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A toast to fear and loathing

By G.D. Maxwell The endless February sun, lowering in the sky, making its way toward the Tantalus in the distance, bore bright white holes through my shades and left my optic nerves numb and damn near blind. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

By G.D. Maxwell

The endless February sun, lowering in the sky, making its way toward the Tantalus in the distance, bore bright white holes through my shades and left my optic nerves numb and damn near blind. I couldn’t stop looking at it. Couldn’t stop wondering if it would ever again be obscured by snow-filled clouds. Couldn’t stop thinking the hundred and twenty centimetres of snow we’ve got – or two hundred and twenty depending on whether you favour the historic or marketing measurement plot – might be all we get in this Year of Missing Winter.

As the sun warmed my face and the tired rock ’n’ roll set the pace on Dusty’s patio, shots of golden Black Jack warmed my gullet. As a general rule, Black Jack is a drink I only favour in a wilderness setting. It is an unsociable drink, despite the best efforts of the company’s spinmeisters to reposition it as a kicky, urban swill. It is a drink capable of stripping away the last shreds of civilization a person clings to before losing consciousness. It is a drink that inevitably leads to an inability to form words, reducing the drinker’s capacity for communication to what Robin Williams once described as one long vowel movement. It is a drink best drunk far, far away from people, automobiles and firearms.

And lacking anything suitably pharmaceutical, it was my drink of choice to honour the passing of Dr. Thompson. If, like so many, you’ve avoided newspapers and newscasts since last November, unable to face the bleak reality of an ends-justify-the-means world, you may have missed the news of Hunter S. Thompson’s death. In a signature act of social defiance, the good doctor put a favoured firearm to his head Sunday and punctuated his final chapter. The legend of Woody Creek, Colorado is no more.

I was contemplating his contribution to both journalism and the culture of excess. I almost didn’t notice a hand reaching for the glass furthest left of the trio of Mr. Daniel’s finest set before me.

"Whoa, dude. Black Jack? This must be serious."

How ironic. For possibly the first time since I met him, the always unexpected appearance of J.J. Geddyup, Whistler’s first and still foremost private eye, seemed both appropriate and welcomed. I was speechless. Glad to see J.J.? It was as though the sun stopped, winked and started to arc back toward the eastern sky. As though the world began to spin the wrong direction. I spoke words I’d never spoken before.

"J.J., good to see you, my friend. Sit. Drink. Celebrate."

In a moment of uncharacteristic caution, J.J. hesitated. "You sure you’re okay, man?"

"Perfectly. Join me in a toast to the death of gonzo, the ascendance of intolerance… born-again drivel… a return to the good old days when men were men and nothing else really mattered."

"Happy to drink with you any time, any place, but you know I don’t share your warm sentiments for washed-up, doped-out, has-been writers. I mean, Thompson’s been a burnout for as long as our waitress has been alive."

"I don’t dispute the good doctor’s best work was well behind him. Don’t dispute he’d become a caricature of himself. And certainly don’t dispute he was certifiably… certifiable. But don’t, for a minute, deny the man his props. In an age of drab, polyester journalism, he changed the rules. Breathed life into a sleepytime vocation and wrote some damn fine, if totally bizarre, sentences."

"Whatever. You forget; while you were wallowing in his excesses, I was da man. Doing God’s work in the jungles of southeast Asia."

"The CIA is God? Christ, J.J., even for you that’s a little over the top."

"Yeah, must be the Jack. But you can’t deny the fact he took the loser’s way out. Suicide?"

"How else would you have expected him to die? I guess he could have blown himself up or overdosed. But let’s face it, he lived by his own rules. With his penchant for things that went boom and guns and drugs, I can’t imagine him choosing to just grow old and infirm and watch his vitality trickle away a little more each day. Besides, whaddya got against suicide. It seems like a reasonable alternative."

"It’s a coward’s way out."

"How can you say that, J.J.? How can deciding you’ve had a good life and you’re not particularly enthralled at the prospects of what lies ahead be considered cowardly? Hell, the last thing you have a chance to do well in your life is die. How can withering away to an incapacitated shadow of your former self, hooked up to all of modern medicine’s keep-the-vegetable-alive technology be brave? I think you’ve got it all backwards, buddy."

"So you think it’s okay to just decide life sucks and blow yourself away? That sounds like a really positive solution to problems."

"I don’t think it’s a solution to life’s problems. I thinks it’s a solution, and a valid option, for someone who’s staring the end of life as they choose to live it in the face. C’mon, J.J., the guy was hurtin’. He was spending time in a wheelchair and lookin’ at spendin’ a whole lot more time, possibly the rest of his life, in one. You’re an active guy. You’ve been an active guy all your life. What are you going to do if your body gives out before your guts decide to stop working? You gonna sit in a chair and watch reruns of Magnum PI? You gonna let some cute young nurse empty your bag and wipe your butt? Is there any dignity in that? None I can imagine."

"So you’d blow your brains out?"

"I’d like to think a less messy alternative might be available. But yes! Who knows? I don’t know the answer, J.J. No one does. We each have to search our conscience and decide whether that spark of curiosity that keeps us going is still there. It just pisses me off when people lay their own moralistic value judgment on what I consider a sane alternative. I read a lot of obits about Thompson that called his suicide a tragedy… horrifying… pointless. What a load of crap. The man made his own decision. He wasn’t any more insane than he ever was. How can we condemn his choice?

"I trust you’re not pondering this ‘sane’ alternative any time soon."

"Hell no, man. I’m going skiing. For as long as I possibly can. Maybe when I can’t anymore…."

"Good. Then there’s at least time for one more round."

"Maybe two. Maybe three. As long as you’ll toast to fear and loathing."