Status Updates From Junky

Communism mentioned!!

It’s tough to tell how Bill feels about his own queerness, he seems to just not care, but I find his description of “fags” as opposed to other queer people fascinating.

Literally over halfway through the book, after he’s been arrested, some asshole cop reveals Bill has a wife and kids (no idea for how long or how old), didn’t see that one coming.

My man Bill is constantly teetering on a knife’s edge - though sometimes it’s hard to discern what’s actually a threat and what’s simply his paranoia

“junk short-circuits sex. the drive to non sexual sociability comes from the same place sex comes from, so when i have an H or M shooting habit i am non-sociable. if someone wants to talk, o.k. but there is no drive to get acquainted. when i come off the junk, i often run through a period of uncontrolled sociability and talk to anyone who will listen.”

I appreciate that essentially every character only exists in as much as they are part of Bill’s heroin use and dealing; he cares about nothing else, or at least doesn’t care to share it with us.

It’s interesting how different groups of “outcasts/undesirables” can hold their own prejudices against one another

“i do not accept the theory that junk is lurking in the body at all time — the spine is where it supposedly holes up — and i disagree with all psychological answers. i think the use of junk causes permanent cellular alteration. once a junkie, always a junkie. you can stop using junk, but you are never off after the first habit.”

The book brings you quickly into the world of the addict through: frequent use of slang; matter-of-fact discussion of drug use, means of attaining it, regardless of if it’s simple pickpocketing or literal torture, and consequences, including multiple deaths; the stream-of-consciousness narration, which will frequently and suddenly jump days, weeks, or seemingly even months at a time.

A gay junky as our protagonist? Sign me up!

“perhaps he stores something in his body — a substance to prolong life — of which he is periodically milked by his masters. he is as specialized as an insect, for the performance of some inconceivably vile function.”