Just then we passed two police cars parked on the side of the road, and I saw that we were going a hundred and three.
“Slow down!” Anita was screaming. “Slow down! We’ll be arrested. I can’t stand it!” She was sobbing and clawing at the air.
“Nonsense,” I said. “Those were not police. My radar didn’t go off.” I reached over to pat her on the arm, but she bit me and I had to pull over. The only exit led to a dangerous-looking section of Pismo Beach, but I took it anyway.
. . .
It was just about midnight when we parked under the streetlight in front of the empty Mexican place on Main Street. Anita was having a nervous breakdown. There was too much talk about jails and police and prisons, she said. She felt like she was already in chains.
I left the car in a crosswalk and hurried inside to get a taco. The girl behind the register warned me to get my car off the street because the police were about to swoop down on the gang of thugs milling around in front of the taco place. “They just had a fight with the cops,” she said. “Now I’m afraid somebody is going to get killed.”
We were parked right behind the doomed mob, so I hurried out to roust Anita and move the car to safety. Then we went back inside very gently and sat down in a booth at the rear of the room. I put my arm around Anita and tried to calm her down. She wanted gin, and luckily I still had a pint flask full of it in my fleece-lined jacket pocket. She drank greedily, then fell back in the booth and grinned. “Well, so much for that,” she chirped. “I guess I really went crazy, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” I said. “You were out of control. It was like dealing with a vampire.”
She smiled and grasped my thigh. “I am a vampire,” she said. “We have many a mile to go before we sleep. I am hungry.”
“Indeed,” I said. “We will have to fill up on tacos before we go any farther. I too am extremely hungry.”
Just then the waitress arrived to take our order. The mob of young Chicanos outside had disappeared very suddenly, roaring off into the night in a brace of white pickup trucks. They were a good-natured bunch, mainly teenagers with huge shoulders wearing Dallas Cowboys jerseys and heads like half-shaved coconuts. They were not afraid of the cops, but they left anyway.
The waitress was hugely relieved. “Thank God,” she said. “Now Manuel can live one more night. I was afraid they would kill him. We have only been married three weeks.” She began sobbing, and I could see she was about to crack. I introduced myself as Johnny Depp, but I saw the name meant nothing to her. Her name was Maria. She was seventeen years old and had lied about her age to get the job. She was the manager and Manuel was the cook. He was almost twenty-one. Every night strange men hovered around the taco stand and mumbled about killing him.
Maria sat down in the booth between us, and we both put our arms around her. She shuddered and collapsed against Anita, kissing her gently on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Nobody is going to be killed tonight. This is the night of the full moon. Some people will die tonight, but not us. I am protected.”
Which was true. I am a Triple Moon Child, and tonight was the Hunter’s Moon. I pulled the waitress closer to me and spoke soothingly. “You have nothing to fear, little one,” I told her. “No power on Earth can harm me tonight. I walk with the King.”
She smiled and kissed me gratefully on the wrist. Manuel stared balefully at us from his perch in the kitchen, saying nothing. “Rest easy,” I called out to him. “Nobody is going to kill you tonight.”
“Stop saying that!” Anita snapped, as Manuel sank further into himself. “Can’t you see he’s afraid?” Maria began crying again, but I jerked her to her feet. “Get a grip on yourself,” I said sharply. “We need more beer and some pork tacos to go. I have to drive the whole coast tonight.”
“That’s right,” said my companion. “We’re on a honeymoon trip. We’re in a hurry.” She laughed and reached for my wallet. “Come on, big boy,” she cooed. “Don’t try to cheat. Just give it to me.”
“Watch yourself,” I snarled, slapping her hand away from my pocket. “You’ve been acting weird ever since we left L.A. We’ll be in serious trouble if you go sideways on me again.”
She grinned and stretched her arms lazily above her head, poking her elegant little breasts up in the air at me like some memory from an old Marilyn Monroe calendar and rolling her palms in the air.
“Sideways?” she said. “What difference does it make? Let’s get out of here. we’re late.”
I paid the bill quickly and watched Maria disappear into the kitchen. Manuel was nowhere in sight. Just as I stepped into the street, I noticed two police cars coming at us from different directions. Then another one slowed down right in front of the taco stand.
“Don’t worry,” I said to Anita. “They’re not looking for us.”
I seized her by the leg and rushed her into the Cadillac. There was a lot of yelling as we pulled away through the circling traffic and back out onto Highway 101.
My mind was very much on my work as we sped north along the coast to Big Sur. We were into open country now, running straight up the coast about a mile from the ocean on a two-lane blacktop road across the dunes with no clouds in the sky and a full moon blazing down on the Pacific. It was a perfect night to be driving a fast car on an empty road along the edge of the ocean with a half-mad beautiful woman asleep on the white leather seats and Lyle Lovett crooning doggerel about screwheads who go out to sea with shotguns and ponies in small rowboats just to get some kind of warped revenge on a white man with bad habits who was only trying to do them a favor in the first place.
. . .
I lost control of the Cadillac about halfway down the slope. The road was slick with pine needles, and the eucalyptus trees were getting closer together. The girl laughed as I tried to aim the car through the darkness with huge tree trunks looming up in the headlights and the bright white moon on the ocean out in front of us. It was like driving on ice, going straight toward the abyss.
We shot past a darkened house and past a parked Jeep, then crashed into a waterfall high above the sea. I got out of the car and sat down on a rock, then lit up the marijuana pipe. “Well,” I said to Anita, “this is it. We must have taken a wrong turn.”
She laughed and sucked on some moss. Then she sat down across from me on a log. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re very strange—and you don’t know why, do you?”
I shook my head softly and drank some gin.
“No,” I said. “I’m stupid.”
“It’s because you have the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope fiend,” she whispered. “That is why you have problems.” She patted me on the knee. “Yes. That is why people giggle with fear every time you come into a room. That is why you rescued me from those dogs in Venice.”
I stared out to sea and said nothing for a while. But somehow I knew she was right. Yes sir, I said slowly to myself, I have the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope fiend. No wonder they can’t understand me.
This is a hard dollar, on most days, and not many people can stand it.
Indeed. If the greatest mania of all is passion: and if I am a natural slave to passion: and if the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase—
Well, that explains a lot of things, doesn’t it? We need look no further. Yes sir, and people wonder why I seem to look at them strangely. Or why my personal etiquette often seems makeshift and contradictory, even clinically insane . . . Hell, I don’t miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room. I know what they’re thinking, and I know exactly why. They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that I am a teenage girl trapped in the body of a sixty-five-year-old career criminal who has already died sixteen times. Sixteen, all documented. I have been crushed and beaten and shocked and drowned and poisoned and stabbed and shot and smothered and set on fire by my own bombs. . . .
All these thi
ngs have happened, and probably they will happen again. I have learned a few tricks along the way, a few random skills and simple avoidance techniques—but mainly it has been luck, I think, and a keen attention to karma, along with my natural girlish charm.
Kingdom of Fear
Honor Roll
Oscar Acosta
Jeff Armstrong
Lisl Auman
Terri Bartelstein
Ed Bastian
Sean Bell-Thomson
Porter Bibb
Earl Biss
Patricia Blanchet
Bob Bone
Ed Bradley
Bob Braudis
Louisa Joe
Doug Brinkley
Judge Charles Buss
Sue Carolan
Jimmy Carter
Marilyn Chambers
Tim Charles
Bobby Colgan
John Clancey
Dalai Lama
Morris Dees
Benicio Del Toro
Kenny Demmick
Judge J. E. DeVilbiss
Robert Draper
Bob Dylan
Joe Edwards
Jeanette Etheridge
Colonel William S. Evans
Tim Ferris
Jennifer Geiger
Gerald Goldstein
William Greider
Stacey Hadash
Hal Haddon
David Halberstam
Paul Hornung
Abe Hutt
Walter Isaacson
Loren Jenkins
Juan, Jennifer, & Willy
Bill Kennedy
Ken Kesey
Maria Khan
Jerry Lefcourt
Lyle Lovett
Semmes Luckett
Jade Markus
David Matthews-Price
David McCumber
Terry McDonell
Gene McGarr
George McGovern
William McKeen
Michael Mesnick
Nicole Meyer
Jim Mitchell
Tim Mooney
Lou Ann Murphy
Laila Nabulsi
Lynn Nesbit
Jack Nicholson
Paul Oakenfold
Lionel Olay
Heidi Opheim
PJ. O’Rourke
Gail Palmer
Nicola Pecorini
Sean Penn
George Plimpton
Charlotte Rampling
Duke Rice
Keith Richards
Curtis Robinson
David Robinson
Terry Sabonis-Chafee
Shelby Sadler
Paul Semonin
Lauren Simonetti
Kevin Simonson
Madeleine Sloan
Harvey Sloane
Bill Smith
Michael Solheim
Ralph Steadman
Judy Stellings
Michael Stepanian
Geoffrey Stokes
George & Patti Stranahan
Richard Stratton
Jay Stuart
Davison Thompson
Sandy Thompson
Virginia & Jack Thompson
George Tobia
Oliver Treibick
Gerald “Ching” Tyrrell
John Walsh
Floyd Watkins
Curtis Wilkie
Andrew Wylie
Tony Yerkovich
Warren Zevon
The Too Much Fun Club
Jennifer Stroup, Marysue Rucci, Anita Bejmuk, Hunter S. Thompson,
Deborah Fuller, Wayne Ewing, Tara Parsons, David Rosenthal
About the Author
HUNTER S. THOMPSON’S books include Fear and Loathing in America, Screwjack Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex, and The Rum Diary and Kingdom of Fear. A contributor to various national and international publications, including a weekly sports column for espn.com, Thompson lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colorado.
“There are only two adjectives writers
care about anymore—‘brilliant’ and
‘outrageous’—and Hunter Thompson has
a freehold on both of them.”—Tom Wolfe
Fear and Loathing in America
The Brutal Odyssey of an
Outlaw Journalist
0-684-87316-8
Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend: running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; creating the seminal road book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; twisting political reporting to new heights for Rolling Stone; and making sense of it all in the landmark Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.
The Great Shark Hunt
Strange Tales from a Strange Time
Gonzo Papers, Volume 1
0-7432-5045-1
The first volume of Hunter S. Thompson’s legendary Gonzo Papers. Pieces range from Thompson’s National Observer days to famous entries from Rolling Stone. Publishers Weekly hails it as “filled with moral outrage and fiendish humor” and Cosmopolitan called it “an indictment of everything shoddy, shifty, and just plain rotten that has afflicted our planet since the 1960s.”
Generation of Swine
Tales of Shame and
Degradation in the ’80s
Gonzo Papers, Volume 2
0-7432-5044-3
The bestselling second volume, this collection of essays from Hunter S. Thompson’s days as media critic at The San Francisco Examiner chronicles the social and political debauchery and decadence of the 1980s.
Songs of the Doomed
More Notes on the Death of the
American Dream
Gonzo Papers, Volume 3
0-7432-4099-5
Spanning four decades, this extraordinary third volume covers high and hideous moments in Thompson’s career, with original pieces from The Rum Diary, Prince Jellyfish, and The Curse of Lono, as well as memos to famous friends and coverage of the infamous Roxanne Pulitzer trial. In Songs of the Doomed, no one is safe from Thompson’s savage wit and astute social commentary.
Kingdom of Fear
Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child
in the Final Days of the American Century
0-684-87324-9
Hunter S. Thompson’s New York Times bestselling memoir: a hilarious, harrowing, historic chronicle of the making of the Gonzo journalist.
“Thompson’s voice still jumps right off the page, as wild, vital and gonzo as ever.”
–The Washington Post
The Rum Diary
A Novel
0-684-85647-6
A brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s.
“A great and an unexpected joy. . . reveals a young Hunter Thompson brimming with talent.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer
Screwjack
A Short Story
0-684-87321-4 (hardcover)
A collection of three wild and outlandish short stories from literary legend Hunter S. Thompson–including rare and elusive lost classics.
Hey Rube
Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the
Downward Spiral of Dumbness. Modern
History from the Sports Desk
0-684-87319-2 (hardcover)
Where do sports, politics, and sex collide? In Hunter S. Thompson’s wildly popular ESPN.com columns, collected here for the first time.
“Thompson is a genuinely unique figure in American journalism, a superb comic writer and a ferociously outspoken social and political critic.”
–The Washington Post
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1. From an undated letter written by English political writer Edmund Burke (1729–1797) to Thomas Mercer.
2. Illinois v. Rodriquez, 497 U.S. 177 (1990).
3. Alabama v. White, 503 U.S. 953 (1990).
4. Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990).
5. Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866).
6. Jesse Barron.
7. Lisl Auman.
8. Bob Braudis, by far the most enlightened and intelligent law enforcement officer I’ve ever met.
9. Brinegar v. U.S., 338 U.S. 160, 180-181 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword by Timothy Ferris
Memo from the Sports Desk
Part One
Chapter 1: When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro
The Mailbox: Louisville, Summer of 1946
Would You Do It Again?
The Witness
Chapter 2: There Is No Such Thing as Paranoia
Strange Lusts and Terrifying Memories
Rape in Cherokee Park
God Might Forgive You, but I Won’t
The New Dumb
Chapter 3: In the Belly of the Beast 42
Sally Loved Football Players
Paris Review #156
What Marijuana?
Lynching in Denver
The Felony Murder Law—Don’t Let This Happen to You
Jesus Hated Bald Pussy
Part Two
Chapter 4: Politics Is the Art of Controlling Your Environment