Spare Ass Annie

"In 1944, Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer in an apartment they shared with Kerouac and Edie Parker, Kerouac's first wife. Due to the more homophobic / societal pressures of the day Burroughs divorced his first wife, IIse Krabbe, and married Vollmer in 1946 with the intent of trying to create a "normal" family. Their son, William S. Burroughs, Jr., was born in 1947 in Texas. During this period Burroughs wrote 2 novels-Junkie & Queer, the latter only published in the 1980s. Both were straightforward narratives unusual only for their very dark humour and pre-date Burroughs' literary experiments. On September 6, 1951 in Mexico City, Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife during what was reportedly a drunken attempt to imitate William Tell's feat of shooting an apple off his son's head. This is often described as an "accidental shooting", but other interpretations are possible, including "murder" or even "assisted suicide". Burroughs was charged with criminal imprudence and eventually skipped bail, leaving Mexico in 1952. He toured South America for several months, then settled in Tangier, Morocco. It was in Tangier that he and Brion Gysin developed the aforementioned 'cut-up technique'."