Marcus Ewert: The Teenage Boyfriend Of The Beat Generation

Ewert in Ginsberg's bed.

To hear him say it, Marcus Ewert was a young man on a mission. In 1988 he was living in suburban Atlanta, just another isolated gay teen who spent much of his free time dreaming of a way out. Unlike other boys in his predicament, though, the then-17-year-old was ambitious and strategic. He was desperate to immerse himself in the literary scene, and being a fan of the beat writers, he zoned in on two of its most prominent figures: Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

“Allen and Burroughs were still alive and they were both gay, and in their work it was pretty explicit that they liked teenage boys,” says Ewert, now 43. “Allen has all these poems about sleeping with boys in Naropa, which is where I realized I could go to meet them. So, I was like, Perfect, I know what to do. …Allen and Burroughs teach there? You don’t have to tell me twice.”

...

“I’d worked out this little phrase that I wanted to say to him: ‘Hello, Mr. Ginsberg, my name is Mark Ewert, and I would like to make you breakfast, lunch or dinner sometime,’” he says. “The idea was, Oh, that’s cute, I’m going to be making him a meal. That’s nice, everyone likes that. It sounds very sweet and devoted, and kind of implies that I’m going to make you a meal the morning after.”

Vocativ.

Mr Ginsberg once made a pass at  Fagburn, btw...