...i mean, if you ever want to see if you're gay, read some Burroughs...you know like Naked Lunch or Wild Boys...as a test let's see if your cock gets hard while reading this...
He rubs the oil in Johnny's ass hairs and lightly around the rectum. Johnny sighs feeling the cold burn and looks down at his throbbing cock..."Like that Johnny?"...Mark takes a jar of mentholated Vaseline from the medicine cabinet. He rubs the Vaseline around Johnny's ass parting the soft pink flesh and shoves the middle finger all the way up vibrating the finger. Burning inside Johnny squirms and whimpers. His body pulls up his ass contracts spasmodically hot white spurts cover his thin stomach. - The Wild BoysNo...didn't get you turned on...didn't get you a little hard?...maybe a little...hehe...
...think your domestic situation is bad...Burroughs...trying to shoot a shot glass off his wife's head, missed and shot her in the forehead.
I am forced to the appalling conclusion that i would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the ugly spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which i have had no choice except to write my way out. - W.B.
...Burroughs was really into writing about control systems...things that control us, bind us, handcuff us...things that keep us from realizing our true potential...things like the education system, government, police, drugs, religion, family morality, sex...throughout his life Burroughs tried dozens of ways to break free of those control systems...from cutting up his writings and words with tape recorders to scrying techniques with mirrors and paintings...
...from Scientology to ESP, psychoanalysis, Wilhelm Reich's orgone box and Reich's Vegetotherapy. He practised the Alexander posture method, studied general semantics, Robert Monroe's out of body seminar, Konstantin Raudive's paranormal tape experiments, Major Bruce MacManaway's pillar of light, the Psionic Wishing Machine, and Carlos Castaneda's fictional Don Juan. He believed in UFO's and Whitley Strieber's aline abductions and used the "control" computer in London that answered questions for 12 shillings and sixpence a time. - From the biography "Call me Burroughs" by Barry Miles
...Burroughs went down to the jungles of South America searching for the Yage plant aka Ayahuasca...on the run from Mexican authorities for the death of his wife and on the run from America for drug arrests, he journeyed deep into the Amazon in search of a Shaman who could prepare a hallucinogenic concoction from the Yage vine...in a search to reclaim his soul...
...El Hombre Invisible aka the Invisible Man...known for his ability to walk through busy Tangier streets without being seen...without the beggars and the hustlers hitting him up he walked invisible...his theory was that if you scan fast enough and see people...see everyone before they see you...you disappear.
...Burroughs was trying to find out where evil comes from...how it enters the mind...how it enters into reality...
I would have to say yes, evil exists, definitely. I asked myself, why do these demons have such necessity to possess, and why are they so reluctant to leave? The answer is, that's the only way they can get out of hell. It's sort of like junk. They possess somebody and they want to hang on to it because that's their ticket out of hell. - W.B.
...Burroughs loved to get high...had popped every known drug and its combinations the world over...
I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. ... I did absolutely nothing. I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. - From Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness
...Burroughs had come to some interesting conclusions on the purpose of dreams...
He found that animals like calves and foals, who can fend for themselves immediately after birth, dream alot in the womb and relatively little after that. Humans and kittens dream less in the womb and are unable to fend for themselves at birth. He concluded that human babies could not walk or feed themselves until they had ENOUGH PRACTICE IN DREAMS. This indicates that the function of dreams is to TRAIN THE BEING FOR FUTURE CONDITIONS. I postulate that the human artifact is biologically designed for space travel. So human dreams can be seen as TRAINING FOR SPACE CONDITIONS. Deprived of this vital link with our future in space, with no reason for living, we die. - W.B.
...and Burroughs was running around with weapons on weapons...the list includes a .454 hand gun with scope that he got from Hunter S Thompson...a collection of shotguns and rifles...switchblades and bowie knives...cattle prods, swords, bear claw brass knuckles!?...and a cane collection with a variety of swords and guns inside of them!!!...i mean, you really didn't want to be fucking with this guy on the stroll...in the immortal words of ice cube...Burroughs was "the wrong nigga to fuck with"
Before "Heisenberg", Burroughs was the man...say my name...Burroughs...say it again...BURROUGHS!!! I just finished Barry Miles bio called "Call me Burroughs" and it's one of the most fascinating biographies i've ever read. From America to Tangier, from Mexico to Paris, from South America to London...from being part of the Beat generation with friends Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to his experimental cut up projects with the artist Brion Gysin in the Beat hotel, Burroughs has quite honestly seen and done it all. If you can't get into his fiction, then i highly recommend this biography...