"For Hunter"
by James Mulrooney
 
The most inspiring cult-personality figure of my life died tonight of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I bought a bottle of Chivas Regal, the most canned Budweiser you can buy at once, and a pack of rum-dipped cigars to write this for him. I have the bottle here with me, a bucket of ice, and I filled a large Rubbermaid with ice and the Bud and stashed that in the shower. The storm tonight rages on, delivering upwards of ten inches of rain, officially breaking the record for the most rain delivered to California for a year. Art Bell says the Death Valley desert is turning green. This is no gentle rain. It falls with a force and a vengeance we don't recognize as natural. Things are changing. The world is moving on and Hunter Thompson's gone.

Looking down the line, projecting our future based on the recent past and current status, Hunter didn't see anything worth waiting around to witness himself. This was a man who could handle himself. Even in the face of the monstrous and horrible things his finely tuned and properly adjusted mind revealed to him that most of us never saw, Hunter was up to the task of dealing with them in any way he saw fit.

He founded a journalism movement he called "Gonzo" that placed the author in the middle of the story, as part of the action; indeed, sometimes as the catalyst of the story itself. This was New Journalism. I was so struck by this idea that I adapted it as a world-view and embraced it as a lifestyle. Hunter wanted to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream in the true Gonzo style, that is writing on the fly, as it happens, no edits. He called Fear and Loathing a failed experiment in Gonzo writing because he had to work on it more later, after the fact. I have based my life on a failed idea of this man. Tonight, right around six o'clock in the evening, a bullet from one of his own guns, delivered by his own hand, ended his life.

I'm writing this for you, Hunter. You've left us behind and rejoined the Universal Mind and I am certain you were not surprised by what you found in that miniscule fraction of a moment between this world and infinity. I can well imagine the feeling of homecoming that you'd glimpsed again and again over the years. Here it is, finally, for you, and it's all yours. I hope that's why you did it. It's all the faith I have in me to well up for you. The shit's so flimsy these days, Hunter, as you know, and this thing you've done isn't making things any easier for anybody. Not for me. I was sad when Warren went and I loved him too. He's playing on my little CD player right now. But you, you're the man who grew himself a new liver when the old one wore out. You were Lono, the reincarnated dolphin king of the Hawaiian islands. You were a beautiful creature of purpose. I believed in you.

You were never one for the bullshit, Hunter. You didn't buy into this 2012, Mayan calendar, UFO mythos. You checked out well before all the hype built up to the frenzy that will amount to as much as the end of the world always has. You saw it all build up and dissolve to thin air for Y2K and instead of the otherworldy apocalypse of a Creator, we were instead delivered George W. Bush. This is a man you said made Richard Nixon look like a hippie. Your work made me a student of Nixon, Hunter, and through your work I developed a particular love of you both. You taught me how to love my enemy in a practical way, something that Jesus never bothered to detail. It's easy to mention something in passing and it's quite another to demonstrate over a course of a career. Your obituary of Nixon should be marked well in the history of the man. It was one of my favorite pieces of yours and a beautiful work of art.

I held faith in your perspective, Hunter. You spoke Truth with the capital T and it was so clear to you that you actually used the capital letter T. I knew this was no mere hubris on your part. You saw The Truth like no one else willing to put it down on the line. You could face any odds, and sometimes you did, as a gambler or a political junkie. You coined the term "Political Junkie" and you invented people, right out of thin air. Where were these people before Hunter S. Thompson? These vacuous pundits on CNN, Fox News? Where were they before HST gave them a reason to breathe, like a novelist invents a character? Are they not as shallow as a novel's ancillary character, these faces and figures on the TV? You let them off too easy, Hunter.

Good-bye, Hunter. I loved the world that moved in a new way because of you and I loved living in it. Your presence in the atmosphere, even when I couldn't read your thoughts, was something I thought I could feel and I gleaned confidence in the idea that some of our ideas bounced on the same wavelengths. Then, when I'd see you on ESPN or Rolling Stone and I'd become reacquainted with your views and ideas, I felt invigorated by your strength and determination. I felt I may lose and I may die having never realized my dreams but I was never a loser for having the faith and strength of what I know as True and I was never dead for whatever legacy I may leave in my search for Truth. Despite what you've done to yourself, I will always carry this for you.

"There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs," he wrote. "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."