limo” was a van—granted, it was a large one—waiting at the clinic’s back door.
I informed the folks in the white suits that all was ready and asked how they would get Hunter from the bed to the van. “Don’t worry,” they assured me. “We know how to do this and we really want him out of here.” Five minutes later, four guys in full bio-hazard suits, including face shields, showed up with a gurney. Enduring curses and threats from Hunter, they lifted him from the bed to the gurney and wheeled him to the exit. Lifting his butt and broken leg, they placed him in the van. Anita boarded, and I got in my car and followed the van to I-70. We were on our way to Woody Creek.
We’d traveled one mile west when the van signaled to exit. More trouble? I followed it to the parking lot at McDonald’s. I approached, and Hunter said that he wanted grilled cheese sandwiches. This item isn’t on the McDonald’s menu, so Anita taught the Bulgarian manager and Mexican cooks how to make them.
With a new cast, a bag of comfort food, and Owl Farm on the horizon, Hunter was once again in control of his environment, a basic requirement for Doc. My only problem, and Hunter’s, was how we were going to get him and his cast from the van into the house. I called Deputy Joe DiSalvo and he agreed to borrow a wheelchair from the hospital and meet us at the farm. I called Cleverly. With grunting and screaming, we got Hunter into the chair, up the stairs, and into the kitchen, where he saw his four-foot-high stool on wheels. “Get me into the stool,” he commanded. None of us thought the stool or Hunter was stable enough, but he demanded, and we complied. Once in place and safely home, he looked at his TV, which had been on for ten years, and said, “Hot damn! The Broncos are on Sunday Night Football. I’ll take them and give three.” Joey, Mike, and I took the bet, won, and never got paid.
The broken leg in Honolulu was a milestone in the downward spiral of Hunter’s health. Hunter had become more and more sedentary over the years, but because he was gifted with the physique of a natural athlete, the accompanying atrophy had been gradual and subtle. The break was a large and immediate change in his life. Hunter had always been perfectly happy to be waited on; he was great at being lazy. For many years that seemed okay, because not getting off his ass was his choice; now he had no choice. He loved riding motorcycles. He loved shotgun golf, jumping into the Shark and flying down to the Tavern. He loved chasing women, literally chasing them, with the women running, and Hunter running. Now he was stuck in a chair and, worse, there was the regimen of physical therapy. To say Hunter wasn’t one for regimens of any kind would be a massive understatement, and the therapy was painful hard work as well.
The situation Hunter found himself in would have depressed the most stoic of individuals, and I don’t think Hunter was ever described as stoic.
Bob
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
It was a February Wednesday. Aspen was at 90 percent occupancy, good for the mercantile interests, waitresses and waiters, ski instructors, and everyone in the trickle-down cascade of resort economies.
“Marky Mark” and “Big Wave Dave,” two surfers from Santa Barbara, were in Aspen for a few days of skiing. They were staying at the St. Regis, one of Aspen’s premier hotels, located at the base of the mountain. Mark, with a day job in commercial real estate, had helped DeDe, my sweetheart, to invest in a former aircraft assembly plant out on the coast. DeDe was happy when she flipped the property at a large profit. Their friendship had endured. He invited us for dinner at a hip new bistro in an old building on Hopkins Street. The food was good, and every seat was filled. Midway through our main course, “Big Wave” said that he and Mark had read everything that Hunter Thompson had written, admired him greatly, and asked if it might be possible to meet him during their short stay. I said that I’d call him after dinner.
Over the years I had fielded hundreds of requests to introduce people to Hunter. The Doc’s phone numbers were not published, but mine were. It was common knowledge that Hunter and I were friends, and pilgrims from all over the world thirsted for a one-on-one audience with him. Some fans had even called me at 911. I vetted most of these requests by getting some details and a callback number, but I rarely bothered Hunter with this litany of suitors. I even treated friends’ requests to hang out with Hunter as a general annoyance and imposition on him and rarely showed up with company. If I asked him if it was okay to bring somebody he would rarely decline, and I avoided abusing his hospitality.
Still, I liked my new friends and told them that if Hunter was up and about, not jamming on a deadline, a postprandial drive to Woody Creek might be in the cards. Just before dessert was delivered, my cell phone lit up. “Hi, it’s Bob,” I answered. “Bob, Hunter. What are you doing?” “Well, Hunter, I’m in town at dinner with DeDe and two dudes from California who are huge fans of yours.” “Well, think they would like to come over?” “Yeah, I do. See you in half an hour.”
We left the bistro. Mark and Big Wave picked up a bottle of ancient single malt that I would have had to take out a loan to pay for, and we headed to Woody Creek by the back road. I told our friends that I could not predict what kind of experience we were in for. DeDe knew why I was delivering this disclaimer. Hunter could be warm and affable, rattlesnake mean, or unconscious. Buy the ticket…
We filed into the kitchen. Hunter was perched and fully dressed—a good sign. Introductions were made. Hunter hugged me and then hugged DeDe, while grabbing her ass. Normal welcome.
The next three hours were animated and fun to watch. Dave and Mark were extroverts. They submitted to Hunter’s journalist interrogation and proved their knowledge of politics and sports. They felt comfortable in the strange world of Owl Farm. Hunter asked them if they would read from his works. On the kitchen counter were five or six of his books, each earmarked with sticky notes, and Hunter picked one up, opened it to a certain passage, and handed it to Dave. Dave began reading.
Hunter loved to hear his writings read aloud. During these readings he would look into the void, as if he were at a symphony or a jazz concert, and he would rock to the cadence of his words. He had hand signals that told the reader to slow down, read louder, read faster, or whatever Hunter thought would benefit his words. He was a conductor. If a reader mispronounced a word or left out a word—a word perhaps written twenty-five or thirty years earlier—Hunter would look up and ask, “Are you sure that’s what I wrote?” Hunter knew. Like a mathematician with his unique formulae, Hunter was his writing. I had ceased being amazed years before, but Mark and Dave were impressed.
In the ensuing hours, Hunter was on his game. We were all laughing, and the room was saturated with mutual respect and an apparent joy for life. I had been aware of stress in Hunter’s life. His business and his relationship and his health were all bothering him. Over the previous weeks, I’d answered his summonses many times. We had discussed possible solutions to various problems as he identified them. During these days we were always alone and often sat in the living room by the fire. One-on-one dialogues with Hunter were rare, precious, and revealing. With me, Hunter shed most of his paranoia and privacy. I would digest what he said and offer my thoughts and experiences without reservation. These exchanges were intimate, adult, and emotional. Over the years, we had shared such moments, and they had drawn us closer. I felt that I was able to assess Hunter’s moods. On this Wednesday night, I thought Hunter’s mood seemed perfect.
At about one in the morning, I said that I had to go to work early on Thursday. Dave and Mark wanted to ski but would probably have spent all night reading and talking. We said good night and got in my car. On the way into town we all felt that we had experienced a night of vintage Hunter. It was a small group with good chemistry, and now each of us is forever bound to the others by the fact that it was the last time any of us saw HST alive. On Sunday, Hunter took his life. Mark and Dave have a story to tell. Hunter loved stories. Long after that final, fatal Sunday, I still reflect on that Wednesday evening and wonder if it was a gift from Hunter, or a last gift from Hunter.
Cleverly
Friday, February 18, 2005
The week before Hunter died, our old friend Loren Jenkins was in town. That Wednesday, Loren and I met with Hunter at Owl Farm. We had a terrific afternoon; we solved many of the problems of the world and conspired to create new ones. When Loren and I hooked up the next day we agreed that it had been a fine time. Hunter at his best. I would have remembered that afternoon fondly, no matter how much longer Hunter had lived.
I was over at Hunter’s again two days later. He was in excellent spirits. It was just the two of us. Anita had gone to the movies with her friend Sue. We talked about John Belushi. I had brought him up for some reason. His brother-in-law, Rob Jacklen, had lived in Aspen in the wild old days and we had both known him. Hunter, of course, was close to John. We watched a basketball game. It was a rerun, but I didn’t know that. Hunter had watched it a couple of evenings before. He made me gamble—game bet, proposition bets, the works. I wasn’t doing very well. I wasn’t suspicious; he’d usually win even when he wasn’t bothering to flimflam me. Basketball is not my game.
The great Ralph Steadman and Cleverly; a classic kitchen evening.
Hunter had a lot of irons in the fire. The high-end art publisher Taschen was releasing a new edition of The Curse of Lono, first published in 1983. Ralph Steadman had done spectacular color illustrations for it, but the original edition hadn’t come close to doing them justice. Hunter and Ralph had always felt slightly betrayed by this, so the new edition was a big deal. Hunter himself was working on an article for Playboy on Sean Penn’s remake of the film All the King’s Men. Penn and Hunter were good friends, and Doc had recently returned from New Orleans where the film was shooting. Hunter and I were scheming up a sequel to my 2002 Sex and Death calendar. Hunter was sure that Taschen would want to be involved in a project of such profound artistic merit. We were obliged to study dirty pictures as research. Hunter had other stuff in the works, too.
Physically, Hunter felt pretty crappy. He was coming back from a series of medical problems, and it was a very slow, painful process. I honestly thought that he was improving. You could tell by the griping that he was making an effort. Physical therapists were coming and going from Owl Farm regularly; sometimes debauchery and sin had to be put off. That evening Doc really seemed to feel okay.
So that last night was business as usual to me. We drank a bit, did a little of this, a little of that. At the end of the game, Hunter came clean about it being a rerun. He pointed at the screen. “See that tiny logo up in the corner?” I made my way over to the TV and put my nose up to the screen. It read, “Instant Classics.” “What does it mean?” I asked. “It means I watched this game two nights ago.” He forgave my debts and my stupidity. Who knows if he’d conned me before and not ’fessed up? If he had, his admission that night might h
ave been telling. We’ll never know.
Anita and Sue got home some time after eleven. They were bubbly and chatty; it had been a good movie. Eleven can be getting late for me, but it was always considered early at Owl Farm. I would leave soon.
A couple of days after Hunter’s death I was quoted in a news story as saying that I would have been less surprised if he’d shot me. That was true. I had no idea. Woody Creek has never been considered an epicenter of mental health. It took a personality as large as Hunter’s to actually stand out. There were always plenty of nutcases running around the neighborhood, but Hunter was never one of them. If I had been told that someone was going to do himself in, I could have made a list, but Hunter would have been at the bottom.
Not every evening at Owl Farm was a party. In recent years the kind of behavior that Hunter’s young fans found so appealing was less and less frequent. An average night would more likely have been Hunter and a close friend or two discussing politics or some other current event. Serious and sober middle-aged guys doing what middle-aged guys do. This would on occasion be a disappointment to some fan who had gained admission, expecting to see a Bill Murray or Johnny Depp version.
The Kitchen Readings Page 19