According to Pitkin County sheriff's records, a friend of Gail Palmer--a long-time associate in the porno industry--reported that Thompson had held a gun to the woman's head, while trying to force her into his hot-tub. The Doktor disputes the allegations: "Would I really need to do that to get her to fuck me?" But the assistant District Attorney took the call seriously enough to dispatch a squad of officers to the Owl Farm in Woody Creek.

"The police spent eleven hours in my house," he mutters. "Eleven hours in a man's house. I guess that's what happens when people get the idea you're not . . . well. I'm surprised they didn't find more drugs," he giggles. "I hadn't cleaned my house for twenty years."

Indeed. The relationship between Hunter Thompson, sex, and strong chemicals is so intertwined that, at this late stage in his life, the triumvirate becomes impossible to separate. He is a man fond of forming oblique associations, having spent his formative years writing about "an unholy trinity of God, Nixon, and the National Football League"--a bizarre combination which produced such Gonzo classics as Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72; and Fear and Loathing: At the Superbowl. But Thompson, Rolling Stone's erstwhile National Affairs Desk editor, packed up and left politics for the good life around 1976. No more cardiac arrhythmia in Washington press briefings; hello O'Farrell Theatre.

The Night Manager

Hunter Thompson took up residence in San Francisco's Chinatown, in a suite "with wrap-around balconies and a deep Ginzu bathtub . . . where the management brings me eggrolls every day." He became friends with the notorious Mitchell brothers, who took the journalist/hedonist on as Night Manager of the O'Farrell Theatre, the Carnegie Hall of Public Sex in America. Thompson became a friend to the lap-dancers, to the suppliers of dildos and ben-wa balls, cavorting at night with a head full of amyl nitrate and a heart full of hate for everything traditional under the Republican sun.

[According to Thompson's agent, the Doc will be covering Jim Mitchell's upcoming murder trial for Rolling Stone. The elder Mitchell is being held without bail following his February, 1991, arrest less than two blocks from brother Artie's Contra Costa home where police found him walking, a rifle in one pant leg, and a pistol strapped beneath his jacket. Artie Mitchell, meanwhile, was lying dead of multiple gunshot wounds.] [Fahey's note, 1/20/96: Hunter Thompson, it turned out, did not cover the trial for RS.] Rolling Stone has never given up on its often-reluctant star writer. After nearly four years of hibernation, during which time Thompson and publisher Jann Wenner wrangled hotly over the mojo wire, then-editor Terry McDonnell reached into a grab-bag of assignments and pulled out a plum scandal of sex and drugs so irresistible that Thompson, in March of 1983, went outside once again to write A Dog Took My Place--a blistering account of the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce trial, replete with tales of Palm Beach orgies, wanton coke snorting, and even bestiality. Thompson got immediately into character, chauffering beautiful topless lesbians around Palm Beach in a rented convertible, sniffing the Dumb Dust off the dashboard, and smiling brazenly at police, whom he called "the security guards of the rich and shameless."

"I was in that mood," Thompson wrote [somewhere; Fahey too lazy to chase down the reference]. "Whoop it up with the rich for a while . . . Nevermind the story. It would take care of itself."

It was Hunter Thompson's newfound reputation as a Player in High-Life that brought a letter to the Owl Farm from one Gail Palmer, the former porn-slut-turned-producer. Answering the letter was a mistake, Thompson says now, which would cost him time, money, and almost his freedom. The nine Felony counts totaled 54 years in a federal prison--a death sentence for the 52-year old writer. Feeling the burn, Thompson went out and hired some of the best lawyers money could buy, and turned the case into a media spectacle. In the end, they broke Gail Palmer, who refused to aid her own prosecution attorneys, and the judge tossed the case out.

"They say I touched her chest," Thompson moans ruefully. "I guess you shouldn't push a woman, except from the back." And the evening goes on.

The crowd yells "Nixon!! Nixon!!"

"There's plenty of time for that," he grins, looking at his assistant for the time, and then fills his glass with fresh whiskey and lights his trademark FDR-style tipped cigarette.

The Battle of Aspen

Thompson tests the crowd's intelligence, grilling them on his recent escapades dubbed "The Battle of Aspen" by Smart magazine [now defunct], which involved Thompson's alleged unlawful discharge of automatic weapons in front of the home of would-be Aspen developer/greed head Floyd Watkins. But the crowd fails miserably.

"I guess you're not into journalism," he chides. "Okay. I'll tell the story myself."

And he does: about how he tried to be friends with this "swine," and how it just didn't work out--especially not at the Jerome Tavern at Woody Creek, where the natives look to their guide as a sort of cultural divining rod. "Okay, so I was playing the fence and I fell off," he shrugs. "I said, `I just can't be friends with you anymore, Floyd. You're a pig and my friends are giving me a hard time.'"

A few nights later, the police report reads, Hunter Thompson lit up the sky over Watkins's property with a sustained burst from his modified AK-47. "The Language of the Full-Auto," he mutters repeatedly. "Different from shotguns or bombs. Some people only understand the Language of the Full-Auto. I kind of enjoy violence," the Doktor admits.

He is at home. The crowd cheers. "Free drinks after the show, Doc," yells a burly, rugby player. Thompson just grins.

"Gary Hart!" someone yells.

"What about Gary Hart?" Thompson wonders. "He would have been a good President . . . he just tripped over his dick."

· On Kitty Dukakis: "She was a really good advertisement for speed for twenty-six years."
· On Drinking Rubbing Alcohol: "They say the craving for speed is so bad . . . but it's not that bad."
· On Where the Buffalo Roam (in which Bill Murray portrayed Thompson): "The movie ate shit, of course."

Tthhap!!

"How many more minutes? Seven? Seven more minutes," he giggles, like a child.

"Hunter!"

"Yeah. Right there. You. Yeah."

"Do you think drugs should finally be legalized?"

"It's the only solution," he nods.

The crowd goes crazy.

He shrugs. "I think there will be an adjustment period. We'll lose about half a generation at first."