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Thompson’s persona
only a sideshow

Hunter S. Thompson and I didn't hit it off when we met in 2002 at the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel. In fact, I apparently grated on his nerves something fierce because, when not sipping from among the half-dozen beverages laid out before him, he repeatedly pleaded, "You've got to settle down" and, I seem to recall, "shut up." In other words, it was what I gathered was a fairly normal sit-down with the legendary gonzo journalist and semiprofessional dabbler in pharmacopeia.

I was happy to sit quietly and sip my beer (I declined the human growth hormone nasal spritzer being passed around the table) and listen to him reflect on life and politics. I was just happy to be there as any writer of my generation would have been. My only regret is that I wrote a rather snotty column about the meeting, having fallen into that trap of trying to be as cool as the guy you are writing about. I regret that column now, even though Thompson apparently was not bothered by it, mainly because he never read the thing.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was required reading for aspiring writers in college, and pity the poor professors who had to slog through our pitiful attempts to mimic Thompson's style. I secretly believed that his propensity to ingest a mind-numbing menu of pills, potions and draughts was merely myth, a way to shock a bunch of Cuban Missile Crisis, post-Vietnam, Cold War babies who weren't easy to shock. But then again, I had one college professor who made smoking marijuana a compulsory part of the curriculum, so who knows. Maybe Thompson's life was a trunk-load of pot, coke, speed, LSD and God knows what else. He sure looked the part when I met him. Forget drugs -- I was surprised that he could drink gin, scotch, champagne and coffee all at the same time, which he was doing.

BUT TO FOCUS on his carefully manufactured public profile of excess is to miss the point that he was a hell of a writer. Every sentence was fun to read. And he was politically incorrect before anyone knew what that was.

Before I left that liquid lunch with Thompson, I gave him a yellowed copy of "Painted Veils," the infamous 1920 book by James Huneker that critic H.L. Mencken called "an absolute riot of obscenity." Coming out as it did at the time of the Comstock book-banning laws, Huneker's book had to be published as a private edition. Huneker was the Hunter Thompson of his day, exposing the dark underbelly of the ruling classes.

Something happened when I handed Thompson that little paperback reprint, which originally sold for just 35 cents. He seemed genuinely moved. Although we didn't "hit it off," I felt we had shared just a moment when he knew that I knew that behind his boozy veil he was up to serious writing business. Then he put another cigarette in his holder and lit it, told me to settle down and took a sip of one of the several glasses in front of him. I thought of that moment when I heard of his death two days ago. It would probably annoy him to hear this, and it's extraordinarily sappy to say it, but I'm happy just to be able to say I met the man.