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Last weekend Henry bought a paperback copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s book, The Hell’s Angels, at a yard sale in his Key West neighborhood. As he hands 65 cents to his neighbor, an older woman, she says,
I found the book in the garage, it looks horrifying, is it a Steven King novel? Henry chuckles saying,
yeah, Stephen King on acid.
What some call the outlaw saga began in the late forties in Southern California when numbers of stray, World War 2 veterans who championed sex, booze, and Harleys, banded together into antisocial groups with handles like, Devils Disciples, Satans Brigade, Banditos.
Bonafide card-carrying bikers, not weekend warriors, are spurred on by their desire to be part of the— emotionally aloof, unrepentant, maniacal, freak free, on the edge 1 percentile.
In 1965 Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation hired Hunter S. Thompson to write a story that morphed into a book about the Hells Angels motorcycle club in California.
Hunter, who was just 28, researches the book the only way he knew how— throwing himself into the early biker scene and riding with the Hells Angels for a year on his BSA because he couldn't afford a Harley.
Everything, (I mean) every fucking thing, has been written about Hunter, so (I want) to pen an original sentence here.
The Hunter S. Thompson thunderclap was ignited by sparks of neuron to nerve messaging— a serotonin rush pounded out with measured doses of dopamine.
Hunter's lifeblood flowed from his ever-churning mind not his daily regimen of intoxicants.
His legendary use of booze, dope, Dunhills, grapefruits, and fondness of pyrotechnics was an embellished myth, spawned at the Owl Farm— Hunter's home and sanctuary in the hills of Aspen.
L u m b e r i n g, on doMed caps cinnamon GLUCOSE::'' & floWer buDS . . . ; ' ' ,'; Alice, most everyone is mad here. i t's A b ea u t i f ul , bE A U T I FULL mess, . ..';;
Henry finishes reading The Hells Angels in forty minutes, it’s ll AM in Key West. He ventures out of his study to the kitchen where his Cuban wife and their lover Summer Wynd are finishing off a pot of coffee as they pass a joint around. Lucia tells Henry,
baby come to Dog Beach with us.
Yeah, OK.
Leaving their dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, they walk out the back door of their bungalow stepping into the jungle as they call it, an inky and overgrown area with bamboo, banana trees, ragged palms, and strange unclassifiable creepy-crawly vines threatening to overtake their house.
Nude in a flash, they jump into a wooden hot tub that's spritzing water and making witchy hisses. Sitting knee to knee, feeling cozy as they play handsy, touchy-feely, find the weeny, nipple tug-a-lug, then having tantric sex— a Hindu teasing game where you can touch and titillate for an eternity, but you're not allowed to screw.
When the jungle festivities end, the girls change into their world-famous thong bikinis, wrapping up in frayed 2XL Oxford shirts, and throwing masses of girly junk into Lucia's large Gucci bag. Then, Summer Wynd oils and braids Henry's long hair Native Indian style.
Outside, the tribe piles onto their Vespa scooter, Lucia drives as the others hold the Chis, Che y Mia, and their pet bird, Pedro the woodpecker follows airborne.
Ten minutes later they're at Dog Beach, where they get off the scooter, park, and rent beach chairs and large umbrellas from Jimmy's Strandhaus at the entrance of the beach.
After walking in the sand a short way they find an open spot that feels right, then positioning and planting the chairs and umbrellas in the sand.
The girls take off their baggy Oxford shirts, showing off their class A thonged bodies, bending to brush sand off their legs, and spraying olive oil on one other— all the time knowingly posing for the turned-on gawkers eyeballing them from every angle. Finally settled, Lucia looks over at Henry saying,
baby, run across the street to Louie's and buy three plastic buckets of Rum Cocos, and be sure to ask for long straws.
He does as he’s told, walking a short distance to Louie’s Alley Bar, ordering buckets of Rum Cocos, rumored to have a hint of cocaine extract mixed in because they are blended with the Cuban soda Matera, not Coca Cola.
After making the drinks the bartender wraps the plastic buckets with Saran Wrap.
Back at Dog Beach, Henry hands the girls their drinks, then, they poke the long straws into the Saran wrapped buckets, lipping the straws and sucking in deep gulps of the magnificent bubbly concoction.
The Chihuahuas rev their tiny engines as they run V8 patterns in the sand. Pedro the woodpecker perches in a high palm, glassy-eyed, dreaming of long ocean flight as he watches seagulls fly.
While the girls pass a joint back and forth, chatting, Henry amuses himself shadowboxing in the sand— a dripping with goo flashback reminiscent of the beach scene ending of the film The Shawshank Redemption.
Andy Dufresne the man who was wrongly imprisoned escapes the joint crawling through a river of shit and coming out clean wearing a dazzling white suit on the other end of a drainage pipe at Paradiso Beach in Acapulco— Hollywood hoodoo at it's best.
As the sun sets Lucia's sitting in her beach chair 100 miles from Cuba, feeling light-years away as she wonders about her mother and which camp follower Fidel is fucking tonight.
With nine buckets of Rum Cocos under their hoods collectively, the short Vespa ride back to the bungalow is shaky, but they make it home without hitting the pavement.
Sitting at the kitchen table, they dip chips into homemade clam dip as Summer Wynd orders Mexican food on the phone.
Henry goes to his study to write a bit on the LA newspaper columnist, Ollie Good.
Ollie Good was born on Chicago’s Gold Coast across the highway from Lake Michigan on July 3, 1951, at Sheraton Hospital.
His earliest memory was the advent of consciousness as he opened his eyes in his mother's womb. This, nothing special— no trumpets blaring, rattling bones, or fanfare. Just, a dull metabolic existence where the biggest thrill was the occasional glucose rush.
Eventually, late one night, a large hand holding forceps resembling two large spoons invades his mother’s uterus, clamping on his pliable skull. This, a lousy experience like being pinched when you didn't ask for it, accompanied by feelings of dread and loss.
Suddenly, he's plucked from the womb head first into worldly reality, blinded by artificial light, feeling culture shock and pain, unable to get his visuals straight, looking at a blurred and twisted world.
Two years later, Ollie Good's a toddler living with his mother Cherry in a two-bedroom Lake Shore Drive apartment on Chicago's Northside.
His old man Buddy's a good ole boy who spends most of his time on the road, selling lady's underwear to nickel and dime shops in small towns across the Midwest.
Cherry, a stay at home housewife, would take little Ollie for rides in his stroller on the lakefront every day, but one day something peculiar happened.
After leaving their apartment building, they cross Lake Shore Drive on a pedestrian bridge leading to Lake Michigan. She pushes Ollie's stroller on the sidewalk to the beach, turning onto a cement walkway that runs out into the lake, rolling a short distance, and parking.
As she lights a cigarette she sees her girlfriend, Shelly, and they begin chatting, ignoring Ollie who frees himself from the stroller, walking to the edge of the concrete breakwater.
Little Ollie stares into the lake, feeling pulled by something familiar, impulsively jumping in, gaging on the smell of dead fish, and bobbing up and down in the water like a cork.
As the current pulls him down he loses his breath, lapsing into unconsiousness.
While unconscious he sees amber light at the end of a cone-shaped tunnel, then seeing human-shaped shadows grouped above the clouds and hearing gentle voices urging him to come forward to the Upper Room.
When he opens his eyes, he's lying face-up in the sand. The lifeguard who pulled him out of the drink is hovering over him, looking like a half-made up clown to little Ollie because his red suntanned face is smeared with zinc oxide.
As his mother's busy signing paperwork and chatting with the lakeshore beat cop, Ollie rolls over, stands, and runs at baby speed into Lake Michigan because he wants to go back to the afterlife.
In a New York minute, his mum runs to him, sweeping him up and carrying him to his stroller where she straps him in.
Later, in winter, Cherry's pushing Ollie's stroller lakeside. Suddenly he screams as the frigid wind, known as The Hawk in Chicago, slaps him in the face.
The Hawks' mighty blow pummels any thoughts of the afterlife out of little Ollie.
Today, Ollie Good works as a contributing writer for the LA Free Press and teaches Transcendental Meditation and astral projection.
