Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs – the only time the two of them were filmed in a two-shot.
AG: Where do you learn about sex, originally from friends?
WSB: Books.
AG: Books, yes. Yeah, I found Kraft-Ebbing in my uncle’s library. He was a a doctor, and that was the first arousing reading I had and I was maybe thirteen, twelve, case-histories, it was aboulomania , or whatever they called it
WSB: It’s a book called The Plastic Age by some guy named Percy Marks (it was so daring), The Green Hat, The Coming of Age in Samoa..
AG: We played out a sort of psychoanalytic or psychiatric role together and I would lay down for an hour every day practically, and Bill would listen and I would free-associate and I remember it came to a kind of climax one day when I burst into tears, it lasted about half a year, and said “nobody loves me”. I actually wept – “nobody loves me”, I felt that lonesome – and that was really a great discovery, because that’s what I actually felt.
WSB: If you did.
AG: Well I thought I did. Well anyway that I was capable of that, of saying that, really amazed me because that was making myself totally vulnerable before somebody. Actually, I still feel that way – nobody loves me.
WSB : Do you want to be loved?
AG: Well, I don’t know. Probably not. Yeah, I want to be loved – on my own terms. (to WSB) Do you want to be loved?
WSB : Well, not really. It depends. By who or what. By my cats, certainly.
AG: I want be loved by certain young gentlemen. (Jack) Kerouac and I were very interested in Bill and curious about him when we first met him so we formed ourselves in a kind of delegation of two to go visit and enquire as to what was the nature of his soul and what does he think about and what does he really think about, you know, what did he feel like, what did he…what did it fell like to be William Burroughs and what kind of sensibility did he have underneath, was he tender or cruel or was he (a) cold lizard or was he some sort of a Blue Boy
WSB: You’re thinking in either/or terms.
AG: Well, yes, there’s a whole variety of possibilities (you see) and Kerouac with a sort of technical intelligent and sort of intuitive heart. and at the same time very straight manly handsome quality was a very appealing person to talk with. And so I don’t now what Bill fit when we show up on his apartment in Riverside Drive but he was very generous, gave us a bunch of books, (W.B.)Yeats, (Alfred) Korzybski, (Oswald) Spengler, (Jean) Cocteau, (Arthur) Rimbaud, (William) Blake, among others