June 3, 2011. Thanks, Hunter

...

Will and I walked east on Route 30 at midnight. Both of us in sunglasses. The streetlamps seemed a mile apart, and thru the tinted plastic of our shades seemed to swim in root beer. A quarter moon ducked in and out of the clouds like a child lost in a carnival. We hadn’t seen a set of headlights in half an hour. So we walked straight down the double yellow line. In my back pocket was a weathered paperback: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson. I’d read it cover to cover several times and had even highlighted a few of the especially frantic, drug-addled passages. We walked for miles, talking. About girls, books, people we knew, skateboards, teachers. It was 1980. And we were sober. Not so much by choice, but more by lack of opportunity. But we had Thompson with us. A small reassurance that the teachers and the jocks and the cops did not have all the answers. Not quite all the power. Reassurance that one could still go crazy, could drop acid at breakfast, then drive over gas pumps at 30 mph in reverse and get away with it. For two high school boys with no car, no drivers licenses, suburbia can be like prison. No place to go, nothing to do. No girlfriends to kiss and fight and worry over. We spent hours at the local diner, catapulting sugar packets across the table with our teaspoons. Flirting, badly, with the waitress. Dreaming of road trips, 3-day drunks, desert skies. I’m not sure even we knew what we wanted, other than out. Out of our parents’ houses, out of suburbia, out of a future that seemed to amount to a rusty chain and a steel desk. Somewhere, we knew, Thompson was out there: cigarette holder gripped in his teeth, aviators on, driving across the desert as if all hell were chomping at his tail lights. For tonight, Thompson was our way out. We ordered another slice of pie. Sent another sugar packet into the air. And waited our turn.

Comments

[Andrew]

I read that book. Not in general -- that exact copy.

[Charlie]

LOL. Right, you did.