Burroughs' citizenship papers were still not straightened out, and he was subjected to various police shake-downs, in the course of which his formerly rosy view of Mexico as a "haven of non-interference" soured considerably. In mid-winter he resolved to quit junk, and after an agonizing, slow-withdrawal "cure", he managed to do so. But with the departure of junk came the return of libido, and after six years with Vollmer -- visibly disintegrating under the accumulated damage of the Benzedrine and now the all-day tequila, and suffering a recurrence of her childhood poliomyelitis -- Burroughs was hungering to connect with a young American boy. There were plenty of those, at Mexico City College and at the Bounty Bar. In the spring of 1951, Burroughs began to pursue several of them.
Off junk, and after a bad period of drinking heavily, Burroughs settled into a routine of writing at home with Vollmer, while the neighbor women looked after Billy [WSB's son with Joan] and
Julie [Joan's own daughter from a previous relationship], and going out to the Bounty to drink and troll for young Americans. In June, around the time he moved his family to the apartment building formerly located at 210 Orizaba, he turned his attentions to a nineteen-year-old named Lewis Marker, from Jacksonville, Florida. Marker had served in the A.A.F. Counter-Intelligence Corps, and was a student at Mexico City College. He was by no means homosexual, nor was he immediately drawn to Burroughs -- who now laid siege on Marker, following his movements, setting meetings with him, and focusing his powers of imagination and performance upon the boy. He was competing with an American woman, Betty Jones ("Mary" in Queer), for Marker's attention.
Vollmer's condition, meanwhile, was worsening. She felt abandoned, and her tequila intake climbed. For a long time she had tolerated Burroughs' pursuit of boys, and he had never made any secret of his essential homosexuality. But she was visibly declining, her hair falling out, her slight limp becoming more pronounced, her wistful features swelling with alcohol; she could scarcely care for the children. Out of her own despair, or her mounting disappointment with Burroughs, she had begun to mock him in front of their friends, deliberately humiliating and verbally emasculating him, when he would launch into one of his grandiose tales.
Before long Burroughs and his "routines" had captivated Marker, who must have had some affection for this man of thirty-seven, because in June 1951 he agreed to accompany him on a trip to Ecuador, in search of yagé, an hallucinogenic vine that was said to convey telepathic powers. Their sexual relationship was unequal, with Burroughs very much the pursuer, and the strains of traveling together in the Third World -- combined with the failure of Burroughs' quest for the spirit-vine -- resulted in the breakdown of their connection, even before the end of the trip.
Exhausted by hard travel and disappointed by their failure to find any yagé, Burroughs and Marker split up and returned separately to Mexico City in early September, after six weeks in each other's constant company. Forsaken by Marker and traveling home alone, Burroughs must have dreamed of a further escape, from the wreckage of his and Vollmer's lives in Mexico - to South America, where they and their children would dwell in deep jungle, living by basic human skills. Only eleven years prior, Burroughs had been desperate enough to cut off a finger for his unrequited love; now his desolation was even greater.