I've been thinking about Hunter S. Thompson's suicide.
His friends and admirers have been describing his decision to commit suicide as the logical, perhaps inevitable act of a man who was determined to control his own destiny.
A few years ago, I began a short story with: "Melissa Jaffries pondered her mind's image of Ernest Hemingway cramming the business end of a shotgun into his mouth and pulling the trigger which -- for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction -- probably vacated his brain from his skull in a New York minute and, like toilet paper spitwads, most likely mucked-up the walls and the ceiling of that bedroom in Idaho with the most god-awful mess one would ever want to see or, indeed, even imagine. "But, then, one would never want to see something like that, would one?" she asked, smiling at Gertrude, her red-ribboned Calico; smiling at the absurd notion that death was Hemingway's final frontier which he quite deliberately intended to conquer before it conquered him. She had determined that one could never really conquer death; one simply slipped into it by accident, deliberately, regretfully or furiously, depending upon luck, health or psyche. No, Hemingway hadn't conquered death. He was just dead. Period. No great, final, symbolic statement to the world there, Ernest. Just fucking dead."
And, I've got to say that's how -- at least for today -- I feel about Hunter Thompson's suicide. The guy was probably so fucking drunk or high or both at the time he pulled that trigger that he probably didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
And, by the way, I thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was for shit. Truly, for shit.
But, that's unfair, isn't it. The man's dead, for heaven's sake. (It was for shit, though.)
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You know, I've suddenly realized (yes, I know, most of you have understood this for a very, very long time) that the day a sitting President of the United States is reelected, he is immediately a lame duck. Politicos really don't have to kiss his ass as deeply as they had before he won reelection ... witness just a wee bit of Republican dissention over Dubya's social security bamboozlepalooza; witness just a wee bit of moderate Republican disconcertion with Dubya's and DeLay's embarrassingly obvious suckass machinations (feels good, huh, James Dobson, Archbishop Chaput) with the Schiavo tragedy. (God, please, let that dear soul pass!)
**
Vignette - Ronnie Coombe
Ronnie Coombe, apartment 3C, who is in middle management at a downtown Denver investment firm, steps from the shower and towel dries himself while still standing in the bathtub. He has called in sick to his work, "Fuckin' flu, man," and has arranged to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe stands about five-six, blond hair, emerald green eyes, well-defined musculature, slightly bowed legs. His thirty-three years do not show physcially; he appears to be no more than twenty-four. But, if one is able to get Ronnie aside and listen to his soft-spoken, serious story about the way it was in Viet Nam; about the blood and deaths; about the American soldiers high as kites traipsing around the green muck of Southeast Asia with known futures of lost legs or severed spinal cords or mangled arms or. "...gettin' your balls shot off, man or losin' your ass, man, just havin' your ass blown off your body..." Yes, if one is able to get Ronnie off to himself he will tell you about the way it was and that he is not as he appears. He has seen hell and has flirted with the devil himself.
But, today, Ronnie Coombe is off to see a man about a horse.
Ronnie Coombe grew up in west Texas, on the hell-hot, dry and stingy earth where the color green was as rare as a cool breeze in July. But, it was there that Ronnie began to understand that the most beautiful, precious thing about that inhospitable existence -- and, perhaps, about the world in general -- was a horse. And, horses he had had. His father had kept no less than six horses on the ranch. And, from shortly after the time Ronnie had mastered the art of walking, he was on a horse. Always riding. Always loving the strength, the giving strength of the magnificent animals which he not so much rode as became one with.
"My horses got me out of the war whole," Ronnie would tell those of us who had managed to get him alone. "When the shit was flyin' in Nam; when you knew there wasn't any fuckin' way you were gonna live through that shit, man, I would just let my mind go and, in my mind, I would climb on Bingo or Blackjack and I would fly; I would fly through that fuckin' mud and grime; fuckin' bullets and artillery whizzin' by my head and I would get out of it, man. They would take me out of that shit. Every time, man, Bingo or Blackjack would just carry me away."
Ronnie Coombe buckles his belt, grabs his keys and heads out the door of Apartment 3C to see a man about a horse.
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