Stories I Tell Myself

by Juan F. Thompson

  However, we moved too fast toward a kind of intimacy that we both wished for but which did not yet exist. I took him at his word, plunged in and sent him a letter expressing my loneliness, sadness, homesickness, and depression. I wasn’t going to leave Tufts and retreat to Aspen this time, but it wasn’t an easy transition. I was exceedingly lonely, I didn’t know anyone and still didn’t know how to talk to strangers. Once again, after three years of being a part of a small and intimate community at CRMS, I was on my own.

  I arrived in Boston, and like Concord three years earlier, it was foreign. It was a big city—I had never lived in a city. The people were different, the streets were different, and their accents were different. Tufts is an island of wealthy academia in the middle of a run-down neighborhood on the border of Medford and Somerville, two towns that were absorbed into metropolitan Boston a long time ago. I looked like a fourteen-year-old Native American boy with hair down to my shoulders and bangs that hid my eyes. This time I was fortunate to have a great roommate, Peter. He came from an upper-class family on Long Island, had attended St. Paul’s Academy before coming to Tufts, wore chinos and oxford shirts rolled up to the elbows, and competed on the sailing team. He made me feel very welcome, though we could not have been more different. He also had the exceptional decency that year to let me use his car many nights, an old Volvo 240 sedan, so I could go on long drives around the city. Peter made a lonely, difficult year bearable. I hope life has been good to you, Peter, wherever you are.

  During the freshman orientation there was a social event in our dormitory where all the freshmen milled about, ate cookies, and drank pop. I dreaded that event, though I went, and sat by myself the entire time. I didn’t know what to say.

  Some nights—or more accurately some mornings—Hunter would call. It might be two or three a.m., early by Hunter’s standards and time zone, but the very middle of the night for me. I would stagger out of bed and grab the receiver, and then go out into the hall to avoid waking my roommate. Mostly we would talk about nothing in particular—politics, Owl Farm, his current project. He would ask how things were going and I would give him a brief update. Sometimes we had business to discuss, such as the tuition payment. Sometimes I would slump to the floor and hold the phone to my ear with my eyes closed, dead tired, just wanting to go to sleep but grateful to hear Hunter’s voice and grateful for his reaching out to me. I see now he wasn’t calling to chat. We didn’t really have that kind of relationship yet. He was calling to find out how I was doing. The letters hadn’t worked as a medium, instead creating more confusion than clarity on both sides, so he called to check up on me in his indirect way, feeling things out from my tone of voice, what I did or did not mention.

  His friend Oliver had a brother who lived just outside of Boston. Oliver got in touch with his brother and asked him to keep an eye on me. Three or four times I went to their house on weekends. It was in a Boston suburb, but heavily wooded and with plenty of space between the houses, more like ranchettes than suburban tracts, except Massachusetts doesn’t have ranches or ranchettes. I would walk in the woods, or read, or talk with Oliver’s brother, who was a doctor. I remember one day while he was working in the garage I asked him questions about cocaine and other drugs, how they worked on the brain, what exactly was dangerous about them. He seemed happy to answer and I was grateful to be with people who had some connection to my roots, rather than spending another weekend on campus alone.

  In the first few weeks of school I took Hunter’s advice and went down to the office of The Tufts Observer. I had no experience as a reporter at all, since my boarding school did not have a newspaper. They gave me an assignment to cover the meeting of the student government. That evening I walked over to the room where the student government officials were gathered and listened to them talk, and talk, and talk. There was the recitation of the meeting minutes, the motions, the votes, the agenda, and long discussions of extraordinarily dull topics. I had my pen and notebook, but I could barely stay awake, much less take meaningful notes. The meeting went on for hours. After it was over I was supposed to write a short article on the proceedings, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to write. I never turned in that assignment and put an end to my journalistic career—with no regrets.

  I wonder where the notion to work for the student paper came from. I don’t remember having any strong interest in being a journalist, and I can’t imagine Hunter actually encouraging me to take up a profession that he has so frequently denigrated, yet Hunter and I had obviously talked about it before I left for Tufts. There was also the burden of having to be good at it. I was Hunter Thompson’s son, after all, and much would be expected of me—by Hunter, by myself, and by others. I was not ready for that kind of pressure. I had always steered away from writing as a profession because I knew well how difficult it was to make a living as a freelance writer, but also because I didn’t want to try and fail at it. I felt an actual terror at the thought of venturing into Hunter’s world professionally, because the stakes were so high personally; he might be disappointed, I might be disappointed. It seemed better not even to consider the same profession.

  And yet, in a letter I wrote to Hunter shortly after I arrived at Tufts, I brought up the idea of joining the college paper as though it was something I very much wanted to do. I even wrote that I wanted to become the editor of the paper. Why would I write Hunter such a thing, given my ambivalence about pursuing writing, and journalism in particular? I must have been trying to impress him, to get my father’s approval by seeking success in his profession. How foolish. How unnecessary. How poignant. Hunter never encouraged me to be a writer. Instead, most often he encouraged me to develop my skills as a computer hacker. Back when the personal computer was just developing, even before the IBM PC, Apple II, the Commodore 64, and the Radio Shack TRS-80, back when the chip was a 4Mhz Z-80 processor and the language a primitive thing called TINY-BASIC, I had been hounding Hunter to purchase a kit computer. He would counter with two questions: How would it help him, and would I in turn promise to devote myself to figuring out how to break into a banking computer and make us rich? I couldn’t answer the former and couldn’t agree to the latter, so I had to wait a few more years to buy a TRS-80 myself.

  To cope with my loneliness at Tufts, I took long walks between classes through the neighborhoods around the school, and later throughout Boston. On weekends I would often walk down Massachusetts Avenue to Harvard Square where I would visit bookstores, see a movie, or just wander through the streets. At night I would plot out a destination on the city map, maybe the Charles River, maybe Harvard Square again, maybe somewhere in downtown Boston, and walk there and back, sometimes a journey of five or six hours through dubious neighborhoods. Other nights I would borrow my roommate’s car and drive out to Nahant, a tiny island just south of Marblehead that is connected to the mainland by a thread of a sandbar. At the tip of the island is the Northeastern University Marine Science Center. I would walk over the dunes and out onto the jagged boulders at the water’s edge, where I could see the lights of Boston about five miles away and watch the waves crash against the rocks. Other nights I would climb up the fire escape on one of the tall old buildings on campus to a little platform just below the roof. It was about five stories, and the campus was built on a hill, so from my perch I had a sweeping view of nighttime Boston.

  Standing on the rocks at Nahant, or sitting on that platform, I had solitude, but not loneliness. I had the pleasure of my company, though I did dream, in a vague romantic way, of sitting there with a beautiful young woman. The night was a thick, warm, and intimate cloak that hid and protected me. At those times I imagined myself a brooding, deeply sensitive soul separated from his peers by a deeper understanding of life.

  If the night was a cloak in which I could hide, daytime was nakedness and shame. I felt exposed, seen, and judged by everyone around me. I could not walk down a sidewalk or a street with other people without a profound sense of awkward self-consciousness. If I
had solitude at night, I had raw loneliness by day, emphasized, or perhaps made possible, by the presence of all the people around me with whom I could not connect, not because I was aloof and made of a finer stuff, but because I didn’t know how. The time during class was manageable because there was no expectation of socializing. It was the time between classes, or during meals, when people talk to each other, that my isolation was so excruciatingly obvious to me.

  Mealtime at the dormitory was the worst. All those people, all that talk, all those connections around me in which I had no part. It was unbearable to eat alone with no distraction. I would eat as fast as possible and still the meal seemed to take hours. I solved this problem by getting a subscription to The Boston Globe and reading the paper during meals, just as I had read Tolkien at Concord Academy a few years earlier.

  It was in this state of mind that I wrote this letter to Hunter, full of disdain for the people around me, a disdain and arrogance born out of loneliness and fear.

  Sept 4th, 1982

  Hunter,

  Yes—naked and alone in Boston. How baffling this is. “I’m not like the others!” The glum reaper is devious this time. He hides outside the window, the tip of his scythe barely visible. Thankfully, he doesn’t show his miserable, despairing form, but I know he’s there. Other times he’s not so subtle. He and I walk side by side, completely alone, so close I can smell the tears, the utter hopelessness of this endeavor. He shows me memories, vivid nostalgia, better times. It’s deadly, and very painful. And then, he retreats, I am reprieved, he never lets me forget he is there, though. Devious, insidious. I feel the best I’ve felt since I’ve been here. As I write this, light glints off the blade of that scythe, moves a bit farther out…It’s true, I’m not like the others. I’m quiet, “weird,” solitary. What can I say? I’m sure there are, among Tufts’ 5000 students, at least a hundred people with whom I can make friends, but they are as invisible as I. The social codes are different, distinctly preppy, fraternity-sorority, hip, flip, fast-and-cute, nauseating, and artificial. I have no doubt that the majority of these people are interesting, likeable, intelligent people. Unfortunately, they’ve been taught not to show it. The problem lies in socializing. When these people socialize, they don a common “mask.” They talk a certain way (hip, flip) act a certain way, do certain things, all of which have been defined as socially acceptable. By acting in such a way, one makes “friends.” With time, friends use their masks less and less, and a true, deep friendship results. But the mask is so cheap, and repulsive! I don’t want to use it, so I take the alternative (which is not necessarily best) and retreat, becoming quiet and “unsociable,” waiting to meet someone like me. Lonelier. The price of principles. The price of a progressive, Aspen, western education. The Community School. I’d do it a thousand times over.

  Tried calling you tonight—no answer. Play? You’re right about the sense of humor. The Ultimate Weapon. Unfortunately, humor seems so far away when I most need it. I’ve made a sign, “Naked and Alone”…which I’m putting on the wall. Perhaps Tufts isn’t the place for me, perhaps the east isn’t the place for me. Nevertheless, I’ll definitely plan to stay a year here, to make a fair judgment. No Concord fiasco, I’m more sensible than that. Yeah, it’s easy to say that behind “His” back, but when he’s beside me, it’s hard.

  My roommate wears the mask. The other night he took it off (why?) and was very nice. A pleasant person and worthwhile roommate. The next morning, and ever since, he’s had it on. The room is looking better. Once I get my boxes it will be quite nice, I think. Now, I could stick it out. Tomorrow, when HE comes, I won’t be very sure. Don’t worry, I’ll survive.

  By the way, this newspaper, The Tufts Observer, needs a good reporter. More importantly, it needs a good editor. Too ambitious? We’ll see…If this is one of the top 5 college papers, I couldn’t bear to see the worst. It needs work. So, Monday or Tuesday I’ll get on the staff, get my foot in the door, so to speak. I hope they aren’t stodgy, intellectual, fraternity snobs running the paper. They may well be.

  My phone number is: 617 628 2043

  Please call anytime. I really enjoyed your letter, thank you, it helped. Get some work done. I’ll be working hard here. Fear is in the air. These people would rather be at Harvard. Old Harvard. These people will be running this country. Not me, I’m not like the others, I won’t be. Never!

  Can I maintain such a claim in the face of such as HE? I’ll make friends, slowly, as is my nature. Slow but steady. I’ll send for some literature on Reed College in Oregon. Just look. A year here may be long enough, or just the beginning. Remind me, Keep me honest, my objectivity can be easily lost here.

  Enough!

  I love you, Dad.

  Juan

  When I found this letter to Hunter in the archive, I also found his notes that he had scrawled on the letter:

  Yeah. “they’ll (sic) all gay like me—why won’t they admit it?”

  Jesus. What hath Sandy wrought?

  No college will cure this problem—only postpone it, for $1500 a month.

  That would pay the mortgage on the Owl Farm.

  I have already paid $5000. Another $1000 due on Oct. 1st.

  Can Sandy take me back to court if I don’t pay?

  So what? He’ll be in the Village by then.

  A few weeks later Hunter replied with a rambling, confused letter in which he recounted a story about the last time he received such a letter in which a friend of his informed him that he was gay and was going to New York City “to be with his people.” Hunter wrote that their friendship petered out after a few get-togethers, not because of Hunter’s hostility to gays, but because they now had different interests and social circles. He finished the letter with this:

  …there is a knotty kind of intensity in your message that was exceeded only by its obscurity. So I figured I’d just skrike out in the fog and see what came of it. None of my doctorates gave me wisdom in areas like these—but I sense something heavier than just college on your mind and I think I should know what it is. Tell me.

  I had written him two long letters explaining how lonely and unhappy I was and his reaction was to tell me I wasn’t being clear and to state the real problem. I had asked my father, who in his previous letter had been so supportive and welcoming of communication, for help or understanding, and now he was no help at all. In fact, his letter brought up uncomfortable questions: Did my father think I was gay? Was he saying that we would drift apart if I were? What was he trying to say? Did he understand me at all? Clearly he could not help me.

  That first letter from Hunter was beautiful wishful thinking. He wanted to believe we had that kind of relationship, as did I. We wanted to believe we could start over from that moment and he could be the father he and I both wanted him to be. My letters to him exploded that illusion, and now I see he had no idea how to handle this kind of appeal from me. He could give practical advice; if I had asked him for help getting a job, getting a car, getting an interview for an article in the student paper, that he could have handled. But a cry of loneliness in the darkness, that he could not handle.

  What it showed most clearly is that we did not know each other, though we badly wanted to, and as a result he could not help me at a time when I very much needed his help. He simply did not understand. We did not have the history, the thousands of hours of shared time and experience over years that we could draw on for understanding each other. I wanted his understanding, acceptance, and reassurance. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, that I was going to be okay, that I was going through a rough time but that I would come out of it. I wanted to hear that I would find my people here just as I had at CRMS, and that I would find a woman to love and who would love me for who I was, a shy, introspective, book-loving, sensitive, and insecure young man. I wanted him to tell me to believe in myself, because I was a Thompson and I was his son, and I would thrive in my own way and in my own time. He wanted a concrete problem to solve or at least react to, somet
hing that he could relate to. We were very different people.

  I kept writing letters, but not to Hunter. We talked now and then, but not about my unhappiness. As Hunter wrote in that first letter, “We still have a ways to go before we can act like good friends….” This series of letters had made it clear just how far we still had to go.

  I stayed at Tufts that year, but I never did find my people. I continued my solitary walks all that year, nights and weekends, getting home at two or three a.m. Those walks helped keep me sane.

  Some friends from CRMS came to visit me at Tufts throughout the year. These visits were spots of color in a gray time, but also a reminder of what I did not have. When they left, I felt my loneliness more sharply than ever.

  I had no intention of returning to Tufts the following year. I considered Bennington College where Stevens was going, but Hunter nixed that idea both because it was even more expensive than Tufts, and because he said that if I was going to go to college and he was going to pay for it, it had better be a decent school, not, to paraphrase Hunter, some overpriced day care center for self-indulgent artists manqués. So we were at a stalemate. When the school year was over, I headed to New York City for a summer internship at Rolling Stone magazine. That, at least, was something Hunter could help me with. That and the use of a studio apartment in the West Village for fifty dollars a month, courtesy of Judy Belushi, widow of John Belushi, who was a good friend of Hunter’s before his death. It was a very comfortable way to experience New York City for the first time.

  I worked at Rolling Stone as an editorial intern, which meant that I was an all-purpose gofer. I would do research for editors, file photos for the photo department, and occasionally run down to a street vendor for a hot dog for Jann Wenner, the editor and publisher. I was paid around seven dollars an hour, but with my fifty-dollar rent, no car, and no expensive vices, it was sufficient. The work was not memorable. Its greatest value was to observe the life of magazine editors and staff writers, and to realize that it was not for me.