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When William Burroughs left Tangiers to meet Ginsberg in Paris he was arrested. The French police took mugshots of him. When they developed the pictures nothing came out. William Burroughs was 6ft 1in tall yet there was always a certain insubstantiality about him. In part this was due to choice. He dressed in grey suits. He also adopted the sort of furtive lifestyles that are a dream to the writers of dust covers Here is his early career - private detective, roach exterminator, drunk roller, drug user, dealer and finally, killer. Not exactly Jack London.
When Kerouac wrote "On the Road" he was writing about the great outdoors. No one stays long in any place when there is booze, drugs and sex on the open road and never mind the girls you leave behind. Burroughs also travelled and "Junkie" takes place in several cities but it is almost as if each place is the same. The world he inhabits is twilight as if the needs of addicts are not subject to geography. everything takes place in hotel rooms, not outdoors. Burroughs only ventures out to score.
Whenever you see photographs of Burroughs his features change little. He does age but there is something timeless about him. It's creepy. Despite all the abuses to his body he lived to be 83. He often maintained that people who used heroin looked younger but some of the people who made the journey with him didn't last as long as he did. Perhaps he just got the knack of remaining invisible every time death came to call. As he got older he looked as if a breath of wind would blow him away but somehow it was a surprise when he actually died.
Then again, perhaps his invisibility was more prosaic than that. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he belonged to old money. That money gave him the education and breeding which enabled him to survive whatever life threw at him. In "Junky" there are accounts of other dealers being beaten and going to prison for long stretches but never him. The background, from which he came and which he tried to escape, probably saved him on a number of occasions. How did the police react to him, for example? No matter how low he sunk, no matter what jobs he took or what books he wrote he could always rely on his trust fund. This gave him a perverse freedom which he used to investigate the dark side in order to develop his own moral view. It also enabled him to experiment - to test life. The drugs which shaped his fiction were originally begun as a form of experimentation.
And what about the murder? Burroughs has never properly explained why he decided to carry out his "William Tell Act" but once he did it he was able to hire good lawyers to ensure that he received a suspended sentence. But by then it did not matter because he had slipped out of Mexico - invisible as ever.