Hunter and Me…

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By Bethany “BST2” Armstrong

I think I was around 10 years old when I first heard Hunter’s voice. My Mom was working 2nd shift at the hospital and my dad didn’t care how late we were up as long as we didn’t miss the bus in the morning.

My favorite thing to do was watch David Letterman in the dark, ready to turn it off and run to bed when mother got home. I liked because it was forbidden but also because the older kids on the bus were always talking about it.

When Letterman announced his guest, I very nearly turned it off. But then Dr. Thompson sauntered out in a tangle of limbs, a bandage on his hand, and immediately started answering Letterman’s questions in a million mile an hour mutter. Now I know he was probably taking all of the drugs, but then I felt a kinship with this “old man” whose mouth ran as fast as his brain.

Thompson came in and out of my life over the years. My dad thought he was cool, and my dad didn’t remark upon celebrities. I remember talk of Hell’s Angels and Thompson at the dinner table. I recall my confusion about Gonzo Journalism and how it was connected to the Muppets. I have the vaguest sense of seeing Hunter on 60 minutes or one of the dozen other news programs and being impressed with his quick wit.

In college round 1, at 18 and too young to know any better, my Literature Prof said I wrote like Thompson. Disjointed, hard to follow, borderline vulgar, too many ellipses… bastard… I took it then as the insult it was meant to be… now it is a badge of honor.
The more I read of my dear Dr. Thompson, the more I see a talented, crazy-genius or genius-crazy human content to live by his own moral code. I recognize the disjointedness coming from a mind that thinks faster than it types. I see the drug use as the self-medication of a mind riddled with trauma and moving too fast to control.

I’m attempting to read my wayward scribbles. Listening to my Hunter playlist like I always do when I’m typing an article or working on my book or researching trauma. It’s made up of the songs I know Hunter listened to (and oddly enough ones my prudish parents sang to me…) and the current songs I think he would enjoy based on what I know of his balls-to-the-wall personality. Every single song on the list slows my brain enough to type my thoughts without losing them to the abyss, the edge.

Like Hunter before me, I’m currently camped out in a two-bit motel trying to earn some coin… scribbling furiously on the motel notepad or napkin or whatever else is handy when an errant thought enters my mind. Most of my writing this week has been in the bathtub with a rag shoved down the drain since they don’t seem to have plugs any more. I wonder how many motel notepads Hunter used, abused?

I wonder what Hunter would make of Trumpelstilskin? How he would view the state of our union? Most importantly, how would he view education? The toppled structure, the rotten system, that made it so easy for the elite to exploit the masses…. He called it in Fear and Loathing in America with his Hammerhead piece.

“In 1995 the standard text high school history books will not say that America in the 1960s was ruled and effectively gutted by a gang of cheap thugs who also happened, for reasons of political necessity, to be Mass Murderers. The history books will not say that Lyndon Johnson was more vicious than Mussolini and more stupid than Hitler” I was a sophomore in high school in 1995. Was Thompson more prophet or prognosticator?

“These dirty truths will not appear in the history text of 1995. The hired fixers will take over just as soon as this undeclared war is unofficially finished – just as soon as the last shark is called off and brought home for an angry rest. And not one of these blood-hungry Hammerhead scumbags will ever be nailed to the final whipsaw judgement they all deserve.”

In 1995 he was too right… now… we’re becoming “woke” as the kids say. We know that the stories we were taught as children about our founding fathers were a lot of bullshit. Most of them were right bastards. We know the pledge of allegiance is hypocrisy at best and a prelude to at fascism worst. Most countries don’t have a repeated oath of loyalty forcibly taught to children. We know Columbus wasn’t a hero. We’re slowly passing these lessons in 2020. But is it too little too late? Only Hunter may know.

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