Making bad look good

Despite our common passions - such as our affinity to make monster faces at babies when their parents aren't looking or our general love for hate - Burroughs makes bad look and sound really good. And his words, oftentimes along the lines of death wishes or nasty comments to children and other social annoyances ,are strangely encouraging and uplifting to many of us who are flawed in our various ways.

Says Burroughs, "I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."

He glosses over his childhood in this collection. Instead, he concentrates on his young adult life as a "gay alcoholic ad guy," sleeping continuously with men of distinct walks of life, from an undertaker in a funeral home where Rose Kennedy once rested, to three Catholic priests.

His mentions of Rogaine, Google, and America Online personal ads signal perhaps a man dependent on the luxuries and social networks of modern technologies, which is partially true. However, there is a major part of him acutely aware of our culture's destructive stage, and each of his essays manifest an absolute release - a letting go of all secrets and shame - as if his confessions purify and absolve his ironic, offbeat presence in a vacuous world to which he's never related.

Burroughs doesn't ask for such forgiveness from his readers, but his selections laced with a sometimes unforgivable narcissism (laughing at people with Down's Syndrome or making a little Chinese girl cry after he steps on her hand) transform in the end into pieces sharing his intimate moments with his partner, Dennis, and their dog, Bentley, in an alternative, "I found love" kind of way.

And he does this in an entirely funny way, although his writing isn't an automatic laugh. In fact, many of my snickers were of the guilty sort, such as when he harasses a Mastercard telemarketer by demanding a photo of his genitals, or when he triumphs in a lengthy battle after murdering a bionic "rat/thing" in his bathtub with Raid and boiling water.

Since his rise to pseudo-celebrity, Burroughs' fan base has grown into one of insanity, with an old grandma stopping him at the grocery store to tell him about her "Dr. Pepper enema" or a recently divorced woman talking casually about her walk-in on her husband engaging in gay sex against her Steinway piano with the building super. Men send an alarming number of photos of their private parts, and it's as if Burroughs has struck a nerve in all of his readers.

Really, if you love his writing, you will almost obsess over his plight to sacrifice his selfishness for a glimmer to "do more good" in his life. And, if you hate him? Well, that's too bad. You're missing out.