The party went on, and on, and on. The last shuttle left around four a.m., and there were still hangers-on, mostly young people I didn’t recognize. The crew started shutting down the lights around five a.m. I walked down the steps and across the dark field to the cabin feeling both exhilarated at the success of the ceremony, and sad, because now it was over, there was no other distraction that could put the grieving on hold.
Someone said the next day that the funeral was a microcosm of Hunter’s life—a lot of things happened that night: there were old feuds renewed or put aside, old lovers reconnected, friendships from decades ago were renewed, there were the matching and pairing of old friends and new. It was more than a funeral for Hunter, I think. It was a toast to the good times, the wild times, not just to Hunter, but to what he represented to each person and the times that he reminded them of. Hunter was like the hub of a great wheel, connecting people who would otherwise never know each other. He was also like a magician, bringing people out of their ordinary lives into a kind of magical sphere where life was special, where you had adventures that you would remember your whole life when you finally stepped out of the magic realm back into your life. Those times would not happen again, and whether each person felt regret, relief, gratitude, melancholy, sadness, or all of them mixed together I can’t say, but it was far more than a party, it was a final salute and send-off to the spirit of an era.
I thought that night that Hunter would have been proud of what we had done, and today I still believe that. He would have been proud.
ELEVEN
WHAT CHANGES, WHAT REMAINS THE SAME
Lawyers, guns, and money—Symposium—Documentaries—The medallion
HST TIMELINE
2007 Hunter S. Thompson Symposium.
2006 Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride documentary released.
2008 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson documentary released.
2011 The Rum Diary movie released.
IN THE NINE YEARS that have elapsed between Hunter’s death and my writing these words, much has changed, and a few things have remained the same.
The first couple of years were all about Hunter. There were documentaries, interviews, lawyers, parties, books, schemes to sell this or that, phone calls from people wanting to buy Hunter’s trash, weird fan art showing up in the mail, emails from strangers.
For those years I had two lives, my workaday life as an IT guy and my Hunter S. Thompson life. By the third or fourth year, though, that petered out, and life returned to something like normal.
After Hunter died, the community of which he was the hub gradually dissolved and its members moved away. George Stranahan, a steadfast Woody Creek resident for fifty years, sold his property and moved thirty miles down-valley. Ed Bastian, who had lived on the adjoining mesa, packed his bags and moved to Santa Barbara. The Craig family, the other major landowner in the valley besides Stranahan, decided to sell their property. The mad artist of Woody Creek, Michael Cleverly, was forced to move from his shack to Colorado’s Western Slope. Only the diehard residents of Lenado seem unfazed by what happened lower in the valley or the world in general. It is no longer Hunter’s Woody Creek, it’s an exclusive neighborhood with monstrous, multimillion-dollar houses being built where the creek used to run beneath the aspen trees and the cottonwoods. It will never become a subdivision—the minimum lot size is thirty-three acres, and besides, it’s a scenic retreat for the very rich. Common suburban tract houses would not be tolerated.
Owl Farm, the land and house, are now owned by a trust administered by a large Boston law firm. I have permission to visit whenever I want and we stay in the cabin. Anita has the use of Hunter’s house until she relinquishes it or dies, whichever comes first. I have not been in his house since the funeral. It was hard to accept that the land was no longer mine in the way it had been while Hunter was alive. Then I did not have to ask permission to visit. It was my home and my father’s land. It is more complicated now. It is still my childhood home, but it is no longer my father’s land.
Even so, it is good to be there. The meadow behind the houses is unchanged, the elk still come down to graze in the winter, the same million stars still shine hard and bright in the night sky, the peaks of the Continental Divide are still visible over the edge of the mesa opposite Owl Farm. When I walk to the top of the meadow, it is the same land, with the same scraggly juniper bushes and scrub oak on the hillside, the same red earth, the same red cliffs far behind the houses. This is still my home, it is a part of me and I am part of it. This has not changed.
I still have the medallion. To me it contains the distilled essence of my father. I will keep it always. I wear it when I want or need to invoke Hunter’s spirit. If I could only choose one object of my father’s to keep, it would be this.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about his suicide, why he did it, whether it was right or wrong, how I feel about it. I know he was very unhappy in his marriage, he knew he couldn’t write any longer, his body was failing, he could barely walk, and he saw clearly that all these afflictions were not going to pass away, they would only get worse. I feel now, as I did then, that it was right for Hunter, and I understand why he did it. That has not changed. The way he died was consistent with how he lived—on his terms, in his time. I know he planned for Jen, Will, and me to be there with him that day, at that time. I’m grateful I was there. It would have been far worse to have gotten that phone call, to always wonder what really happened, and if I could have done anything to stop him. Because I was there I don’t ask those questions.
I think about the gun he used. If that gun was offered to me, I couldn’t look at it or touch it. I would bury it deep, deep in the ground someplace where it couldn’t be found again or uncovered by chance, and I would forget that place, so that I could not find it again, and imagine the earth slowly eating it away, rendering it useless, dissolving it until it was only a higher concentration of iron in the red, iron-rich soil of Woody Creek. Or I would throw it into a bright forge, a giant pool of molten steel, so that it would melt and vanish, and maybe, take that image with it, that pool of blood at my father’s feet, while he sat with his head slumped on his chest.
I love him and I miss him. That has not changed either. I don’t think about him every day, but often. I can’t say I loved him. I still love him. It would be very comforting to have a strong faith in a Christian heaven, but I do not. However, I cannot accept that he is utterly gone, no soul, nothing, only existing in people’s memories. I believe, without any rational basis, that there is probably some essence out there still in some timeless, inconceivable form and that perhaps he is aware. I would like to believe that in some way he is aware of Deb, Jen, Will, and me.
I worry still whether he would approve of this or that in my life, just as I did when he was alive. Am I making the most of my life? Have I been a good steward of his legacy? It is no help to me, but he lives on as a silent judge and jury in my psyche nevertheless. His approval, even in death, is still important to me, but I know also that my approval was important to him.
I know he loves me. Over the years since his death I have not doubted that. If anything, my conviction has grown stronger. I don’t have to look for the evidence, or read old letters to remind me. I just know it, I feel it. It is rooted in my being, not my head, and therefore rooted deeply and unshakably.
I am proud of him, and to be his son. That was a long time coming. When I was young, I feared and hated him. I was ashamed of him. Over many years I came to know and understand him better, to forgive him his transgressions, and then to be proud of him. I can’t imagine anything could change that now.
At the end, I am left with gratitude: gratitude for the combination of luck, perseverance, blessings of the gods, the fortunate and persistent meddling of the women in our lives, the flashes of insight, willingness, and mutual need that made it possible for my father and me to heal the damage from those early years before it was too late. For this I am deeply thankful
.
I am a different kind of father to my son than Hunter was to me. Jennifer, Will, and I eat dinner together every night, I go to school events, and I know the names of his friends, his teachers, how he is doing in his classes. Sometimes I lie on his bed with him at night and we talk about current events, or science, or movies. I massage his feet while the three of us watch TV. I don’t go into rages; Jen and I don’t scream at each other at two a.m.
I have tried to carry on what Hunter did well. I taught Will to shoot, I’m teaching him to drive. I try to let him have his own political opinions, interests, passions and desires, musical tastes and aesthetic preferences, though I may disagree with him. I want him to know that what is most important to me is that he is happy and a good man. Everything else is incidental.
I hope that I have given him reason to be proud of me as I am proud of my father. I hope that when he is thirty-five and I’m sixty-nine, we can sit together and watch The Big Sleep and acknowledge without speaking a mutual love and respect. I hope he knows how much I love him, the way Hunter loved me.
My son, Will, tells me he’s no longer angry at Hunter for killing himself in the next room that day. He says he is mostly just sad. He misses Hunter. I miss him too. Very much. That will not change.
HONOR ROLL
HUNTER USED TO INCLUDE an Honor Roll in his later books. I will continue that tradition. The people on this list contributed to this book being written, whether directly in the case of my editor, Victoria Wilson, and my agent, Lynn Nesbit, whether in the form of great patience, constant support and encouragement from my family and friends, or support in the form of reading the early drafts and making recommendations. I especially want to thank Paul Scanlon for his invaluable assistance. Many others provided indirect support by playing an important supportive role in my or Hunter’s life. A number of people helped keep my family and me on the rails when my father died, support for which I am forever grateful.
To all of you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping to make this book possible.
Jennifer Winkel Thompson
Will Thompson
Deb Fuller
Lynn Nesbit
Victoria Wilson
Jann Wenner
Paul Scanlon
Tom Gilboy
Johnny Depp
Christi Dembrowski
Norm Todd
John Equis
Joel Mandel
Hal Haddon
Doug Brinkley
Loren Jenkins
Kevin Breslin
Ed Bastian
Tim Ferris
Ralph and Anna Steadman
Richard Brennan
Sandra Wright (previously Thompson)
Hal Wakefield
Jimmy Buffett
Jane Buffett
Tom Corcoran
Tom Benton
Betty Benton
Brian and Michelle Benton
Marci Benton
Doris Kearns and Dick Goodwin
Oliver Treibick
Laila Nabulsi
Bob and Gabby Rafelson
Brad Laboe
Carol and Palmer Hood
George and Patty Stranahan
Cliff Little
Rhett Harper
Ann Dowell
Nicole Fulcher
Virginia Thompson
Davison and Adelaide Thompson
Robin, Adelaide Hunter, and Susannah Thompson
Patrick Krause
Chrissy Sawtelle
John, Kristi, Jack, and Will Doherty
Andrea Winkel Haines
Paul Haines
Ella and Will Haines
Carrie Watson and Phil Fontana
Ellis and Madelyn Fontana
Pamela Reich
Jack Thibeau
Gene McGarr
Debra Wilde
Marla Bonds
Shannon Jones
Lyle Lovett
Julie Conklin
Bob Braudis
Joey DiSalvo
Jeff Armstrong
Ed Bradley
Patricia Blanchet
Dana Krafchik
Tami Hogan
Alisa Winkel
Pete Laborde
Tory Read
David Grinspoon
David Monsma
Walter Isaacson
Alex Gibney
Trish, Steve, and Hayden Setlik
The Tiberi family
Dede Brinkman
Todd Divel
Eddie Mize
Bill Murray
Don Stober
Gerry and Chris Goldstein
Dan Dibble
Michael Cleverly
Cass Cleverly
John Zajicek
Jeff Kass
Marea Evans
Nicole Lefavour
Stevens Brosnihan
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Stories I Tell Myself Page 23