The Rum Diary

by Hunter S. Thompson

The thing that disturbed me most was that I really didn’t want to go to South America. I didn’t want to go anywhere. Yet, when Yeamon talked about moving on, I felt the excitement anyway. I could see myself getting off a boat in Martinique and ambling into town to look for a cheap hotel. I could see myself in Caracas and Bogotá and Rio, wheeling and dealing through a world I had never seen but knew I could handle because I was a champ. But it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I’d finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.