C O N T E N TS

Chicago 1968: Death to the Weird 115

First Visit with Mescalito 119

THE SEVENTIES; Reaping the Whirlwind, Riding the Tiger

Iguana Project 131

Never Apologize, Never Explain 136

Vegas Witchcraft 137

High-Water Mark 140

Fear and Loathing 142

Lies—It Was AU Lies—I Couldn't Help Myself 143

Ed Muskie Doomed by Ibogaine: Bizarre Drug Plot Revealed 144

Washington Politics 147 Summit Conference in Elko: Secret Gathering of the Power

Elite 148

Opening Statement: HST 153

Rolling Stone: Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here 159

Dance of the Doomed 161

Checking into the Lane Xang 162

Whooping It Up with the War Junkies 166

Confidential Memo to Colonel Giang Vo Don Giang 177

Memo to Jim Silberman on the Death of the American Dream 179

Letter to Russell Chatham 185

THE EIGHTIES: How Much Money Do You Have?

Welcome to the '80s 189

Bad Craziness in Palm Beach: I Told Her It Was Wrong . . . 191

Sugarloaf Key: Tales of the Swine Family 207

The Silk Road 211

Fishhead Boys 211

Overview 215

The Murder of Colonel Evans 220

Letter to Ralph Steadman 227

Letter to Ken Kesey 234

Last Memo from the National Affairs Desk 235

Memo from the Sports Desk 241

Via Certified Mail 243

The Dukakis Problem: Another Vicious Beating for the New

Secret Cables to Willie Hearst 250

Re: Qaddafi 250

Re: The Column 250

San Francisco Examiner Columns

The New Dumb 254

Fear and Loathing in Sacramento 257

Strange Ride to Reno 259

Omnia Vincit Amor 261

The Death of Russell Chatham 264

Whiskey Business 266

I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll 269

Community of Whores 271

Return to the Riviera Cafe 274

Avery: Making Sense of the '60s 276

German Decade: The Rise of the Fourth Reich 279

Turbo Must Die 281 Memo to Jay Johnson, Night Editor, San Francisco Examiner 283

Warning Issued on Cocaine 286

WELCOME TO THE NINETIES: Welcome to Jail

Editor's Note 289

Nothing But Crumbs 290

Arrest Warrant and Charges 292

Beware 295

This Is a Political Trial . . . 296

Thompson Hit with 5 Felonies 297

Memo to Hal Haddon: Attack Now 297

The Art of Hitting the One Iron 299

Motion and Order to Dismiss the Case 300

Hunter Hails Legal Triumph for Americans 301

Press Release, Owl Farm, 5/31/90 303

Final Analysis: Gerald Goldstein, Esq. 305 A Letter to The Champion: A Publication of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Keith Stroup,

Executive Director 310

Later That Year ... 312

Author's Note 314

EDITOR'S NOTE

Shortly before this book went to press, we were stunned and profoundly demoralized by a news bulletin out of Aspen—along with murky AP wire-photos—saying that Dr. Thompson had been inexplicably seized, searched, and arrested on nine felony counts and three bizarre misdemeanor charges of brutal sex and violence. Initial reports from the Pitkin County Sheriffs Department were hazy and incoherent, but Thompson's alleged attorney told reporters that "The Doctor is probably guilty of these crimes and many others, which means he could go to state prison for at least sixteen years."

It seemed impossible, but so what? Moments after his arrest, Thompson posted $2,000 cash bail and flew out to California on a private Learjet to deliver a series of lectures on "Journalism and the Law," despite efforts by local police authorities to prevent him from leaving the state without an ankle-strap body beeper that would cause him to radiate high-pitched beeping signals every fifteen seconds and would suck blood from the arch of his foot every two hours "for drug-abuse testing and other criminal evidence."

He disappeared, nonetheless, in the company of a key female witness, and remained incommunicado for many days until he was finally tracked down in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel by his old friend and colleague Raoul Duke, who flew in from Shanghai on a U.S. military jet to head the search for Thompson and force him to deliver his book manuscript on schedule, in accordance with a seven-year-old contract that made no provision for jailing and criminal seizure of the author by half-bright white-trash cops in a troubled rural district.

Duke agreed to return from China, after long years of exile, to head the Operations wing of Thompson's legal defense and also compel delivery of the doomed and desperate writer's final chapter. In a hastily called press conference at the Polo Lounge on Sunset Boulevard, Duke told reporters to "stand back. This is victory or death. That is all ye know and all ye need to know."

Fiend behind the fiend behind the fiend behind the Fiend. Mastodon with mastery^ monster with an ache. At the tooth of the ego, the dead drunk judge: Wheresoever Thou art our agony will find Thee Enthroned on the darkest altar of our heartbreak Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard, O dog, my God!

AUTHOR'S NOTE

WOODY CREEK, JULY 1990

LET THE TRIALS BEGIN

''He that goes to law holds a wolf by the ears." — Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

I WANDERED INTO A library last week and decided to do a quick bit of reading on The Law, which has caused me some trouble recently. It was a cold, mean day, and my mood was not much different. The library was empty at that hour of the morning. ... It was closed, in fact, but not locked. So I went in.

Far up at the top of the long stone staircase I could see a small man gesturing at me: waving at me, shouting. . . . But his voice sounded crazy and scattered, like the screeching of a cat or the sound of beer bottles exploding in a garbage compactor. The only words I could hear were Of/r and WG/Zr.

When I got about halfway up the stairs I stopped and raised both hands. "Don't worry!" I shouted. "Police!"

He shuddered and fell back, saying nothing. His eyes were huge and a shudder ran through his body as I approached. "No problem," I said to him. "Just routine police work." I flashed my gold Special DEA Agent badge at him, then reached out to shake hands, but he moaned suddenly and leaped away . . . and as he collapsed awkwardly on the cold marble floor I saw that his left ankle was encircled by a heavy steel band that was strapped to a black box.

"What the fuck is that thing?" I asked him, reaching down to help him up. But he scuttled away again; and then he hissed at me.

''You know what it is!" he whimpered. "You filthy murdering/?/g.'"

"What?" I said. "Are you crazy?" Then I jumped down on him and grabbed his foot so I could bring him a little closer. He uttered another sharp, terrified cry as I slid him across the smooth floor and pulled his ankle up to where it was right in front of my eyes.

"Be quiet," I said. "I want a look at this thing in good light." He

Struggled briefly, but I quickly stepped over his leg and hyperextended his knee until he went rigid, then I braced him and examined the box. It was a standard-issue Body Beeper with a lock-on ankle bracelet— one of the New Age tools now available to law enforcement agencies everywhere, for purposes of electronic House Arrest for those who have been brought within The System, but for whom there is no room in the overcrowded jails, pens, and prisons. The United States of America has more people locked up than any other country in the world, including Cuba and South Africa. Our prison system from coast to coast is bulging at the seams, and hundreds more are being crammed in every day—more and more of them saddled with the mandatory Sentences and No Parole Provisions that came in with the first Reagan Administration, which began only ten years ago, but it seems like twenty or thirty. . . .

Indeed. But that is another very long story and we will save it for later. ... So let's get back to the library and my new buddy, the unfortunate Prisoner that I seized and captured by accident at four o'clock in the morning when I caught him wandering aimlessly through the hallways of a massive public building with his eyes bulged out and his spine like rubber and probably his nuts on fire, too, because he had nothing to say for himself and no excuse for anything.

He was a loser. A wimp full of fear, with no pride and sure as hell no Money. . . . But I let him go, anyway and we talked for a while in the Mens Room about his problem. We were both nervous, so I went out to the car and got a bag of warm beers out of the car, along with a wooden pipe about half-full of good marijuana.

Soon we were both in a better mood, and I told him I was not really the Police, but just another good old boy with a yen to Read Law for a while and a few hours to spare before my next court appearance.

He was a first-time offender from Phoenix, serving work-release time in the Library on a six-year Attempted Rape charge that happened when he wandered into the Ladies Room at the airport and got in a fight with two Mexican women who said they were paid police informants and turned him in as a Sex Offender when the airport police finally ran him down in a false doorway at the far end of the Lost Luggage hangar and dragged him away in handcuffs to the Red Carpet Club where they subjected him to a loud and humiliating Strip Search and beat him on the kidneys with iron gloves.

He was innocent, he said, but it made no difference. . . . When they finally got him to jail he was charged with nine felonies including Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer, Gross Sexual Imposition and

Possession of 2,000 Marijuana Seeds that fell out of the lining of a suitcase he had borrowed from his son, for the trip.

That night he was beaten severely in the holding cell by a gang of sodomites who took all his cigarettes and then kicked him into a coma. After thirty-three days in the jail hospital, he was assigned to a public defender who laughed at his case and called him "shiteyes" and said it was all a matter of money.

Ten weeks later, he was assigned to another lawyer who said he had no choice but to plead guilty and take his medicine like a man.

"I was lucky," he said. 'T almost got sixteen years." He grinned happily and stared vacantly into my eyes.

''As it is now, I'll only have to do five."

He was broken; a niggardly shell of a man, so afraid of the Law and the Cops and the Courts that he felt lucky and grateful to be serving only five years instead of sixteen—even though he was innocent. But now, after two long years on his knees within The System^ he no longer missed standing up.

It made me nervous, so I started pacing around in circles on the white tile floor and jabbering distractedly at him from time to time. ... I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start.

"Do you keep any whiskey in this place?" I asked him. "We need whiskey. My brain is getting hazy."

He stared at me for a moment. Then he smiled vaguely and stood up. "Sure," he said. "I think I can put my hands on a pint of Old Crow." He chuckled. "What the hell? I could use some whiskey, myself." He sUd down off the marble washbasin where he'd been sitting and shuffled out of the room. He moved quickly and almost gracefully, but the ugly black box on his ankle slowed him down and caused him to walk with a limp.

I sat on my own basin and drank our last warm beer. What the hell am I doing here? I wondered. I am a Doctor of Journalism and a Man of The Cloth. Why am I slumped in a bathroom at the Public Library at four o'clock in the morning? Drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana with a soul-dead convict who might be taken back in jail at any moment?

"What's your name?" I asked him as he returned with a half-finished pint of whiskey in a brown bag.

''Andrew," he said. 'They call me Andy."

"Okay, Andrew," I said. "Give me that whiskey and stand back. We are on the brink. Yes. I have an idea."

He tossed me the bottle and I drank deeply, then handed it back to him. "Don't worry about having this stuff on your breath when they come for you," I said. "I have a new electric toothbrush out in the car that will sterilize your whole Thorax in ten seconds. I also have some very fine cocaine downstairs in the car, which you might want to use when your eyes start looking like they do now. ..." I slapped him on the leg and hit the Old Crow again. "Hot damn, Andrew!" I barked at him. "We are warriors. The time has come to rumbler

He said nothing. The bottle of whiskey was tilted high over his face, and I could see that he was finishing it off. ... So what? I thought. We can always get more. The whiskey stores opened at seven, and I didn't have to be in court until ten. There was plenty of time to do anything we wanted. Many wrongs could be righted in five hours if we had the right tools. . . .

"Well, Andrew," I said to him in a high-pitched mournful voice. "I hate to be the one to tell you this ... I don't want to hurt you, but—"

"No!" he shouted. "Please don't kill me!"

I seized him quickly by the hair and jerked him off balance. His eyes rolled back in his head and then he went limp. "Stop whining!" I snapped. "I just want to tell you about a legal axiom."

"Bullshit," he croaked. "You're a goddamn vicious maniac!" He jerked out of my grasp and leaped away, then he braced on the balls of his feet, bashed me in the stomach with a frenzied right hook. "You bastard!" he screamed. "Get away from me! You're a paranoid psychotic!"

"We are going to Court, Andrew. We are champions! We will crush them like cheap roaches! TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON!" I spun suddenly and hurled my green beer bottle so fast across the room that it exploded against the wall like a glass bomb before he even saw it happen. BANG! Whirling like Quisenberry and catching a runner on the nod at second. . . . Fantastic speed and accuracy, no reason at all, but Andrew went crazy with joy and I had to subdue him physically and give him a chance to calm down. It was almost dawn. "Where are the telephones?" I asked him. "Where is a Fax machine? We will kill the ones who eat us, and eat the ones we kill!"

We had no choice.

I moved quickly for the door, but he stopped me. "Wait a minute," he said. "We're almost out of whiskey."

He was right. The Old Crow pint was empty except for a few drops down in one corner, and the bars would not open for three hours.

"Don't worry," he said. "I know where there's more. Upstairs in the president's office."

"Wonderful," I said. "We can't run out of whiskey at a time like this. Go get it. We'll need everything we can get our hands on, before this thing is over."

He chuckled and tried to sprint off, but the thing attached to his ankle made him stumble. "Goddamnit!" he screamed. "I'd kill to get ridof this thing!"

"Don't say that," I snapped. "We are innocent men! We are working within the system . . . and besides, I think I have some good crank outside in the car."

He went upstairs to loot the president's office, and I went down those long marble steps, once again, to where my jeep was parked in front of a fireplug on the street. Hot damn! I thought. This will be a very fast day. . . .

It was still raining. There was no other sound on the street. Only rain in the elm trees and the fast lazy slap of my brand-new white low-cut Chuck Taylor All-Stars on the sidewalk. I felt Hke a polar bear, and I wanted to hear some music.

The big weird jeep was still there, lurking peacefully under the trees and almost invisible in the mist and the hanging Spanish moss. ... It was huge, but it had no color. It came from the factory with no paint— only a dull stainless steel finish that soon faded to a filthy shade of yellow and millions of tiny reddish pits all over the hood and the doors and even the Panzer-style undercarriage.

"These holes are not rust/' the pompous little factory rep assured me. "What you see here is priceless chemical development that was applied to this vehicle only after fifty-five years of careful research at our secret Color Color Lab in the Milanese Alps. ... So you must be patient," he warned. "This process takes time. It involves the slow liberation of Astro-Bacteria, which is frequently lethal to laymen. And which did, in

fact, end the life of the tragic genius who first invented it, a man named Squane from Austria."

Well . . . maybe so, I figured. It was ugly and pitted all over with millions of festering poison pits, which boiled and bubbled constantly and infected all those who touched it. . . .

But it was a full-bore Lamborghini hot rod, a monstrous thing that weighed 5,000 pounds with bulletproof glass and twelve cylinders with a top speed of 125 miles an hour and a .50-caliber machine-gun mount behind the driver's seat. . . . One night on the Big Sur Highway I beat a Porsche 928 from the Carmel Bridge to Nepenthe by nine minutes, mainly because I beat her like a cheap hound on the curves. It was a small woman driving the 928 and she went all to pieces when I passed her at no on the Bixby Creek Bridge and then squeezed her into the sand dunes. . . .

Why not? It happened to me once—in Sacramento, when some Japs in a brute Lamborghini ran me down on The Parkway like I was standing still, then bashed me repeatedly at top speed until I finally lost control. ... It was one of the ugliest moments of my life and I'll never forget it. Those tattooed swine! I should have had them locked up, but I was helpless.

After that, I got one of my own, for $150,000.

But that is another story, and I was too busy that day to even think about it. Dawn was coming up and it was still raining and I had to be in court at 9 o'clock and, ye gods, I still had this freak to deal with— this gutless zombie with a beeper on his leg who obviously needed help, and somehow I was it.

How had it happened? I shd into the Lambo and locked the heavy armored door behind me. . . . What dangerous craziness had plunged me into this situation? All I'd wanted to do was hang out in the library for a while and read some Law.

But somehow I wound up with Andrew on my hands. They had railroaded him into jail for five years, and now I was his only hope. One way or another, I had to get him into a courtroom situation where he'd be able to confront The System on its own mean terms. Put him on the Attack, instead of always on his knees. . . . Right. And we needed to get that goddamn beeping manacle off his leg.

Indeed. But first things first. Calm down, cool beer, and relax with elegant music . . . and yes, ah ha, the Crank. Andrew was looking a bit limp, and we would both need special energy for the ordeal I knew was coming. . . . Once I broke him out of jail, as it were, I would be

responsible for him until my lawyers took over. They were good, and I felt sure they could get him a new trial. Never mind this/a// bullshit. He was innocent. He never had a chance. . . . But no more. The worm had turned. My man Andrew was about to know what if felt like to go into court like a warrior and beat the swine to death with their own rules.

I felt good about this, very calm and focused as I buried my face in a silver bowl of pure speed and snorted until my whole head went numb and my eyeballs seemed to be fusing together. ... I punched the music up to 600 watts and felt the jeep shudder nicely as Lyle Lovett came on. . . . Thank god this thing is soundproof, I thought, or we might have a serious police problem.

Which is something I like to avoid. But it is getting harder and harder. These are bad times for people who like to sit outside the library at dawn on a rainy morning and get ripped to the tits on crank and powerful music.

As I walked back to the library I remembered Bobby Kennedy's words: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

But not me, Jack. Whatever I was doing that morning, it was sure as hell not ''nothing." I was about to pluck an innocent victim from the jaws of The System. . . . Hell yes! I thought. Thomas Jefferson would be proud of me today, and so would Bobby Kennedy. . . .

The crank was taking hold, which caused me to think rapidly in odd mathematical terms and suddenly understand that Thomas Jefferson had been dead only 142 years longer than Bobby Kennedy which is not a long time in places like Egypt and Cambodia and approximately the same, in fact, as the life expectancy of the average American woman by the year 2015.

I was brooding on these things as I bounded up the long gray steps and found Andrew fretting nervously on his slab in the Main Floor Executive Men's Room. He had some rumpled-looking Xerox pages out in front of him, but he quickly gathered them up as I entered.

"Where the fuck have you been?" he snarled. "I'm about to go crazy! They expect me back at the jail in twenty minutes. I'm doomed." He eyed me sullenly and lifted a quart bottle of Southern Comfort to his hps, sucking it down his throat so fast that his eyes rolled back in his head and I thought he was passing out.

"You bastard!" I yelled. "Give me that goddamn bottle! I want you on your toes when we go to court. You're about to face a life or death situation!"

"Screw you," he said. ^'You're crazy as a goddamn loon. I should have had you arrested the minute I saw you."

I gave him a quick Pre-Frontal Lift and bounced him off the mirror, then I seized the whiskey bottle from his hand as he slumped to the floor. . . . ''Get a grip on yourself, Andrew," I said.

I gave him a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill and watched him snort almost half of our whole stash into his head like a bullet. He choked desperately for a few seconds, then leaped to his feet and fixed me with a wrong and unnatural grin. I could see that he was going sideways. "You fool," I said. "You took too much."

''Fool?" he screeched. ''Nobody calls me Sifool." He laughed distractedly and lurched at me, but I shoved him away.

"Calm down," I said. "We have serious business to do."

"Business?" he shouted. "What kind of business?'' He lunged at me again, but I could see that he was going into spasms. "You business bastard!" he jabbered. "I know what kind of business you're in! Yeah! Take care of business. Mister Businessman!" Then he scrambled up to his wet marble ledge above the urinals again, clinging to a pipe with one hand and fumbling in his pocket with the other.

"Be careful!" I said. "We'll both be fucked if you fall down and split your goddamn skull before we get to court."

He stared at me for about twenty seconds, saying nothing. Then he reached down, demanding the whiskey, and unfolded the wad of Xerox pages that he'd been reading so intensely when I came back from my run to the Jeep.

''What court?" he yelled. "What are you—tht judge?''

Ye gods, I thought. What now? This poor fool had been in jail for so long that he can't handle the crank and the whiskey and freedom all at once.

"Who are you?" he screamed. "What do you do for a living?"

"Never mind that," I said. "Right now I'm your skyhook —so come off that goddamn ledge and let's get some of this stuff on paper. We don't have much time."

"Paper?" he screeched. "What are you—some kind of writer?" He laughed harshly. "You want paper, shiteyes? I'll give you some goddamn paper." Yeah! I'll give you writing, you asshole! If you think you're a goddamn writer, get ready to drop to your knees."

Then he lifted the crumpled pages up to his eyes and started to read, but I cut him off.

"What is that stuff?" I asked. "Give it to me."

He smiled disdainfully and jerked the papers out of my grasp. ''Stuff?'' he said. "You call this stuff?''

"Okay," I said. "What is it?"

He hesitated, then smiled happily. "This is my writingV he said. "This is my stuff! This is probably the best stuff Qwer written in English! And it's mine! I wrote it when I was in jail—like Ernest Hemingway."

"Ernest was never in jail," I said. "At least not Hke you. He never swept floors in a Hbrary at night with a beeper strapped to his ankle." It was cruel, but I felt the time had come to rein him in, to flog him back to reahty. But he was getting hysterical, so I let him read on.

''Stand back!" he yelled. "I am the most amazing writer in the world! I wrote this one night in the jail library, when nobody else was watching!"

"Wonderful," I said. ''Read your crazy shit."

He hurled the whiskey bottle at me, but it missed and went into the stalls, where it exploded against a wall and left glass all over the floor. . . . Jesus, I thought. This place will be a bitch to clean up in the morning—or even explain. Well, I guess I can't rightly explain this mess. Don't ask me how it happened. I swear. This place is normally so clean this time of the morning. . . . We have convicts at night, you know. They clean the whole library, spic and span. But good God almighty. It's so ugly and horrible now that I can't stand to even see it!

Andrew ignored the explosion and began reading his work, in a loud and menacing voice. He had obviously done this more than once, probably in solitary confinement. ... I listened curiously as he launched into the thing and started to get wound up. It was something about electric storms and Benjamin FrankHn. But I was not really listening. My mind was on court.

Meanwhile Andrew raved on, rolling his eerie phrases like a man gone wild in a trance, and I began to pay more attention. . . . Jesus! I thought. This is pretty good stuff. I recognized a certain rhythm, a weird meter of some kind that reached me even if I wasn't listening. ... It was strange. I had a feeling that I knew it all from somewhere, but I couldn't quite place it. . . .

Soon I felt a queer humming all over my body, like falling into music, and for a long minute or two I actually liked Andrew again. He definitely had a feel for words, almost like an idiot-savant. By the time he was halfway through I was ready to give him money.

I was listening carefully now. He called his screed "Electricity" and this is how it went:

ELECTRICITY

They laughed at Thomas Edison.

It has been raining a lot recently. Quick thunderstorms and flash floods . . . lightning at night and fear in the afternoon. People are worried about electricity.

Nobody feels safe. Fires burst out on dry hillsides, raging out of control, while dope fiends dance in the rancid smoke and animals gnaw each other. Foreigners are everywhere, carrying pistols and bags of money. There are rumors about murder and treachery and women with no pulse. Crime is rampant and even children are losing their will to live.

The phones go dead and power lines collapse, whole families plunged into darkness with no warning at all. People who used to be in charge walk around wall-eyed, with their hair standing straight up on end, looking like they work for Don King, and babbling distractedly about their hearts humming like stun guns and trying to leap out of their bodies like animals trapped in bags.

People get very conscious of electricity when it goes sideways and starts to act erratic . . . eerie blackouts, hissing, and strange shocks from the toilet bowl, terrifying power surges that make light bulbs explode and fry computer circuits that are not even plugged in. . . . The air crackles around your head and you take a jolt every time you touch yourself. Your lawyer burns all the hair off his body when he picks up the cordless phone to dial 911.

Nobody can handle electricity gone amok. It is too powerful. . . . Ben Franklin was never able to lock a door again after the day lightning came down his kite string and fused that key to his thumb. They called it a great discovery and they called him a great scientist; but, in fact, he bawled like a baby for the rest of his life every time he smelled rain in the air.

I find myself jerking instinctively into the classic self-defense stance of a professional wire wizard every time I hear rain on the roof That is an atavistic tic that I picked up many years ago in my all-night advanced intelligence electronics class at Scott AFB, on the outskirts of east St. Louis — where I also learned about pawnshops, oscillators, and full-bore lying as a natural way of life.

The stance was the first thing we learned, and we learned it again every day for a long, crazy year. It is as basic to working with serious electricity as holding your breath is to working underwater. . . .

Lock one hand behind your back before you touch anything full of dissatisfied voltage — even a failed light bulb — because you will almost certainly die soon if you don't.

Electricity is neutral. It doesn't want to kill you, but it will if you give it a chance. Electricity wants to go home, and to find a quick way to get there — and it will.

Electricity is always homesick. It is lonely. But it is also lazy. It is like a hillbilly with a shotgun and a jug of whiskey gone mad for revenge on some enemy — a fatal attraction, for sure — but he won't go much out of his way to chase the bugger down if ambush looks a lot easier.

Why prowl around and make a spectacle of yourself when you can lay in wait under some darkened bridge and swill whiskey like a troll full of hate until your victim appears — drunk and careless and right on schedule — so close that you almost feel embarrassed about pulling the trigger.

That is how electricity likes to work. It has no feelings except loneliness, laziness, and a hatred of anything that acts like resistance . . . like a wharf rat with its back to the wall — it won't fight unless it has to, but then it will fight to the death.

Electricity is the same way: it will kill anything that gets in its way once it thinks it sees a way to get home quick. ...

Zaaappp! Right straight up your finger and through your heart and your chest cavity and down the other side.

Anything that gives it an escape route. Anything — iron, wire, water, flesh, ganglia — that will take it where it must go, with the efficiency of gravity or the imperative of salmon swimming upriver. . . . And it wants the shortest route — which is not around a corner and through a muscle mass in the middle of your back, but it will go that way if it has to.

Some people had to have their loose hand strapped behind them in a hammerlock with rubber cords, just to keep their hearts from exploding and their neck nerves from being fried like long blond hairs in a meat fire when the voltage went through. But sooner or later they learned. We all did, one way or another.

One night — perhaps out of boredom or some restless angst about the fate of Caryl Chessman or maybe Christine Keeler —/ connected a 50,000-volt RF transformer to one end of the thin aluminum strap on the Formica workbench that ran around three sides of the big

classroom; and then I grounded the strap to a deep-set screw in a wall socket.

Severe shocks resulted when the generator jumped its limiter and began cranking out massive jolts and surges of RF voltage. A sOyOOO-volt shock ran through my stomach, just below my navel, burning a long, thin hole that I can still pull a string of dental floss through on wet nights.

It was horrible, and still is, but it was also a massive breakthrough; and I will never forget the warped joy I felt when the first surge of electricity went through them. They squawked at each other and flapped their arms like chickens. . . .

My own pain was nothing compared to the elation of knowing that I had just made an unspeakably powerful new friend — an invisible weapon that could turn warriors and wizards into newts, and cause them to weep.

Washington, D.C., 1989

About halfway through I suddenly came out of my coma and started feeling so weak and crazy and maybe drunk with terrible speed hallucinations that I had to lean against the wall. ... It was too horrible to understand all at once.

That dirty, evil, thieving little bastard! That treacherous rotten little sot! I was stunned by the flat-out criminal insanity of it. . . . Jesus, I thought. We don't get many moments hke this in Ufe. It was an original experience.

Incredible. No wonder I had a feeHng all along that Vd heard or maybe seen Andrew's proud gibberish somewhere before. It was mine. I had written it, word for word, for one of my long-ago Examiner columns that I thought got killed at the last moment, before it went to press and out on the syndicate wire. . . .

Well . . . shit happens. Once a thing gets loose on the wire it can turn up almost anywhere. Even in the hands of some filthy little pervert Hke Andrew—who had his own warped reasons for plagiarizing it all by himself in the jail library at night.

But he was clearly sick and dangerous. He was a liar and a thief and a rapist who was probably incurable. . . . In some states they have Castration Programs for foul balls like this: Chop out the hormones, turn them into eunuchs with fat little hands and glistening eyes and wispy hair on their necks who don't mind admitting they're wrong.

My brain felt crazy, but my body was stone rigid. I felt like I'd just been shot in the nuts from behind, then went into shock, or at least

a State of No Pain, but I hung on and stared straight back at his dirty, poisonous, treacherous, ugly Httle eyes.

They were small and rheumy with drink and cheap speed. Or maybe crack and PCP. . . . God only knows. You can get anything you want in prison these days, and he was in truth a Dope Fiend and a shameless thieving whore with a bad whiskey jones and the morals of a slut on acid.

Fuck you, Andrew, I said to myself. You're doomed. You are a rotten lying degenerate and if there is any real justice in this world you will stay in a filthy backwater prison for the rest of your goddamn life and rats will gnaw through your skull. . . .

I stared at him, but he was grinning like a newborn sheep. His mind was somewhere else. Lost and gone, like some kind of Pod with no pulse. ... He was ugly and wrong. Deeply wrong, and now I knew what had to be done. The truthless little swine had left me no choice. He was evil. . . .

"Not bad, Andrew," I said finally. "Not bad at all. Who wrote that stuff?"

"Me," he said cheerfully, "/wrote it."

I shrugged and stood up, then I snorted the rest of the crank and took him by the arm. "Let's go, Andrew," I said. "It's time to go to court."

He followed me out of the library and down to the street. It was still raining. When we got to the jeep I gave him a chamois to bite on while I seared the hardened steel strap off his leg with electric bolt cutters and then sent him back out on the street and told him to hurl the whole beeping evil contraption through the only window in the library that was still lit up—the Executive Men's Room, where we'd spent most of this hideous night.

Seconds later I heard the crash, and then he came loping out of the darkness with a waterhead grin on his face. "Good work, Andrew," I said. "That was a very shrewd move. Now they'll think you're still somewhere in the library. They'll be looking for you all day."

He giggled and slapped his thighs. "Fuck those pigs!" he said. "Their brains are pitiful! They'll never look for me in court, will they?"

I smiled but said nothing. There was no need for it. The die was cast. The fat was in the fire. This giddy little rapist was about to have his day in court.

It was early and we still had an hour to kill, so I drove around for a while and listened to Bob Dylan songs while I took the big Lambo through Cherokee Park at speeds that caused Andrew to lose his grip again. He wept and jabbered and cursed me as I aimed the huge tank

of a jeep down narrow roads full of S-curves at loo miles an hour without ever touching the brakes.

Then I drove downtown on River Road and hit what looked like the entrance to the old Jeffersonville Bridge at a hundred and fourteen or fifteen. . . . But the bridge had been changed somehow, or maybe demolished, and we almost went into the river. When we finally got jammed in a maze of bent steel and old wooden girders, I looked down and saw that we were just over the spot where my old friend Mu-hammed Ali had stood when he came back to Louisville after winning the i960 Olympics and threw his Gold Medal into the Ohio River just after accepting the Key to The City from the mayor, my friend Harvey Sloan, and who still denies it ever happened.

"All history is gossip," said Clare Booth Luce.

"Judge Marshall has made his decision," said Andrew Jackson. "Now let him enforce it."

Right, and so much for all that. I backed off the bridge and drove slowly over to Courthouse Square, where the lawyers were gathering for breakfast. . . . My own people were not there yet, so we ordered some poached eggs and fatback and then I grabbed a well-dressed lawyer out in the parking lot and shook him down for some speed, which I snorted at once in a doorway just across from the old county jail.

Andrew was useless, but I ignored him. It was almost nine and business was picking up at the metal detector gates leading into the courtroom. "Let's go," I said. "It's time."

On the way to the security checkpoint I handed him a baggie full of crank and a steel Knife'n'Knuckles tool that I knew would be seized at Security. "Here," I said. "Take these things and I'll meet you inside. I have to go through the Press gate, where the cops do a full body search on everybody. . . . Yes. So you take this stuff and go through the Visitors' gate. They don't search anybody down there. Just stroll right through and my lawyers will be there to meet you with all the papers."

"Hot damn," he said. "We'll bust these pigs wide open. I can hardly wait to get up there on the stand and tell the real story about what they did to me."

"Don't worry, Andrew," I said. "There is damn little Justice in this world, but you're about to get your share of it."

"Yeah," he muttered. "It's about goddamn time."

I nodded. He was still about 88 percent drunk and he was still wearing his blue Jeff Co Jail coveralls. The crank had worn off a long time ago, and now he was getting sloppy. There was a stupid kind of

White Trash arrogance in his manner, and his eyes were Uke two Httle holes poked into his skull with a cheap screwdriver. ... I was beginning to hate the sight of Andrew. He was dumb and ugly and loud; a bonehead rapist with a big mouth and a mean spirit. So I busted him. It was easy. . . .

As we approached the courtroom I could see that my old friend Rodman, the bailiff, was in charge of Security at the Press/Media gate. Wonderful, I thought. We are about to witness an outburst of brainless violence. . . . Rodman once played fullback for Male High when they won the State Championship three years in a row, but in recent years he had fallen on hard times and now he worked mornings for the court and sold drugs to lawyers in the alleys around Courthouse Square at night. He was a huge brute with no sense of humor and no morals at all. He appeared to be asleep as I checked myself through the metal detector and whacked him on the side of his head with a rolled newspaper. . . . "Wake up Rodman, "I said. "Your time has finally come!"

"O, God," he moaned. "What now?"

"Good news," I said. "You're about to make a huge arrest. Is your gun loaded?"

"You bet," he said. "I'm hungry to kill somebody. I need money."

"Never mind money," I said. "You'll be a hero and get promoted. Or killed. There will be shooting."

"O, Jesus," he hissed. "What's happening?"

"Big news," I said. "A vicious armed rapist just escaped from the county jail and he's trying to get into your courtroom to blow the judge's head off."

"God almighty!" he said. "Where is the bastard?"

"Right over there," I whispered, pointing to Andrew as he stood nervously in line at the Spectators' gate, where a crippled teenage bailiff called "Missy" was aggressively searching everybody who came through the gate, unaware that she was about to confront an armed psychotic rapist with nothing to lose.

Rodman took one look at the situation and leaped into action. He drew his gun and raced across the hall like a fullback and hit Andrew from behind, just as the stupid little pervert slithered into the gate and set off every bomb-detector siren in the courthouse. . . .

Andrew never had a chance. Rodman got him in a death-grip Full Nelson while the teenage bailiff kicked him repeatedly in the groin until he finally sank to his knees and screamed desperately for help as Rodman pistol-whipped him from behind, then dragged him to his feet just as I got there and hooked Andrew twice in the groin before he even saw who I was. So I hit him again, before Rodman could put

him in manacles. . . . Other courthouse bystanders joined in—stomping and whooping as they swarmed over him. He was like a rubber chicken, kicking and jerking and screaming as I moved closer and closer to the Beating Area and tried to catch his eye, but it was impossible. They were swollen shut, and I had a feeling he didn't want to talk to me anyway, if only because he was bitter.

On my way out of the courthouse I stopped by his cell and had to push my way through the crowd, so I could speak with him personally

"You'll have plenty of time to write your stuff nov/,'' I said quietly. "You'll be in jail for the rest of your life."

He stared through the bars at me, but his eyes were like split grapes and his shoulders were so slumped that they almost touched in the shadows under his chin. He was ruined, he was finished. ... He was doomed.

I wanted to kill him. And I knew I could, but it would be wrong. . . . Indeed. I was tired of murder, and tired of scum like him. How many times can a zombie rapist like Andrew be allowed to work his foul will with impunity, before we know he has to be murdered?

But not by me. I was weary. I was lonely. And I was weak in a different way, this time. I had lost my tolerance, especially for poison lizards like Andrew.

On my way out, I paused long enough to give him a quick beating on both sides of his ugly truthless head. . . .

And then I left, with no noise, and walked back to the hotel in the rain. It was midnight, and I was running late on my deadline for the column, which I finally composed on a voice-writer in a frenzy of hate, disillusion, and fear:

LAST TRAIN FROM CAMELOT

October is the crudest month of any election year, but by then the pain is so great that even the strong are like jelly and time has lost all

meaning for anybody still involved in a political campaign. By that time, even candidates running unopposed have abandoned all hope of victory and live only for the day when they will finally be free to seek vengeance on all those treacherous bastards who once passed themselves off as loyal friends and allies and swore they were only in it because they all shared the same hopes and dreams. . . .

October in the politics business is like drowning in scum or trying to hang on through the final hour of a bastinado punishment. . . . The flesh is dying and the heart is full of hate: the winners are subpoenaed by divorce lawyers and the losers hole up in cheap motel rooms on the outskirts of town with a briefcase full of hypodermic needles and the certain knowledge that the next time their names get in the newspapers will be when they are found dead and naked in a puddle of blood in the trunk of some filthy stolen car in an abandoned parking lot.

Others are not so lucky and are doomed, like Harold Stassen, to wallow for the rest of their lives in the backwaters of local politics, cheap crooks, and relentless humiliating failures. By the time Halloween rolls around, most campaigns are bogged down in despair and paralyzed by a frantic mix of greed and desperation that comes with knowing that everything you have done or thought or worked for or believed in for the past two years was wrong and stupid.

There are never enough seats on the last train out of the station. . . .

MEMO FROM SKINNER

Doc, don't call me anymore. I quit. PoUtics is a disease for dirty little animals. We were wrong from the start. . . .

I had a dream last night. It scared me worse than anything that ever happened to me. It was so horrible and so real that I woke up screaming and burned all that skin off the back of my hand, but I was so crazy I never even noticed it. I didn't even feel it when that bitch bit me in the face.

Hell, that was nothing. This time I saw the devil and it scared the s— out of me. He tried to get his hands on my throat but I kept stabbing him.

And then I saw all those people running out of the White House and screaming about murder. I thought they had killed Bush, but it turned out that Bush had murdered Quayle. Shot him with a Luger.

The night cook said she had heard them screaming and fighting all night and drunk on whiskey in the Lincoln Room. It was nothing new, but this time George started slapping him around a little bit. He said Quayle was stealing from him. He just stepped back and shot him nine times in the stomach and then gouged out one of his eyes while he was dying.

DEATH TO THE WEIRD

November has finally come and the Fat Lady is about to sing for a lot of people who will call it a hateful noise, even though they always swore they loved music. The campaign is over unless somebody gets assassinated, and even that probably wouldn't make much difference unless it was Jesse Jackson. ... No riots would erupt if any of the others were croaked. You can't miss what you never had.

''The dog sucked his brains out/' the girl replied, ''He's dead,"

San Francisco, 1988

NOTE FROM RALPH STEADMAN

Hunter S. Thompson does not suffer fools gladly. In fact, I have reason to believe that I am the only fool he has indulged like a twin in all his life, but that is a long and other story. All kings need their fool. King Lear's fool was his wisdom and finally his vision. Hunter has both in full measure and needs neither fool nor pretender to forge his destiny and maybe ours.

Nevertheless, as the fool, I am determined to make my presence felt if only on the tattered endpapers of his third cumbersome volume of scrofulous prose and put the record straight. It was / who darkly saw what he needed to know in Kentucky and it was / who raged against the coming of the light in Miami and at the Watergate hearings. It was / who knew for certain that America was sick at heart and it was / who discovered the dark legend of Hawaii through Robert Hough's book of Captain Cook's voyage and realized that Hunter may be the reincarnation of LONO—the God returned after 1500 years of wandering like a lovesick child to save his people—and his beloved American Constitution. Make no mistake about that, for he is your saviour and he is guardian of all you profess to hold dear. In his weirdness he illuminates the faults in your reason and etches the silhouettes of your antics against a pure white background like Balinese shadow puppets.

For better or worse he sees inside the blackness of those silhouettes searching for the soul of a nation, united only in its desire to seek individuality in a melting pot. It is a privilege to have him in my life.

Ralph Steadman, 20th July 1990

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The

FFI1ES

LAST RUMBLE IN FAT CITY

TARRED AND FEATHERED AT THE JERSEY SHORE

When i got out of the Air Force I got a job in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, which for some queer reason as an innocent child I believed was on the Jersey shore somewhere. It turned out to be like 400 miles into the mountains and down the road from Penn State. It was an abandoned coal town. The paper was just one of those stupid dailies with big white margins around it, tiny type, no pictures. I had to join the goddamn Elks Club in order to get a drink there on weekends.

I was the sports editor. I had an apartment way out, big gray place, naked bulbs. It was a nightmare, really. I was tolerated, but it was clear that I was weird. It was a given. And I didn't like the publisher who also acted as the editor. He was an asshole. Cheap bastard.

I was a good editor. I did wire copy, wrote headlines, and laid out the paper. I was more concerned with the layout than the writing. I was a layout freak for a long time. That's how I got into taking pictures. I got so dissatisfied with the photographs I was getting — this was in the Air Force — that I began to take them myself. I began to see photographs not for what they portrayed but for how they fit on the page. You know, if I needed a long, thin, dark photograph to balance a four-column, like a banner photo of a football game, of people running, a panoramic thing, I would get what I wanted. One long shot of a guy catching a pass in the end zone. I may have had this one section in my mind even before the game was played and for that picture I needed a picture of a guy reaching very high and just one person so I ended up having to take the pictures myself just so they would fit into my idea of how the sports section should look. I did that in Pennsylvania too.

It was an afternoon paper so I had to be there at seven in the

morning. I was finished by two and then what did I have to do? Hang out in the Elks Club. Shoot pool. Afternoons were a hard time in Jersey Shore.

There was one guy that I got along with. He was an academic, kind of an unemployable poet who might lecture once or twice at the local community college. He worked on the paper, writing features. He became my only human contact. He was the best person to talk to in town.

He had a nice farm outside of town. And he had a daughter who worked in Chicago for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Very pretty, dark-haired girl who had just gotten out of either Northwestern or the University of Chicago. He wanted me to meet her because nobody else in this barren town was between the ages of fifteen and fifty. It was clearly a match of the ages. It was mandatory for him to do this. He thought it was the best thing he had done for both me and his daughter. She was barely off the train when I went to have dinner at the ranch.

She was a very pretty girl, and on the second night, it may have been the first night, in any case, he and I switched cars for some reason. It was raining, actually, that's why we switched cars. Because his car was better in mud, I guess. On the roads in the rain. I was driving a '49 Chevy myself, which was a little bit shaky. He had no idea what I was going to do. I didn't either. I ended up in the car with his daughter, driving around in a horrible monsoon.

Well, I hadn't seen a human being in about five weeks, didn't have anybody to talk to. I was very pleased, like some guy who'd been given a great present, until I drove the car into the river.

Actually, I didn't drive it in but I got myself stuck on the riverbank, and somehow tried to turn around and the front end slid into the water. It was about two-thirty in the morning and I had to wake up a farmer in the driving, horrible torrential rains. I had to walk about three miles to the nearest house and beat the hell out of it, get some old Dutch farmer up. He was really angry and I don't know how the hell I managed to get him to do it. He didn 't know me. He didn 't know what I was doing in this weird bog down by the river this early in the morning. He had to put on his rain clothes, get his tractor, and come down there and pull the car out.

I was behind the wheel as he hooked onto the back and started to pull the car back up toward the road. The bastard was in a rage and he was pulling it out as quick as he could. You know how you open the door and look back, you have your one hand on the wheel and

you're looking as you're backing up? The door caught on a log and ripped the door off the side of the car. It was hanging by one hinge so we got it back up on the road but it wasn't quite on the road so he went around to the front, hooked onto the bumper and tore the bumper off But it too was still hanging.

So here's the car a mangled wreck full of mud, the front end full of water, but it still runs. I took her and it back to this guy's house and got my own car and went back to this grubby, soot-hlled apartment that they'd gotten for me.

I went to work the next day. I had to get there very early, like seven o'clock, to do all the overnight wire stuff for the afternoon paper. At about seven-thirty I was sitting there casually going through the wire copy, the previous day's basketball scores, putting the sports page together for the day and I heard this horrible noise outside in the street from far off. I began to hear this grinding as metal was rending and grinding on concrete. It sounded like someone driving a railroad car down the street set over on its side—like some kind of a G-g Cat was pulling a piece of junk along the main street of town.

Everybody heard the noise. People got up and said, what the hell is that? So I got up to look out just in time to see the feature writer whose car I'd driven into the river the night before drive into sight with his bumper grinding and sending up sparks, with his torn door off and dragging. He was bringing his car in to show the people what I had done. He could have tied it up, I guess, made less noise, but he wanted to present the spectacle to the editor and publisher and make me pay for it. Ah, it was such a horrible sight. And so was he.

The parking lot for the paper was behind the building so he had to turn in past the front of the building, go around the side, park in back, and come in the back door. I could see his face as he drove past. He was beet-red and I knew heavy trouble was coming so while all the rest of them went around to the back door to see what in the hell had happened to his car, what was wrong with it, I just got up, took my coat off the rack and went out the front door. Didn't even collect my pay. Went straight to the apartment, loaded the car and drove to New York like a bastard.

I'd never been there, never even seen it. I remember being stunned at the New York skyline as I drove over this big freeway, coming across the flats in Secaucus. All of a sudden it was looming up in front of me and I almost lost control of the car. I thought it was a vision.

Woody Creek, March 1990

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE RIVIERA

It was lime, the stuff you mix in with concrete.

It was down there beside the furnace. I don't know why, I just picked up this bag ofUme, put it on my shoulder, the fifty-pound bag. Through the narrow hall out of the basement, up the winding stairs to the sidewalk on Perry Street.

I was with McGarr, and we both had dates. We walked down toward the Riviera and I noticed that the bag was leaking. It wasn't real bad but it was getting faster.

It was Saturday night, and the Riviera on Saturday night was then and still is jammed. It's a focal point for weekenders from the Bronx and New Jersey, Columbia law students, whatever. It's a triangular-shaped place with a door, like a hundred feet wide in the back and four feet wide at the front door. That's all it is. They have a swinging door. We were walking on the other side of the street. There's a cigar store that's still there. . . .

Anyway, these girls worked for Time magazine. They were friends. We were going over to hear Bob Dylan or something like that. There wasn't anything strange about the situation except that meanwhile this thing is leaking. McGarr says, ''What's that in that fucking bag? What are you carrying that bag for?" And I didn't know. I had no reason.

Then — and I don't know what the hell possessed me to do this —/ said to McGarr, ''Well all right, let's go over and have a beer." We were just walking along and there had been no intention of going to the Riviera. We never went to the Riviera on Saturday night.

And he said, "Are you crazy? What do you mean go and have a beer?" And the girls are saying "No, we can't go in there, it's a mob scene." I insisted and McGarr kind of caught on somehow, as people will. He didn't say anything. At that point I took my watch off and handed it to my date.

And we went in there to have a beer. They wouldn't come with us. They waited in the coffee shop across the street or something.

And there was no end to the people, wall-to-wall people, and I still have this fucking leaking bag. And it's getting worse. You want to

keep in mind, it was in the back, behind me, where it was leaking. As we jostled our way through the bar, the people in there — the sporting crowd, dressed to the nines, Fordham people, like that — they noticed right away. We were three feet inside, maybe six, when people were starting to bitch about it: "Hey! Now, what the shit?? This white shit all over me? Look at this! Get the hell out of here . . . what are you doing?"

The bar was in front of me . . . and we were still trying to buy a beer. We had to really slide through a crowd, like you get at pari-mutuel windows. And the anger, the muttering behind me growing louder. The place was real long, maybe a hundred and fifty feet long, the bar along one side, the stairs, the main dining room, the music stage back in back. The bar was almost all the way to the front so we had to go only about fifteen feet, maybe twenty. But to find a place at the bar was hard.

As these people behind me were bitching, the bartender noticed there was some kind of problem, and McGarr began slamming a glass on the bar. "Goddamnit, we want a beer." / don't think we ever got one. I think I got a half-empty one that I grabbed and drank, reaching over. The sack was making a horrible mess, it was really going.

And the bartender and the manager were there, and suddenly a great roaring and mumbling began: 'TUCK YOU GET OUT OF HERE YOU BASTARDS. " Yeah, I remember, a great protest: 'TUCK THIS ITS ALL OVER ME! JESUS WHAT IS THAT SHIT . . . LYE!'' They thought it was lye. Hell, I thought it might be lye. Lime, lye, I don't know. Sure. 'IT'S FUCKING LYE! IT'S CORROSIVE!"

What was I going to do, could I drop it? We were being pushed out and people were starting to swing, and McGarr took a few shots, and I was going backwards toward the door. There were fights going on, bartenders, managers, punches were being thrown, I was hit once or twice, but I still held on to the bag.

When we got to the door I realized this was going to be an ignominious departure with that whole crowd, I mean that angry crowd of a hundred people fighting — a hundred people wanted to hurt me right then. We were being gotten rid of.

Just as I got to the door I grabbed the bag by those tits where they tie the corners and leaped back there and swung the fucker straight out. I think maybe I was swinging at somebody who had hit me. It burst on the way around. At the end of the swing it just busted loose, emptied in my hands — the rest of the fifty pounds —and they went

completely nuts. The whole place turned white. Turned utterly white.

The girls who were across the street in the coffee shop said it was the zaniest thing they had ever seen. The doors of the Riviera blew open like this very suddenly and for an instant there we were, backs first, and an eruption of white smoke and people running around inside and people going blind way back inside, way back, like a five-minute walk to the door. It was panic, utter panic.

They beat the shit out of us on the street. The bartender, the patrons, screaming, ''LYE! WHY THE FUCK DID YOU . . . YOU DIRTY BASTARD!'' Oh, they beat the shit out of me. It was worse than the HelTs Angels. Everybody wanted a piece.

Woody Creek, March 1990

PRINCE JELLYFISH

''Just another lonely country boy grown weary of the night Just another boy with a sink full of dirty dishes . . ."

— Cowboy Junkies, "Where Are You Tonight"

HIT HIM AGAIN JACK, HE'S CRAZY

"Manhattan . . . is the homeland of the uprooted.''

— Malcolm Cowley

New year's eve in Manhattan. A freezing rain blows through the dark streets. Above the city, far up in the mist and rain, long beams of yellow light sweep in great circles through the black air. They are anchored to the Empire State Building—that great phallic symbol, a monument to the proud dream of potency that is the spirit of New

York. And below, in the damp neon labyrinth of the city itself, people hurry: somewhere . . . everywhere . . . nowhere. . . .

Welburn Kemp lay on the couch in his Charles Street apartment, his head propped up on two pillows. He looked at his watch: eight-thirty. Another hour and he could go to the party without feeling uncomfortably early—and obviously alone. In the meantime he drank.

He crossed the room to the tiny kitchen and refilled his glass. On the way back to the couch he paused by the phone and thumbed through a small book full of numbers. He dialed one ... let it ring several times . . . and hung up in disgust. Goddamn! He thought, I know she doesn't have a date. But he had tried the same number four times already: no answer ... no answer ... no answer . . . and no answer. New Year's Eve, and no date.

He felt agonizingly certain that all over the city there were girls without dates: pretty girls, lonely girls, girls who sat by the phone with tears in their eyes, waiting for that last minute call.

But no way to find them. (No way, damnit!) Ah well, get drunk and to hell with it.

It was almost ten when he got up to go. He took what was left of his bourbon, jammed the bottle into his overcoat pocket, and went down the stairs to the street. The rain was just a drizzle now, but it quickly settled in his hair and crept in icy rivulets across his scalp. The bottle in his pocket bounced against his body at every step, and he held it with one hand as he hurried along the street to the subway.

The party was at Harry Kardeman's place on Morningside Drive, over a hundred blocks away. He had met Kardeman in the army, working for the base newspaper at Fort Carson, Colorado. When they got out—only several weeks apart—Kemp had gone to ply his trade in the backwoods of American journalism, and Kardeman had settled down to the intensely quiet life of a Columbia law student. He rarely gave parties, and when he did there was never enough liquor and the people he invited were, in Kemp's opinion, lumps of well-dressed clay. But a party was a party . . . and there would be girls . . . yes . . . girls.

And just then he saw one. He was standing on the curb at Sheridan Square, waiting for the light to change, when he saw her emerge from the subway hole across the street. She was small and a little thin, with a frail, delicate look about her that struck a fatherly chord somewhere deep in his groin. He watched her as she hurried across the street (coming directly at him) and continued to stare when she shifted her gaze slightly and looked him straight in the face. She wore a canvas rainhat, and her eyes looked large and lonely in the shadow beneath

the brim. He stood rooted to the spot, unthinking, as she passed by. Then he turned to watch her as she hurried around the corner.

Suddenly it came to him: the girl is alone! All alone on New Year's Eve! She wants me!

He wanted to whirl and follow her, but the rational side of his mind refused to let him move. What if I'm wrong? he thought. I'll make an ass of myself!

But the frustration of looking all day for a date was too much for him. He turned quickly and hurried around the corner after her. She was halfway down the block and he ran to catch up. The bottle bounced wildly in his pocket and he clutched it to his body as he ran.

Fifty feet behind her he stopped running and wondered for a moment what he was going to say. At the corner of Bleecker she stopped for an instant and looked behind her before crossing.

Oh God! he thought. She's going to say something! Panic seized him and his mind groped wildly for words. But no . . . she hurried on . . . and he followed, trying to organize his thoughts as he walked.

He fondled the bottle in his pocket as he planned his approach. "Miss," he would say, tapping her gently on the shoulder, "excuse me, but I couldn't help noticing you were alone."

She would look at him warily, not quite sure of what to say. Girls like this hate to admit they're lonely, he thought, I'll have to be suave and gentle.

"Well I'm alone too," he would say with a frank and disarming smile, "and I'm on my way to a party. I wonder if you'd care to join me.

She would hesitate and he would reassure her: "Nothing wild, of course . . . just a few friends of mine . . . law students at Columbia."

She would smile then, in spite of herself. His calm would overcome her. She would be properly reluctant at first, but a few words of persuasion would be all she needed.

In mulling over his approach he almost ran into her as she turned into a doorway. The near-collision flustered him momentarily, and by the time he recovered his wits she was through the open door and into the hallway. She was opening the door of a ground floor apartment when he stepped into the light of the entranceway. The glare made him squint, and his mind was spinning with excitement as he opened his mouth to speak. He stopped by the door, several feet from her, and smiled as casually as he could.

"Ah . . . good evening," he said.

She looked at him blankly for a moment . . . then turned away and

yelled into the apartment: "Jack! Come here quick! There's a guy after me!"

The words echoed in Kemp's mind, but he refused to accept them. No, he thought, no. What's happening here . . . ?

"Pardon me," he said, "but I wonder if . . . ah . . . you see ... I wonder if you'd like to . . . ah . . ."

His voice failed as he heard something moving inside the apartment. Suddenly a small, muscular man in an olive-drab undershirt burst into the hall, yeUing "Where is he? Who's after you?" He carried a thick leather belt in his hand, a vicious-looking thing that dangled by his side as he looked at Kemp, standing a few feet away in the entrance.

"Whaddeyou want?" he roared.

Kemp's mind felt numb. He stammered, but it sounded like the gibberish of a fiend.

At the sound of Kemp's voice, the man roared again: "You son-ofabitch! Get outta here!"

Kemp still could not move. No, no, he thought. This can't be!

The girl pointed at him: "He's crazy!" she screamed. "He followed me clear from the subway!"

The girl's scream sent the man into action; he snarled wildly and lashed out with the belt. Kemp bolted for the doorway, but the strap caught him across the shoulders as he leaped into the street. Swaacckkk!

It nearly knocked him down. His knees went rubbery and he screamed in terror. Over his shoulder he saw the man lash out again. Swaacckkk! It caught him on the arm this time, wrapping itself around his elbow. He jerked away, nearly hysterical with fear and confusion, and lurched backward against the building. The man came at him again, still snarling and the girl screamed behind him: "Hit him again. Jack! He's crazy!"

As Kemp turned to run the lash caught him on the back of the head. Pain shot through his body and he uttered a long, high-pitched chattering whine that rattled up the street. He felt himself moving, running with desperate speed toward the corner. He was still unable to comprehend this terror, this insane misunderstanding. No . . . no . . . why . . . ? The man was running after him, screaming hoarsely: "You filthy bastard!" The strap swished through the air behind him, just missing his neck. The bottle was bouncing . . . almost out of his pocket . . . and he gripped it against his stomach . . . running now in a low, awkward hunch and breathing heavily. Screams echoed in the

Street behind him and he gasped for breath. He ran for two blocks before he reaHzed the man was no longer chasing him.

As he lurched around a corner he spotted a cab half a block away. He shouted: "Cab! CabT It pulled over to the curb and he sprinted the last twenty yards.

As he fell exhausted into the back seat the driver turned with a curious look. ^'What's wrong, buddy?" he asked. "You all right?"

"Quick, get going!" Kemp gasped. "They're after me."

"Who's after you?" the driver said quickly. "The cops?"

"No, no!" Kemp said. "A man with a whip! A lunatic . . . quick, hurry on!"

The driver shrugged his shoulders and the cab moved slowly away from the curb. Fearfully, Kemp peered out the rear window, but the street behind them was quiet.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

Kemp relaxed. "Morningside Drive," he said, "corner of a Hundred and Twentieth."

Now moving through traffic, through tunnels of neon sparkling in the rain. Up Eighth Avenue, past Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Madison Square Garden . . . then through the Puerto Rican section: wide streets lined with delicatessens, cheap clothing stores, pawn shops, and miles of dark tenements . . . finally past Columbia, tires bumping on the damp bricks, and now at the corner of Morningside Drive. A dollar-ninety, quarter tip, and into the rain again.

In the lobby Kemp felt his shoulder: no pain, but the back of his head was still sore. Probably used the buckle end, he thought. Jesus, what a god-awful thing!

A tubercular old woman rode up with him in the elevator, hacking and coughing into a withered hand. Kemp tried to hold his breath, but couldn't. He breathed carefully, trying for clean air. When they got to the fifth floor he leaped into the hall and took a deep breath. The old woman continued upward with her flock of germs.

The apartment was full of people he'd never seen. He pushed through the crowd and left his overcoat in one of the bedrooms, then went to the kitchen to mix a drink. Christ, he thought, I need a drink! Getting beaten with a leather whip is enough to give a man pause. And for no reason, either . . . just trying to be nice.

Kardeman was in the kitchen, talking with two girls. He shouted happily as Kemp came through the door. "Welburn! About time you got here—where've you been?"

"I was attacked on the street ... by a man with a whip."

"Oh? Well ... get yourself a drink, there, and join the party." He hesitated: ''Ah . . . say, Kemp . . . don't you have a date?"

"No, sorry."

"Well, keep away from mine," Kardeman said with a smile, "the rest are fair game." He introduced the two standing with him: one was giggling stupidly and the other had no ears. Kemp stared, unable to believe it, but ... ah yes . . . there they were, flat and tiny against her head.

"Kemp's going to write the great American novel some day," Kardeman told the girls. They nodded appreciatively and Kardeman smiled. He had a faintly chubby face, with small, intelligent eyes and short blond hair. The beer fat was beginning to show at his beltline, giving him that healthy, rounded sort of look that old ladies invariably remark upon: "My, how well you look, Harry." His family lived on Long Island, but he preferred to live in the city while he went to school.

Kemp moved into the living room, nodding here and there to people he knew. The apartment was full of law students: "A flogs B, then pleads regression from tort. In the meantime B dies from another flogging, this time by C . . . what? . . . Ah ha! But Powell says ..."

Smoke . . . music . . . conversation . . . tweed coats and cordovans . . . girls moving here and there, standing, drinking, laughing, having a good time.

Kemp stood in a corner, feehng self-conscious and too sober. In the dining room was a table full of bottles, none of them empty. Kemp recognized the honor-system setup: you put your bottle on the table and drank from no other. His bottle was almost empty; he eyed the liquor table with a mixture of guilt and greed ... all that liquor, enough to drive a man straight out of his mind . . . sucking it up Hke a maddened beast . . . rubbing it all over his body. . . .

Kemp was the only stag. He felt them watching him . . . fearing him . . . keeping their dates close at hand. The fools, bethought. They know.

He was joined in his corner by Jay Gold, the law school's answer to James Murray. Gold was immaculate in his new black suit, well-creased and precision-neat as always. His date was drunk, passed out on the coats in the bedroom.

"Flunked two out of five last time," he was saying. "What the hell . . . why worry about these things . . .?"

They strayed into a group of intense young men discussing the possibility of a nuclear attack. Their dates nodded wisely and stared into

their drinks. Someone laughed and someone else joined. The music was louder and Kemp went back for another drink.

His bottle was light—maybe two more drinks—but he filled the glass with bourbon. Back in the Hving room he spotted Gold talking to a giri he'd seen eariier; a tan, Creole-looking girl, lean and sensuous in a dark blue dress.

Gold eyed him strangely as he approached. '*I thought you'd passed out, Kemp."

"No, Gold, I can't really say that I have. Uh . . . What's this I hear about your date being sick?"

"The soaking sweats," Gold repHed. "She gets them every New Year's Eve."

The girl looked alarmed: "The soaking sweats?" she asked.

"It's psychosomatic," Gold said, "a result of severe tension . . . usually in the womb."

The girl looked at him with a puzzled smile.

"How is she?" Kemp asked.

Gold laughed. "All right, Kemp," he said. "You've made your point. This is Ann Farabee." Kemp smiled and Gold continued: "Ann, this is Welburn Kemp."

Ann Farabee smiled. Her eyes sparkled, large and brown above high cheekbones.

"You aren't from New Orleans, are you?" Kemp asked.

"No," she said. "Why?"

"Just a wild guess," Kemp said.

"Are you from New Orleans?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Nashville."

Gold turned to go. "Excuse me," he said. "I think I'll check on my date."

Kemp turned to the girl: "Do you have a date?" he asked.

"Of course I do," she said with a short laugh. "Somewhere."

"But you don't have a drink," he protested.

"Oh, I had one," she said, glancing around as if she might find it floating beside her in the air. "It's here somewhere."

"I'll get you one," Kemp said. "Come on."

"Who are you with?" he asked on the way to the kitchen.

"A boy named David Bibb."

"A law student?" Kemp asked.

"Yes," she said. Then she turned to look at him. "Don't you have a date?"

"No," he replied. "I tried to get one, but I was beaten with a whip on my way to pick her up."

"You're kidding!" she exclaimed.

"Not at all," he assured her. "It was terrifying!"

"But where?" she asked. "Who . . . ?"

"Some lunatic," Kemp said. "Jumped out of a doorway half-naked and started beating me with a big strap."

"Great Scott!" she cried. "What did you do?"

"Oh, I handled him," Kemp said modestly. "I know a little judo . . .

"It's just unbelievable!" she exclaimed.

"Well he won't be beating people for a while," Kemp said quietly. "When I left him he could hardly breathe."

She murmured sympathetically.

Kemp saw himself standing off a whole pack of lunatics with whips, cutting them down like weeds with the back of his hand . . . nimble and quick, silent and deadly. . . . "Attack me, will you!" . . . whap! . . . slash! . . . screams of pain . . . now standing above a ring of prostrate bodies, wiping the blood off the back of his hand with a handkerchief.

"You didn't get hurt, did you?" she asked.

He laughed. "I'm fine," he said as he handed her the drink, "just fine."

He felt a twitching in his groin as he watched her turn to put her drink on the table. She was not as tall as she'd looked when he first saw her, but her body was slim and willowy. He could see the faint outhne of muscles stretching beneath the flesh on her arm as she lit a cigarette. He thought about offering her a light, but it was too late. She dropped the match in an ashtray on the table, and turned back to find Kemp staring intently at her legs.

He jerked his glance upward and their eyes met. Kemp flushed slightly but said nothing. Her expression was blank, but her eyes seemed (to Kemp) Hke dark coals of smoldering sensuality. He turned away, unable to meet her gaze any longer. I wonder where her date is, he thought. Maybe he's passed out.

"Who is this Bibb character?" he asked suddenly.

She looked down at the floor. "I barely know him," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. "He's a friend of Harry's."

Kemp nodded. Kardeman's friends are all boobs, he thought. Especially the law students . . . this poor girl is stuck with a boob! On New Year's Eve!

She watched him, obviously amused by the pained expression on his face.

I must have this girl, Kemp decided. I want her . . . this boob has no right to such a girl ... I must get her out of here.

Suddenly the whole apartment was plunged into blackness. Kemp's first thought was of a nuclear attack. Oh Jesus, he thought, not now! Not just when I've found this girl! There were screams in the living room, followed by shouts and laughter. He realized it was only midnight—no bomb. Midnight! he thought suddenly. Where's that girl? I can't see anything! He reached out wildly and felt his hand thump into a body; there was a cry of pain. "Sorry," he said, *'who's that?"

"It's me," said a soft voice, "Ann."

"Good Lord," he said, feehng immensely relieved, "I thought you'd run away."

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Did I hurt you?"

"No ... I'm all right."

He reached out slowly, tentatively, his heart pounding with excitement. He found her arm, let his hand rest there for a moment, then moved it over to her waist. It rested on her hip now, and he could feel the elastic band of her panties beneath his thumb. He pulled very gently and she swayed against him. With his other hand he reached back to put his drink on the table, and heard the clatter of ice cubes and broken glass behind him as it missed the table and burst on the floor.

He felt her long fingers on the back of his neck, pulling him down. A chill of astonished excitement ran through him as her tongue slid gently into his mouth. He pulled her closer, rubbing his hand slowly up and down her back and feeling his fingers bump along the little ridges of her spine. Their tongues touched, bumped together, and his hand slid below the elastic band and pressed in, toward his body. She gasped softly and he felt her fingers tighten on his neck.

Somewhere in the distance he heard voices. The lights came on and people appeared in the kitchen. Reluctantly, he let her pull away. Now there was a voice behind him, asking for a drink . . .no, talking to Ann. "I've been looking for you," it said. Kemp turned and saw him standing there, looking angry and bewildered. It's the boob, he thought. What now?

He moved toward Ann as if to kiss her, but she jumped away. "No," she said. "It's over."

How ridiculous! Kemp thought happily. The boob stared, apparently stunned by the awful failure of his long-awaited moment of abandon. Then he turned to Kemp: "What do you think you're doing?" he mumbled.

"I was kissing your date," Kemp said calmly. "We thought you'd gone home." Ann smiled, and Kemp felt warm and powerful.

Slowly, the boob grasped the meaning of it all. He started to say something . . . stopped . . . turned a pitiful, hopeless half-grin on Ann . . . and walked quickly out of the kitchen. "I really shouldn't have done that," she said. "Now he'll hate me." "You?" Kemp said with a laugh. "I wonder how he feels about me!" She hesitated for a moment, then looked up at him: "Let's go somewhere," she said. "I feel guilty, staying here."

INTERVIEW

For almost six months Kemp had been angling for a job on one of the metropolitan papers. He'd tried them all, from the slimiest, shabbiest tabloids to the gray and haughty Times. He had a vision of himself as a reporter—trench-coated, sabre-tongued, a fearless champion of truth and justice. He saw himself working late at night, lonely and feverish at a desk in the empty newsroom, pounding out stories that would rock the city at dawn.

Since early fall he had worked tirelessly to find a reporter's job: writing long letters, shouting into phones, filling out applications—all to no avail. The magazine job was getting on his nerves. He'd been at it for over a year, turning out an endless stream of senseless, unsigned articles: a new plastics plant in Toledo, gaslights make a comeback in Kansas City, dogskin shopping bags the newest thing in novelties, and finally those soggy plums of free publicity—the dashing, dynamic "man of the week" profiles! He winced each time he read his own copy.

In the past six months he'd suffered through at least five "don't call us, we'll call you" interviews, and after each one he seethed with bewildered anger. What was wrong with the bastards? They were shouting from the rooftops for new blood, weeping and mumbling all over the country about journalism going to the dogs, editors lined up twelve deep at the wailing wall, screeching and begging for young talent . . . and here poor Kemp couldn't even get a job as a cub reporter! Insane, by God!

They were trying to freeze him out, by Jesus! They were afraid of him . . . afraid he would show them up for the incompetent half-wits they were! There was no room in their complacent world for a man who despised mediocrity—who would let nothing stand in the way of truth. The great American press was a babbling joke—an empire built

on gossip and cliches—a final resting place for rumor-mongers and pompous boobs.

So, while the nation floundered in a bog of half-truths and erotic pap, and the press wallowed in its own foul nest, Kemp plugged away at Business Age^ stewing in his own bitterness. Day after day he turned out his quota of tripe, waiting impatiently for that call to the battlements, that urgent summons to a higher duty, that day when he would charge into the fray as the legendary reporters of an earlier and more fortunate generation had done before him.

When it finally came, he was surprised at his own apathy. He felt no excitement, no anticipation—just a mild annoyance at the tardiness of his long-awaited summons. It came from a big morning daily, where his application had been on file for at least three months.

A week after New Year's Eve he got a call from the editor's secretary, asking him to come in on Friday for an interview. ''Mr. Turner can see you at three-thirty," the voice said. "Would that be all right?"

His excitement mounted as the elevator ascended to the fourth floor, the city room. The atmosphere was a sharp contrast to the dull efficiency of his own office; the hum of conversation, incessant pounding of typewriters, wire machines clacking with urgent regularity—all this gave an air of tension and importance to the place. Things were happening here; it was a throbbing nerve center, a great clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute history. The atmosphere of subdued excitement settled in his brain, driving out the bitterness and the frustration of earlier rejections. He felt that old anticipation now, that sense of purpose; he was about to join a proud and noble team, a profession dedicated to the cause of truth.

The sign on the door said william turner, managing editor. The secretary told him to go in.

The office was small and bare: two chairs, a desk, and a typewriter. William Turner looked up from a sheaf of papers on the desk. "Kemp?" he said. "Good to see you. Sit down."

Kemp sat, putting his briefcase on the floor beside the chair.

Turner looked at him with a smile. "Are you still available, Kemp?"

"Sure," Kemp said quickly. "My job is about to drive me crazy."

"What are you doing?" Turner asked.

"I'm a staff writer for Business Age.''

"Sounds all right," said Turner. "What's wrong with it?"

"It's a little dull," Kemp said. "I'd like to write something besides tripe for a change."

Turner looked at him blankly for a moment, then picked a piece of paper off the desk. Kemp recognized his application, filled out several months before; there was a small note in someone else's handwriting clipped to the front of it.

"I see you went to Washington and Lee," Turner said. "Where's that?"

*'Lexington, Virginia."

"What kind of school is it?" Turner asked.

Why you ignorant swine, Kemp thought. It's a barber college! "Liberal Arts," he said, "one of the best in the South."

"Never heard of it," said Turner. "What did you major in?"

"English."

Turner was staring at the application. He was thin, about forty-five or fifty, Kemp guessed, and not very impressive-looking. He looked up. "You don't have much experience, do you?"

"Three years," Kemp said. "Two dailies and a national magazine."

Turner smiled: "That may sound like a lot to you," he said, "but by guild standards it almost makes you a beginner."

"What do you mean, a beginner?" Kemp exclaimed. "I've been working on newspapers for five years!"

"Five?" said Turner. "You list only three on the application."

"I was sports editor of a paper in the army for two years," Kemp explained. "I forgot to put that down."

"Well it wouldn't count, anyway," Turner said with a grin.

"Why not?" Kemp demanded.

"It just doesn't," Turner said. "Experience is determined by the guild scale . . . service papers don't count at all, weeklies count slightly, and dailies count according to their circulation." He glanced again at Kemp's application. "Yours probably amounts to about two years."

Kemp stared sullenly at the floor.

"Hell, for that matter," Turner continued, "I've never even heard of the Blackmoor, Indiana, Gazette, or the Creek, Virginia, Daily Press r

"Well, they exist," Kemp snapped. "I have paycheck stubs to prove it."

"Certainly," Turner said quickly, "of course. What did you do, general reporting?"

"Sportswriting," Kemp said. "Didn't I put that on the application?"

Turner rechecked. "Ah . . . yes," he said thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact, you did."

"I was sports editor of the Daily Press,'' Kemp said. "I have clippings to prove it."

Turner eyed him warily. "Now don't get upset, Kemp," he said quietly. "I'm not saying these papers don't exist. I've just never heard of them."

Kemp smiled contemptuously.

"You say you have clippings?" Turner asked.

Kemp reached into his briefcase and pulled out a pile of clippings. "I've been meaning to get these into a scrapbook," he said, "but I never seem to have the time."

Turner lifted the top clipping from the stack and read through it. He read two more, scanning them quickly and without comment.

"What kind of a job are you looking for?"

"Reporting," Kemp said. "Something I can sink my teeth into."

"Teeth?"

"Something important," Kemp explained. "I'm tired of writing tripe."

"You mean the . . . larger issues," Turner said with a smile.

"Yeah," said Kemp. "That's right . . . silly things hke communism and education and national survival."

Turner continued to smile, drumming his fingers on the desk and staring at the wastebasket.

"What's so funny about that?" Kemp demanded.

"Nothing," Turner said quickly. "Nothing at all. It's just that attitude."

"What attitude?"

"Oh, it's a common thing," Turner assured him. "That old hero pose . . . that idea that you're out to change the world."

Kemp checked a sarcastic reply and remained silent.

"It's an occupational disease with young reporters," Turner said with a grin. "But you're the first case I've run into in a long time. I was beginning to think it was dying out." He grinned broadly now, leaning back in his chair with the pleased expression of a man continually amazed by his own wisdom.

Kemp felt his temper slipping; he leaned forward and spoke impatiently. "What about this job?"

Turner's mirth seemed to fade instantly. "Oh yes," he said, swiveling around in his chair. "Yes, job . . . job." He looked down at the application. "Well, let's see now. . . ."

Kemp lit a cigarette.

Turner spoke slowly, looking Kemp straight in the eye: "You have a good background, Kemp . . . you're young, you write well . . . you're bright ... I think we can use you."

Kemp brightened.

"You know, this business has changed a lot in the past twenty years," Turner said. "It used to be run Uke a circus." He looked back at Kemp. "Did you know that?"

Kemp nodded, and Turner went on: "What we've done, you know . . . we've rooted out most of the irresponsibles." He swiveled to stare out the window. "Rooted them out!" he said proudly.

"Yeah," Kemp muttered uneasily.

"Damned right!" Turner said, swiveling back to face Kemp. "Damned right. The main thing, though, the main thing ... we bounced the drunks."

Kemp felt a nervous churning in his stomach.

Turner was talking again. "We have a new breed of people nowadays—good men, solid backgrounds." He flashed a brief smile: Backgrounds very much Uke yours, in fact—college graduates, good training— reliable people. ..."

"Yeah," said Kemp with a weak grin, "we live in happy times."

"The day of the prima donna is gone!" Turner exclaimed vehemently. "They were hooligans, and they got what they deserved!"

Kemp tried to think who "they" were, and what they had "gotten."

Turner spun suddenly in his chair. "You don't see me running around drunk in the streets!" he shouted. "Not me ... I know what's going onr

Kemp nodded politely.

Now Turner was calm, intense. "It's a responsibility, Kemp, and a damned big one! You think you can handle it?"

Handle what? Kemp thought. What the hell are you talking about? (Pause)

"We need men like you," Turner said, "men with good backgrounds . . . steady!"

Kemp smiled modestly.

"It's a long, hard pull," Turner warned. "The road to the top is not easy."

Kemp stared at the floor, already feeling the mantle of that terrible responsibility settling on his shoulders.

"What do you say, Kemp, can you handle it?"

"Sure," Kemp said. "Are you offering me the job?"

"You're damned right!" Turner blurted. "We need men like you."

"I'll have to give Business Age two weeks' notice," Kemp said.

"Right you are," Turner replied. "You can start here in two weeks."

"What about salary?" Kemp asked.

Turner hesitated, then reached into his desk and brought out a small booklet. He flipped over a few pages, ran his finger along a column of figures, then put it face down on the desk.

"The guild minimum is fifty-five a week," he said, "but in your case we can make it sixty-five." He smiled proudly.

"My God!" Kemp shouted hoarsely. "I'm making eighty-five a week right now!"

"But look what you're doing!" Turner reminded him. "You said yourself the job was driving you crazy . . . look at the opportunity you'll have here!"

"But sixty-five a week!" Kemp protested. "How in the hell can you get reporters for that kind of money? It's hardly enough to live on!"

The blank stare returned to Turner's face. "Oh no," he said quickly. "No . . . reporters get more than that. Hell, I think the minimum is eighty-five."

"Then I should get eighty-five," Kemp said. "That would be fine."

Turner stared at him. "But we don't start our beginners as reporters," he said quietly. "You'll have to get familiar with the operation first—there's a lot to learn around here."

Kemp's stomach tightened and his palms began to sweat. "Then what the hell kind of job is this?" he demanded.

"We'll start you as a copyboy," Turner explained. "After a few months—if you work out—we'll begin working you up to a writing spot."

The word "copyboy" hit Kemp like a blow to the genitals. He began to stammer, but caught himself and tried to calm down.

Turner rambled on, heedless of Kemp's reaction. "Hell, we've had men who got bylines inside of a year. Why, in two years, you'll be pulling down ninety or a hundred a week!"

Kemp could hardly breathe: "You mean to say you think I'm actually going to take a job as a copyboy?" he said.

Turner focused the blank look on him.

"You must be out of your damned mind!" Kemp shouted. "What the hell . . . ?"

Turner spoke soothingly, but Kemp was already on his feet, stuffing the clippings back in the briefcase. "Wait a minute, Kemp," Turner was saying, "you're getting all excited ..."

Kemp headed for the door, his eyes blurred and his chest tight with humiliation. Turner's voice came from somewhere behind him, but it faded out in the ceaseless clatter of the city room.

The wind stung his eyes as he hurried into the street. He buttoned

his coat as he walked swiftly to the subway. Gradually his brain cleared, and only a dull pain remained in his chest. It soon turned to anger, and he found himself muttering as he waited for the train. The sleazy little bastard! he thought. I should have hauled off and bashed him in the face!

CHEROKEE PARK

For several days following the country club debacle, Kemp stayed close to home. He slept as much as possible, read constantly when he wasn't sleeping, and waited nervously (so to speak) for the "heat" to lift. What a hell of a way to start a vacation, he thought despairingly. I've got to get a grip on myself or this goddamned drink will destroy me!

On Friday night Billy Porter stopped by after dinner. "I can't stay but a minute," he explained, easing himself into the big living room chair. "I have to go by for Nancy at eight-thirty."

"Where are you going?" Kemp asked.

"Just out to the Pine Room," Porter replied. "Why don't you get a date and come with us—won't be many people there."

The mere thought of a date sent Kemp into a quiet frenzy of frustration. "Hmmnnn ..." he mused. "No, I don't really feel Hke it. Couldn't get a date this time of night anyway."

"Sure," said Porter, "I know of at least three girls you could call right now and get a date. Hell . . . good ones, too."

Well, Kemp thought, why not? Then his stomach tightened as he imagined the whispers that would accompany his entrance to the Pine Room: There he is! Welburn Kemp . . . Did you hear about his stunt at Betsy Stites's party the other night? Certainly! Drunk as a hoot owl . . . called her a whore ... I don't know . . . been living in New York the past few years . . . guess he's gone to the dogs. . . .

He slumped back in a corner of the couch, staring at his bare feet. "Hell," he mumbled, "I don't really feel like it. No sense in going out, anyway."

Porter looked at him with a faint grin. "Don't tell me you're still sulking over that thing at the Club the other night," he said.

"Oh no," Kemp blurted, "hell no ... I just don't feel like going out."

"Lord alive," Porter said with a chuckle, "everybody's forgotten about that. Why let it worry you?"

"It doesn't," said Kemp.

''Well get off your ass and get a date then," Porter exclaimed. "Call Lee Pennington; she doesn't have one. I talked to her this afternoon."

Kemp pondered. Sooner or later I'll have to go out. Why not get it over with? He wavered, feeling a mounting desire to get up and call Lee Pennington. But the whispering: Oh God, there's Welburn Kemp. . . . Let's get out of here . . . gone all to pieces, I tell you . . . New York does it every time . . . gone straight to the dogs. . . .

"Aw hell," he said gruffly, "I can't waste my nights talking to a bunch of boobs at the Pine Room. No, to hell with it."

Porter shook his head sadly and stood up. "Ah well," he said, "it's none of my business; if you want to sulk, go ahead and sulk. I have to go."

Kemp stood up and followed him to the door. "I'll give you a ring some time tomorrow," he said. "Thanks anyway. ..."

Porter grinned as he started across the lawn to his car. "Have a good time," he said. "If I see Betsy I'll tell her you said hello."

"Yeah," said Kemp, "you do that."

For almost an hour he read the afternoon paper, going through it page by page. When he finished he went to the bookshelf and rummaged till he found a copy of War and Peace. I've been trying to get to this for years, he thought. Now would be a good time.

So he stretched out on the couch with a fresh cup of coffee, a good overhead light, and his copy of War and Peace.

By ten-thirty he was nearly out of his mind with restlessness. Grimly, he stuck to the book, forcing himself to concentrate. But finally it was no use; he dropped it to the floor and stared up at the ceiling. I must go somewhere, he decided. But where? Why the hell didn't I call Lee Pennington? To hell with those fools at the Pine Room; let 'em talk all they want! He searched his mind for someone to call, somewhere to go, a reason—even an excuse—to get out of the house. Finally it came to him: cigarettes, he thought happily, I'm just about out of cigarettes. I'll have to go out and get some.

He got up and put on his socks and shoes, then called to his mother in the den: "Mom, I'm taking the car for a minute. I have to get some cigarettes."

Her voice was faint behind the heavy door. "I have some," she said. "They're in here."

"No," he called, "I don't like those. I want some Kools."

"Great heavens!" came her faint reply. "What's happened to your taste?"

"See you later," he called from the doorway. "Be back in a few minutes."

He backed hastily out of the driveway and felt the cool September night blow through the car as he started up the street. Damn, he thought, it's actually cold. He rolled up his window and turned the radio on: something about a football game. Football? he wondered. Then he remembered reading in the paper that the local high schools opened their seasons tonight. Damn! he thought. That was the fastest summer I've ever spent in my life!

He turned down Iroquois Road, a dark tunnel between rows of old sycamores on either side of the street. A thick canopy of leaves waved gently in the breeze above the road; they rustled peacefully in the night, absorbing the dull yellow glow of street hghts and waiting patiently for autumn (cold red-brown autumn) to sweep down from the north and rob them of their summer life. Kemp felt another chill and turned the heater on. Music, night music, sugary sounds for a teenage Friday night moaned out of the radio, and now he slowed down for the STOP sign at the entrance to the park.

I'll go through the park, he thought. They used to have a cigarette machine at the Kingston Inn out by the driving range. He stepped on the gas and pointed his headlights into the park. The road was empty, and he picked up speed as he came over the hill by the golf course. He remembered the sharp curve by the clubhouse, and slowed down as his headlights swept through a grove of silent trees behind the first tee. The road was still empty, and he heard no sound but the soft thunder of his big engine, the music on the radio, the monotonous whirling of the heater fan above his legs, and the humming of his tires on the black asphalt.

How completely different this is from Central Park, he mused, how beautifully wild and uncivilized: no buildings, no taxis, no traffic Ughts. . . . Just a sprawling, lonely woods, here on the edge of the city. How many times have I come over this road? he wondered. God knows; and yet it's no different now than it was the first time I saw it . . . hell, at least twenty years ^go. He let his mind drift back over the years, easing his foot on the gas pedal as he watched his headlights probing into the trees.

How long have I known this park? How old was I when I first walked along this road? Two . . . ? Three . . . ? No older, certainly. A tiny boy in a red jacket and brown corduroy pants . . . walking along that same sidewalk beside my grandfather—my mother's father, who was once a tiny boy himself—stopping to feed the squirrels, leaving the sidewalk and cHmbing up that hill, resting at the top on a stone bench.

sitting beside my grandfather in the crisp September breeze, while the autumn golfers trudged and slammed along the fairway at the bottom of the hill. . . .

More curves now, and heading away from the golf course, across the creek on a stone bridge, and leveling out beside the old football field. He peered into the darkness, trying to see if the goalposts were still there, wondering if they still chalked the lines at the beginning of every season. But it was too dark to tell, even in the cloudy moonlight.

I was ten or eleven then, he thought; my grandfather dead, me no longer feeding the squirrels . . . but riding by that time on my own bicycle, coasting with the others down that long hill to the football field, wearing my old Hutch helmet and my blue jersey over the shoulder pads—number 22—wearing my black tennis shoes and my yellow padded pants, parking my bike at the edge of the field and running out for a pass, racing along in the warm September sun—Saturday morning and no school—yelling, "Throw it, throw it," in my piercing small-boy voice that has vanished now with all the rest: the old Hutch helmet, the size-five tennis shoes, the wild-eyed excitement of a ten-yard sprint around right end ... all gone now; for just as they have paved this road with new asphalt, they have covered our old football field with other people's children. . . .

He lit a cigarette now, leaving the football field behind and starting up the winding road to the softball diamond. He knew they would be there, parked all along the road—all together, for some reason he could never understand—for he had always parked in lonely, unfrequented spots . . . where you could be alone . . . and get out and stretch if you wanted to . . . and sometimes walk over and sit in the grass if the night was warm enough. . . .

How many nights have I parked on these dark roads, with a warm head against my shoulder, and a six-pack of beer almost as warm in the back seat. . . . Ah, but I was older then ... no longer playing football, no more to wear my shoulder pads and yell in a small-boy voice . . . but to wear a tie, and drive a car . . . and feel small arms around my neck, soft hair against my cheek . . . and strange to have said, "I love you" only once in all those nights; all those parked cars, those trembling hours, those soft lips and six-packs. ... So strange that I often wonder why I've never said it since; wonder first and then feel sad because I haven't wanted to . . . and rightly sad, at that. . . .

And so his mind wandered, hopping across the years, whirling along the dark roads of that huge and ageless park, pausing here and there to wipe the cobwebs from some long-forgotten face, or to stop and

listen tensely for some once-enchanting voice. And, all the while, he drove on, almost to the end of the park now, the trees behind him and the driving range on his left, the lights of the highway just ahead.

The Kingston Inn was no more. The building was still there, but now it was the Hi-Dee-Ho-Club. Kemp swung into the parking lot, barely missing the giant tailfin of a parked car as he cut sharply into an empty space beside the building. Cars streamed by on the highway as he hurried through the parking lot to the front door. The sidewalk in front of the building was brightly lit, and he felt certain as he hurried toward the door that someone he knew would pass on the highway and see him going, all alone, into something called the Hi-Dee-Ho Club just before midnight. He turned his head away from the highway as he ran up the stairs and through the door.

"You have a cigarette machine?" he asked the bartender. The man pointed toward the rear of the bar.

As he approached the machine, Kemp noticed a vaguely familiar face at a nearby table. Do I know him? he wondered. He looked hard at the face, then at the pretty girl at the same table. Yes, he decided, I know him . . . but what the hell is his name? Just then the face swung toward him; he looked quickly away and fumbled in his pocket for some change as he came to the machine. As he was putting the coins in the slot, the name came to him: I'll be damned! he said to himself. That's Dave Briscoe, my old playmaker! Dave Briscoe, the all-city guard, his teammate for two years . . . frantic stomping in the academy student section as Briscoe brings the ball across mid-court, looks intently at the defense, then dribbles over cross-court to set up the play. Kemp breathing heavily, draws his man into the corner, sees the play, now jumps around his man and takes a quick pass. Briscoe right behind the ball, whirling by on the outside, brushes his man off on Kemp, takes the hand-off, now driving hard for a lay-up. Kemp's man drops off on Briscoe, Kemp spins to the inside, all alone, takes Briscoe's underhand flip . . . jumps, shoots ... no good . . . goddamnit!

He pulled the lever and picked his cigarettes out of the tray. I'll be damned, Dave Briscoe! I wonder if he remembers me. . . . Maybe I should say hello. . . .

He turned, intending to speak, and found Briscoe watching him. He looked quickly away as Kemp started for the door. Damn, I don't think he remembers me. What the hell could I say to him anyway? He hurried along the bar, passed within five feet of Briscoe's table, felt eyes on his back as he crossed to the door, and then forgot Briscoe instantly as he saw a face watching him from a car stopped at the red

light. He jerked his head in the other direction and broke into a run. Good God! he thought. Who was that? He sprinted across the parking lot and scrambled into the welcome darkness of his car.

Damn, he thought as he started the motor, I should have spoken to Briscoe. He used to be a hell of a good guy. I wonder if he knew who I was. . . . Probably. . . . Why the hell didn't I speak? Now he'll figure I've turned into a bastard ... a snob . . . and damn, people watching me from that car, too. . . . Wonder who it was. . . .

He relaxed slightly as he sped along the road beside the airport. "Goddamn," he muttered to the steering wheel, "my nerves are driving me crazy."

Now he was back in the park again, headlights sweeping through the darkness as his tires squealed softly on a curve, heading for the big lake and the tennis courts on the other side. . . . And there they were again, long rows of taillights on either side of the road beside the lake. He drove between them, looking straight ahead and feeling horribly alone in this little cluster of intense togetherness.

Good lord, there must be a hundred cars here, he thought. Prices must have gone up at the drive-ins.

Now he left the lake behind and the road was empty. He thought again of his six-pack days, remembering how he used to take his shoes off and drive in his socks, a can of beer resting on the seat between his legs.

He wondered if anyone had found his old parking spot, far down at the end of a gravel road behind the archery range. I'll drive down there, he decided, just for the hell of it.

On the way he passed another cluster; anonymous, sinful-looking taillights, gleaming red along the peaceful roads, dotting the midnight landscape from one end of the park to the other. But there was no one at the archery range, thank God, and as he turned down the familiar gravel road he thought immediately of Elaine Holland. That one time. ... "I love you." He hadn't seen her since high school, not one time during four years of college vacations. How long? Eight years? Impossible, for now on this gravel road it seems like only yesterday. But it is, by God, eight years! He could almost feel her in the car beside him as he listened to the familiar crunching of his tires on the gravel. Where is she now? he wondered. He remembered asking, several years ago, and hearing someone say she'd dropped out of college and gotten married. That's right, some guy in the navy at Pensacola, a pilot or something.

But where is she now? Here in the city? If I knew, I'd go throw rocks at her window like I used to. . . . Bring her over here and park.

I

husband be damned. . . . Wonder if she has any children, or maybe she's pregnant right now. . . . God, how awful. . . .

He was right on top of the car before he saw it. One second he was floating along in his peaceful dream, remembering her soft voice and her arms around his neck . . . and the next instant he saw the car. Great Jesus! he thought, slamming on the brakes. There it was, black and almost invisible with all the lights turned out, but now framed in the terrible glare of his headlights as he sat there, unable to move. Oh God, he thought as his mind whirled in panic, what a ghastly goddamn thing! Still he was unable to move, and now a head jerked up in the front seat of the black car. A face, with one hand trying to shade the eyes, squinting into Kemp's headlights. Then a scream of anger: "Turn out those lights, you son of a bitch!" Suddenly the door opened, and a figure leaped into the light, running toward Kemp's car.

The sight of the man running toward him jolted Kemp into action; he jerked the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. The car leaped backward, and he heard himself cursed again as he gripped the wheel desperately to keep the car from weaving into the trees on either side of the road. His heart was thumping with terror as he felt his wheels grip the asphalt of the main road. He screeched to a stop, jammed the car into first, and roared away.

God almighty lord! he muttered as he fled along the winding road. I should have known there'd be somebody there!

Now he was on the golf course road, only a httle way from the entrance. I've got to get home! he thought wildly; my nerves are going all to pieces!

New York City, 1959

FLEEING NEW YORK

I WENT TO UPSTA TE New Yovk and got a job as a reporter on a paper called the Middletown Daily Record. I was there about two months. I was fired after I got in a vicious fight with an advertiser over lasagna.

The guy's place was right across the street from the paper where they all ate. He made rotten lasagna, I sent it back to the kitchen about five times. His name was Gallo, Joe Gallo, or Joey Gallo, something like that, I really don't know. Sounded like Joey Gallo. And nobody sent his lasagna back.

So finally he came out one day, after Fd sent it back again, and attacked me with a wooden kitchen fork. Then we got in a hst fight in the restaurant. I was perfectly justified. It was stinking lasagna.

The next day I went to work and the publisher called me in. Here was this bastard standing there in his apron. They were complaining that first Td fucked his food over and then Td beaten him up. I tried to explain myself — all Td done was send the rotten food back to the kitchen. I thought that the publisher, naturally, would support me. I was writing good stories. Typical things — Lion's Club luncheons, you know, the typical cub reporter's beat. City Hall.

But the publisher warned me that one more thing and I would be fired. I was very surprised. And the advertiser felt vindicated. I had to apologize, I think, for calling his lasagna bad.

About four or five days later I went out of the newsroom to a candy machine back behind the composing room. I wanted a candy bar.

I put a nickel in the machine and nothing happened. I pulled the thing — nothing came out. I put another nickel in, pulled the handle — nothing came out.

I stepped back to give it a boot. You know, you smack things and coins drop. Instead, the whole bottom of the machine gave way. The bottom was where they kept all the storage stuff underneath. You know, the guy doesn 't just come around and fill the candy machines with a sack. When he comes in he replaces the stock, moves the candy bars up into the rack from underneath.

So I couldn't get the damn metal panel back into the machine. I had kicked it very hard and sprung it out. I couldn't get it back in, so I propped it up and thought nothing more of it. I just took two candy bars out of the bottom, which I had paid for, and put the tin piece back in there. It looked almost right. Somehow someone figured out that it wasn't quite right and the people in the composing room stole the candy bars and ate them, naturally, free. I didn 't think that anybody else knew that the whole bottom was full of candy bars.

So I go in the next day and I get fired. And they docked my pay for all those candy bars. I had to pay something like $17.8s for 350 candy bars, something like that. That was when I gave up on journalism completely.

They hadn't hassled me at all about my copy but they hassled me a lot about my personal attitude, the fact that I would take my shoes off in the winter. Wet shoes, of course you take them off. No, I never got into trouble about the work I did, it was always about personal relations with people.

So I moved into a cabin deep in the hills about twenty miles out of Middletown. I couldn't afford heat so I would turn the heat way down until my hands got too cold to work and then Vd go to sleep. The next day Vd work again and Fd get in about three hours work at night.

I was just living off unemployment and driving a huge black Jaguar Mark VII and was writing short stories. Seems like I have a long history of constantly retreating from journalism to fiction, which is the exact opposite of the traditional American writer, where the noble novelist is continually forced by rejection and ignorance and money pressure to resort to journalism.

I saw an ad in Editor and Publisher for a new sports magazine starting in Puerto Rico. They needed staff writers. The guy said it was going to be the Sports Illustrated of the Caribbean. I thought this thing was made for me. I got the job and went down to Puerto Rico.

It turned out that the bastard was running a bowling magazine.

He was using the magazine as a vehicle to promote bowling. They were introducing bowling to Puerto Rico. I had to go out and cover bowling every night in San Juan. Bowling was going big. Bowling alleys were popping up everywhere. What could you say about bowling? Bowlers just wanted to see their names in the paper. That was the essential thing. I also had one-angle assignments, like I did a lot of research and a big piece on cockfighting. But about half my work was making sure every bowler in San Juan got his name in the magazine called Sportivo. And ever since then Vve hated the word bowling.

At almost precisely the same time, for some reason, they were starting San Juan's first English newspaper. I had sent the editor, Bill Kennedy, what I thought was a really elegant letter of application. I had cited the bronze plaque on the side of The New York Times building in New York — a thing about truth in journalism and dignity of man.

The tone of my letter was that Fll accept employment with you under certain circumstances. I had said I won't be kept fucked over like I have in the past with these pigs in journalism. I told him it was time for me to get serious, that I wasn't going to come and cover City Hall, that kind of crap. I said I didn't want to be just any reporter.

I was rejected, I thought somewhat brutally. I had put a lot of

idealism and effort into this letter of application. Meanwhile a friend of mine was hired as a photographer, a guy from the Middletown Record, Bob Bone.

So I had written the editor back saying, ''You worthless hack motherfucker, " having no idea that Sportivo would open up like a month later. I said, ''You filthy cheap hack, Vm going to come down there sometime — it might be next week, or next year or ten years — but when I see you Vm going to ram a bronze plaque far into your small intestine and kick your teeth out. " All this kind of thing.

So by some weird twist of luck about a month later I showed up in San Juan with a job at Sportivo, knowing Bone was then working for the Star, which had attracted all manner of geeks, a whole colony of floating expatriate journalists, people who worked for English-language newspapers in other countries.

Kennedy was advised at once of my presence on the island by Bone. Finally I met Kennedy, and we became instant good friends.

So I hung on down there, mounting various wars and diatribes in a constant fight with the publisher of the Star, who hated me. I had an apartment on the beach. I had a motor scooter, a Lambretta. The beach house rent was like $so a month and another friend of mine came down, an artist, and shared the rent with me, and Sandy came down.

Meanwhile, to augment my income I would pick up jobs doing tourist and brochure folders for a thing called Puerto Rican News Service, the official government propaganda, and I became a sort of part-time Caribbean stringer for the Herald Tribune. It was a prestigious gig and of course the News Service loved it because it was publicity for Puerto Rico. Everything I wrote was selling. I was clearly the preeminent writer or journalist on the island and I didn't even work at the Star.

Woody Creek, March 1990

I

The

SIXTIES

WHAT THE HELL? IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL .

LETTER TO ANGUS CAMERON

March 22, '60 c/o Semonin San Juan Star San Juan, P.R.

Angus Cameron Knopf Inc. 501 Madison Ave. NYC

Dear Mr. Cameron:

I want to thank you for your meaningful and perceptive comments on my manuscript. Few editors, Fm sure, would have taken the time to compose such an informative rejection slip, and few indeed could have put down their thoughts with such style and mastery of tone. It's been said, I know, that most editors are boobs, cretins, and witless crayfish who have edged into their jobs through some devious means made possible by the slothful and incestuous nature of the World of Publishing. Ha! Let me say now, Mr. Cameron, that if more editors write letters like yours, the people who say these wretched things will certainly be laughing out of the other side of their mouths. Just where do they get the gall to talk like that?

But be all that as it may, we still have to dispose of Prince Jellyfish, don't we? I tried like hell to finish it. Since September, however, the people who sheltered me have appHed for divorce, I was beaten by hoodlums in New York, put in jail in Virginia Beach, arrested for drunken driving in Louisville; then 1 was taken by plane to San Juan where the man who hired me to write sports copy proved to be an insolvent liar. All this has somewhat hindered the progress of the book. But now I am ready to roll again; the typewriter is rusty and full of sand, but I have stolen a ribbon from the San Juan Star and now feel ready to complete this wretched thing I began in what seems like

another world. Suppose we send it to an agent named Elisabeth McKee. It would take me two or three months to find her address, because I left it in a box of paper somewhere in the Catskills. I feel, however, that it's somewhere in the East Sixties (enviable, eh?) and I feel, also, that one of your people can locate it in the Manhattan Telephone Directory. I am enclosing a note to her, and if you find that your facilities are insufficient to the task of getting both note and manuscript sent to the McKee address, please send all back to me and I will take care of it myself. If this happens, of course, you will soon find in your mailbox a packet of sea urchins: to derive full enjoyment from them, take one in each hand and squeeze. With fondness and admiration, I remain,

quite gratefully. Hunter S. Thompson

THE RUM DIARY

The atmosphere at the paper was more tense than ever. On Wednesday, Lotterman got a summons from the Department of Labor, inviting him to a hearing on the question of Yeamon's severance pay. He cursed about it all afternoon, saying it would be a cold day in hell before he'd give that nut a dime. Sala began taking bets on the outcome, giving three-to-one odds that Yeamon would collect.

To make things worse, Tyrrell's departure had forced Lotterman to take over as city editor. This meant he did most of the work. It was only temporary, he said, but so far his ad in Editor and Publisher had drawn a blank.

I was not surprised. ''Editor," it said. ''San Juan Daily. Begin immediately. Drifters and drinkers need not apply."

HUNTER S. THOMPSON JI

At one point he offered the job to me. I came in one day and found a note in my typewriter, saying Lotterman wanted to see me. When I opened the door to his office he was fumbhng idly with his baseball. He smiled shrewdly and tossed it up in the air. "I've been thinking," he said. "You seem pretty sharp. Ever handled a city desk?"

"No," I replied.

"Like to give it a whirl?" he asked, tossing the ball again. I wanted no part of it. There would be a good raise, but there would also be a hell of a lot of extra work. "I haven't been here long enough," I said. "I don't know the city."

He tossed the baseball up in the air and let it bounce on the floor. "I know," he said. "I was just thinking."

"What about Sala?" I said, knowing Sala would turn it down. He had so many free-lance assignments that I wondered why he bothered to keep his job at all.

"Not a chance," he replied. "He doesn't give a damn about the paper—he doesn't give a damn about anything." He leaned forward and dropped the ball on the desk. "Who else is there? Moberg's a drunk, Vanderwitz is a psycho, Noonan's a fool, Benetiz can't speak EngHsh . . . Christ! Where do I get these people?" He fell back in his chair with a groan. "I've got to have somebody!" he shouted. "I'll go crazy if I have to do the whole paper myself!"

"What about the ad?" I said. "No replies?"

He groaned again. "Sure—wineheads! One guy claimed he was the son of Oliver Wendell Holmes—as if I gave a goddamn!" He bounced the ball violently on the floor. "Who keeps sending these wineheads down here?" he shouted. "Where do they come from?"

He shook the ball at me and spoke as if he were uttering his last words. "Somebody has to fight it, Kemp—they're taking over. These wineheads are taking over the world. If the press goes under, we're sunk—you understand that?"

I nodded.

"By Jesus!" he went on, "we have a responsibihty! A free press is vital! If a pack of deadbeats get hold of this newspaper it's the beginning of the end. First they'll get this one, then they'll get a few more, and one day they'll get hold of the Times —can you imagine it?"

I said I couldn't.

"They'll get us all!" he exclaimed. "They're dangerous—insidious! That guy claiming he was the son of Justice Holmes—I could pick him out of a crowd—he'd be the one with hair on his neck and a crazy look in his eye!"

Just then, as if on cue, Moberg came through the door, carrying a chpping from El Diario.

Lotterman's eyes became wild. "Moberg!" he screamed. "Oh Jesus—where do you get the nerve to come in here without knocking! By God I'll have you locked up! Get out!"

Moberg retreated quickly, giving me a puzzled look as he darted out.

Lotterman glared after him. "The nerve of that goddamn sot," he said. "Christ, a sot Hke that should be put to sleep."

Moberg had been in San Juan only a few months, but Lotterman seemed to loathe him with a passion that would take most men years to cultivate. Moberg was a degenerate. He was small, with thin blond hair and a face that was pale and flabby. I have never seen a man so bent on self-destruction—not only self, but destruction of everything he could get his hands on. He was lewd and corrupt in every way. He hated the taste of rum, yet he would finish a bottle in ten minutes, then vomit and fall down. He ate nothing but sweet rolls and spaghetti, which he would vomit the moment he got drunk. He spent all his money on whores and when that got dull he would take on an occasional queer, just for the strangeness of it. He would do anything for money, and this was the man we had on the police beat. Often he disappeared for days at a time. Then someone would have to track him down through the dirtiest bars in La Perla, a slum so foul that on maps of San Juan it appeared as a blank space. La Perla was Moberg's headquarters; he felt at home there, he said, and in the rest of the city—except for a few horrible bars—he was a lost soul.

He told me that he'd spent the first twenty years of his life in Sweden, and often I tried to picture him against a crisp Scandinavian landscape. I tried to see him on skis, or living peacefully with his family in some cold mountain village. From the little he said of Sweden I gathered that he'd lived in a small town and that his parents had been comfortable people with enough money to send him to college in America.

He spent two years at NYU, living in the Village at one of those residence hotels that cater to foreigners. This apparently unhinged him. Once he was arrested on Sixth Avenue, he said, for pissing on a fireplug like a dog. It cost him ten days in the Tombs, and when he got out he left immediately for New Orleans. He floundered there for a while, then got a job on a freighter headed for the Orient. He worked on boats for several years before drifting into journalism. Now, thirty-three years old and looking fifty, his spirit broken and his body swollen with drink, he bounced from one country to another, hiring himself out as a reporter and hanging on until he was fired.

Disgusting as he usually was, on rare occasions he showed flashes of a stagnant inteUigence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard.

"Lotterman thinks Fm a Demogorgon," he would say. "You know what that is? Look it up—no wonder he doesn't like me."

One night at Al's he told me he was writing a book, called The Inevitability of a Strange World. He took it very seriously. "It's the kind of book a Demogorgon would write," he said. "Full of shit and terror—I've selected the most horrible things I could imagine. The hero is a flesheater disguised as a priest—cannibaHsm fascinates me. Once down at the jail they beat a drunk until he almost died—I asked one of the cops if I could eat a chunk of his leg before they killed him. . . ."He laughed. "The swine threw me out—hit me with a club." He laughed again. "I'd have eaten it—why shouldn't I? There's nothing sacred about human flesh—it's meat like everything else—would you deny that?"

"No," I said. "Why should I deny it?"

It was one of the few times I talked to him that I could understand what he said. Most of the time he was incoherent with drink. Lotterman was forever threatening to fire him, but we were so understaffed that he couldn't afford to let anyone go. When Moberg spent a few days in the hospital after his beating at the hands of the strikers, Lotterman had hopes that he might straighten out. But when he came back to work he was more hopeless than before.

At times I wondered which would be the first to go—Moberg or the News. The paper gave every appearance of being on its last legs. Circulation was faUing off and we were losing advertising so steadily that I didn't see how Lotterman could hold out. He had borrowed heavily to get the paper going, and according to Sanerson, it had never made a nickel.

I kept hoping for an influx of new blood, but Lotterman had become so wary of "wineheads" that he rejected every reply to his ads. "I've got to be careful," he explained. "One more pervert and we're finished."

I suspected that he couldn't afford to pay any more salaries, but one day a man named Schwartz appeared in the office, saying he had just been thrown out of Venezuela for some reason, and Lotterman hired him immediately. To everyone's surprise he turned out to be competent. After a few weeks he was doing all the work that Tyrrell had done.

This took a lot of the strain off Lotterman, but it didn't do much

for the paper. We went from twenty-four pages down to sixteen, and finally to twelve. The outlook was so bleak that people began saying El Diario had the News' obituary set in type and ready to go.

I had no feeling for the paper, but it was good to have a salary while I fished for something bigger. The idea that the News might fold began to worry me and I wondered why San Juan, with all its new prosperity, couldn't support such a small thing as an English-language newspaper. The News was no prizewinner, but it was at least readable.

A large part of the trouble was Lotterman. He was capable enough, in a purely mechanical way, but he had put himself in an untenable position. As an admitted ex-Communist, he was under constant pressure to prove how much he'd reformed. At that time the U.S. State Department was calling Puerto Rico "America's advertisement in the Caribbean—living proof that capitalism can work in Latin America." The people who had come there to do the proving saw themselves as heroes and missionaries, bringing the holy message of Free Enterprise to the downtrodden y/fearo^. They hated Commies like they hated sin, and the fact that an ex-Red was publishing a paper in their town did not make them happy.

Lotterman simply couldn't cope with it. He went out of his way to attack anything that smelled even faintly of the political Left, because he knew he'd be crucified if he didn't. On the other hand, he had the free-wheeling Commonwealth government, whose subsidies were not only supporting half the new industry on the island but were paying for most of the News advertising as well. It was quite a bind—not just for Lotterman, but for a good many others. In order to make money they had to deal with the government, but to deal with the government was to condone "creeping Socialism"—which was not exactly compatible with their missionary work.

It was amusing to see how they handled it, because if they thought about it at all there was only one way out—to praise the ends and ignore the means, a time-honored custom that justifies almost anything except shrinking profits.

To go to a cocktail party in San Juan was to see all that was cheap and greedy in human nature. What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and Philistines with gimp mentalities. It was a new wave of Okies, heading south instead of west, and in San Juan they were kingfish because they had literally taken over.

They formed clubs and staged huge social events, and finally one of them started a gossip sheet that terrified and intimidated everyone

I

whose past was not an open book. This took in half the gang, including poor Lotterman, who suffered some vicious libel almost every week.

There was no shortage of free liquor for the press, because all hustlers crave publicity. No occasion was too small for them to give what they called a "press party" in its honor. Each time Woolworth's or the Chase Manhattan Bank opened a new branch, they celebrated with an orgy of rum. Not a month went by without the opening of a new bowHng alley; they were building them on every vacant lot, so many bowhng alleys that it was horrible to ponder the meaning of it.

From the new San Juan Chamber of Commerce came a stream of statements and proclamations that made Jehovah's Witnesses seem pale and pessimistic—long breast-beating screeds, announcing one victory after another in the crusade for The Big Money. And on top of all this there was a never-ending round of private parties for visiting celebrities. Here again, no half-wit Kiwanian was too insignificant for a blowout in his honor.

I usually went to these things with Sala. At the sight of his camera the guests would turn to jelly. Some of them would act like trained pigs and others would mill around Hke sheep, all waiting for "the man from the paper" to push his magic button and make their lavish hospitality pay off.

We tried to go early, and while Sala was herding them around for a series of meaningless photos that would probably never even be developed, I would steal as many bottles of rum as I could carry. If there was a bartender I would tell him I wanted a bit of drink for the press, and if he protested I would take them anyway. No matter what kind of outrage I committed, I knew they would never complain.

Then we would head for Al's, dropping the rum at the apartment on the way. We put all the bottles on an empty bookshelf and sometimes there were as many as twenty or thirty. In a good week we would hit three parties and average three or four bottles for each half-hour of painful socializing. It was a good feehng to have a stock of rum that would never run out, but after a while I could no longer stand even a few minutes at each party and I had to give it up.

II

One Saturday in late March, when the tourist season was almost over and the merchants were bracing themselves for the muggy low-profit

summer, Sala had an assignment to go down to Fajardo on the eastern tip of the island and take some pictures of a new hotel that was going up on a hill overlooking the harbor. Lotterman thought the News could strike a cheerful note by pointing out that things were going to be even better next season.

I decided to go along for the ride. Ever since I'd come to San Juan Yd been meaning to get out on the island, but without a car it was impossible. My furthest penetration had been to Yeamon's, about twenty miles out, and Fajardo was twice as far in the same direction. We decided to get some rum and stop by his place on the way back, hoping to get there just as he paddled in from the reef with a bulging sack of lobsters. "He's probably damn good at it by now," I said. "God knows what he's living on—they must have a steady diet of lobster and chicken."

"Hell," Sala remarked, "chicken's expensive."

I laughed. "Not out there. The niggers let them run wild. He shoots them with a spear gun."

"God almighty!" Sala exclaimed. "That's voodoo country—they'll croak him, sure as hell!"

I shrugged. I'd assumed from the very beginning that Yeamon would sooner or later be croaked—by somebody or some faceless mob, for some reason or other, it seemed inevitable. Ten years before—even five—I had been the same way. I wanted it all and I wanted it fast and no obstacle was big enough to put me off. Since then I had learned that some things were bigger than they looked from a distance, and now I was not so sure anymore just what I was going to get or even what I deserved. At the most, I was five years older than Yeamon, but I had come a long way in that time, and if I was not proud of what I had learned I never doubted it was worth knowing. Yeamon would either learn the same things, or he would certainly be croaked. This is what I told myself on those hot afternoons in San Juan when I was thirty-one years old and my shirt stuck damply to my back and I felt myself on that big and only hump, with my hardnose years behind me and all the rest downhill. They were eerie days, and my fatalistic view of Yeamon was not so much conviction as necessity, because if I granted him even the slightest optimism I would have to admit a lot of unhappy things about myself.

We came to Fajardo after an hour's drive in the hot sun and immediately stopped for a drink at the first bar. Then we drove up a hill on the outskirts of town, where Sala puttered around for almost an hour, getting his shots. He was a grudging perfectionist, no matter

how much contempt he had for his assignment. As the only pro on the island, he felt he had a certain reputation to uphold.

When he finished we bought two bottles of rum and a bag of ice. Then we drove back to the turnoff that would take us to Yeamon's. The road was paved all the way to the river, where two natives operated a ferry. They charged us a dollar for the car, then poled us across to the other side, not saying a word the whole time. I felt like a pilgrim crossing the Ganges, standing there in the sun beside the car and staring down at the water while the ferrymen leaned on their poles and shoved us toward the palm grove on the other side. We bumped against the dock and they secured the barge to an upright log while Sala drove the car to solid ground.

We still had five miles of sand road before we got to Yeamon's place. Sala cursed the whole way, swearing he would turn back except that he'd be hit for another dollar to go back across the river. The little car thumped and bounced in the ruts and I thought it would come to pieces at any moment. Once we passed a pack of native children, stoning a dog beside the road. Sala stopped, took several pictures, then shouted for them to let the dog alone, but they paid no attention.

"Jesus," he muttered, "look at those vicious bastards! We'll be lucky to get out of here alive."

When we finally got to Yeamon's we found him on the patio, wearing the same black trunks and building a bookshelf out of driftwood. The place looked a little better now; part of the patio was covered with an awning made of palm fronds, and beneath it were two canvas deck chairs that looked like they belonged in one of the better beach clubs.

"Man," I said, "where did you get those?"

"The nigger," he replied. "Sold 'em to me for five dollars. I think he stole 'em in town."

"Where's Chenault?" Sala asked.

Yeamon pointed down at the beach. "Probably sunning herself down by that log. She puts on a show for the natives—they love her."

Sala brought the rum and the bag of ice from the car. Yeamon chuckled happily and poured the ice in a tub beside the door. "Damn fine," he said. "This poverty is driving me nuts—we can't even afford rum."

"Man," I said. "You'll have to get some work. You'll turn into a nigger out here."

He laughed and filled three glasses with ice. "I'm still after Lotter-man," he said. "It looks like I might get it."

"You will," said Sala. "Things are slow here, but they'll nail him."

"I hope so," Yeamon replied. "We're getting pretty low."

Just then Chenault came up from the beach, wearing the same white bikini and carrying a big beach towel. She smiled at Yeamon. 'They came again. I heard them talking."

*'Goddamnit," Yeamon snapped. ''Why do you keep going down there? What the hell is wrong with you?"

She smiled and sat down on the towel. "It's my favorite place. Why should I leave just because of them?"

Yeamon turned to me. "She goes down to the beach and takes off her clothes—the niggers hide back in the palms and watch her."

"Not always," Chenault said quickly. "Usually it's just on weekends."

Yeamon leaned forward and shouted at her. "Well goddamn you, don't go there anymore! From now on you stay up here if you want to lie around naked! I'll be goddamned if I'll spend all my time worrying about a bunch of niggers raping you down there on the beach!" He shook his head with disgust. "One of these days they'll get you, by God, and if you keep on teasing the poor bastards I'll damn well let them have you!"

She stared down at the concrete. I felt sorry for her and stood up to make her a drink. When I handed it to her she looked up gratefully and took a long swallow.

"Drink up," said Yeamon. "We'll invite some of your friends and have a real party!" Then he fell back in the chair. "Ah, the good Hfe," he muttered. "Might as well try to share it with a wild boar as with a woman."

We sat there drinking for a while, Chenault saying nothing, Yeamon doing most of the talking and finally he got up and picked a coconut off the sand beside the patio. "Come on," he said, "let's have a little football."

I was glad for anything that would clear the air so I put down my drink and ran awkwardly out for a pass. He spiraled it perfectly, but it smacked my fingers like lead and I dropped it.

"Let's get down on the beach," he called. "Plenty of room to run."

I nodded and waved to Sala. He shook his head. "Go play," he muttered. "Me and Chenault have serious things to discuss." Chenault smiled half-heartedly and waved us down to the beach. "Go on," she said.

I slid down the bluff to the hard-packed sand on the beach. Yeamon threw up his arm and ran at an angle toward the surf. I tossed the nut high and long, watching it fall just beyond him in the water and make

a quick splash. He fell on it and went under, bringing it up in his hands.

I turned and sprinted away, watching it float down at me out of the hot blue sky. It hurt my hands again, but this time I hung on. It was a good feeling to snag a long pass again, even if it was a coconut. We played for several hours, running up and down the beach and falling in the water when the nut fell out of reach. My hands grew red and tender but it was a good clean feeling and I didn't mind. We ran short over-the-middle passes and long floaters down the sideline, and after a while I couldn't help but think we were engaged in some kind of holy ritual, the reenactment of all our young Saturdays—expatriated now, lost and cut off from those games and those drunken stadiums, beyond the noise and blind to the false color of those happy spectacles—after years of jeering at football and all that football means, here I was on an empty Caribbean beach, running these silly pass plays with all the zeal of a regular sandlot fanatic.

But there is no getting away from football. Americans are cursed with it. The quarterback is God, and to stand back there with the ball—or the nut—resting easily in your hand, your arm cocked and hell breaking loose all around you, is to know the real essence of the mythical American; a foolish game with no foundation in reality, and yet a childish faith that a man can be a good sport and a winner on the same day.

As we raced back and forth on that sandy beach, falling and plunging in the surf, I recalled my Saturdays at Vanderbilt and the precision beauty of a Georgia Tech backfield, pushing us back and back with that awful belly series, a lean figure in a gold jersey, slashing over a hole that should never have been there, now loose on the crisp grass of that secondary and the unholy shout from the stands across the way; and finally to bring the bastard down, escape those blockers coming at you like cannonballs, then line up again and face that terrible machinery. It was a tortuous thing, but beautiful in its way; here were men who would never again function or even understand how they were supposed to function as well as they did today. They were dolts and thugs for the most part, huge pieces of meat, trained to a fine edge—but somehow they mastered those complex plays and patterns, and in rare moments they were artists.

Finally I got too tired to run anymore and we went back up to the patio, where Sala and Chenault were still talking. They both seemed a Httle drunk, and after a few minutes of conversation I realized that Chenault was fairly out of her head. She kept chuckling to herself and

mocking Yeamon's southern accent, which was so faint that Vd never noticed it.

We drank for another hour or so, laughing indulgently at Chenault and watching the sun slant off toward Jamaica and the Gulf of Mexico. It's still light in Mexico City, I thought. I had never been there and suddenly I was overcome by a tremendous curiosity about the place. Several hours of rum, combined with my mounting distaste for Puerto Rico, had me right on the verge of going into town, packing my clothes, and leaving on the first westbound plane. Why not? I thought. I hadn't cashed this week's paycheck yet; a few hundred in the bank, nothing to tie me down—why not, indeed? It was bound to be better than this place, where my only foothold was a cheap job that looked ready to collapse any day.