I called CCNY and got the day, time, and room number of Burroughs’ class. There were only about a dozen students in the classroom when I arrived and sat at the back. Burroughs arrived a few minutes later, looking just like the photographs, el hombre invisible, in the signature hat with the turned up brim. As he conducted the class, he seemed unsure of himself, harried, ill at ease. And the kids didn’t help. They were disrespectful and ignorant about his work and literature in general.
I connected with his nervousness and this weakened my resolve to talk to him. As I envisioned approaching him after the class, I felt panic and searched for an excuse not to do it. I would just be another irritant and one that hadn’t paid the fees. But then I remembered what a once-in-lifetime-opportunity this was and steeled myself. He closed the class by reading a draft of an article about his new obsession: language and authority as viruses. I liked it and had read other similar writings of his recently.
Most of the kids filed out and a few stood around Burroughs with questions. I waited behind them. He broke off with a chick by telling her to come to his office during office hours. Then there was just one guy between us. He had shoulder-length dark hair and beard, and he said in a soft southern drawl that he had just hitched up from Alabama. I didn’t catch Burroughs’ reaction, but I was impressed. I always had a special respect, even awe for Southern freaks. Tim was one.
While the Alabaman and Burroughs talked, the mention of his office hours reminded me that I could go to Burroughs’ office and maybe have him alone, and it would be safer and therefore easier to bring up yage. The Alabaman was running out of conversation. I took advantage of my excuse and left.
But a couple days later, I was walking down a long wide corridor in some basement somewhere at CCNY, scanning the names on the office doors. Kurt Vonnegut’s got a reverential pause. Burroughs’ door was open and he was sitting behind a desk. The room was the size of a large walk-in closet and its bare walls were a washed-out institutional gray. He looked up, pen in hand, from a student paper.
“Hi…” I said. “I, uh…I’m not a student… in your class. I’m just a… big fan…of your work. I think you’re… unique… in world literature.”
“Well…Thank you.” He seemed slightly less uncomfortable than in the classroom.
I didn’t have anything more to say and would have preferred to just silently study his face. There were countless photographs of it and I had seen it in some art films. (He was something of a ham.) Granitic, inscrutable, it was the face of a man with a self-proclaimed talent for social invisibility.
But I’m expected to speak! And not a thing comes into my head. Then I remember the yage.
“Uh, I have some yage…” I said.
His discomfort was instantly replaced by interest.
“…And I was wondering if, uh …” I said, “maybe you could, uh… give me some advice…”
“Sit down,” he said gesturing toward the only chair besides his.
“Uh, I got it from a friend in Haight Ashbury,” I said as I sat. “I’m from San Francisco . There’s a cat there… he’s made a lot of money from head shops and he’s got this… amazing refrigerator. And with all the exotica he’s got moving through there, I wasn’t too surprised when yage popped up.”
“You’ve got to be careful. There’re a lot of people claiming to sell yage.”
“Oh, yeah, I thought of that…”
“There’s a blue light…” he said and paused. “If it’s yage you’ll see this… blue light.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that in The Yage Letters…”
And we were off. With Burroughs, it was “know the work, know the man,” and I knew the writings so well that he didn’t have to explain, so he picked up momentum. We became like a couple of heads (users of psychedelics) meeting anywhere.
Then, at one point, he mentioned there was intermittent interest in a movie script he had written. Among Burroughs’ odd interests were the delirious rantings of the gangster Dutch Schultz during the days it took him to die from gun shot wounds. The rantings were transcribed and Burroughs fashioned from them The Last Words of Dutch Schulz.
He sighed and looked off into his thoughts and said, “They’ve been jerkin’ me around about this for a couple of years…”
“It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t be eager to buy a script from William Burroughs…” I gushed.
Was it possible? Did he blush? But then he paused. He seemed to be examining a note in my tone of voice. Sarcasm? I could be taking a potshot at him. He didn’t know me. Since the speed disasters of ’67, I could never be sure what was communicated in my tone of voice.
But he wasn’t offended. He considered my comment and replied seriously, “They don’t care about… literary reputation.”
I was glad that I hadn’t offended him but I realized I wouldn’t be able to relax again. I was locked on-guard for an outbreak of tuning-out or any other alienating behavior.
So, reluctant and relieved, I said, “I’ve got to leave…”
He was surprised and clearly wanted me to stay longer. We had been together about a half hour. He stood and we shook hands. I thanked him for sparing me the time (when in fact he was glad for the company) and left.
It was only later on the subway, amid the rumble-clatter and flashing chrome, that I remembered questions I had wanted to ask but forgot to. For instance: in the early Sixties parts of Naked Lunch had been published and ruled obscene and therefore illegal to mail (later reversed in court). Around this time a friend was returning from Tangiers and as a favor to someone there, smuggled an original manuscript into the U.S. She thought it was Naked Lunch but wasn’t sure.
Later still, I realized my accomplishment. It was in his body language. I got him to lean back and put his hands behind his head. I was hip enough to relax with. For a while I prized an invisible trophy with a gold statuette of William Burroughs reclining in a chair with his hands behind his head.
Colleen
A couple weeks after I returned to the West Coast, I took the yage with Colleen. We sat in my livingroom for an hour or so of mostly strained silence, waiting to be transported. But nothing happened. Maybe, as Henry had warned, it was too old.
