Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.” – William S. Burroughs
Those were the last eleven words he ever wrote.
The old man thought his last own last words might be Embrace the grind. Own the finish line.
Absent the government and the rules and the people, the old man almost liked where he lived. As long as the air conditioning held up.
He was studying a video biography: Williams S. Burroughs: The Man Within.
Surprised the queer junkie gun nut didn’t shoot more people. Just his wife.
Burroughs. Another in a long line of the wrong hero.
There were times he didn’t have a vehicle, there were times he didn’t have a roof, but he always managed to hang on to his impressionistic portrait of William S. Burroughs.
Gleaned from the Portland Art Museum’s Silent Auction. Nobody else bid.
“I could’ve ended up a drunken academic,” Burroughs said. The old man had considered much the same career path. Seemed empty and errant.
Oddly enough – maybe not – both Burroughs and the old man became pest exterminators. Briefly.
The young redhead pretended the huge oil painting wasn’t there.