A memoir. Set mostly during his adult years in New York City, before he became well known for his first memoir, Running With Scissors. It deals mainly with his love life, the men he favored and the man who later became his main man at the time, Dennis aka The Schnauzer. I guess at the time he wrote this book, he was pretty certain that Dennis was forever. However, looking online I see that they split up, growing apart, according to what I read, but still fond of each other.
Burroughs loves to shock us with his crazy life. But to me the most shocking thing I read in the book was his torture killing of a mouse in his apartment. It was truly disgusting and inhumane what he did to that poor creature.
On the other hand, much of the book is really interesting and frequently funny. Oddly, he describes an encounter with Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs which I found interesting because of Combs trial this year and sentencing to about four years of incarceration. The encounter Burroughs writes about happened at the Kentucky Derby:
During the seventh race, a man in a blindingly white suit approached our box and, seeing that it was full, stood at the opening of the box next to ours, the one just slightly ahead of the finish line. A murmur rippled through the box, and I heard the word 'Daddy,' a word that for various reasons always gets my attention.
His diamond earrings flashed in the sun. Of course: P. Diddy (formerly Sean 'Puffy' Combs), rap star, music producer, recently acquitted gun-out-the-window-thrower. A small entourage of impeccably dressed and very handsome black men huddled behind him.
A crowd materialized, and there seemed to be less oxygen in the air. The dozens of photographers in front of us on the track now turned around to face Puffy. Auto-focus lenses whirred into action. Flashes fired.
'Puffy!' yelped on of the debutantes. 'A picture? Pretty please, Daddy?'
Puffy extended his arm, and the girl parted the crowd and slid right in. Flashes exploded on their faces. The light around us popped.
The crowd seemed to close in on our little box. Puffy signed autographs, signed anything passed to him. He held a cigar between his teeth. There was not a single smudge on his white suit. His Rolex shone. When he spoke, he sounded like a senator.
Even without his white, white suit, Puff Daddy would have been the whitest man at the Derby. And yet I couldn't help but think: all these Hats, swooning over him, their faces melting into smiles, their bodies leaning into him, their eyes trained on his every gesture—these ladies wouldn't give him a quarter to save his life if he were wearing sweat pants, a Fubu jersey, and a backward baseball cap. Yet now, I was certain, any of them would have been proud to bear his children. The men, too. Any one of them would happily shrug, 'What the hell?' and be his bitch."
Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews.
And one from the New York Times.
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