Hunter S

after riding with the hell’s angels, running for sheriff of pitkin county in colorado (speaking on the “freak power” platform---from which he swore that if he won---he would tear up all the streets, replacing them with newly sodden, “never take mescaline whilst on duty,” and legalize all drugs to be used solely for the purpose of recreation), & climaxing his life in the epic saga of fear & loathing, along with his faithful cohort (and attorney)--- none other than the brown buffalo himself---hunter s. & oscar packed “2 bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, 5 sheets of high- powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and 2 dozen amyls,” no doubt sending the both of them reeling into a frenzy that was sufficiently documented in his most famous book. but it must have been during his time spent trying to uncover the “reasons” for hemingway’s suicide, that he himself started to think about his own mortality, as well as the extent to which he would continue to write, before illness or writer’s block (amidst anything else that springs suddenly upon us) would inevitably destroy his ability to express himself. it wasn’t long before all this actually happened, and at age 67, hunter stating in what his family regards as his suicide note---aptly entitled “football season is over,” he stated that he had lived 17 years too long---at age 50 he had become boring & old. unlike hemingway, who had been locked away getting electroconvulsive therapy before being let out into the world deteriorated & destroyed two days before he put his favorite shotgun’s barrel in his mouth--- hunter had thought long and hard about his decision beforehand. he was on the phone with his then-wife, anita, when he ended it. here was a man who lived by his own rules & no one else’s---whose energy so explosive & interesting, could only have lasted as long as it had & not a moment longer. in being ahead of the curve, & in being full awareness of the utter shortness of being (“being” defined as those years that the individual in question understands to be valuable to them), he blew out his own flame. whoosh.