I'd missed this, this being an interview with Taibbi about how he saw Hunter S Thompson, can't think why, it's not as if I've been doing any maths. It almost made me want to go out and buy fear and loathing in Las Vegas for the umpteenth time. [Most of his other books lie around somewhere in this pit-hole of paper, lentils and books. In dire necessity I could lay my hands on them.]
Let's leave the fact that I don't own a book that I have bought many times to the side for a wee while shall we? And let's give this a yuletide theme.
I was taken with his statement that Hunter's embelishments didn't change the essential truth of what he was saying. So lying entertainarly might be as true, or truer, than the slap-head truth. Is this true, or perhaps I mean right?
So I looked at something that I'd written about a Christmas eve that I suffered exactly thirty years ago Monday. I'd link but it's on here and you can't link to individual posts so here it is...
Amateurs, don't get in tow with them.
It was christmas eve, actually it was now christamas, and I could see that we had trouble.
I'd made sequential mistakes: the white suit, the Hawaiian shirt, the LSD, but my major mistake was allowing people with cars to maroon me in deepest Morecambe. Fifteen miles from home.
True, we were in a mansion, with Porches in the driveway and we were lolling around a pool. But the drivers were now well pissed and I couldn't help but think that mummy and daddy were going to arrive home soon. Soon with much to say to the nubile daughters of the family and the posse of guys who's tongues didn't fit in their mouths any more.
Worse, the stupid prick that I'd arrived with had lost his jacket and it was minus four outside. He was going to usurp my jacket.
I was right, about everything, there was a terrible scene. Even worse than I'd imagined. I rather liked their dad, if I meet him again I'll punch him straight-off, because that's the only way that I'll ever win.
But I ain't no amateur, the whisky kept me warm. A nice twenty-year old Glenmorangie travelled home with me. I even managed not to clock the-prick with the bottle when he put up resistance to giving me back my jacket when he got home.
To be fair his mum did most of the work. She offered me soup, I waved my bottle in her face. It was clear who she blamed for this.
I woke the next day to a regret that I've woken to since. So I learnt nothing.
The above is mostly true, except it was a lot more squalid and teenager than that. There was no pool, there was no Glenlivet, there were sports cars--of the wanna-be spots cars type, dad knew everybody except me. He was berating teenagers who he knew and who had been rowdy before.
I was the only outsider, and when dad called me out he heard my accent and saw my square eyes; you are going to have to make my blood flow in copious quantities if you want me to back down. [Why that's so is another post]
So he cut his loses and drove everyone but Ian and I home. We all behaved like a pigs that night, Ian and I were the only ones who suffered badly.
It was awful walking home, the acid was wearing off, it was freezing, Ian was gibbering nonsense. The entire reason that we'd gone there was that he'd assumed that he was on a promise, he moaned. I had no drugs.
Then we got to his house, where I had to explain a ravaged-rat-shivering nonsense of, what was essentially a wee boy, to his parents. I knew his parents quite well, madly they trusted me. i saw that light die in their eyes.
None of this was my fault, Ian had made me do it because I didn't want to go, but, he, Ian, fancied a girl.
See! The truth is slippery.
And in case you are wondering why I don't keep a copy of FALILV, it's because it drives me utterly bammy, dangerously so. I have a terrible urge to go do drugs and just go ape.
Words have weight.
But whatever Thomson, whatever Nietchce, whatever Beartrix Potter said. Why do you believe them