Evan Wright - Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnuts War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures With the Totally Lost Tribes of America

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Table of Contents

ALSO BY EVAN WRIGHT

Generation Kill

To the great American humorist,
cynic and realist Alan D. Wright, Esquire

There is almost no circumstance under which an American doesnt like to be interviewed.

A. J. Liebling

INTRODUCTION

After the publication of my book Generation Kill, some critics called my work gonzo, because reporting from the midst of combat as I did struck them as an act of gonzo journalism. For Generation Kill and now Hella Nation, use of the term is a misnomer insofar as gonzo speaks of writing that is more about the reporter than the subject. With few exceptions, my intent has always been to focus on my subjects in all of their imperfect glory. Gonzo journalism was born and died with Hunter S. Thompson, and lives on only in his writing. But not even Thompson himself was entirely gonzo. One of the most astute political observers of his time and a grand American humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain, Thompson was also a prodigious reporter. His Hells Angels stands as a classic of immersion journalismin which Thompsons adventures in gathering his material never diverted focus from his outlaw subjectsand was an early inspiration for my own reporting from inside American subcultures.

Portions of Hella Nation appeared in different form in Rolling Stone at a time when I served as the magazines unofficial Ambassador to the Underbellya title jokingly bestowed on me in an editorial published by Rolling Stones managing editor, Will Stone, in 2002. My primary subjects at Rolling Stone (and later at Vanity Fair) were people I found roaming the great American underworld, from runaway teens trying to make it as ecoterrorists, to Internet scamsters, to human growth hormone hustlers in Phoenix, to celebrity street skateboarders. The young combat troops I reported on in the Middle East represented a new kind of subculture, one that was often as misunderstood by civilians at home as it was by military leaders.

When my father read of the unofficial ambassadorship bestowed on me by Rolling Stone, he phoned to congratulate me on the promotion. Underbelly is one step up from ambassador to the crotch, he explained, referring to my previous job as an editor at Hustler magazine. I had started at Hustler in the mid-nineties as a triple-X-film reviewer and reporter assigned to cover the adult film industry. Like other hopeful college graduates in America, I had never had a strong ambition to wind up working in the porn industry. But when I found myself in it, assigned to interview porn starlets and write about the sketchy characters running the adult industry (such as my boss Larry Flynt), I drew on the work of New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling as inspiration.

While I did not delude myself that Hustler was equivalent to Lieblings New Yorker, I liked to think that Liebling, who reveled in the Depression-era world of boxers, small-time swindlers, exotic dancerspeople getting by, as he affectionately called themwould have appreciated the rich diversity of characters in Southern Californias Porn Valley. Lieblings appreciation for the vernacular spoken by his streetwise subjects and his instinct for humor in even the grimmest of situations offered insight for how I might handle my subject matter. Describing his approach to writing, Liebling said, The humor, as during a blitz, was rueful and concerned with the imminence of individual disaster.

My career at Hustler began with an overdose of Xanax. I had been working a string of temp jobs in Los Angeles when a friend told me about an opening to be a copy editor at the magazine. I sent in a rsum, and a few days later I was called in for an interview. At the time I suffered from an imaginary form of social anxiety disorder. I had a fear of going into social situations that might induce a panic attack. This had never happened to me, but I had read about it happening to other people and developed a fear it might happen to mea phobia of a phobia, as it werewhich I medicated by popping copious amounts of Xanaxes before a stressful social interaction, such as a job interview. Without the crutch of a massive dose of tranquilizers, I feared that in the middle of an interview I might lose my mind and begin to sweat uncontrollably, speak in tongues and walk in aimless circles through the office of my prospective employer. On the afternoon of my job interview, I overshot the mark. Id eaten a big lunch that day, and to compensate, I popped several extra pills before getting on the bus that would take me to Hustlers offices in the Flynt Building on Wilshire Boulevard. Somewhere in Beverly Hills the bus broke down. I had to jog several blocks to make the interview. The exertion must have released a powerful wave of tranquilizer into my bloodstream. By the time a receptionist showed me into the executive editors office, I couldnt feel my face.

Allan MacDonell, the executive editor, sat at a broad, uncluttered desk behind which panoramic windows offered a sweeping view of nothinglow, putty-colored apartment buildings and parking lots. In his late thirties, MacDonell wore thick black-framed glasses that gave him a passing resemblance to Elvis Costello. He had a raspy voice and mumbled like a character in Mean Streets. My difficulty in understanding him was compounded by the fact that the numbness from the tranquilizers was radiating from my spine in warm, liquid golden waves of heat. It was so intoxicatingly pleasant I had to concentrate not to slump face forward. Between MacDonells mumbling and the extreme effort it took to remain upright, I could only pick up snippets of what he was saying.

I pieced together that my rsum contained a typo, which disqualified me for the position of copy editor. I remember only disjointed pieces of the afternoon from that point onshaking hands, walking across a floor that felt bouncy like a trampoline, trying to hold on to a No. 2 pencil as I filled out some papers. I came to the next morning in my apartment, wondering what had happened. I phoned Hustlers offices and was put through to MacDonell. It was a confusing conversationIm sure for both of usbecause MacDonell had offered me a job the day before, and I had accepted, and now I was on the phone with him trying to pretend like I knew that already.

It was only on the following Tuesday when I showed up for work and was led to a spacious private officewith a large TV and VHS player across from my desk and stacks of adult videotapes on the shelvesthat I discovered I had been hired as Hustlers entertainment editor, responsible for covering the adult industry. Later I would find out that my hiring had come about after the hasty departure of my predecessor, whose heroin problem had gotten so bad MacDonell had been forced to fire him. I was told that my predecessors heroin problem hadnt been grounds for his termination. It was his other behavior, such as never leaving his office. One of my new coworkers explained, The guy who had the job before you would come in every morning with a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, drink it all by lunch and spend the rest of the day peeing in the empty bottle, so he could hide in his office. My colleague offered a tip: Just make sure, no matter what you do in your office, you step out and walk around sometimes so MacDonell can see you. He gets freaked out if employees dont seem to be able to walk around.

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