Fear and Loathing and Antihistamines

"O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent the evils I have done: Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did Would I perform, if I might have my will; If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul."

-Aaron, Titus Andronicus, Act V, Scene III

It’s the day after Kurt Cobain died, and I’m not in Seattle. I sure as hell would like to be, but instead, I find myself sipping Neo-Citran in the back of a grey-white high school cafeteria, trying my best to alienate myself from the apes all around me. This is supposed to be a class, and I’m supposed to be a student, but for some reason, there’s nothing my temporary instructors can do. When I say temporary, I’m not being dramatic. In fact, the two people meant to look after all thirty-five of us for forty-five odd minutes are nothing more than interns. Music majors on ‘stages’ in order to fulfill a university assignment. One of them will end up as a no-bullshit teacher here in the year to come. Too bad it wasn’t the fun one.

The fun one (albeit a real ball-buster in class), Miss Hannity, was the one who let me off to get the cup for my “instant coffee” bag. As far as she knew I was simply getting money from my schoolbag, instead of stealing Styrofoam from the coffee and tea station near the cash register. And now, as far as she knows, I’m sipping caffeine, and not getting stoned on cough medicine as she looks down at me with a playful smirk on her relatively young face. She looks like one of us. We’re sitting across from each other, at the same beige-and-stained table. At least I think it’s beige, or used to be.

As I said, this is supposed to be a class. However, since the auditorium stage we use as a classroom was in use by someone far more important, we were sequestered to the prison-like cafeteria at the other end of the school to do absolutely fuck all for an hour. In her mottled, shoulder-length light brown hair and thickly rimmed glasses, she looks down to ruffle through her attaché. She picks out some work as I, from my own pleather backpack, take out Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and try to read. The noise from the other side of the room gets me, the white and the stains get me, and three pages in he sits down, and really gets me.

Allow me to clarify something: I am a sixteen year-old-girl. I enjoy reading and sitting and biting on Styrofoam cups. I like getting high. And of course I’m a spoiled, angst-ridden, alienated suburbanite who likes to be alone. QED, I had no intention of sitting with the teachers. It’s as simple as: I got my drink, found a spot, sat down and then came the fun one. How do I say no to ‘can I sit here?’ when the entire table on both ends, except for my spot, is free? I always could’ve said “No, I have about fifteen people reserved for especially this one, middle-of-nowhere, plastic bench.” But that’s far too fucking risky for 11:00 a.m. As Mr. Vonnegut would say, “So it goes.”

And so he sits down, opposite Miss Hannity, in front of me a few paces. Here she is in her hideously motley, chunky purple sweater, and here I sit in my In Utero t-shirt and busted All-Star high-tops, a Converse knock-off. And here he is, around five-foot-two at the most, in a suit and tie and polished black shoes, like he’s going to the fucking Château Ramezay. His head is a touch too large for his body, like Elmer Fudd with chestnut hair. His lips are thin and reddish-blue, surrounded by poorly shaven stubble, and his eyes are blue-grey, cold and watery and dull. He sits down in dyed lavender cotton and grey gabardine, and he greets only Miss Hannity.

I keep trying to read. I’m feeling drowsily, comfortably light-headed. Not giggly, not spacey, just tranquil.

As I nibble on the plastic cap of the cup, unable to pay any real attention to the book in my hands, she says to me,

“So how’s the coffee?”

“Urm…okay.” I’m still nibbling at the cup. He looks down in disbelief, his fluty voice full of shock and sanctimony, and his eyes, briefly, come to life.

“You’re drinking coffee?!”

“….yes.” I try to remain buried in the book, my eyebrow raised slightly.

“Wow…they sold it to you?” He sounds almost like a small child learning about mortality from roadkill.

“I brought my own. But why shouldn’t they?” I ask in a calm yet caustic monotone. He stutters for a moment, while Miss Hannity keeps to her work, her face bordering on inscrutable, just so I could tell she’s not trying to pay attention. The noise and garbage in the background is like white noise, and he seems ignorant of it, focused solely on the damn coffee. He tried to shut them up once, coming in. He failed, of course, and gave up.

“Well, because it’s a drug….and you’re a minor.” He reasons to me, satisfied.

“Dude, have you seen the other shit they sell-” I’m cut promptly by Miss Hannity, who suddenly springs to life again.

“So how’s the book?” She asks a tad desperately.

“It’s good. Hard to concentrate on, though.” He looks away from me, dead and dull, making an awkward coughing gesture. She looks directly at me.

“Yeah, yeah…it’s pretty loud, eh?”

“Yup.” I guess he decided to make peace with a stranger, so he asks me,

“What’re you reading?”

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, speaking of drugs.” I almost murmur with the same caustic, distrustful tone. The conversation becomes our own. Miss Hannity, visibly uncomfortable, having her work, severs her connection to us and continues with her papers.

“Never heard of it,” His face is a puzzled slate as he says this to me, “who’s it by?”

“Hunter S. Thompson.” I answer, almost sweetly, almost excitedly.

“Who’s he?” I begin to find his ignorance on the matter more comical than purely lame.

“He was a journalist. Pioneered Gonzo journalism?”

“Gonzo what?” Now he’s facing me, and I am the teacher.

“Gonzo journalism. It’s a type of journalism where the author has to seek his own story with its own goal. He has to research like anyone else, and be as objective on the reporting front, but he’s allowed to give his own perspective on the story all the way through.”

“Oh, like an editorialist.”

“Yeah, but not quite. A Gonzo writer has to seek a path and follow it to whatever answer he gets. So it’s different.”

“I see. So what’s this one about?” In my gut I feel one hell of a talk on the rise. I know this hunger, love this hunger. I calm my sweet tooth and let it loose,

“Well, Hunter is this journalist, right? And he’s supposed to go off to Vegas to some dirt-bike show. He’s given like three-hundred bucks for his expenses,” My elbow is leaning casually on the table as I say this, the book drooping languidly in the palm of my clasped hand. My thumb keeps me pressed on a part I can’t, in the din, focus on, and the adrenaline of the cause overrides the mild lethargy of the cough medicine. I look straight into him intently, “but instead he spends it on drugs and shit. He goes through Vegas, totally baked, on the search for the truth of the American Dream. It’s incredible. But anyway you should see all the shit – here let me find it.” I flip the book over to the back with a flick of the wrist, and bring it close to me, myself backed comfortably against the wall. He’s looking down with disdain, disillusionment. The back cover of the book, and one of my favourite parts, to say the least, reads like this:

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls...but the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

This is what I read to him, to which he can only reply,

“I think that’s very sad.” He looks on simply, with a vague hint of sanctimony and disgust in the way he carries his chin. I giggle slightly.

“I think it’s hilarious!” I offer.

“It’s not. Drugs aren’t cool, and anyone who does them is a terrible role model. But I can’t talk about this too much, or I could get in trouble.” He doesn’t even look at me when he says it; it doesn’t have to mean anything. Then I remember something.

“What about our greatest poets?” I say with a slight ball in my throat.

“What?” He turns back to me.

“I said, what about our greatest poets? Poe, Carroll, Cobain….they did drugs, lots of’em.”

“Yeah but –hey, who was that last one?” He puts his simple face back on.

“Cobain. Kurt Cobain, from Nirvana.” I feel more contemptuous than tickled at this point. And still he asks me, “who?”

“Uhh, he spoke to millions of young people with his music, helped start a generation...He died yesterday.” My voice, though sharper in edge, is still leaning more towards caustic than cruel. It’s a debate, and I could feel the energy in me, the heat and the anger and the verve. This is angry fun.

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” he says “How’d he die?”

“Shot himself, they say. But there was lots of heroin in his blood.” I reply emptily.

“Lovely.” He looks away again, satisfied. I feel the blood pooling in my cheeks. I’m not going to let him have it, oh fuck no.

“It’s not like that’s the point though. He wrote good poetry, something that’s hard enough to find. He and Hunter and all those other guys, at least they didn’t lie about their failings, they expressed them!”

“They exploited them,” he instructs me, in his suit and tie. And I’m willing to bet the highest he’s ever gotten was off kettle steam. “Those guys were degenerates and weaklings that used drugs to get ahead. And then they’d die. So they’re not that special. But I really can’t say too much on the matter.”

He never raises his voice as he says it. Instead he smiles an irritating, triumphant little smile and clasps his hands. He looks down on me, and his eyes are lifeless and reverent to another being. And so I take that for all it’s worth. And you can bet your ass I’m at least more than slightly vexed.

“Fuck, that’s not fair! And you know it too! Most people have some kind of vice, and most of them don’t impart anything. At least these guys had something to say, which has been more helpful to humanity than nagging ever has! And of course they died! Everyone fuckin’ dies! At least they left something better behind. It’s not like addiction was a central focus, and even if it had been how would anyone know anything about it if those guys didn’t say anything?”

He stares at me for a moment, almost bewildered. He has that small town look about him, that peasant look.

“Yes well”, he says without a smile this time, “It stills shows a weakness of character to fall into those kinds of temptations. So you better watch out, ‘cause if you’re not careful you could end up like your heroes. But that’s all I can say about that.” I’m thinking slightly that he was raised in a Puritan guidance counselor-run commune and spent a great part of his college years underneath a rock. I’m also of the opinion that he’s much older than the twenty-five-year-old he says he is.

“And get outta here? Good idea! Then I guess I’ll develop a real vice and get off my own high horse.” I almost mutter it, and it’s lost on him anyway. Right before the bell rings, I manage to say to him,

“And by the way, drugs didn’t kill Hunter. He shot himself!” I start to rise, backpack on, book in hand, empty cup in the other, and he says to me,

“Oh, sure. Look, I really hope we can discuss these things further. I’d really love to talk more about them.” I look him dead in the eye and say,

“If you can discuss them further,” He walks off first, with a look of mild amusement on his face. I hadn’t noticed, but I suspect Miss Hannity beat us both to the punch, and all traces of her are gone. And now he’s disappeared too.

“Unless fear so encumbers you.”

I toss the Styrofoam haphazardly into the large grey plastic garbage can by the corridor, and look upon the holy mess the apes left behind.

“Looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.”

And I take a walk to cool down. He won’t beat me next time.

“He’s the one, who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don’t know what it means, he don’t know what it means when I sing…”
-In Bloom, Nirvana