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THE

PAGES OF

FEAR

AND

OF

LOATHING

Hunter

the strange and savage life of hunter s thompson

by

e jean carrol

HUNTER S THOMPSON’S FIRST TRIP

as told by Sandra Dawn Thompson Carlo

My first recollection of Hunter taking acid was with the Jefferson Airplane.

It happened at our apartment on Parnassus Street in San Fancisco. In the Haight. They gave it to Hunter and left. He began to act very strangely. Juan [the Thompson’s son] was asleep in his crib. I was terrified. I didn’t know whether Hunter was going to kill our son or kill me or what was going to happen. Everything I had ever read about acid scared me to death. I thought that peoople just went crazy. My feeling about it was that you could just totally lose it and mutilate your own child.

Hunter and I were sitting on the bed which was also the couch and he was out there. He was saying things to me that made no sense whatsoever. About animals, about God, about I didn’t know what. And it was scaring me. Then he said, "Where are my guns?"

And I said, "Your guns? I don’t think that’s a good idea, your guns."

He said, "Where are they?"

I said, "That’s OK, I’ll take care of them."

Then he went on to something else and I got his guns and hid them. Then about an hour later he said "Where are the guns?"

And I said "I’ve taken care of them, they’re fine."

And he said, "If you don’t give me the guns I’m going to throw this boot through that window.".... there were bay windows across the back that overlooked Kezzar stadium.... "I cannot give you the guns" I said. And he took the boot and he threw it through the bay window, shattering glass everywhere.

I went into shock.

And there was some kind of box on the floor, and I got up onto that box, and Hunter was standing there and I got up on the box and I just scraped my nails down his face and I drew blood, actually. I was just so scared and so angry. I just clawed him. All that had to happen was for him to throw that boot and it went crash and I went wild.

Then he decided that he was going to get on his motorcycle and go to see our friends in Sonoma, Bob and Terry Geiger. They lived fifty miles away.

COMPILER'S NOTE

Can I just say that that is one pretty fucking amazing story. In the one place and at the same time we have the haight! but not just the haight but rather haight-ashbury in its absolute fucking prime! furthermore, hunter s thompson, AND the jefferson airplane and FURTHER MORE hunter s thompson’s first FIRST actual ACTUAL fucking ACID TRIP! The guns, the screams, the horror scene that unfolds, that’s just to be expected of course; a by product of the environment. But the actual content, the actual setting in the first place- un fucking believable. The book ‘hunter’ by e jean carrol is among the most interesting & informative books I have ever eaten. urp.

The White Rabbit

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S Thompson.

My attorney was in the bathtub when I returned. Submerged in green water - the oily product of some Japanese bath salts he’d picked up in the hotel gift shop, along with a new am/fm radio plugged into the electric razor socket. Top volume. Some gibberish by a thing called "Three Dog Night," about a frog named Jeremiah who wanted "Joy to the world."

First Lennon, now this, I thought. Next we’ll have Glenn Campbell screaming "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

Where indeed? No flowers in this town. Only carnivorous plants. I turned the volume down and noticed a hunk of chewed up white paper beside the radio. My attorney seemed not to notice the sound-change. He was lost in a fog of green steam; only half his head was visible above the water line.

"You ate this?" I asked him, holding up the white pad.

He ignored me. But I knew. He would be very difficult to reach for the next sixteen hours. The whole blotter was chewed up.

"You evil son of a bitch," I said. "You better hope there’s some thorazine in that bag because if there’s not you’re in bad trouble tomorrow."

"Music!" he snarled. "Turn it up. Put that tape on."

"What tape?"

"The new one. It’s right there/"

I picked up the radio and noticed that it was also a rape recorder-one of those things with a cassette unit built it. And the tape, Surrealistic Pillow, needed only to be flipped over. He had already gone through side one- at a volume that must have been audible in every room within a radius of one hundred yard, walls and all.

" ‘ White Rabbit,’ " he said. "I want a rising sound."

"You’re doomed," I said. "I’m, leaving here in two hours and then they’re going to come up here and beat the mortal shit out of you with big saps. Right there in the tub."

"I dig my own graves," he said. "Green water and the White Rabbit . . . put it on; don’t make me use this." His arm lashed out of the water, the hunting knife gripped in his fist.

"Jesus" I muttered. And at that point I figured he was beyond help- lying there in the tub with a head full of acid and the sharpest knife I’ve even seen, totally incapable of reason, demanding the White Rabbit. This is it, I thought. I’ve gone as far as I can with this waterhead. This time it’s a suicide trip. This time he wants it. He’s ready. . .

"OK," I said, turning the tape over and pushing the "play" button. "But do me one last favour, will you? Can you give me two hours? That’s all I ask- just two hours to sleep before tomorrow. I suspect it’s going to be a very difficult day."

"Of course," he said. "I’m your attorney. I’ll give you all the time you need, at my normal rates: $45 an hour- but you’ll be wanting a cushion, so why don’t you just lay one of those $100 bills down there beside the radio, and fuck off?"

"How about a check?" I said. "On the Sawtooth National Bank. You won’t need any ID to cash it there. They know me."

"Whatever’s right," he said, beginning to jerk with the music. The bathroom was like the inside of a huge defective woofer. Heinous vibrations, overwhelming sound. The floor was full of water. I moved the radio as far from the tub as it would go, then I left and closed the door behind me.

Within seconds he was shouting at me. "Help! You bastard! I need help!"

I rushed back inside, thinking he’d sliced off an ear by accident.

But no... he was reaching across the bathroom toward the white formica shelf where the radio sat. "I want that fuckin radio," he snarled.

I grabbed it away from his hand. "You fool!" I said. "Get back in that rub! Get away from that goddam radio!" I shoved it back from his hand. The volume was so far up that it was hard to know what was playing unless you knew Surrealistic Pillow almost note for note, which I did at the time so I knew that "White Rabbit" had finished; the peak had come and gone.

But my attorney, it seemed, had not made it. He wanted more. "Back the tape up!" he yelled. "I need it again!" His eyes were full of craziness, unable to focus. He seemed on the verge of some awful psychic orgasm . . .

"Let it roll!" he screamed. "Just as high as the fucker can go! And when it comes to that fantastic note where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that fuckin radio in to the tub with me!"

I stared at him, keeping a firm grip on the radio. "Not me," I said finally. "I’d be happy to ram a goddamm 440-volt cattle prod into that tub right now, but not this radio. It would blast you right through the wall- stone-dead in ten seconds." I laughed. "Shit they’d make me explain it- drag me down to some rotten coroner’s inquest and grill me about,. . . yes . . . the exact details. I don’t need that."

"Bullshit!" he screamed. "Just tell them I wanted to get higher!"

I thought for a moment. "Okay," I said finally. "You’re right. This is probably the only solution." I picked up the tape/radio- which was still plugged in- and held it over the tub. "Just let me make sure I have it all linked up," I said. "You want me to throw this thing in to the tub when ‘White Rabbit’ peaks-is that it?"

He fell back in the water and smiled gratefully. "Fuck yes," he said. "I was beginning to think I was going to have to go out and get one of the goddam maids to do it."

"Don’t worry," I said. "Are you ready?" I hit the "play" button and "White Rabbit" started building again. Almost immediately he began to howl and moan... another fast run up that mountain and thinking this time that he would finally get over the top. His eyes were gripped shut and only his head and both kneecaps poked up though the oily green water.

I let the song build while I sorted through the pile of fat ripe grapefruit next to the basin. The biggest one of the lot weighed almost two pounds. I got a good Vida Blue fastball grip on the fucker- and just as "White Rabbit" peaked I lashed it into the tub like a cannonball.

My attorney screamed crazily, thrashing around in the tub like a shark after meat, churning water all over the floor as he struggled to get hold of something.

I jerked the AC cord out of the tape/radio and moved out of the bathroom very quickly... the machine kept on playing but now it was back on its own harmless battery power. I could hear the beat cooling down as I moved across the room to my kitbag and fetched up the Mace can . . . just as my attorney ripped the bathroom door open and started out. His eyes were still unfocussed but he was waving the blade out in front of him like a man who meant to cut something.

"Mace!" I shouted. "You want this?" I waved the mace can in front of his watery eyes.

He stopped, "You bastard?" he hissed, "you’d do that, wouldn’t’ you?"

I laughed, still waving the bomb at him. "Why worry? You’ll like it. Shit, there’s nothing in the world like a Mace high- forty-five minutes on your knees with the dry heaves, gasping for breath. It’ll calm you right down."

He stared in my general direction, trying hard to focus. "You cheap honky sonofabitch," he muttered. "You’d do it, wouldn’t you?"

"Why not?" I said. "Hell, just a minute ago you were asking me to kill you! And now you want to kill me! What I should do, goddammit, is call the police!"

He sagged. "The cops?"

I nodded. "Yeah, there’s no choice/ I wouldn’t dare go to sleep with you wandering around in this condition- with a head full of acid and wanting to slice me up with that godamn knife.

He rolled his eyes for a moment, then tried to smile. "Who said anything about slicing you up?" he mumbled. "I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead-nothing serious." He shrugged and reached for a cigarette on top of the TV set.

I menaced him again with the Mace can. "Get back in the tub," I said. "Eat some reds and try to calm down. Smoke some grass, shoot some smack- shit, do whatever you have to do, but let me get some rest.

He shrugged and smiled distractedly as if everything I’d said made perfect sense. "Hell yes," he said very ernestly. "You really need some sleep. You have to work tomorrow." He shook his head sadly and turned back toward the bathroom. "God damn! What a bummer! He waved me off. "Try to rest," he said. "Don’ t let me keep you up/"

"I nodded and watched him shuffle back into the bathroom - still holding the blade but now he seemed unaware of it. The acid had shifted gears on him; the next phase would probably be one of those hellishly intense introspection night mares. Four hours or so of catatonic despair; but nothing physical, nothing dangerous. I watched the door close behind him, then I quietly slid a heavy, sharp angled chair up in front of the door knob and put the Mace can beside the alarm clock.

The room was very quiet. I walked over to the TV set and turned it on to a dead channel- white noise at maximum decibels, a fine sound for sleeping, a powerful continuous hiss to drown out everything strange.

OTIS COOK-

A HIPPIE ODYSSEY

Written by Lee Heater

painfully extracted from:

Play Power

by Richard Neville

‘I had been in Korea with the US army. I didn’t know anything about dope or things like that. When those hippies started at Laguna beach I picked up a hitch-hiker, a long haired guy about nineteen or twenty, and he rolled a few jopints. I had my first experience with dope. It was beyond words.

‘I went to a love-in in Los Angeles. I was walking around on two capsules of acid, when someone handed me a joint. I walked over to a bunch of drummers. I passed the joint around. Next thing I knew, some of the cats sitting there weren’t flower children; they had flowers in their ears and beatnik clothes but they were cops, and they hauled me away.

‘I was going to play the game and go to jail but I was friends with a lot of people down in the canyon. They had a thing gong up in the mountains where you could take acid with no one bothering you. Well I went with them, took some mescalin and walked around getting stoned on the birds and the bees, picking up pretty things. Then we all lay down on a rock and they started reading from Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Prayer Book. He has published two and I want to put in a plug for both of them. I didn’t understand at first, but he says if you do anything wrong in the beginning, everything you do would be a conspiracy against yoursefl, and I believe with that book and the right mescalin or acid you can experience beyond your five senses. I went through lots of different changes... It’s fantastic when you get exclusive with nature. You really get close to something. You never stop enjoying your movie as long as there’s breath in your body. My lawyer told me that he couldn’t get me off. I was on a few charges of various kinds. I didn’t want to play games with them in their cubby holes. It was more important to find myself. So I told Kathy I had decided to split. She said "That’s cool." I got a visa for India, because my Brothers of Eternal Love in Laguna told me I would find my guru there.

‘In Hong Kong I bought some ginseng root, the purest thing in the world. It glows in the night. Eaten over a period of twenty one days it is like taking acid, only a body purifier as well. It is very rare. The guy in the shop didn’t think I had the money for it. I went next door which looked like it hadn’t had any customers for twenty years. They had it for 250 dollars. I went to the bank, and when I got back to the store, the whole family was waiting to see me buy the stuff. It was in a tin box. Inside the tin box was another old and wooden box and inside that was about thirty pieces of long sticks.

‘When I opened the box in Calcutta everyone in the hotel wanted some. You know: "I got a sick mother" and all that. Next thing I knew I was down to one piece. When I got to Katmandu I had to camp outside of town. There was a Danish camera man taking pictures. So I went to my suitcase and showed him the ginseng root and an Indian statue I had. I went to show him the tent and when I came back, the kids had broken the root up into little pieces and passed it around. It blew my mind. All gone.

‘I put my machine and all the records I had got in India, in the blue Tibetan restaurant. Everyone played it while smoking their chillums. After about two weeks of this the restaurant owner and neighbours got uptight. The restaurant opens at 10 am and could seat thirty, but the ones who got there first would just sit there all day and he wasn’t making any money. He would throw them all out at 10 pm and I would end up paying their bills if they had no bread. Well, it was a good trip. A friend said he would take me out of town to see the country side. I though it wsas meant to be a private bus but it tourned out to be a regular city bus. There were about thirty of us so I said why don’t we just rent it. We did and drove out to this place called Dhulikhel with tents and blankets. It was like a commune. One night we tripped on the idea of building a temple. In Katmandu there are 2,500 different temples and different religions, so every day is a holiday. We figured if we called out commune a temple, they might let us stay there. We had visas for fifteen days. After that they start looking for you. Katmandu is full of spies. They all knew where I was because an Indian newspaper had done a story on us building a temple. So they grabbed us and threw us out. They accused us of thievery. Someone had picked up some souvenirs from one of the temples and put them on one of the tents. That was just an excuse. I don’t know what their real reasons were, whether about drugs or what, I didn’t think about it.

‘All these officials came out to the camp, wanting to talk about me building a temple. So I turned to Paolo, this Italian cat, an artist, on acid every other day and said: "Hey, come and explain your temple bit." He said,: "Sure I’ll come" and we had a final blast on the chillum and walked up the hill to their little office, full of little men with glasses, shirts and suits. One said in English: "You have twelve hours to leave this country." I said: "You motherfuckers, you can’t see beyond your eyes. You don’t give us a chance to get accustomed to your country, just your selfish money." They said they were just following orders, but they’d take us to Katmandu to see about it, so I said all right, and we went- Paolo and me and this guru, a beautiful Nepalese- in a jeep with two policemen, and suddenly I had a feeling I’d never see the camp again. ‘This was it. I knew they were heading for the indian border so I ujumped off. Paolo put up a fuss too. They turned the jeep round and sarted into Katmandu, but I woudln’t go with them. I walked. Got rides. Ran ino several roadblocks. At one they chased me but I got through. I walked into the Blue Tibetan for my passport. I was really mad, cussing those Nepalese who were my friends but were actually spies, all the time, and doing their thing with the Government and getting paid for it. I was blowing my mind, not knowing which ones were cops. Eventually they came and got me. Three of them. I chuckd them off and threw one sideways. That was it. I had taken action so they weren’t going to let me get off. They started kicking and stomping It wasn’t a good trip. Tied up in chains and dragged through the streets. They were so frightened and paranoid. I put up a hell of a fight. I was in jail for ten days. Pretty good. They kept me loaded with hash. All the brass generals came and shook my hand, played thier little games.

‘Paolo and his wife had gone while I was in jail. I told him to take a room in a hotel in New Delhi and wait for me there... he’s not a hippie and took advantage of the situation because he stayed in the richest hotel with room service and I had to pay for it. He sold his camera to pay for souvenirs to take back to Italy while he dined at my expense. He was in the hotel for ten days before I arrived. I paid the bill. It was in the past. I had told him I would.

‘We went from there to Kabul. Paolo had an idea about going to see the Pope in Rome. It was just one of his trips. We wantwd to five the Pope everything that our camp represented- all the art work, the pictures, the souvenirs, Vuddha statues, scrolls. the tonka. We wanted to do this because the Pope had just gone on TV in America asking for peace. We were going to give peace to the Pope. It was Paolo’s bag, though. For me it was just a trip. I thought, OK, it’s as good as anything else.

‘While we were in Kabul I got a package in the post from friends in Los Andgeles. The brothers of Eternal Love, and it was just outasight. In the package 250 caps of Blue Cheer, so I though tI would give a party. It was christmas eve. We had it in a hotel and it was the most beautiful party you ever have seen. Everyone took the capsules. 150 hippies freaking out on acid at Christmas. Wow! In Afghanistan.

'Well we took off again on our way to Rome but the money ran out in Iran. I had this Nepalese bak draft for 2000 dollars but no bank in Iran would touch it. Now I had no money, Paolo and his wife left me. I dumpled all their stuff they had with me at the American Embassy, in hopes they would send it on to the Pope. That was end of that trip. All I had was a passport and no money.

‘When I finally cahsed that cheque the first thing I did was buy a casette, and twelve tapes. It was great to have money again. I hjad a pad in Copenhagen for the winter, with the Danish photographer from Katmandu. So I bought an air tocket. I knew I coyuld get dope there. In the plane I had m cassette playing some music. A Swiss guy asked me politely to turn it off. Then rthe streward asked me I siad I din’t see why I should. They got uptight about it. I turned it off. Then later I put on the tape and began talking into it. "I'm on an airplane aboiove the clouds, oon we will hear the wheels touching down." As we landed I said into it. "I’m gong to leave this on and tape me going through customs." It was just a trip. When I got off the plane I had it under my sleeve. I went towards the waiting lounge, not customs. There were two airline officials there, one a very nice guy.

‘I says "Which way do I go?"

‘He says, "Well, where do you want to go?"

‘ "I want to go home to God."

‘He says, "Well this is Copenhagen, Denmark, and this is God to us, you go through there."

‘I says, "Well thank you very much."

‘I went through this door and up to a little qindow, but before I got thee a door went sliding shut and I says, "Oh, you’re locking me in, huh?" They say, "This is passport control, your passport please?" I says "Outasight, outasight outasight," handed my passport over. They say, "Where are you coming from?" I says, "I just been roudn the world, I’m coming from San Francisco." He says, "I can see by your hair... you do not have a return ticket?" So I says, "Well I don’t need one when I’m coming home." He saus "This is your home?" "Yes, the whole world si my home" Well they objected to that. "Do you have any money?" I says "Money, do you want to see moneh?" By this time I was getting mad and I pulled out this 2,000 dollars whcih I had in traveller’s cheques and I said "Is this 2,000 dfollarsd enough or do you want 10000 more?" They kept throiwing this "Oh, so you’re a rich man" stuff at me and I really flipped out. I tore all the traveller’s cheques up.

‘They were needling me. At one ponit they were going to let me and in fact even started to open the door,, but when they seen the microphone he said "What is that there?" I said "It’s a microphone." he says "You’re recording this conversations? Turn that thing off." I said "Why?" He said, "You’re in a democratic country here, we don’t errecord your voice, so don’t record ours," I said "If this is a democrayxy I don’t want anymrpe of it." They said "Sit over there and we will see if you can be let in. After I tore tp the money tjey locked me up. I recorded hte whole thing. "They’r four police men taking me up the stairs, they’re puitting me in an elevator." One was the big chief who had denied me entry. In the elevator I says "First floor."he saus "Second floor." I says "Third floor." We go into a room. I says into the tape "Threes customs, four cops and one big cheese." He saus "Take eveything out of your pockets." I do and he says, "Give me that Machine." I said, "Oh, no you don’t get this away from me" He started wrestling for it so I shout, "I’ll give it to you, just let me turn it off." So that was the end of the tape. When the american consul man came down I played it to him and said "It’s because he didn’t like me and I didn’ted like him they refused me entry." He said "Tonight they’re going to put you on a plane and they are to fly you back to Zurich."

pg 196