I've been fortunate to have lived many extraordinary lives and reincarnations in just this one lifetime. Forget about all the others. One life at a time, baby! That's my motto these days.

Let the chips fall wherever they may. I'd much much rather be an anonymous starving writer living under a tree full of monkeys shitting down my neck here in Brazil any old day than ever go back to being a famous celebrity tattoo artist or even an obscenely overpaid movie star...

Back in the Nineties though, back in another lifetime, we had a little gang, me and Johnny Depp and Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop. We even dubbed ourselves the Death is Certain Club. We all wore the same skull ring and we all had the same tattoo. We were tight. Brothers...

Anyway, I hadn't seen Johnny Depp in a few months. I think the last time he'd come around, we'd both been in a big old barroom brawl involving hecklers and Hells Angels and cops and high-risk adventures and drama. The usual legendary shit we always seemed to fall into together whenever he came to visit New York City.

The following account is about the day I almost hung out with Hunter Thompson. It didn't come off quite as planned...

But I will say this: I've hung out with Hells Angels for a LOT longer than Hunter Thompson ever did, and I never got my ass kicked by 'em... Maybe cuz I don't drink the way Hunter did, God rest his soul...

- Jonathan Shaw
Rio De Janeiro, 2009

The Day I Gave Johnny Depp and Hunter S. Thompson the Finger
by Jonathan Shaw

I was walking around the 26th street flea market, killing time, waiting for the call from Johnny Depp to come through on my little Nokia cell phone. It was another late summer Sunday afternoon in the mid-90's and I was a big shot New York City underground tattoo artist with a pocket full of cash and a fancy new cell phone, waiting for a call from my big deal fucking movie star brother.

A few years earlier I was a loser. Broke and unknown, living in a little shack in a squalid favela in Brazil with no electricity or running water, no phone, no money, no friends, circling the drain in drug addiction and obscurity. But now I was here. Reincarnated again. What a life!

Johnny had called an hour earlier and told me that he and Hunter Thompson were sitting up in Hunter's room in some fancy hotel where they were both staying somewhere way the fuck uptown doing press or doing lines or doing some fucking legendary thing.

Hunter S. Fucking Thompson! He'd always been one of my big literary heroes, ever since I'd first gobbled up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with a handful of good 1970's LSD as a crazed, rootless teenager running the streets of Hollywood with other wild-eyed Manson Family refugees.

JD hadn't been round to visit NYC for a few months, so we were overdue for a reunion. Now he was staying way the fuck uptown, way up there in the sanctified stratosphere of the 50's. Maybe it was the 60's...70's. It all got to be a big blur up there in the high numbers for guys like me and my friends and neighbors, Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop. We rarely strayed from our sheltered little septic bunkers way downtown on the Lower East Side.

So there I was, nursing a psychic nosebleed, wandering around the flea market up there in the 20's, like a dark helmeted deep sea diver taking time to decompress in safe, familiar waters to keep from moving up too fast and getting a deadly case of the bends or something. I walked around in my usual afternoon stupor, not really shopping though, since I actually had a plan for the rest of that day, and even a destination. Somewhere to go on my old Triumph Bonneville 650 -- as soon as JD called.

"JS! What's up, buddy?"

A familiar voice snaps me out of my spell and I look up. It's just my friend, Biker Billy. 6'4" and 275 pounds of heavily tattooed muscle-bound hustle. Biker Billy was a sometimes Hells Angel hang around who haunted the flea market like some diamond Rolex-wearing, shaggy-grinning lunatic pirate scourge. I'd known Billy since before he was an FXR-riding sidewalk commando. Since he was still just a schoolboy, a button-down uptown preppy who went nuts on liquor and drugs on the downtown scene and suddenly emerged one day looking like some hung-over shabby tattooed Kossak, mercilessly reinventing himself as a cheap second-generation knockoff of guys like me. There seems to be a very fine line between fear and love and respect and imitation sometimes. Just ask Captain Jack the Pirate... But that's another story.

So Biker Billy looms and lurks and hovers over me as he tells me he's got something I've just fucking gotta see. I blow him off. Biker Billy's ALWAYS got something you just gotta see. That's his hustle.

But sometimes he really did come through -- not that I'd ever give him the satisfaction of letting him know it. Finally, after much sneering and pestering back and forth, the two of us shifting around on the flea market asphalt like a couple of angry crabs in the desert sand, I gave Biker Billy a shot at the big time.

"Alright, hot shot, let's see watcha got," I sneered as he reached in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, looking around like a criminal.

"Cut the shit," I said to counter his contrived dramatic effect and disguise my own growing curiosity. Then Biker Billy produced a dusty looking zip-loc bag and handed it to me proudly.

"What the fuck is this?" I spat. It looked like an old bag of dried up dog shit.

"Check it out, dude," he smirked. That same smirk was plastered on my memory banks like Puerto Rican gang graffiti on a jailhouse wall. He wore that smirk when he sat down at my desk at the tattoo shop a year earlier and unveiled a gruesome decapitated human head in a jar for me...So I was prepared as I cautiously opened the bag and rolled a turd-like item out onto the palm of my hand. Fuck. I was holding a petrified human finger! With a perfectly manicured fingernail. There were four more fingers in the plastic bag. Biker Billy had robbed a fucking grave or something now...Fucking tattooed freak.

"Where did this shit come from, man?" I asked casually.

"They're souvenirs some guy brought back from 'Nam, I think," he said.

"You THINK!?"

"Well, the guy I got 'em from told me..."

"Some guy told you..." I sneered, already depreciating the goods, hopefully driving the eventual price down. Biker Billy shrugged, losing ground. "Talk about a fuckin' trick bag..."

"I'll give em to ya cheap, man," he whispered desperately.

"Whatever, dude," I said unaffected, holding the bag away from me as if it stunk.

"How much you want for this shit anyway?"

"For you, man...Fifty bucks."

"Fifty bucks?!? For THIS!? You gotta be fuckin' kidding!" I knew Billy didn't pay more than twenty, so I figured I'd just try and get him down to thirty and let him make a ten spot for his trouble. Who else was he gonna sell a bag of somebody's severed, dried-up digits to around here?

"This shit ain't for me man," I said shaking my head, handing him his bag back, lowering the boom on his ass.

"Gimme forty," he said suddenly, refusing to take the bag.

"Uhh uhhn" I said. This was the moment of truth. "I'll give ya thirty... and ya better take it fast, Billy, before I change my fuckin' mind."

"Thirty five," he tried. I had him.

"No way! I don't WANT this shit, Billy!"

"Ok ok. Gimme the thirty," he said, biting the dust as I quickly stuffed the bag of dubious origin in my pocket. I handed him thirty and walked away fast, leaving him standing him there talking to himself. I was halfway across the lot when I answered the call.

"JS," I said.

"What's up, fucker," that ultra famous voice crackled through the airwaves.

"Nothin' to it, man. What's up witchoo, big time?"

"Just finishing up here. You comin' up? Hunter wants to meet you."

"That makes two of us, brother. How soon?"

"Whenever you get here. We'll dangle with Hunter for a minute,
then go down your way. You motorized?"

"Got a spare helmet if ya don't mind sittin' bitch for a minute. See ya in fifteen." I hung up, putting the Nokia in my pocket with my bag full of fingers as I got on the old Triumph and gave it a kick...

I'd forgotten all about my bizarre little purchase by the time I pulled the bike up on the sidewalk in front of the plush hotel. A dour-faced white haired porter in a red monkey-grinder's suit approached purposefully with a look of disdain as I got off my dirty black wasp, obviously about to shoo me off hotel property like an oversized shit fly.

"I'm here to see my brother, Johnny Depp," I said casually, as I planted a greasy black motorcycle boot onto their fancy-pants red carpet.

"Johhny Depp..." He mumbled. "Oh, yes, of course! Yes sir, just go to right up to the desk and they'll announce you...I'll keep an eye on your...Motorcycle for you, sir..." Instant attitude change, right before my eyes. I glided like Fred Astaire over to the front desk.

"May I help you, sir?" A pleasant young front desk jockey in a spotless black suit said in an ear-pleasing British accent. I especially dug the 'sir' thing.

"Uhh, Johnny Depp's room?" I said.

"Oh, of course," he said, looking relieved, as if I'd suddenly solved a puzzling riddle for him.

"I'll ring you up just now," he said pleasantly.

"And your name, sir?"

"JS."

"Yes sir," he said as he lifted the phone and called the room. After a minute, the handsome young man frowned, ever so pleasantly. "I'm so sorry, sir. They don't appear to be answering in that room. Would you care to have a seat for a moment?"

"Can't I just go up?" I said. "He's expecting me. I just spoke to him a few minutes ago..."

"I'm sorry, sir. All visitors must be announced."

Then I remembered. They were in Hunter's room. I told the desk guy to try Hunter Thompson's room and he did.

After a minute, same frown, same story. Shit. I staggered over to a plush white sofa and plopped my greasy biker ass down in defeat. Hurry up and then fucking wait. So I sat there and waited. And I waited.

Every once in a while I wandered over to the front desk and the pleasant handsome young man in the spotless black suit looked up from whatever he was doing to try the room again. Same frown. Same helpless shrug. I went back to my post, waiting.

Half an hour later I was sick of waiting. I paced the lobby, watching the elevator, looking at my Rolex. What if I just made a run for the elevator and went up? Fuck. I didn't even know the room number. I looked over at the pleasant young man behind the desk. He managed to smile reassuringly and shrug helplessly at the same fucking time. He was good. British. A born diplomat. Probably gay. He wasn't gonna give me that fucking room number. No way. Hotel policy. I shrugged back and tried to smile, squeezing out something that probably looked more like an agonized gold-toothed rigor mortis grimace.

Forty-five minutes gone by. Fuck this. I was done. I walked back up to the front desk and asked the pleasant young man for an envelope and a piece of stationary. He gladly obliged.

Here I was. Just another big fucking loser, a greasy old nobody waiting in a fucking fancy hotel lobby for some movie star who didn't give a shit. Self-pity is a terrible malady. And I was drowning in it, going down fast.

Vindictive, I sat back down on the sofa and laid out the crisp sheet of hotel stationary on the table in front of me. Fifty-three minutes passed. Fair enough...I got out my Mont Blanc and I wrote:

HERE'S A LITTLE SOUVENIR FROM THE LAST ASSHOLE WHO LEFT ME WAITING FOR AN HOUR IN A FUCKING HOTEL LOBBY.

HAVE A NICE DAY.

JS

I looked around. Then I reached in my pocket and took out the dusty zip-loc bag, lowered it discreetly between my knees and opened it. Nobody around. Fuck it. I reached in the plastic bag and extracted a finger with a good-looking fingernail on it. Middle, I think. That would do the trick.

Then I remembered Hunter. A writer of his status was certainly worthy of a finger of his very own. I popped out another one. Index. I quickly rolled the two dried digits in my hastily scrawled note like a burrito and dropped it into the envelope. I licked the envelope somewhat distastefully, wondering vaguely about possible diseases. I stood up and looked at my watch.

Over an hour. Ample justification. I looked at the elevator. Fuck it. I sauntered over to the pleasantly smiling, helplessly shrugging young British diplomat at the front desk. He smiled back pleasantly. No turning back now.

"Something's come up, man. I gotta go," I said. "Would you please make sure this envelope gets delivered to Johnny Depp personally? Its very important."

"Of course I will," the pleasant young hotel man smiled pleasantly, reassuringly, taking the grim package from my sweaty hand. I thanked him and walked quickly out of the hotel. I got back on my greasy old motorcycle and rode the fuck out of there.

I would've gladly given a thousand bucks to be a roach on the wall of that fucking hotel room when they opened that envelope!

Here's Johnny Depp's full account, faithfully reconstructed from my own memories of the many times I've heard him tell the story over the last ten years:

"Me and Hunter were sitting around this big table up in his suite, telling stories and drinking absinthe and...Ingesting things. We'd been sitting there for quite a while. Days maybe...Hunter always had stories and you just sorta lost track of time around him. Especially when you'd been ingesting things with him...The table was just littered with all sorts of stuff. Hunter's stuff.

We'd been sitting there for a long long time, ingesting Hunter's stuff... It was all pretty surreal. There was a knock at the door. Hunter looked around and said,'Did you order from room service, Coronel?' He always called me Colonel. I told him it was probably just my friend, JS.

He said, 'Well you better go find out. I'll just stay here and keep an eye on things.'

So then I went to the door and the bellboy handed me this sort of bulky little envelope. He didn't know where it came from. So I went back over to the table and Hunter said, 'What's that you've got there?' I told him I didn't know. He looked at it and told me, 'You better open it then, Colonel' and I did. There was something in it, wrapped up in a note. From JS.

These two brown clumps of... stuff fell out onto the table. I didn't know what it was. Hunter picked one up and said, 'Looks like hash. Let's try it out. I've got a pipe here somewhere...' Then suddenly he goes, 'Uuuhhgghhh!!!' And drops the thing on the table... He was pretty startled..."

Here's what Hunter had to say:

(c) Jonathan Shaw 2009.

Jonathan Shaw began writing as a contributor for the LA Free Press in the late 60s. In the early 70s, he trained as a tattoo artist in Long Beach under the legendary Bob Shaw. He opened his own joint, Fun City Tattoo, in 1976 in New York's East Village. After traveling the world extensively as a tattoo artist and managing editor of tattoo magazines, he retired from tattooing in 2001, moving to Rio De Janeiro to begin his next chapter as a full time writer. His first book, Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes, is available from Amazon.com. To read more of Jonathan's writing check his blog at ScabVendor.com. You can also follow Jonathan on Twitter @jsfuncity.

f54325

I'm lost

September 2007

APR 07, 2009 08:02 AM

Great story, but the pictures are down.

xfinitex

East Lansing, MI

August 2005

APR 07, 2009 08:08 AM

I love these stories, but the photos are down! I want to see what Hunter had to say!

sketchy_

HOPEFUL

Owens Cross Roads, AL

APR 07, 2009 08:46 AM

Love the story! Wish the pics worked