This is the letter I sent to Nile Southern yesterday about Hunter. I also interviewed Hunter for Puritan Magazine and I wrote a 100 page illustrated letter to him that is called Shame Depravity and Lesbianism in the Twilight of a Dying Civilization. I wrote about 200 letters to Hunter over the past decade. I loved him very much as you can see below.

One of Our Own

Hunter's clairvoyant voice still runs over my hot line; I feel closer to him now than ever. Under the black ice Hunte's mind runs clean and cold, str8 off the summit; " Can I interest you in some Bolivian Flake?" I fly out for a last goodbye. The moon is bald. The Shaman has gone back where he came from. Drugs booze and Heyoka madness shoot up; sparks crack a little boy smile; electric fire.; Skins of pulverized wood carry Hunter's wine to the unborn. Letters skitter over the page; Gutenberg's industrial progeny: the undead.
Hunter's fresh sonic meat sure had a different taste. Words flowing from his living mouth Upper lip, like mine, a little long. Extra handsome. Only last month, after a good pause, he gathered the rhythm into his body, rocking back and forth, laughing softly, looking to his spirit guides, and then shooting back a real answer, "Straight across" into my own glad ear heart. Bourbon for punctuation; Happy jingle of cubes. High white and pretty.

I said, "AA,Hunter, AA.” He said, Don't bore me. The thing that scared me most was gambling addiction. I mean what the fuck is that? Some kind of Dostoyevsky shit. And then shooting at animals. And if you chastised him he gave you that sincere wounded look. He would burn me with cigarettes and then spend hours tenderly applying bacitracin He loved Burroughs to distraction- imitated and emulated him. Note: Joan Vollmer Adams died 1953 when WB attempted to shoot a glass off her head during a drunken spree in Mexico, missed, and shot her in the forehead) I'm willing to sacrifice my body for literature but just don't call me Dead Girl. In this drawing you see him holding a gun to my heart. The gun has no safety.
Mr. Thompson Mr. Grotesque Mr. Macabre Mr. Ridicule, Mr. Sex Violence and Death Mr. Right on Time murdered his own thinking machine.
“I think you dropped some thing, fella”
His style with women was
1. Give her total attention.
2. Make her feel more important than she ever felt in her life.
3. Palpitate the clitoris with expert care
4. Back rub
5 Ego melting doses of free alcohol,
6 Ask her sensitive questions
7 Listen with compassion
When subject begins to erode: - eyes half closed drifting to sweet dream of love.

8 Lean forward for a deep romantic kiss
9 Fill her mouth with Japanese speed and LSD.
10 Add: Physical grossness and torture
11 Until
12 She leaves

Berserk behavior obsessive compulsive videotaping, drugs sex power celebrity demonic possession: man I loved him who wouldn’t. The fireman had to clean up his brains and blood. The sheriff told me it was very gross. I am losing my loveds. Talking Leaves died on Sunday as a I skied my Hunter grief on Aspen Mountain. So it's been a good week for Death, that filthy bastard.

THE MEMORIAL

They asked me to sing at the memorial. That's some expensive jetset shit go flying around like that but what could I do. I got a ticket for 300 on price line and rented a car for 15 a day. With the skiing and the gas and everything else it still came to 500. I ended up sleeping at the Sunset Motel in Glenwood Springs$39.99. I took steam at YamPah Caves $12. Billion year old bacteria shvitz in the sulphurous mist. And if you listen hard enough, you can hear the voices of the Ancient Ones Saturday morning I drove up past Hunter’s house in Woody Creek and into the Rockies and did my own tobacco service. I practiced my song for the mountains. The hills sang back a voice, my voice greatly altered, but the words were clear. This comforted me. I ate smoked trout at Woody Creek tavern and drove to town. Parked next to the park and wiggled into the black evening dress in the rented Toyota. I put my accordion on my back and stumped over to the Jerome in my spikes. I saw Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray, Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Don Johnson, the editor of Sports Illustrated and ESPN, and many others. Photographers snapped my picture thinking I was a star. Doug Brinkley said Phoebe we want you to close the show with your song Hunter would have wanted it
Many were in shock and grieving. It was if the heart had been cut out of Aspen. Don Johnson was crying. He read Hunter’s gorgeous essay on Electricity. I looked around as he was reading and realized that the women in the room didn't get it. In fact there were not many women there. I saw Eleanor looking like an old old lady. I think the only two women who spoke were Jennifer (Juan’s wife) (wonderful!)and Sandy (Hunters first wife) (wonderful!)oh yes and Ta. She looked very happy: the dog that ate the peacock. I understand there were real troubles in that marriage. Well, duh. I sat next to her mother, a short squat woman with a thick Lithuanian (?) accent..
I followed (beautiful and kind!) Juan. I did not cry. I recited my poem about Hunter

By the edge of the field at twilight
Mr. Universe came to me in the form of a cloud
He put his tongue in my mouth.
Hot was the tongue of Mr. Universe
And I could taste it everywhere.
Mr. Universe was 14 Billion years old
if he was a day
But he caught me and held me
And brought me to a secret room
Hung with stars and gauzy plasma
I saw the soft flush of his milkiness
Where all possible pasts and all possible futures
Exist simultaneously in a quantum foam
of wonderful warmth.
Hot was the tongue of Mr. universe
He caught me in his hot strong spiral arms
And held me kissing me
and lifting me
gasping
toward the radiant and passionate edge
of infinity.
Black sorrow retreated before us fast
Fast, we flew,
creating a new space,
a new road,
through the absolute unimaginable blackness
Of the absolute vacuum
As we flew
Mr. Universe blew kisses at young superstars
They emitted hot jets from their entrails
Stars exploded in violent and beautiful parades.
Mr. Universe said, Watch this little lady
And he detonated
90 zillion squillion tons
of nuclear power.
Flamboyant and insane
Mr. Universe reveled in displays of this type.
Mr. Universe was the kind of guy
who kills his own food
and keeps alotta guns in the house
How I loved him!
His whole thing was so Rock n' Roll
Supernovas,
Nebulae,
Cosmic Background Radiation
The cosmological constant!
I loved Mr. Universe: his perturbations,
Keplerian orbits, and really hard Celestial Mechanics.
Differential Equations suddenly got sexy.
Too sexy to be true of course, but that's the way men are
And when, in time he handed me my Christmas stocking
Containing two lumps of coal, and one unsolvable problem,
I said,
"I must translate this love and grief
into something that can be held and read for years “
By next week Mr. Universe will have forgotten me."
No matter.
Turning to look at something
in the Hourglass Nebula,
by mistake,
Mr. Universe dropped me.
I fell for millions of years.
As I fell, I heard him say
Sorry honey.
But don't hold it against me.
“Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott aber boshoft ist er nicht.”*
What is this heart shaped perfect drop of grief
falling upwards toward the spiral arms of an awakening galaxy?
A River of dark energy and starlust that
holds at its gemlike center the flaming Cosmic Cock

and then I sang a medley of I’ll Fly Away, I Saw the Light and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. I put my arm around the life size cutout of Hunter that stood in front of his American Flag. Everyone stood up, held hands and sang Will The Circle Be Unbroken with me. I was stunned by how well this worked out. I never sang that song before; I just got the idea to sing it from one of Hunter’s favorite quotes,

"The geniuses in the world stand hand in hand and one shock of recognition runs the circle round"

I learned “Circle” while weeping continuously and blowing my nose the morning of the memorial at the Sunset Motel in Glenwood Springs. The woman who owned the motel gave me a late checkout. She was kind to me and that was lucky, because you really need time to learn a new song.
It was a beautiful day bright sun and blue sky shining like the shell from hell, and those superbad mountains all around me Cocaine monuments to Hunter. Anyways, I did my best and in the end I did have the last word but it was a hollow victory.
After the memorial I went back to Chris and Jerry Goldstein’s. (Hunter’s lawyer) Chris had made some good food; little sandwiches with pork and a big plate of lox. Chris is a beautiful person.
Ralph Steadman was on the couch drawing compulsively. At the memorial he said Hunter said Why don’t you stop that filthy habit, that drawing all the time He was really distraught and also said That bastard ruined my life and other things I'll tell you if you want to know. They made a recording of the memorial and I hope to get a copy. Thank God I got two of Steadman’s drawings on BMW paper.
I played blues piano while some of the men played pool, did drugs and reminisced about Hunter. Nancy Pfister sat on the men’s laps. I asked her to sit on mine but she refused. Several of the men propositioned me and offered me drugs. The sheriff took me aside and told me everything about the brains and the body and how his face looked. He also offered me a job as a policeman in Aspen. I went to bed in the top bunk in the basement where a bunch of 14 year old boys were already asleep. I woke up at 6 Am, did the dishes and went to Snowmass. I got in a whole day of skiing It was 60 degrees. Best thing I could have done. Skiing was so fun I stopped crying.
At 4:00 I started driving to Aspen. Almost went over the high side several times watching the sunset show on the twisting phallic monuments and lava flows in White River National Park. Kept driving. Slept in the parking lot at Conoco. Met a nice African man who gave me a glazed Krispy Creme. Caught the 6 Am flight back - 4 hour lay over in Atlanta. Pretty intense.
And now I know Hunter is really dead.
I wish you had been there. I am very sorry I did not have a chance to show you this amazing aberration, this wonderful monster master, this man genius baby, the second most articulate man after Terry Southern. I told William Kennedy about the Candy Men and about Texas Boyhood. He said Magic Christian was one of the greatest American novels. He wrote down everything I told him. At the memorial Bill said the best stuff about Hunter because Bill is the real thing.
Bill Murray complimented me very sincerely. He was funny but I can’t remember a single joke. Remember when they cut me out of Ghostbusters 3? Maybe you were already gone by then. Bill is like a Zen Master, no sympathy. I told him I was imitating him in the movie I just did(w/Julianne Moore). He told me the secret of acting is Get out of your own way.”
Really the most memorable thing I heard was from Simms the next morning. He woke up around the same time I did. I started cleaning up, it was a big job…. and Simms helped me a bit. We talked. I said, What do you do man, you got the phenotype of a lawyer and those great horn rims and everything. He said I sold ____, I did dishes then he said I came from five generations of lawyers and I went to _____ law school. Then one day he grew a ponytail and dropped out and went to Aspen. His mother wrote him a letter It said, Dear Son, I hate you. Love, Mother.
I said, Oh I see, she is brilliant.
He said one time she was going to read something of Hunter’s at a library or something and she got in a terrible car accident. She bled all over the text.
She wrote to Hunter,

I put my life on your lines

and Hunter wrote back,

Dear Celeste,

Don't worry. We will be in charge in Heaven and we will wallow in fun as we settle many old scores.

Hunter

Then Simms flew off to Mississippi.
So there it is. As closely as I can remember. I left out the hours that I sat morosely drinking beer and looking at the woman who worked so hard to keep me away from Hunter but of course she did me a favor because you know I am an Olympic codependent and there's nothing I love better that a genius drunk. We get so caught up in our beloveds and we try so hard to love and help them. Now we have big work to do.