Here is yet another excerpt from the Burroughs novel I am working on. Though it may be switched by time of publication, this is the opening to chapter three: It's Kind of a Glow focusing heavily on William's and Joan's current relationship, a mutual but somewhat unstable truce. William had just began his cure from dope and is beginning to drink heavily. This chapter also introduces The Bounty Bar with all the expat regulars. Once again, this is a first draft, so...
For the Cris sake do you actually think
that laying a woman makes someone heterosexual? I have been laying women for
the past 15 years and haven’t heard any complaints from the women either.* What
does that prove except that I was hard up at that time? Laying a woman so far
as I am concerned is O.K. if I can’t score for a boy. But laying one woman or a
thousand merely emphasizes the fact that a woman is not what I want. Better
than nothing, of course, like a tortilla is better than no food. But no matter
how many tortillas I eat I still want a steak.**
“You got a kick out of that, didn’t you,
Joanie?” William asked with an almost imperceptible smirk. He sat typing at his
desk. Joan lounged on the sagging couch grasping a glass of tequila in one hand
and the letter to Ginsberg in the other.
She chuckled from her editorial comments
written with a pencil on the typed letter. By the first asterisk she scrawled:
“Correct!” By the second: “Around the 20th of the month, things get a bit tight
and he lives on tortillas.”
“At least a bit of a laugh I think on
Allen’s end.” She said.
William loudly snorted, clearing his
sinuses. “Joan, though tolerant of my personal sexual preferences, I realize
you cannot remain unaffected by the irony of our mutual situation.”
She gulped a shot of her tequila and pointed
with yellow stained fingers at the letter in her free hand, taking a drag from
a cigarette, she added, “What’s interesting about this is it reveals to dear
Allen that you and I do have sex, at least sporadically. And that, apparently,
is my only kick.”
“Indeed.” William droned. He reached for the
chilled martini next to his typewriter, sipped it. “Tortillas, I have found,
are an acquired taste. Unsavory and somewhat tasteless to the palate but serves
to sate ones hunger.” Before Joan could utter a retort, William loudly removed
the paper from the machine’s roll carriage and quickly continued, “Here is my
current dispatch to Jack. Tell me, what do you think?”
He passed her the letter. She scanned it
with crimson eyes. It read: Mexico is an
oriental country that reflects 2000 years of disease and poverty and
degradation and stupidity and slavery and brutality and psychic and physical
terrorism. Mexico is sinister and gloomy and chaotic with the special chaos of
a dream. I like it myself, but it isn’t everybody’s taste, and don’t expect to
find anything like Lowell…No Mexican knows any other Mexican, and when a
Mexican kills someone (Mexico DF has about the highest murder rate of any city
in the world), it is usually his best friend. I guess they find a friend less
frightening than a stranger.
Joan handed the correspondence back, “This
aggressive ambiguity you feel toward Mexico seems quite apparent. Tell me, how
true was the sentence: “I like it myself, but it isn’t everybody’s taste”? Are
you actually attempting to affirm your irrefutably underground identity?
Evidently with Mexico being an underground country compared to stateside, isn’t
it impetuous of you to write it off or reject it out of hand? The truth being,
in my humble opinion of course, despite the sordidness and uncivilized behavior
of Mexican society, Mexico still remains alluring to you, and again, it is
simply my respectful observation, there exists a certain empathy between the
two of you, a distant yet genuine communicating vessel. I believe you have
found your time/space location.”
William sat brooding at the typed letter,
marked with corrections and additions in pencil on the yellowed onion paper. He
emitted a resigned sigh. “To be honest, Joanie, I actually do not know how much
longer I will be around Mexico City. As you are fully aware, the money from
Texas is still pending. When I do receive it, we certainly will be taking off
for points south.”
She curled up with her feet onto the couch,
propped herself on the arm, clutching a fresh glass of tequila. She coyly
smirked, “I am thrilled you said we,
Bill. We as in myself and the children or we as in whatever adolescent infatuation
you have snared at that given moment?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he retrieved
a folded letter from a small pile next to the over-flowing ashtray. He glanced
over it and commented in a dry monotone, “Did I mention to you the latest
concerning Allen and Huncke’s current dramatic fiasco? As a result of allowing
Huncke to flop in his apartment to stash stolen loot, and then getting busted,
Allen, in lieu of a jail term,
apparently landed himself in the Columbia Psychiatric Institute.”
“Our wayward muse in the nuthouse once
again? Whenever will he learn?” She gulped the tequila down, grabbed the
bottle, refilled it.
“On my end with this dire debacle, as I
continue to write Junk, I am now dealing with Allen, Lucien being out of the
picture as my agent, by the way. I have been forwarding revisions of the
manuscript, uncluttering any theoretical references quoted by Wilhelm Reich. In
his last letter, Allen arrogantly replied he is under the impression that the
manuscript is simply a justification of my habit. I retorted in turn what in
the name of God did he mean by saying the book is a “justification” for junk or
myself taking junk? I don’t justify nothing to nobody. As a matter of fact, if
I may say so myself, the book is the only accurate account I ever read of the
real horror of junk. I never meant it as justification or deterrent or anything
but an accurate account of what I experienced during the time I was on junk.”
Joan took a long drag from her cigarette,
blowing billowing gray plumes into the already dank room. “Will you be
including any of your current escapades with Old Dave? I imagine it would
constitute an interesting contrast of New York compared to Mexico City. Give it
an intercontinental slant. And on that note, where is Old Dave? I haven’t
smelled him of late.”
“We…don’t talk.” William mumbled.
He had purposefully kept away from Dave
Tesorero. Old Dave owed William three hundred pesos lent to him so he could
sell a share of dope and give back five hundred. Dave wasn’t seen for weeks
after the deal. It didn’t matter. William knew he could kiss those pesos
goodbye. He didn’t need Dave around, anyway. His cure was going as planned and
certainly did not want Old Dave schlepping around having an adverse effect on
him. Although he had stopped shooting heroin and reduced his alcohol intake to
three martinis a day, William did smoked opium once a week, considering the
narcotic harmless.
Joan clumsily attempted to roll off the
couch and to go relieve her bladder. She lost her balance and fell onto the
floor. William apathetically glanced at her. He returned to his typing as if
she was not in the room. Bumping the end table, she accidentally knocked off
the tequila bottle. The clear liquid soaked into the already stained throw rug.
“Oh, hell.” Joan muttered.
With much effort, she tottered to her feet
and smiled. “Well, Bill, it’s nearly five. You want to grab the kids and head
down to The Bounty? Get out for a bit?”
He stopped typing. Glanced at the near empty
martini glass on the cluttered table. William’s lower back was sore from
sitting at the desk all afternoon. He stood and grabbed the remainder of the
martini, gulping it down. “I could use a break. Certainly. Round up the brats and
I’ll wait for you down in the courtyard.”
