Born On This Day- February 5th... Writer William S. Burroughs: “Perhaps All Pleasure Is Only Relief.”

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on & sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.”

Drugs, gay sex, foreign lands, trouble with authority & then writing it all down… chapters in my memoir- Jockstraps & Vicodin? No, these are the major themes in the life & works of William S. Burroughs.

In 1988, I had the great pleasure of acting in a film titled- Drugstore Cowboy. Everyone on the set, from director Gus Van Sant to the grips, were in awe of being in the company of William S. Burroughs. He was terrific in the role of a junkie priest & I am a fan of this performance as well known former priest & drug fiend, a frail, unfortunate junkie who turned Matt Dillon's character- Bob on to drugs when the latter was still an altar boy. Oh yeah. Burroughs, with his natty style, gravelly voice ,& sardonic delivery, packs a mighty impression in this small role. I didn’t have a scene with him, & I was too intimidated to chat him up. But, I like the fact that I can drop the phrase-“yeah, I did a little film with William S. Burroughs.”

A still from Drugstore Cowboy

Burroughs, heir to the adding-machine fortune, was Harvard educated & & dressed like a conservative undertaker ,& became famous, before any of his peers, for all the things you were supposed to hide in the 1950s: he was gay, he was a junkie, he shot his wife. Burroughs was indeed a scandalous personality, but his literary works: The Naked Lunch, Queer & Junkie have become important landmarks of American literature. He was a huge influence on everyone from beatniks to punks, from rockers to poets to performance artists, & he added to our lexicon: "Heavy metal," "Blade Runner," "Soft Machine" & "Steely Dan"... all coined by Burroughs. 

He was member of the American drug culture when there really wasn't one, & he really did shoot his wife: Drunk & playing William Tell, he put a bullet through Joan Vollmer's head in Mexico. Burroughs mourned & he admitted that the shooting (for which he never served serious time) made him the writer he was. Burroughs' persona was dry & dour. His public voice was a monotone, & his hat & somber suits were in contradiction to the colorful hippie look of his good friend Allen Ginsberg.

Photo by Avedon

William S. Burroughs was expelled from high school for taking drugs & keeping a diary of his sexploits with the boys. He lived in Mexico, South America, NYC, Rome, & eventually Morocco, where he lived in a gay brothel. While living in Morocco & under the influence of new set of drugs, he started writing in earnest. When The Naked Lunch was published, it was judged as obscene, & U.S. Postal Service would not allow it to be sent in the mail. His works were banned in the USA for years. Finally In 1984, Viking Press published Queer (written in 1953), & subsequently published 6 more of Burroughs’ books. Check out David Croenenberg’s film version of Naked Lunch with Peter Weller & Judy Davis.

There is a funny & ironic anecdote in Patti Smith's memoir- Just Kids. Smith tells of meeting Burroughs for the first time at an automat where he treated her to a meal mistaking her for a pretty boy.

Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence Kansas in 1997, a day after suffering a heart attack.

“In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.”