Bowie, Burroughs and Me

David Bowie died on 10 January 2016.  He was 69 years old, three years younger than I am.  The only album of his that I owned was Ziggy Stardust back in 1972 and, later, I was a big fan of three of his movies—The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Hunger (1983), and Merry…

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

It has been a while since I’ve updated this section of the website.  The plan, originally, was to pay tribute properly to friends and colleagues who have contributed to my own personal growth, not only as a writer but also as a human being. The list seems to grow longer every time I wake up in the…

Lee and the Boys in the Backroom: A Play Based on the Novel QUEER and the unpublished correspondence of WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Requirements:  38 parts played by 8 M and 1F (Voice Only).  Additionally, Lee’s wife Jane and Allerton’s girlfriend Mary will be represented on stage not by live actors but by life-sized ragdolls. Setting:  A bar, a bed-sitting room, a movie-house, and various streets in Mexico City, 1949-1952. Plot:  Lee and his wife Jane are American…

Naked Lunch in Lawrence, Part One

“Party Time in Academe.”  Reprinted from The Wayward Professor by Joel J. Gold.  Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1989.  Pp. 119-121.  The piece appeared originally in the Chronicle of Higher Education. ”…One of our most dashing graduate students, who had earlier rented a Chinese restaurant and ordered a special dinner for about half of…

Naked Lunch in Lawrence, Part Two

I was riding high in 1977, coming off, as it were, from the “success” of my first play, Conpersonas.  Marshall Fine, the Arts Editor of the Lawrence Journal-World, had somehow convinced the editor that the local paper should cover the invitational performance of the K.U. production of the play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. …