Opening Line JUNKIE

Junkie was my first encounter with William Burroughs, the infamous beat writer. I can't recall my ag, when I read his first novel. Maybe 18. Maybe 20. His novel was not in the stacks of the town library to the South of Boston in the 60s. Imust have found it in a Harvard Square bookstore.

Junkie along with Last Exit to Brooklyn opened my eyes to the transgressions life. I survived my early years without imitating that life.

In the 70s I sometimes saw Burroughs shuffling across the marble floors of Grand Central Terminal, his steps whispers on stone. His eyes not saw me. I studied him for several seconds. In a suit grayer than his skin. Gaunt. Glazed by heroin or vivid with the need for heroin. I never said anything. His world was his and heroin. Not mine. Some times. Never no more.

"I suppose I'm a junkie, which is a fairly long story." First line Junkie 1953. I was one years old. I'm much older than that now, unlike so many junkies.

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

The Second Coming Of Rockets Redglare

Rockets Redglare was a native New Yorker. His family was tough. He was born addicted to heroin. His childhood was no fairy tale and Rockets moved to the East Village to escape his past. He couldn't outrun heroin and his habit became the thing of legends on the Punk Scene. Rockets could score anywhere and anytime. This service endeared him to the junkie stars on the Lower East Side scene. Big names got drugs from him. They got ripped off too. Rockets was skilled at both, but not at losing weight and no matter how much dope he did, Rockets ballooned past overweight to fat and then obese. His loser image was captured in Jim Jamusch's STRANGER THAN PARADISE.

Rockets Redglare was a true punk heavy.

The drugs wore him down and the legend languished in a hospital bed till his death in 2001.

His life was immortalized in the 2003 documentary ROCKETS REDGLARE.

"Anything I ever liked ... I always did to excess."

He was one of a kind, however Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been dodging recent allegations of smoking crack cocaine. The extremely obese Canadian was elected as a conservative. A video has surfaced showing Mr. Big huffing on a stem. His defense of this accusation has consistently been to deny ever doing drugs.

One look at his face and I say 'guilty guilty guilty' of lying.

Rockets Redglare never Judased his jones.

Judging from the below photo Rob Ford resembles a man out of control.

He must have a very good clean-up staff, because this guy has been like this for a long time.

He's no Rockets Redglare, unless Rob Ford has decided to exhume the role for Canada.

I thought once was enough, but maybe I'm wrong

Rockets Redglare was real.

from URBAN DICTIONARY - ROCKETS REDGLARE

A dealer in New York City in the '70s. He specialized in speed and heroin, since marijuana was considered a hippie drug. He was quite known throughout the under ground for his great deals and for the fact that you could gip him easily, because he had no common sense.

One evening in the year of '77, Rockets Redglare was found at a bar with a bunch of his buddys, drinking beer. He footed the bill, which is something he never did, because he was almost always broke. One of his friends asked him where he got the money. On hearing this Rockets promptly started bragging to his friends that he killed Nancy Spungen.

Yes, the same Nancy Spungen who at the time, was the girlfriend of Sid Vicious. Nancy was killed with Sid's favorite knife, that never got separated from him. Sid was blamed for killing his girlfriend and stayed doped up on heroin for a week.

At the end of the week, he and a bunch of friends had a huge party. One of Sid's friends told him that he knew of a great heroin dealer that could make him a good deal because of who he was. The dealer came to where Sid was staying and sold him some heroin. Sid took it and partied till he dropped. The next morning he was found in the home, dead. We now know that what was given to Sid was a hot shot.

Now that's a story and it might even be true.

The Truth About Whores

"Beware of whores that don't want money. The Hell they don't. What they mean is that they want more money." William Burroughs.

Several years ago I had occasion to visit the Elk Gallery on Crosby Street.

Jocko Weyland was curating a photography exhibition of lurid bloody vistas of wild Italian youth.

Punk, guns, and drugs with a little nakedness.

A 50 year-old art critic deemed the pictures derivative.

"You are a cynic without any feel for the future or past."

"And you are who?" He sounded like a Harvard boy. They possessed a free pass with bad grammar.

"No one special, but these photos have more of a feel than those at the Diane Arbus show I saw in Paris." I would have only hung one of those pictures on my wall. It was a photo of a movie theater.

"But why?" He wasn't getting it.

"Because I'm an ex-junkie." I never was a junkie, but saying so sounded wicked in these modern times.

"What's your name?" The critic wanted to add me to his enemies list.

"Who I am is unimportant. Really."

I don't lie and walked off to the cheap white wine table.

The artist, a skinny 20 year-old Italian man came over to shake my hand.

"Grazi."

Abe Formenti was his name. Jocko liked his work. It reminded me of Danny Lyons or Richard Kern. That was a good thing.

Per niente." That exchange exhausted my Italian.

"I'd like to shoot you injecting heroin." The young artist had overheard my declaration.

"Sure." I thought it out a little more. "Only if you get me the heroin and a needle. I'll provide everything else. Setting and ambiance."

Abe took my number and introduced me to his young girlfriend.

"I like old junkies." She smiled with a missing tooth.

The critic joined us and asked, "Are you trying to be a legend?"

"Who cares?" I've ceased wanting anything more than a couple of beers before I go to sleep, however I wouldn't mind doing a little dope with a couple of near-naked Italian girls. Abe and I left the soiree with the girls. Thankfully they weren't able to score any dope.

Call me square. Never a legend. I've lost my name.