Billy the Poet: What role does he play in the book Welcome to the Monkey House?

Billy the Poet is an outlaw who defies the government by kidnapping and deflowering Suicide Hostesses. No one knows what Billy looks like because every woman he kidnaps describes him differently. When Nancy is confronted with him, she sees he is very short and strange looking—not the swarthy playboy she may have been expecting. Billy's treatment of Nancy is systematic, as he has completed this task many times before. He has a gang of men and women who are also nothingheads. The women are all former Suicide Hostesses, who were once deflowered by him. He tells Nancy that they all hated him at first but came to appreciate his purpose and be grateful. When he deflowers Nancy, he is determined and sad about it. It must be done. "If there were any other way," he says.

Billy believes that the government is robbing mankind by taking away healthy sexuality. His goal is to spread the "nothinghead movement" until everyone can take birth control that prevents reproduction, not sexual desire or pleasure. He explains to Nancy that the government has equated sex with death by restricting any sexual image to the Suicide Parlors. He also tells her about his grandfather's wedding night, during which his grandmother cried and became sick. Eventually, his grandparents developed a healthy and robust sex life. He leaves Nancy with a sonnet that his grandfather read to his grandmother on that night. Billy's choice of conversation and literature supports his belief that, by banning sex, the government is oppressing life itself, and not just physical intimacy.