Growing old, not growing up

Tom Collins Arizona Summer Wildcat

He had the look though - black shoes, black pants and black vest.

Makes me feel old.

It's hard to be hip when the balance of life is precarious as a checkbook, but in this suburban city .

In suburban cities around the country, there are multiple generations of kids fed on Naked Lunch, years of howling.

There are kids up and driving from coast to coast, east to west, not looking to settle. It's not just VW microbuses, it's Hondas too.

I'm wrapped up and rent due. I'm not leaving anytime soon. The opportunity to move and keep moving is a hairsbreadth short of lost on me.

Now, Burroughs is on the big screen in the sky. Laughing, rambling, edgy skeleton. He'll be giving advice to young people celestial like, man.

He cashed at the end, got his props from pop stars. From Gus Van Sant, from old Kurt Cobain, from Bono. Forever remembered as an MTV icon, a disposable hero.

The century's screaming to a stop and there's a counter culture count off. Ginsberg's gone and Leary's a space shot.

I'm still trying to get through On The Road, still trying to get to the part about Old Bull Lee. Maybe then I'll understand. At 18, I put down Naked Lunch 10 pages in and never picked it up again. I never rented the movie. I never bought any Nikes.

I slogged through every poem I think Allen Ginsberg ever wrote and came out the other end dirty and dissatisfied.

William S. Burroughs will be remembered for shooting his wife and heroin and for telling it like it is and for living long enough to put all his younger cohorts in the grave.

Seventeen hundred thousand 17-year-olds are reading Junky at lunch time, sneaking Camel straight cigarettes.

See, all this talk of beats and early hippies gets me thinking, that maybe I really missed a boat.

Obituaries are inherently reflective things, stories told after all the action. It leads me down the same road. Upon reflection, these dead men have been important, but I'm not sure it's for any particular thing they said, but for general things they did. From their lives sprung the sixties and from the sixties sprung I, you know. These are heroes that belong to me, belong to that rock and roll mythology that is the stuff of teenage and post-teenage talking. What I've read and what I haven't is not at issue. What is at issue is the fact that I have all but fled the possibility of addiction to irresponsibility. Man, I actually believe that responsibility exists.

I got old at some point, I got stodgy. Serious.

When you look into you grandfather's eyes and know just where he's coming from and you pick up Burroughs and you don't know where he's at, then it's time to register Republican and start buying bonds or something. Then, it's last ditch, I think. You either hit the road or don't. If you don't you're going to be working at the post office for the rest of your life, maybe wondering, but maybe not, about that missed adventure. but maybe not, about that missed adventure.