Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Page 45
Ok, that’s about it. Number one I would like to know about pretty quick. Two can wait, because I have full confidence that I will always have plenty of material for good shots.
Let me know as soon as you can.
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO BILL WILLIAMSON, BRAZIL HERALD:
Stone broke in Peru, Thompson appealed to the editor of the Brazil Herald.
From the extra bed in the flea-ridden hotel room of …
… Hunter S. Thompson
August 3, 1962
Lima
William:
[…] I recently arranged with the Observer to go from here to Mexico City, then across the Caribbean and down to Rio via the Guianas and Recife. Fortunately, I am too broke at the moment to even consider such a thing, so I will proceed as planned from here to La Paz to Rio. It will involve a mad, headlong, poverty-stricken rush across the continent. I have a panama hat and 200 pounds of excess luggage, so the trip should be a killer. It cost me $38 simply to get my gear from Guayaquil to Lima, via Panagra. It goes without saying that I have taken my last plane in South America, at least until I can deposit some of this worthless junk.
If Rio is no better than the places I have visited thus far I will beat a hasty retreat to the north and write this continent off as a lost cause. For the past month I have felt on the brink of insanity: weakened by dysentery, plagued by fleas and vermin of all sizes, cut off from mail, money, sex and all but the foulest food, and hounded 24 hours a day by thieves, beggars, pimps, fascists, usurers, dolts and human jackdaws of every shape and description. If these are Pizzaro’s ancestors you are goddamn lucky he never got to Brazil. All this time I have had in the back of my mind an unreasoning certainty that Rio is a decent place where a man can sit in the sun and drink a beer without having to put on a frock coat and carry a truncheon to ward off the citizenry. If this is a delusion I will probably have a breakdown when I arrive and the Embassy will be forced to ship me home like an animal, with “No Dice” scrawled across my passport.
At any rate, your note was the only ray of optimism I have found in as long as I dare remember. My last communication from Bone was a letter threatening my life, I believe, and the rest of the mail has been no cheerier. I will be here long enough to divine the nature of Peruvian politics, then push on to La Paz for a bout with whatever diseases are currently fashionable in that country. After that, I face the 2-week train to Rio, which should just about finish me off. If there is an Alms House in Rio I trust you are on good terms with the proprietor, so I can enter without delay.
Until then, I remain, yours for the broadening aspects of travel,
HST
TO PAUL SEMONIN:
Disappointed by Lima, Thompson nevertheless wrote one of his finest National Observer articles there: “Democracy Dies in Peru, but Few Seem to Mourn Its Passing.”
August 4, 1962
Lima, Peru
Niggerboy:
As I recall, my letter from Guayaquil was done in a fit of drink, and since there is no chance of that happening now, I will try to explain some of the things that I didn’t say too well.
It alarms me to think you may come over here on my say-so, because I am not sure myself just what I think. One sure thing is that since leaving Colombia, which is a good country in a lot of ways, I have been getting steadily more depressed until I am seriously beginning to wonder if my personality is being undermined. As a matter of fact, every place I have been except Cali, Colombia has been a pure dull hell and full of so many nagging discomforts that I am tempted at times to write this continent off as a lost cause. Lima is the worst so far; I have done nothing but sit in my hotel room, which is like something on the main street of Flora, Illinois, and smoke. Now and then I go out to eat or to be snubbed at the Embassy. I have spoken to no one except the AP man in four days. Perhaps I should say I have talked to no one; there is a lot of talking done here but it means absolutely nothing—in a way that makes it an easy place to write about, because all you have to do is line up all the facts, note how they refute everything you are told, and simply ignore all the shit people ram in your ears. And the facts line up very simply. They made a show of having free elections here, a queer won, the army didn’t like it and the army took over. The fact that the army and the bankers are still very much on speaking terms sort of speaks for itself. The only ones who think democracy is going to work here are the people in Washington—and perhaps the U.S. Ambassador who was virtually drummed out of the country when he voiced his displeasure with the takeover. He is now in Washington too, and will probably stay there. Meanwhile, business goes on as usual.
That may give you an idea of what I mean when I say you can learn a lot here. (They are throwing rocks at the window again; it is driving me into a black rage but in my weakened condition I dare not go into the street and tackle a pack of thugs drunk on pisco.) The machinations of politics are so obvious and the types of people are so extreme that you understand very quickly how life works. The grey areas are so extreme that you understand a lot more about the U.S. but it is not simply that I have got away from it geographically but in a lot of other ways as well. Maybe Spain is the same way, but I am sure France and England and Germany and Italy are not. What I mean here is that people down here have not the faintest idea what I’m talking about. If they have a sense of humor it focuses not on the ridiculous or even the improbable, but on the sadistic. Frankly I have seen no evidence of any sense of humor at all; I have heard them laugh like hell all the while. I am beginning to think that my coming here is like an Abolitionist going to the Old South and trying to communicate with the people there. And considering the relations between the indians and the wealthy (there is no other group) I think the comparison is fairly apt.
Frankly, I don’t like the bastards. Nor do I like the Americans I’ve met down here because they go to extremes to ape the locals, explaining that “it is the only way to get along in business.” Naturally, the only Americans down here are businessmen. Occasional reformers, but they don’t last. As I probably said in my last letter, I have not had human contact since William Kennedy in San Juan.
All in all it has been like being in jail and I think I am beginning to crack under the strain. I note a wailing, paranoid tone in my letters, a complete lack of anything like vitality or a decent feeling for life. None of which I have, of course. I am so goddamn wracked by dysentery and several other heinous diseases that for the past three days I have not been able to leave the hotel due to constant vomiting, shitting and dizziness. I finally hauled my ass to a doctor and spent all day in a clinic getting tested, jabbed, poked and all the other tests that rotten specimens are given. The report will come on Tuesday and I fear it. Meanwhile I am trying to write a story on Peruvian politics but it is rough going when I cannot think clearly. And with rocks clattering off the windows. I hear a woman’s voice in the hall now and it nearly breaks me down with lust. Having my sex life cut off is probably the worst of it. Or was until recently, anyway, when I was cut off drink indefinitely. Also off pepper, spices and fried foods. This is my second drink-stoppage and since that was my only pleasure I am not sure how long I can stand up under it. For the first time in three months I have been able to get tobacco—at $1.25 for four ounces. I cannot drink the water, the milk, the beer, or anything but mineral water. Nor can I eat anything but maize and unpeppered meat. Vegetables are out, of course. The whole continent is covered with indian shit and everything that grows is poison. Beware everything, that is the motto.
These are the things that make it impossible for me to enjoy anything, even if there were anything to enjoy. It compares very favorably to the way we were received in St. Louis that ugly time. And if you can imagine that sort of thing dragging on for three months you can understand how I feel and why I am nearly at the end of my rope.
On the other hand, I am trying to resist the temptation to go into a funk and quit because I know it cannot be as bad as it seems. To begin wi
th, I have three drastic handicaps: 1) my knowledge of Spanish is still almost nil, 2) I keep moving from one place to another and never have time to sink into a place, and 3) I am forever broke to the point of madness, and in this economy that is disaster.
It seems to be possible to live with the natives over there, but here it can’t be done. They are unbelievably primitive. I have tried and that is reason one for my present condition. Nor can a poverty-stricken man live with the white people; he simply can’t afford it. So I am stuck somewhere in between with no company and I’m getting damn tired of it. I have not met a soul on this continent who was not either desperately poor or making $150 a week at bottom. Now that I think on it there was one exception in Bogotá (a Fulbright lad) and one in Cali (a Canadian teaching English). Also two young Americans in Barranquilla, but that was for 3 days and they were hardly wad-busters. The others are spiritual [J. P.] Morgan trainees, and for that matter the majority are real bankers.
I retain a mad faith that Rio is better, primarily because I have heard it is bad from people who would not know a good thing if they swallowed it. I have also had a good exchange of letters with the editor of the paper there, saying flatly that I need not worry about money although he is not sure where it will come from. But he sounds hip and the atmosphere is at least that uncertain and besides he says it is cheap even by my standards. Perhaps it is just these rotten indian lands that are this way. Colombia was different, although I did not have enough sense then to appreciate it. I have begun to have a great belief in the effect of climate on personality. It has held true 100% so far and that is one of the few things that moving fast can tell you. Lima, for instance, is the gloomiest place I have ever seen with the possible exception of Bogotá. The guara is on the land and has been here since May; they say it breaks in October or November, but that doesn’t do me much good. It is hard to believe this town could ever be anything but gloomy. Maybe if I could find a white girl even to chat with over mineral water it would not be so bad. As it is, I don’t talk at all and it is frightening what this kind of living can do to a man.
None of this does you much good, of course, since I doubt you’ll be getting to Lima anytime soon, even if you aim this way instead of niggerland. I hesitate to recommend it, yet I intend to stay down as long as I can stand it. Rio will be the boom-or-bust point. If that is bad I will have to give up in spite of my firm conviction that there is a lot to be learned here, and—for somebody else—a lot to be done. I suppose I will look back even on Lima some day as a good and worthwhile episode where I got a little closer to seeing life as it is. But it is hard to see anything when your eyes are bloodshot and your cheeks are hollow and your bowels are rotten and your head spins when you get up and your prick is falling off and you barely have the energy or even the inclination to get out of bed in the morning. That is exactly the way I feel.
I think Bone is going to Rio to work on a CC [Chamber of Commerce] magazine. It is something that editor mentioned to me while I was in New York, and I passed it along. Bone wrote several weeks ago saying it had come through. I give you that for what it is worth, as far as pondering your move is concerned.
As for me, I hope to finish this story in the next few days, and if my health permits, shove off by bus and train for La Paz. I think I will have enough money to get there, and if the Observer pays quickly for the Lima thing, I will then have enough to shove on to Rio. That is a two-week train journey, and it should just about do me in. What I think I need more than anything else is a chance to settle in where I at least know somebody, and act like a human being for a change instead of a traveling stenographer. And to recover my health, which I had never lost before this, and let me assure you it is a hellish thing to contend with not only on the physical side but more on the mental. This letter, plus my last, will undoubtedly provide ample evidence of my mounting hysteria and general inability to focus. I am having to work hard as hell to keep it from showing up in my journalism.
Hah! Exhibit A—the thing I had in mind when I started this letter was to tell you I was canceling that swing up through Mexico and the Carib. Here I have rambled three pages and not mentioned it. Anyway, it’s off. I haven’t told the Observer yet and am a little worried on that score, but in my present condition I could no more undertake a thing like that than I could swim around the Horn. So I hope to be in Rio by September 1, probably in rotten shape but with things looking up. I hope. (It is a good sign that I remembered to say this; maybe my brains are warming up.)
There was no mail when I got here (another thing I’d meant to say earlier). They had forwarded it either to Guayaquil, as I requested, or to Quito, which I didn’t request, or they had sent it back as unclaimed (at which point I nearly shit)—but they couldn’t remember which, and didn’t much care. Embassy people are shits; Consulates are better—that is a rule. Anyway, I didn’t get your earlier letters. Nothing from Hudson either; I wrote him today, demanding to know his plans. When you write, use the New York box; at least there is hope there.
Hunter
TO PAUL SEMONIN:
After spending a week in Ecuador writing National Observer pieces, Thompson landed in Bolivia exhausted but in good spirits. A letter from Semonin was waiting for him at the U.S. consulate in La Paz.
August 28, 1962
La Paz, Bolivia
Paul—
Yours arrived today, jack, and I’m going to whip this one off in hopes of catching you before shoveoff time. Fat chance, considering the fucking mails here. Your hideous pansy envelope almost prevents me from answering—yet I was encouraged by the rich paper and all appearances of a new t-writer ribbon. You must be working for the govt.
I for one see definite humor in the rape of nuns.18 And while we are humoring, I would advise you not to laugh too hard at those who rank themselves by how far they have wandered in search of work—nor at scavengers, for that matter. We are all members of one another, eh?
For my part, I am about to be dismembered here in the Andes for the issuing of ugly checks in a far-off town called Lima. They are trailing me like golf balls, coming low and hard on all the walls. In a phrase, I have fallen from grace. That being a pun of sorts, because the Grace Company19 has been backing me in the check-cashing business and suddenly we are all stung. I have, in short, over-extended myself.
I was also stung, quite literally, by a poison bug in Cuzco, which paralyzed my leg and put me in great pain for 3 days—not to mention the awesome doctor bills. When they get a gringo down here, they really get him. I support most of the medicos on the continent, and those in Brazil don’t know what a good thing is coming their way. I am trying to get out of here on the jungle train, but the hotel won’t take my check so I can’t leave. I just sit in the room and ring the bell for more beer. Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously. Frankly, reality here is too much to handle. I have given up politics and have publicly declared myself an anarchista, which has contributed heavily to the making of new and foreign friends. I am at last cracking the language barrier, using sex as a wedge and drink to dilute the ignorance. Next is the Santa Cruz, which is supposed to be the Cali of Bolivia, which means I will probably never get to Rio. (Cali is the Valhalla of Colombia, which in turn is the Valhalla of South America.) La Paz is good enough, fine sun and snow-capped peaks all around. I am sitting at 13,000 and the snow runs up to 23,000. Electricity is rationed and I have to go up five flights of stairs on one leg to check my mail at the embassy, where they have no elevators and are working by Coleman lanterns. Bolivia is not quite real, but they have good beer and white girls and, god help us, a sense of humor. All the Brazilians I have met have been zanies, to use your (and Mencken’s) term and I am looking forward to it if I can ever scrape up the loot to pay this awful hotel bill. Now that I am finished with Ecuador and Peru things are picking up. Both should be dynamited into the sea. I am thinking of ordering a barrel of lobster sent down from Maine and giving a reception in Santa Cruz, courtesy of Do
w-Jones. The Grace jefe [boss] here is a good friend of Barney Kilgore’s, and Barney is jefe of Dow-Jones. I was treated well until the golf ball story was published. They are sweating, though, because they have vouched for several hundred here, which I spent on drink and native gimcracks. Send word to Rio, and keep loose over there. I think the testicles are descending. Hello to Africa. I remain, con bombas, HST
TO CLIFFORD RIDLEY, NATIONAL OBSERVER:
At last Thompson arrived in Rio de Janeiro, where he would stay until May 1963. Ridley had written to him that his National Observer articles were winning high praise throughout the journalism community. Although not on salary, by the time Thompson arrived in Rio he was selling the National Observer regular stories.