The Floating Head of Ayn Rand: A Timeline

July 1967: While helping a lost diabetic girl's blind puppy kick drugs and find its way back home, Rand meets Hunter S. Thompson in a roadside diner. The Gonzo journalist, now writing for Rolling Stone magazine, is travelling to Washington, DC, to cover the 1968 national election. After he gets over the shock of seeing that Rand has, indeed, achieved floating-head-hood, he offers Rand a ride to Washington with him. After rescuing the blind puppy from a raging flood, she accepts.

During the ride, the two bring each other up to date over a six-pack of canned martinis and a soundtrack of psychedelic music. They quickly become friends. Upon arrival in Washington, Thompson looks up Pat Buchanan, then a Nixon speechwriter, for an interview. To Thompson's amusement, Rand and Buchanan hit it off immediately.

After a series of dates at the White House private movie screening room, watching such objectivist classics as The Fountainhead and How To Marry a Millionaire, the two become lovers. A fixture at Washington cocktail parties and gossip columns, Rand and Buchanan are together for nearly five years.

Strangely, all mention of Rand in Thompson's writings are excised at the insistence, during a trip to Las Vegas, of his 300-pound Samoan attorney.

Next: Watergate...and G. Gordon Liddy