This first installment, though, was—along with “Fear and Loathing in Elko”—Hunter’s last extended, evocative narrative; a surreal, gimlet-eyed inside view of the culture of a sport, as he put it, “for the filthy, aggressive rich,” with guest appearances by the ghost of Averell Harriman as well as Belinda, the “all-knowing, dissolute slut horse” who is the sport’s mythical, four-eyed goddess.
Letter from HST to JSW
Woody Creek
ROD & GUN CLUB
HUNTER STOCKTON THOMPSON, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR
July 13, ’94
Dear Jann,
Here is a quick memo on the story ideas we discussed on the phone yesterday. (which is not to say that my Concept of doing extensive PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS) on a few of the Finest Motorcycles on the American Road in the Nineties was a failed & flawed idea ... It has several built-in guaranteed Fun Factors, as in: 1) ELEGANT MOTORCYCLES on loan from the factory for me to test-drive all summer, and 2) Writing about them will be Fun to write and Fun to read, and 3) It would establish RS (or MJ) as a fount of high-end MOTORCYCLE CRITICISM—not only from me, but also from other ranking experts)
And I might do business with regard to the fee . . .
Right. And now back to POLO and MANDATORY SENTENCING—both of which are do-able without massive expenses or long-term grief.
I will count on you for research help on the M/S piece, and I see the POLO gig as a sort of Adventure Story: HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION, ETC. . . . ME AND RALPH GO TO POLO PRACTICE & DISCOVER THE MEANING OF LIFE. (I can start on this one today (Wed 7/13), and Ralph will be here next week—for a summit meeting on the nature of our Final Assignment—and you know how he loves Polo. He can’t get enough of it . . .
And neither can I—because now I must immerse myself in the living, prancing, preening Human Context of a Preterhuman world of speed, money, and passion ... “Polo Is My Life,” which I can finish by Christmas, once I get my staff/support system in place.
As a matter of fact I think I can send you a few chapters of “Polo” by Labor Day, now that I finally have time to work on it, and a professional reason to hang around Polo practice with the big-time Argentines & their sloe-eyed trophy bimbos is precisely what I need to get myself in gear.
R.S.V.P.
Hunter
HST
Letter from HST to JSW, September 22, 1994
Garden City Hotel
Please help me
I’m sick
Dear Jann,
Here is a nine (9) page running start on our Polo Project and The Nature & Fate of Democracy. Note Polo Was My Life. Details enc. You’re welcome.
Tobias will have a clean copy to you before ten. He has been a big help in many ways & I think we should give him a raise ... Corey should be fired. He went crazy out here with a sex doll & almost got me evicted . . .
Bob Love is nutty as a fruitcake if he thinks we’ll have 20 real pages on this thing by “the end of the week.” The BIG GAME is not until Sunday, & I’ll be a victim of Rigor Mortis by then.
The U.S. Polo Open is the dullest spectacle since Boss Tweed died of old age with all his children watching. They were forced to, and the death took many weeks.
That is how I feel now, in this horrible morgue of a hotel. I will flee to the city tomorrow, or maybe tonight. My book has moved up to No. 13 on the NYT list and my daily expenses have increased accordingly. I can no longer live on this meager $200 a day Per Diem. [sic]
Okay. Let us speak. Later.
HST
*** I think this one should go as a Memo from the Sports Desk. We would be fools to try to bloat it up to 15K words.
Polo Is My Life: Fear and Loathing in Horse Country
December 15, 1994
Queer for Power, Slave to Speed. . .Adventures in the Pony Business
Arms, my only ornament—my only rest, the fight.
—Cervantes, Don Quixote
I
Polo meant nothing to me when I was young. It was just another sport for the idle rich—golf on horseback—and on most days I had better things to do than hang around in a flimsy blue-striped tent on a soggy field far out on the River Road and drink gin with teenage girls. But that was the old days, and I have learned a lot since then. I still like to drink gin with teenage girls on a Sunday afternoon in horse country, and I have developed a natural, friendly feeling for the game.
Which is odd, because I don’t play polo, and I hate horses. They are dangerously stupid beasts with brains the size of cue balls and hoofs that can crush your whole foot into bone splinters just by accidentally stepping on your toe. Some will do it on purpose. I have been on extremely mean and stupid horses that clearly wanted to hurt me. I have been run against trees by the bastards, I have been scraped against barbed-wire fences and bitten on the back of the head for no reason . . .