JUNKIE

Back in the 1980s on several occasions I espyed Burrough’s walking corpse crossing Grand Central, his unpolished shoes slithering over the marble floor with an effortless gait. No hello. We knew not each other. I sometimes a drunk. He high and listlessly heading to score dope, his once elegant suit hanging off a scarecrow frame, awaiting a breath of wind to show that he was alive. Just. A rich man’s son. I loved JUNKIE. Glad not to be him. A murdering junkie. No one’s hero, except as a slave to heroin. William Burroughs.

A counter-culture icon. When the filthy rich proposed to build the Andy Warhol Museum on the Lower East Side, I thought better to have the Museum of Junkies with twin statues of Burroughs at the entrance.

“The old junky has found a vein... blood blossoms in the dropper like a Chinese flower... he push home the heroin and the boy who jacked off fifty years ago shine immaculate through the ravaged flesh, fill the outhouse with the sweet nutty smell of young male lust.” NAKED LUNCH