The Next Three High Risk Articles

Romance & Body Horror (Also William S. Burroughs)

High Risk is the most interesting anthology to write about because I don’t like everything in it. With John Cheever, there are some disappointments, but I didn’t decide to write about every story in the collection without first deciding that I liked John Cheever quite a bit. The Bible chapters are also hit and miss, but they are telling a story. Obviously, I am going to be kind to all the stories in an anthology that I published like BADASS HORROR.

Yet, High Risk is a gamble. I could love a story, hate a story, find a story to be overrated bullshit. I might discover a new exciting writer that I never thought I’d like. I could find that I hate a writer even more disgusting than ever. I really don’t know. Even after I’ve read the whole thing, I don’t know what I’m going to say about these articles until I get to them.

The fourth article in High Risk and the first one I’m discussing here is “Poems” by Pat Califia. Pat Califia is a writer that I never heard about until I read High Risk and with in many ways, I have to say that his poems makes the book worth the rest of the bullshit. In these interconnected poems, he writes about the flutterings of first love, hiding one’s desire, the girlfriend’s son and descent into heroin addiction. Rarely do I read a lesbian love story that ends with heroin addiction (he presented female at the time. He has since transitioned). It’s a cool and scary love story, and the poetry is really damn good (even though it took me a few readings to fully appreciate what he was doing with the language).

And next we have the reason why most people bought the book. William S. Burroughs has something to say. Most of us first encounter William S. Burroughs in college and as far as I’m concerned, Naked Lunch still has more to say than On the Road. It’s also ironic that Burroughs with his heroin addiction was the healthiest of the big three beats. Jack drank himself to death early. Allen Ginsberg couldn’t stop creeping on teenage boys and joining NAMBLA. So William S. Burroughs left New York City to avoid that punks that kept wanting to shoot up with him and moved to Lawrence, Kansas and became “Nice Mr. Burroughs with his cats.” He did some decent spoken word albums, but Naked Lunch was never going to be de-throned as his best work.

In “Just Say No to Drug Hysteria,” he’s not even trying. In an article on Neil Gaiman, I stated that Gaiman hit a point where he could send his shopping lists for publication and people would give him money. So Neil Gaiman wrote crap for over 20 years. I’m not sure if that’s the deal with Burroughs, but certainly he wasn’t a hungry writer who wanted to impress anyone (even himself) when he wrote a barely trying article about how drug hysteria is bad, mmmkay.

Finally, there’s Bob Flanagan who made a name for himself by driving nails into his penis. He was also a poster boy for cystic fibrosis and got some fame for it when he was 16. One wonders, did he think that getting famous for a fatal condition was a terrible way to go, so he decided to get famous for extreme self-torture? It’s a good theory. Anyhow, “Body” serves as a manifesto for Bob’s performance art, the kind of thing that might get passed out to patrons when coming to enjoy a show as Bob nails his penis.

Ok, that’s fun. L’Ag B’Omer is coming up and if you’d like to give tzeddaka you can either donate to my gofundme, get a paid subscription or hire me to revise your resume, manuscript or whatever (I charge $25/hour) at either omanlieder@yahoo.com or

Here’s an article on Bob Flanagan, if you’re still curious.

Looks like Pat Califia has books on Amazon, like Public Sex: The Culture of Raqdical Sex. So buy it.