Joan Vollmer was born in 1924 and went to Barnard in the early 1940's where she fell in with the beat crowd. In New York, at 421 West-118th Street, she roomed with Edie Parker, who was going to Columbia and would go on to marry Jack Kerouac. There, Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg contrived to set up Joan Vollmer with William S. Burroughs, even though Burroughs was gay. The first time they slept together, Vollmer told Burroughs, "You're supposed to be a faggot, but you're as good as a pimp in bed." Eventually Volllmer because addicted to drugs; she is the basis for the New Orleans junkie in Kerouac's On the Road. Joan Vollmer and William S. Burroughs had a son together, William S. Burroughs Jr., who was himself a writer. As Segnbora-t says, Joan Voller died in Mexico City in 1951 when Burroughs shot her in the head, playing William Tell. Vollmer's death is a key story in the movie, Naked Lunch (1991) (not the book.)
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