by Barry Miles
According to Hubbard, the universe is 320 trillion years old (the Lambda-CDM concordance model estimates it is 13.75 billion years old, plus or minus 0.13 billion). In the primordial past Thetans brought the universe into being for their own pleasure but became corrupted and lost their immense powers. They lived in a Galactic Confederacy of twenty-six stars and twenty-six planets, including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. Overpopulation was causing problems so their ruler, Xenu, summoned billions of them together for an income tax inspection, paralyzed them, and froze them for transport to Earth, where they were to be exterminated. The spaceship looked rather like a DC-8 only the DC-8 had propellers and the spaceship didn’t. Once on Teegeeack, the helpless citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes all around the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously. The disembodied souls of the victims were captured on an “electronic ribbon” and forced to watch a 3-D widescreen motion picture that implanted what Hubbard called “various misleading data,” which included all Earthly religions. (Hubbard had been a sci-fi author.) These teachings cost many thousands of dollars to receive, and this is only Operating Thetan level III. At the time of writing there are eight released levels and a further seven unreleased.
Burroughs got hold of copies of most of the material up to and including Operating Thetan level VII from defectors. “I saw it all. It wasn’t very interesting,” he said. “It didn’t strike me as anything very special, very special at all.” What puzzled his friends was that he thought it might be. For years he ran Scientology audits, repeating them until they ran flat on the E-meter, on one session spending eight hours a day for six weeks. In April 1969 he was finally put in a condition of treason for his critical writing about the organization. “They tried to put me into a condition, and I said, ‘Well I’m not going to put up with this. Gold stars and all this I left back in kindergarden.’ And that was that.”6 Burroughs said later, “It was a weird episode but interesting, I don’t regret it. I learned a lot. I do know how to work a lie detector.” Alan Ansen suggested that one of the reasons that Burroughs became a junkie was to provide himself with the semblance of a social life, appointments, meetings, and so on. It is possible that, in part, Scientology filled the same need: people with a shared interest and endless talk about Sec Checks and Release levels. But Scientology alienated him from his greatest love, Ian, and wasted years of his life. Many people were turned off by his conversation, which returned time and again to Scientology. Without question, his period in London was poisoned by his obsession with Scientology. Without doubt his life would have been utterly different, happier, more sociable, and more productive if he had never heard of the E-meter. As Burroughs said much later, “There is no doubt about it: Scientology is evil and basically ill-intentioned and nasty.”7
After Robert Fraser went to jail in 1967 for possession of heroin, Bill was deprived of a ready-made social scene that he could drop into at will. What he needed was a regular pub or club, like the society at the Bounty in Mexico City, the San Remo in Greenwich Village, the Café Central in Tangier, or the bar at the Beat Hotel. Had he lived closer to the Chelsea Arts Club, that might have served. He liked it there, but it was miles away, the other end of the Kings Road. He did visit the Colony Room on Dean Street from time to time, mostly to see Bacon, but it was tiny, there were few places to sit, and Muriel, who owned it, was a loud in-your-face Jewish lesbian from Birmingham who called all her clients “Cunty!” which Bill found most distasteful. Similarly, the French pub, also on Dean Street, drew a clientele of “artistic gangsters” including Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Patrick Procktor as well as assorted boxers, journalists, photographers, and Soho types. But again it was very crowded, and as usual in British pubs, there were few places to sit. The most irritating thing was the idiotic British licensing laws which meant that at 11:00 p.m. the bartender would bellow “Time, gentlemen, please!” and all drinking would have to stop.
Burroughs still saw Mikey Portman, who was beginning to deteriorate, alternating between alcoholism and drug addiction, cures and immediate relapses. He would call, sobbing on the phone at 3:00 a.m., a complete mess. He had no strength or discipline. By this time, Burroughs had written a number of important articles for International Times, the London underground newspaper, and got on very well with the various editors and staff. He very much supported what they were doing and they were grateful to him for using them as a vehicle for his articles. In mid-1967, an American living in London, Bill Levy, took over as editor. Lord Goodman, as head of the Arts Council and pillar of the establishment, was one of Levy’s many bêtes noires, and he sought to attack him by alleging that the reason that Mikey Portman did not get busted for heroin was because Lord Goodman was using his political influence to shelter him. Goodman telephoned Burroughs and asked him, “Can you kill this story? This attack? If you can do anything to stop this, please do because there is no need for them to attack a poor shattered thing like Mikey.” Burroughs said that he would do what he could and called Bill Levy and said, “Listen, lay off.” And Levy did, but it seeded a resentment in Levy that was expressed at a later date. As Burroughs said at the time, Goodman was establishment, but he was liberal establishment; he wouldn’t even have South African sherry in his apartment.
Mikey did in fact get busted. He was nabbed by police as he left Alexander Trocchi’s apartment and they found a few jacks of heroin on him (a jack is a sixth of a grain). The police accused Trocchi of dealing, but the judge took into account that his wife had recently died of an overdose and that he had two sons to bring up, one of whom was dying of cancer of the spine, and in the light of these tragedies he only put Alex on probation. Mikey also got off.
While Burroughs was completing his Scientology clearing course in Edinburgh, Ian and Alan had moved out. It was a relief for Bill to find the place empty, but he quickly realized that it was too big for his needs. He inquired after a smaller flat in the same building, but it was to be many years before one came up. In the middle of August 1968, Bill reported to Brion that Alan Watson had run off to Paris with a rich queen and his opera tapes and that Ian looked ten years younger because of it.8 However, just when a reunion was possible, Ian found Burroughs impossible to live with because of his obsessive interest in Scientology. “When he fixes me with that Operating Thetan stare I just can’t stand it,” Ian said. “I can’t get out of the room fast enough.”9 As far as Ian was concerned, Burroughs was wasting his intelligence and his time on an utterly spurious organization. Burroughs claimed that he was only investigating it, but as far as Ian could see, Burroughs was well and truly hooked. If there was a time when he and Ian could have got back together, this was it, but Burroughs was too interested in clearing his engrams.
In August 1968, Ian moved to an overfurnished, overpriced flat at 55 Red Lion Street, off Red Lion Square, which he could now afford because he was working on a research project with a large computer company. Each week they did the audit of Coutts Bank, which took them only two and a half days; previously it had taken seven months. He loved working with computers and it placed him in a happier frame of mind. He used the facilities to produce several permutated poems for Brion Gysin: Brion would give him one line and Ian would have the computer print out every possible permutation of it. They did small editions of two of these. From Red Lion Square, Ian moved to a rather opulent flat filled with chintz and overstuffed furniture at 24 Ansdell Terrace, near Kensington Square. He still saw Burroughs frequently, but refused to discuss Scientology.
Bill and Ian continued to have a sporadic sexual relationship right up until the time Bill left for the United States in 1974 even when Bill had other live-in boyfriends, but Ian had no patience for Bill’s interest in pseudoscience, neither Scientology nor the other fringe outfits he was ineluctably drawn to. As Bill said, “Ian is one head I can’t walk on,” meaning that there was a whole side to Ian that was completely inaccessible to him: Ian’s whole technical side, his grasp of mathemat
ics. As Bill saw it, people function as a whole, their every action both intellectual and emotional. If someone is a mathematician it spills over into everything, making their whole personality much harder to assess or contact if you don’t have any concept of technical subjects, which is how it was with Ian. Someone like Mikey, on the other hand, was much easier to identify with and to feel what he was thinking. There was always a mystery with Ian, and this always intrigued Bill. “He was very intelligent, he had a real grasp of mathematics and physics. He was a great technician. He had certain very definite qualities. I think that potentially he was a real mathematical genius. […] He was extraordinary, a most extraordinary person, there’s no doubt about that. It’s too bad that things worked out so badly.”10 Ian featured in most of Burroughs’s books, including The Place of Dead Roads, where he is Tom.
John Berendt from Esquire wanted a new approach to his magazine’s coverage of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, and instead of hiring political commentators, he commissioned Terry Southern, Jean Genet, and Burroughs to cover it for them. Bill accepted this unusual assignment in part because he very much wanted to meet Genet, one of his favorite writers. The prospect of Esquire’s $1,500-plus-expenses fee enabled him to first visit Tangier, where he spent time with Brion Gysin and Paul Bowles. Bowles was surprised at Esquire’s choice of Bill to cover the convention. He told Jane, “I suppose the point was to find the most apolitical person they could.” While there, Bill wrote the text for the catalog to an exhibition of paintings by Ahmed Yacoubi that opened at the American Library on July 17: “Yacoubi is mapping timeless areas of magic and therefore his work has a special relevance in the space age since these areas are now open to exploration and we may well look to artists for orientation.” Bill shared with Yacoubi the belief in hostile forces and the efficacy of curses.
It was on this trip that Burroughs encountered Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, whom Brion Gysin and Mohamed Hamri had taken to Joujouka to record the Master Musicians. They met in the Parade bar and Bill went back to his room at the Minzah to listen to a selection of the tapes. Jones had a recording engineer with him and had recorded the performance on a pair of Uhers. It was released in 1971, after Jones’s death, as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, but only after a lot of unseemly haggling with the Rolling Stones management. Burroughs was enlisted by Derek Taylor to write sleeve notes, and to record a radio publicity shot: “Listen to this music, the primordial sounds of a 4,000 year-old rock ’n’ roll band.” Bill often played the cassette of this recording in his room at Dalmeny Court.
Chapter Forty-Two
Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.1
1. Chicago 1968
Burroughs flew to Chicago directly from London on Saturday, August 24, two days before the Democratic convention began. It was his first time in Chicago since the war. He entered the bar of the Sheraton, jet-lagged, wearing a brown suit, black shoes, and a fedora with the brim turned up all the way around. His disguise certainly prevented anyone from identifying him as a reporter; he looked like a businessman or minor bank official. Terry Southern thought the hat made him look like Buster Keaton or Edith Sitwell. He met up with John Berendt from Esquire, Terry Southern, and Jean Genet, along with Richard Seaver from Grove Press, who was both Burroughs’s and Genet’s publisher. Seaver’s French wife, Jeannette, was there to translate as Genet spoke no English. They had all flown in from New York after Genet had been smuggled across the American border by French Canadian separatists; the Americans would not grant him a visa because he was a former thief, convict, and a pederast. They were refused seats in the hotel’s Golliwog Room: “Ties, gentlemen!” Burroughs was the only one suitably attired and so they had to make do with the downstairs lounge. After drinks Genet wanted to see Les Yippies, and after dinner with Terry and John, Bill went to bed.
Next day they all went to Midway Airport to watch the arrival of Eugene McCarthy, where they joined the rest of the press on the flatbed truck reserved for reporters. Bill wore a McCarthy button and spent his time recording crowd noises on his Norelco cassette recorder. It was impossible to talk to Hubert Humphrey, and after waiting more than an hour they gave up on McCarthy, despite having received a more enthusiastic welcome from his staff. Bill and Genet got on well: “I had not met Genet before. We got on just great, he doesn’t speak much English, but I never had any trouble in communicating. With most French people if you can’t speak French they can’t communicate, but he communicated perfectly. He just seemed to be able to understand immediately what you were getting at.”
After another early night, Bill met up with Allen Ginsberg, who, though not holding press credentials, joined their party. Like Bill, he had not previously met Genet and was delighted to be with him. At a Yippie press conference in Lincoln Park on Monday morning, Genet, with Ginsberg translating, told the crowd, “First, let me say that I took a lot of Nembutals last night to forget I was in Chicago. Forgive me, I am a little groggy.” He praised the Yippies and condemned the police and conventioneers, gaining a rousing cheer and a kiss from a young woman reporter. Genet hugged her, but leaned back and called to Ginsberg, “Allen, be sure to tell her I’m a homosexual!”
At lunch, back at the Sheraton, Bill explained to John Berendt what he was doing with the tape recorder: “Look, man, what you do is this: You tape about ten minutes of someone talking, then you reverse back to the beginning and go forward again, cutting in every few seconds to record bits and pieces of something else. You keep on doing this until you’ve made a complete hash of it all. Then you walk around with the damn thing under your jacket, playing it at low volume. It flips people out. I do it in London all the time.”
That evening they attended the convention, but it was deadly dull, and after half an hour of Bill taping and Ginsberg quietly chanting a Hindu mantra they left. Everyone except Bill then headed for Lincoln Park, where three thousand Yippies were determined to defy the police and spend the night. Bill went off to the Oxford Club Bar on Clark Street and so missed the first police attacks on the unarmed demonstrators, who were teargassed, kicked, and clubbed indiscriminately until long after midnight. Clouds of tear gas finally flushed Bill out of the back of a truck parked on Clark Street where some hippie fans had taken him for a smoke. The next morning, the Esquire delegates assembled to compose public statements expressing their horror at the events of the previous night. Bill’s read:
Regarding conduct of police in clearing Lincoln Park of young people assembled there for the purpose of sleeping in violation of a municipal ordinance. The police acted like vicious guard dogs attacking everyone in sight. I do not “protest.” I am not surprised. The police acted in the manner of their species. The point is, why were they not controlled by their handlers? Is there not a municipal ordinance requesting that vicious dogs be muzzled and controlled?
The dog theme was taken up by both Genet and Southern in their statements, with Genet pointing out that this was the treatment that blacks had received in America for the past 150 years. That night, several hundred members of the clergy held a service in Lincoln Park beneath a twelve-foot cross accompanied by many children. However, at 12:40 the police attacked as before, this time using street-cleaning trucks to spray the crowd with tear gas. The trucks and motorcycle cops’ headlights advancing across the park through clouds of orange gas was like the invasion of aliens in a science-fiction movie. Many of the crowd, including Burroughs, Genet, and Ginsberg, retreated to the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel where Ginsberg was staying, which was filled with people coughing, tears streaming from their eyes. “The hippies are angels,” said Genet. “They are too sweet, too gentle. Someday they will have to learn.”
The next day, Wednesday, Chicago was virtually under martial law; the National Guard patrolled the streets with machine guns mounted on the front of their jeeps. The Hilton Hotel, where bystanders and newsmen had been beaten up indiscrimi
nately by police, was ringed with guardsmen. Burroughs remarked to Genet, “By God, they’re the scruffiest soldiers I’ve ever seen.” To which Genet replied, “I don’t know. I prefer the SS after the Second World War. They looked worse.” The police tactic to prevent the Yippies from using Lincoln Park was to lob tear gas into it at regular intervals all day. The city stank of it. The pathetic circus dragged on with the inevitable conclusion of nominating Hubert Humphrey.
They had arrived as observers, but Burroughs and Genet now addressed two rallies, with Bill saying that the system was unworkable and could not be enforced: “police and the behavior of the police, nothing memorable I’m sure.” Then an illegal march left from the band shell led by Burroughs, Genet, Southern, Ginsberg, and British photographer Michael Cooper. It was supposed to go for five miles, but to Bill’s relief, lines of police and National Guardsmen barred their way before they got more than three hundred yards. The Esquire contingent escaped through the north of the park but to the south carnage ensued, transmitted live to the world, as Mayor Daley’s shock troops threw tourists and pressmen through plate glass windows, beat people indiscriminately into bloody heaps, and even charged into the Hilton Hotel to beat delegates and reporters there. Jean Genet was charged by police as he tried to get to his car and he ran into an apartment building and knocked on a door at random. “Who’s there?” the occupant asked. “C’est Monsieur Genet!” he replied. By a remarkable coincidence, the door was that of somebody who was writing a thesis on Genet. Ed Sanders was delighted to see Bill on the streets: “he was out there on that night with the teargas. So Scientology hasn’t thwarted his social sense anyway.”
