Dropping Burroughs

"I get all my papers and smile at the sky

For I know that the hypnotized never lie "

The Who

In the early evening warmth of summer, in the well-groomed and manicured back yard of an upper crust neighborhood came three young people; two young men and a young woman. To suggest that they were furtive about their entrance may be going too far, at least inasmuch as they seemed to hurry to the gazebo by the lake where they might not be overheard. Yet they cast no wary glances about them. They did not minimize their body language to give hidden watchers the impression that they could be anyone. They were silent while they crossed the cleverly mowed lawn, however, apparently satisfied to wait until they gained the destination to broach the topic of their meeting.

That they were young people could not have been in doubt, since none of the three had shed the haste that implies lack of experience. And at a glance one could admit that if truth were to be found in fashion, then the young men were honest in their pretensions.

The thin and moderately tall one, whose face was quite assaulted by skin blemishes, and whose nose cleanly plowed the atmosphere before him, was clean shaven and sported a cheap grey suit and tie, white shirt and grey fedora with matching white band. Although his shoes were sorely inexpensive, he had the decency to shine them. He capped his expression off by a stark denial of Sinatra embodied in Malcolm X style sunglasses.

For his part, the other boy had an equally procured presentation, but was entirely Bing Crosby. Dressed for a polo club, he opted for a white Stetson Turf Club to match his lemon pants, white shirt and shoes and Ray Ban Vagabonds. A taller drink of water, also cleanly shaven, he gave one the sense that he was at any moment in danger of crooning Zippity Doo Dah.

The girl, her shoulder length blonde hair naturally falling about her symmetrical face and brown eyes, who was forced to make an effort to keep up with them because of her shorter stature, may at first have seemed like an affectation, or a decoration, next to these young men, but that they either slowed their pace for her or looked to make sure of her progress from time to time. Upon a requisite second glance, one couldn’t fail to note that she did not follow the boys’ fashion sensibilities and apply bobby socks or skirt and collegiate sweater, but loosely fitting blue jeans instead that nonetheless displayed a pleasant figure, a black Iron Maiden t-shirt and running shoes which were plain, even if they were, indeed, expensive. We might suspect, upon such a zapatic revelation, that the girl had a firmer, more sagacious grip on fashion than the boys she accompanied.

Upon gaining the gazebo they turned to face each other, the Sinatra type sitting to adopt a brooding contemplation of what, we might assume, was about to be a serious matter.

The girl, not content to wait upon the boys’ pretensions, spoke first.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “This is going too far.”

“Cherry, are you kidding me?” said the tall one.

“Look, I’ve been reading up on this and it’s more dangerous than it seems at first,” she argued.

The boys fairly snorted with derision.

“Oh my god,” they both said.

“Terry-“ she entreated the Sinatra type.

“It’s Romulus now,” he interrupted.

“What?” Cherry said.

“What?” she was echoed.

“It’s my Tune In name. Call me Romulus now.”

The other two were silent while they processed this new information. They looked at each other.

“Fine,” Cherry began again, “It was fun at first, but really, I don’t want to make this my life.”

“You’re copping out!” Romulus accused her, “You’re giving in. I can’t believe it. After everything we’ve seen, you’ve decided to collaborate with them.”

“You make it sound like treachery.”

“Not on us,” the tall one said, “Only on yourself. There is no reality but the self, Cherry, and its treasonous to allow others to impose their will on you. That’s why everybody chooses for themselves in this group. Y’know. We just don’t like tuning in without you. You’re one of us.”

“Yeah. You have to decide for yourself,” Romulus agreed.

“Hey,” Cherry said, one hand chopping to emphasize her skepticism, “I was with you on Shelley, and on Keats, and even on Ginsberg, so you can’t treat me like some novice. In fact I was doing Rimbaud and Wilde while you two were all maudlin over Woody Guthrie so don’t talk to me about prostituting myself to the machine!

“Now, you went on and dropped Kesey; I said fine, let’s see what happens. Then you dropped Kerouac, Jim Morrison and then Hunter Thompson and I didn’t say anything, but this time you have leaped right off the precipice of reason with big dumb smiles on your faces. I’m just saying: I don’t think you’re going to come back this time. You just don’t know what this is going to do.”

The boys paused at this rather grave and judicious, not to mention accurate, assessment.

The tall one broke first.

“Hm. You know what? Cherry has a good point. I’d like to see who has made it through this one before I take the plunge.”

Romulus pursed his lips and pressed on, “Look. No one else has ever gone through this before, let alone made it. Life is not to be lived by cowering behind innovators. We need to be the innovators! Anyway, I spent three grand on these, so if you two are out, then I am doing all of it myself.”

Then Romulus took a tiny envelope out of his blazer and removed three very tiny data storage chips. One by one, he inserted them in the ports behind his left ear.

“How did you even get three ports?” James asked. Romulus looked at him, as Kirk must have looked at McCoy when asked the obvious upon passing the Kobayashi Maru test; as Keats must have looked at Byron when questioned about the Chapman madness; as Lincoln must have looked at McLellan after Antietam; as if to say, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’.

The following afternoon found two of the trio pacing nervously in and around the gazebo, chewing their fingernails, pulling their hair, and worrying at the receiver implants on their radial bones. Romulus, still immaculately posed as Frank Sinatra, lay in the middle of the Gazebo on his back, unresponsive.

“James,” Cherry alerted when the parents arrived.

“We came as soon as you called,” said the lady, a smartly attired woman in her fifties who was clearly acquainted with Gucci. Alongside her the male strode imperiously, as if his very presence would imply martial certainty. Both were well tanned, the man to such extent that his white, perfectly clipped moustache seemed nearly painted on.

“How long has he been like this?” he asked.

“Seventeen, eighteen hours,” Cherry admitted.

“Oh my God,” said the woman, “How did this happen?”

Both James and Cherry shared the ‘I don’t want to do this’ glance.

James began, “Uhm. I don’t know how to tell you this, uh.”

“Maybe you want to sit down,” Cherry advised.

“Alright. Out with it,” the father demanded.

“We’ve been dropping poets,” Cherry said.

After the horror sank in, the mother spit out a sob, her hand to her mouth, and turned away aimlessly. The father sucked in his breath and squinted. He too turned away, walking around the gazebo running a weathered hand through his white hair. He turned back to them abruptly.

“How long?”

“About a year and a half,” said James.

“I see,” he nodded, “I’ll have to inform your parents, of course. James. Your father is going to blow his stack- you know how he gets. Cherry. I just don’t even know what your poor mother will say. She has quite enough on her mind already, what with your brother becoming a Chomskyist.”

“We still love you!” Rom’s mother sobbed.

“Yes. Yes. Of course we do!” He paced the gazebo slowly again.

“Y’know, to some extent I expect this from Terry-“

“Uh, it’s Romulus, sir,” James offered.

“Hhwut?”

“Oh! We’ve lost him!” Rom’s mother cried. Cherry back-handed James in the arm.

“Ow! Oh! Uh, nothing. forget it, sir.”

“As I was saying, I expect some of this from Terry, and James, you’ve always followed a bit too much for my liking but you, Cherry? I had you pegged as smarter than this. Thought you’d stand up to them. Counted on you.”

“If only we had talked with him more,” said his mother.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

“Well,” Cherry began, “I’m sorry to say this, sir, but it started when Terry found your stash of Paul Simon.” Suddenly Rom’s mother quit sobbing, her eyes wide open.

“Simon? But I threw him out when you three were infants!” the father argued.

“Oh,” said his mother, “Well, I may have, uhm, unthrown him out.”

“I see. Well. Go on.”

“Well after that another friend found some bootleg Cobain at his parent’s place. He traded it for the base recipe and began cooking up whoever he could get his hands on in his basement. You remember that riot at the G8 Summit in Montreal? Uh huh. A bad batch of Sid Vicious.”

“But Simon? He was so peaceful.”

“Doesn’t matter, Mary,” said the father, “He’s a gateway poet.”

“After that we experimented with Enlightenment writers, Romanticists, Victorian poets. The big breakthrough came when Jenny Cummins’ mom O.D’d on Janis Joplin one night and left out her stash of Jim Morrison.”

“Oh No!” said Rom’s mother.

“Mother of God!” the father exclaimed.

Cherry continued, “We dabbled in Whitman, Masters and Williams, and then came back around to Woody Guthrie. These two fell into a Bob Dylan funk for about a month. It- wasn’t pretty. But this time things got out of hand when Terry came back from Berkeley with William Burroughs.”

Mary, mother of Romulus, fainted off of the gazebo bench with an unceremonious thump, her eyes rolled back in her head and her ankles twitching slightly. Rom’s father was too consumed to notice. Tears streaked his face and he snuffled when he spoke next.

“Burroughs? My God. How did I let this happen?”

James stepped up, “We thought we were just covering old ground, sir. We thought you had all been there before. I mean, you had Paul Simon.”

“What?” he replied incredulously, “Well sure! Yeah, we had Paul Simon. We had some Joni Mitchell lying around. We used to have friends over and do some Burton Cummings on the weekends; maybe, maybe some Gordon Lightfoot. Murray fuckin McLaughlin! We didn’t sell our souls and wallow in anti-establishment beat poets. I mean Burroughs? Come on!”

And then Terry/Romulus lifted an arm and scratched his face a little bit. About then, his mother awoke, picked herself up and noticed her son.

“Oh! He’s waking up. Terry? Terry? Oh come back to us.”

Romulus began getting off the floor, “Kindly cease the vituperation, children of lemmings.”

Mary tried to hug him, “Oh thank god you’re back.”

But he held out his hands with an estranged frown.

“Unhand me, or I’ll be forced to shoot you by accident,” he said.

“We’re your parents,” his father asserted.

He regarded them calmly, “A sad victory for verisimilitude! You are prostitutes, one and all, sentenced by your own weaknesses to serve the great buggerer in the sky. Now if you’ll excuse me I must decode my orders.”

With that pronouncement, leaving the other four shocked into silence, he spun on his heel and strode imperiously across the manicured lawn.

Only Mary was left with any sentiment coherent enough to give voice to, and thus she did,

“Paul Simon is evil,” she declared.