William S. Burroughs, �Blade Runner, a Movie�
WARNING! VERY LONG RANT LIES AHEAD!
First, a confession. I suppose Burroughs is one of those authors I�m supposed to love, but the only book I ever tried to read by him (I think it was The Ticket That Exploded), happened to be while I was in the middle of a tour with my band.
I don�t know how many people have been on tour before, but you lose your mind when you�re stuck in a small van for 16 to 30 hours at a stretch with the same people who you begin to hate more and more with every passing minute.
But I digress. Anyway, in the middle of no sleep, a cheap beer hangover, and a fistfight with another band member, I tried to read William S. Burroughs. And I found his writing to be so convoluted, so strange and so freaky that I gave up halfway through the book, and I have never picked up a Burroughs book since.
But I know about him, and he�s one of those authors who, while I had already sampled his work and hated it, I felt I should eventually get around to reading. After all, he was dealing with my favorite subject matter: drunks, drug addicts, and freaks who don�t fit in with normal society. Like Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, Burroughs (supposedly) wrote about men who could take twice their weight in illegal substances, yet still out-think, out-fight and out-fuck any other person. Like the mythos of Hemingway, Burroughs (again, supposedly) dealt with the outcast as hero.
I can relate to this. I always romanticized the protagonists of Bukowski and Thompson, though I never had the stamina to try and recreate their feats, so I lived vicariously. As I grew older, I couldn�t help but notice that the drunks I knew weren�t anywhere near as interesting as the ones I read about through my favorite authors. In fact, they weren�t interesting at all.
My romanticizing the drunk as hero waned. As it stands now, although I am still a fan of booze as well as the idea as the drunk as mythic hero, I�ve found the rest of the local drunks, well, boring.
Which brings me to my recent dilemma. One of my old friends, a person I hadn�t seen in quite some time, was having a bachelor party. I was working that day, but made plans to show up afterward. As the day progressed, however, I had second thoughts. After all, the party started at three in the afternoon; strippers were supposed to show up at five. Did I really want to show up to a bachelor party, stone-cold sober, only to see the entire party in the final throes of alcohol poisoning?
I decided that I didn�t. Bachelor parties bug me anyway. There�s something inherently sleazy about them, and I didn�t want to see a bunch of horny guys trying to coax sexual favors by monetary means from women they�ve never met, and who probably wouldn�t be inclined to talk to them if they weren't being paid to undress in front of them.
Instead, I decided to accompany a bunch of women who were also out of the bachelor/bachelorette loop. I figured I had an even chance that this group of women would get naked, and it wouldn�t cost me anything.
Now, I�ve long parroted a mantra I made years ago: Men Are Pigs and Women Are Evil. Put simply, this means that both sexes act like jerks, but women do it with much more finesse, more pizzazz, more cunning, and more vindictiveness than any man. The reason for this is simple: Men are dumb, which is why we so often resort to punching. Still, the entire time I said this statement, I think I always secretly believed that women were more capable of kindness and tact.
I believe it no longer.
To the men in the world, don�t worry (or perhaps I should say worry � worry A LOT), for women are just as piggish as the men are when they get together. Actually, it�s much worse, because they still manipulate the men. Think of it this way: while the guys were getting lap dances from strangers after paying an appropriate amount of cash, these girls were getting the same thing AND getting their drinks bought for them!
Sometimes it�s hard being a woman, my ass!
After conning these poor schumcks out of cash and booze, the women left to check another bar, where we ran smack into some of the fellas who were privy to the bachelor party. Of course, they were barely conscious, though conscious enough to realize they had spent all their money on a naked stranger who was now gone, and there was now fresh meat. And thus, they proceeded to hang all over every girl in our group. And of course, they all ended up back at my place.
But I�m getting ahead of myself. The girl I was with was one of the drivers, and being both hot and technically single, most of the guys tried to force their way into her car. I had to order one of them out of my seat in the front, and that was only after much scowling. Then, on the drive home, one guy in the back kept trying to fondle the girl�s neck as she drove. When she finally barked at him to leave her alone, he rubbed his hand though MY hair, saying, �That�s okay, this one�s cute too!�
�Don�t fucking touch me,� I said.
�Holy shit!� He yelled, �You�re a fucking dude!�
Inside the house, one of them decided to turn to drunken philosophy. �You know, Dean,� he said, �you�re pretty cool, but sometimes I get the feeling that you think you�re better than the rest of us.�
�Well, that�s because I am better than the rest of you,� I replied. This may sound pompous, but it�s really not. Looking at the group that had gathered in my living room and saying I�m better than the rest of them is the equivalent to winning the Gold Medal at the Special Olympics � you�re still retarded.
It didn�t take long before I retired to my room. I had had enough. But even my bladder isn�t immune, and I eventually went back out into the front room. The same guy who ran his hands through my hair was now standing over the stove. I looked over and saw that he had obviously raided our refrigerator, and as I�m the only one who cooks in this house, it was obvious that he had taken my food — specifically, some frozen raw sausages from CostCo, and an entire red onion (uncut and unpeeled) — which he was attempting to boil.
I�m a master of throwing things together and making a meal from it, but I had no idea what he intended to make. I also didn�t care. I reclaimed my food, berated him for a bit, and then went back to bed, thoroughly annoyed.
Which brings us back to this Burroughs book. It was everything you would expect from a Burroughs book: lots of drugs and alcohol with a sense of nonconformity, but all with a sense of purpose. You wanted to root for Burroughs� characters because their excessive lifestyle revolved around a sense of rebellion to their surroundings. All I wished for my real life drunken partners is that they would get the fuck out of my house.
I�ve said it before, I�ll say it again: and people wonder why I read all the goddamn time.
