One of the big karmic jokes of it is that he did it when it was becoming clear that he'd been right all along, and now we really needed him. But by then he was old and tired, and he wasn't able to be there anymore. He knew—and had known for a long time—what was coming, what we would soon find out. In “Football Season Is Over,” he wrote:
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won't hurt.
Thirty-three years after Hunter S. Thompson took us on a trip to Las Vegas for the macabre funeral of the American Dream, he placed a well-aimed Colt .45 bullet in his brain, saying farewell in a typically loud fashion. Four years later, the cracks in the national concrete are big enough for even the most deluded person to see, and it seems as though they're spreading.
So. An essay on my dead hero and his dead American dream. How depressing. Must I make my second trip to the liquor store in eighteen hours? No—Thompson, the siren-song of your Too-Much-Goddamn-Fun personality cult would leave me devastated on the rocks once again, you rat bastard, you perverted swine. I wish I had your gift for adjectives so my insults would ring as sweetly affectionate as yours did. I've been reading his books, listening to this ghost voice for weeks, counting down the years, the months, the weeks until the bullet's in your head, the last great, twisted trip you took us on. But the deadline looms, and I wonder if, in order to do this thing any justice at all, I'll need to get some Wild Turkey.
No—too damn hot. That still, stagnant hot where you find flattened earthworms desiccated on the sidewalks. No—sweat it out, then, and try to connect, and when the deadline comes, turn in something weird and maybe not completely accurate but true in some deeper, more universal way.
~ more... ~
No comments:
Post a Comment