Before he was “Hunter S. Thompson” he was just Hunter, the nightshift manager of the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco, cleaning jizz off the floors and seats every night while trying to make it as a writer during the day earning the occasional $5 or $10 per article from publications like SCREW (well, that is, until he burned his bridge with us).

Hunter’s success, like most success stories, didn’t come overnight (pun intended). It was a process, not an event. He wasn’t entitled to it. Nor was it bestowed upon him. Nor did he just “luck out”. Instead, he put in the work, the time and effort, the energy and imagination; he earned his bones, he swallowed some pride and cleaned some jizz, and perhaps even swallowed some jizz (wouldn’t surprise me).

My point is, the road to success is never pretty. It’s not meant to be. If it was, everyone would be successful. Everyone would be Hunter S. Thompson, and there would be jizz everywhere because there would be no one around to clean it.

Do what you have to do to keep your dreams alive and to follow (and fuel) your passions. If that means picking packages at Amazon or driving DoorDash or shopping for Instacart or cleaning jizz at the peep show theater in the mean time to pay the bills, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t make you a loser if you’re working towards something bigger and better. Having no prospects for the future and doing jack shit is what makes you a loser.

We all have to clean the jizz of life to get to where we want to be. After all, life itself is the reason the jizz is there.

— P.

Phil Italiano

Publisher, Visionary, Provocateur

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