Editor's Note: This investigative article originally appeared at the Far Gone Books site. It is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.

Author's Note: This article originally appeared in the March 1991 issue of Fling.

I remember very crisply my introduction to the cult of Hunter S. Thompson. Having already broasted the front side of my body under a thin ozone layer one warm August afternoon in Santa Barbara, I traded my beach chair for a friend's towel, so I could lie on my stomach and read from an orange and blue paperback, which had him laughing so hard he could barely hit off the joint we were trying to finish before the locals came begging around. Ralph Steadman's insane sketching on the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had sucked me right into the rented fire-apple convertible, and into the giddy vortex where Dr. Thompson lives.

Later that afternoon, like any obsessive-compulsive personality, I drove to Earthling Bookshop and cleaned out their supply of Thompson works, and began reading to the extent that I neglected basic human contact for as many weeks as it took to exhaust the six pieces of stone-madness. I became a True Believer, an historian, a collector--most likely a huge bore--emerging from literary hibernation and bringing Dr. Thompson with me to work, to parties . . . home to the folks for Thanksgiving. Dad was a bit miffed. He suffered through the introduction to The Great Shark Hunt, shaking his head spasmodically, and handed the book back to me, muttering, "Well, it isn't James Michener."

No. It is not. Hunter S. Thompson is a special breed, a variety of which will not likely be replicated in the near future.

And so, when Herr Doktor's agent informed me of an impending "nightclub act" at The Strand, in Redondo Beach, I was genetically enthusiastic. I was also a bit apprehensive; the scattered reports emanating from similar gigs, from people I trusted, were not real . . . positive. The first ugly feedback came from a girlfriend of mine, who had gone to see the Doc do his "Gonzo thing" at UC Santa Barbara. The outlaw journalist, she said, staggered onto the stage and proceeded to suckle from a bottomless flagon of Wild Turkey, alternately raving and mumbling in a uniquely demented fashion, until he was booed off the stage by a band of angry preps feeling cheated out of their twenty-dollar cash drain. The other, less reliable, report came from a tainted source, and had something to do with Dr. Thompson, G. Gordon Liddy, a mound of white powder and a blow-up doll--but the story was too disturbing to want to verify, and so I'll have to take my gentleman source at his word.

I jogged across Pacific Coast Highway, after eating dinner at a rustic little ptomaine palace called the Bull Pen, and positioned myself as near as I could to the Doc's stage-table. Looking around, I was struck with the respectable outward appearance of most of the crowd--like any you might see at a Manhattan Transfer concert. I laughed nervously at the thought of well-dressed ladies paying $21 a shot to see, by his own admission, the most depraved and degenerate figure in the history of American Letters. And I was suddenly overcome with a newfound revery: I understood the perverse thrill that keeps the good Doktor from otherwise staying home at the Owl Farm, with his peacocks, to a crippling agoraphobia.

LADIES . . . AND . . . GENTLEMEN, WOULD YOU PLEASE WELCOME DR. . . .HUNTER . . . .S . . .THOMPSON, THOMPSON!

"Gonzo!! . . . Gonzo!!"

The audience has become frantic. The self-described Heavyweight gonzo Champion of the World is led onto the stage by one of his beautiful young assistants--more like someone reluctant to be lowered into a pit of adders than a man confident of his universally-sanctioned title. He is a tall fellow, with the gangly physique of a longshoreman far gone into serious yoga, and he jerks and twitches in a spastic kind of kinetic motion, which gives him the appearance of a brutish marionette. A pair of grey-tinted shades shield his dilated pupils from the painful glare of the spotlights. I can hear him repeating to his assistant: "You're going to have to help me . . . I'm blind as a fucking mole up here."

I could feel sorry for Hunter--for, oh, five or nine seconds--until he lifts a quart of Chivas from out of an ice bucket and pours himself a healthy glass on the rocks, and I remember, once again, that this man has had more excitement and adventure and pure notoriety than the Beach Boys, Marco Polo, and Jim Jones put together.

This is a man who talked football with Nixon, drank beers with Jimmy Carter; who covered the first Ali/Spinks fight for Rolling Stone and won all his bets. He raises high-altitude peacocks near Aspen for relaxation, plays shotgun golf on his own hundred acres: a man who calls himself "The Champion of Fun."

"Well, shit, I'm only an hour late," the Doc grins from behind his shades, and taps the microphone against the table--to see if it works--and nods as it reverberates in a nasty "tthhap!" throughout the club. "It's a nice feeling to know you're not going to have to register yourself as a Sex Offender at the airport. I can handle a lot of things, but Sex Fiend isn't one of them." He thinks for a second. "Even fiend wouldn't be that bad, but a Sex Criminal is kind of degrading."

Sex & Drug Bust

Last year's sex and drug bust is still fresh in Thompson's mind. And even though all eight felony counts were eventually dropped--including possession of 39 hits of LSD, and assorted sticks of dynamite and blasting caps--the pain of an ugly trial lingers on. Seems an unwelcome visitor had come to Thompson's Owl Farm one lonely evening last summer. "Gail Palmer," he says, with emphasis. "A real pig. Really. Does anyone remember--"

"Candy Goes to Washington!" yells a man in the audience.

"Yes! Yes! That's it. Smart boy, wanna come up here?" Thompson nods eagerly at the empty chair at his table, but the man opts against the honor.

Tthhap!!