Walking with the King

Always with appreciation for striking ways to express things, the other night I had the great good fortune to run across the term that you see me using here as the title of this post.   I found it in "The Great Shark Hunt," a collection of some articles by the recently deceased King of "Gonzo Journalism," that fabled Kentucky Colonel of sorts, Hunter S. Thompson.   He was writing about his attorney who was so prominent in that  remarkable film, " Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which starred Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro and was based on Thompson's book of the same name.   

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" must've been an especially harrowing film to make, due to the subject matter but even more because of the tremendous contortions of their bodies and their minds that Depp and del Toro were called upon to make and of which they did such a great job while impersonating being strung out past belief on a huge assortment of drugs that no sane person would inflict on any of their all-important mental or physical systems, much less actually buy and carry around.  And also there was all the work that the property people had to do to set up luxury hotel suites flooded with noxious-looking water and every kind of debris.  But I guess all that was fun, too.

Because of his attorney and drug partner, Thompson narrowly missed  seeing the printing of "Fear and Loathing" getting cancelled at the very last moment.   Though something was worked out to avert that catastrophe, the publisher's lawyers recommended axing the book, not so much because of what you would instantly expect if you've seen the movie or read the book, as it was because of numerous libelous even if true statements that Thompson made about that attorney, who in real life was named Oscar Acosta and was known for going to the same sort of extremes to secure the legal rights of the Have-Nots in this world as he did in his mind extension habits.

That was high irony, because nobody was readier to be libeled by his friend than Acosta himself.  But when Thompson sought to save the day by flying down to Mexico to have him  sign a waiver, while Acosta was agreeable to signing on all other accounts, which included multiple admissions of felonies of many kinds that he had committed during their rampage of several severely acid-addled days in Las Vegas, he balked at going down in history in the book as being a "300-pound Samoan," when he was actually a 250-pound Mexican.

By the time that Thompson wrote his articles about O. Z. Acosta, having reached just about the age of Jesus Christ as widely shown spiked to a cross, and true to his word about the kind of thing he would do when he had reached that stage,  that barrister had met some forever unknown fate that caused him never to be seen again, probably in Mexico and much like the great novelist of the 19th century, Ambrose Bierce, and now more than twice Acosta's recorded lifetime has passed, and his most celebrated client also is no longer around, after having reached the age of 67.

That was  an incredibly long time for Hunter S. Thompson to have existed, for if even half his escapades that he describes are true. especially the ones that took place overseas in  Cozumel and Las Vegas, with his huge and incessant intakes of drugs, booze, and nicotine,  it's a miracle that he lasted that long.

I think I have the explanation.   It was sex, notably the near absence of it.

I saw some drug scenes up close at around the same period as Thompson's heyday, in the glorious 1960's, and to my observation, if men were present, so were women, always, and after one got high, the next thought -- and one that was considered to be absolutely essential to the experience -- was usually sex.   But in Thompson's work women are rarely mentioned, and sexual acts even less.  Consequently, if this was not some unlikely self-censorship to keep editors and publishers off his back as much as possible because of all the other misgivings they might have had about his views of things, he avoided at least the enormous wear and tear on the body and the soul that, like hard drugs, can accompany hard sex, what with jealousy, over-exertions, diseases,  and all the rest of the rigors involved.

"Walking with the King" was Acosta's term for being strung out on various dangerous drugs, most frequently LSD, for solitary periods of a week or more, during which he undoubtedly skirted the edges of total self-destruction and death.

I wonder if he came up with that expression himself, or whether it had already long been a part of the indigenous or the Spanish or the Mexican idiom.    Did it even go as far back as the ancient Greeks, while they were drinking their strong wine and imagining themselves coping with some decidedly fickle and unstable gods and goddesses?  However I think that "Walking with the King" is largely wasted on modern-day, death-calling drug trips.   It is imperative that that great expression be preserved and put to more meritorious and less ruinous use, such as serving as a title for a short story, a novel, a play, an article, or a weblog post.