Authors: William Burroughs
B
ENWAY:
‘Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever
heard.
‘This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could
smell.
‘This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like
a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”
‘“Nah! I had to go relieve myself.”
‘After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags
back at him every time.
‘Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any
other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his
fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don’t need you around here any more. I can talk and eat
and
shit.”
‘After that he began waking up in the morning
with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the
whole head would have amputated spontaneous – (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) – except for the
eyes
you dig. That’s one thing the asshole
couldn’t
do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped
in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes
went out
, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eye on the end of a stalk.
‘That’s the sex that passes the censor, squeezes through between bureaus, because there’s always a space
between
, in popular songs and Grade
B movies, giving away the basic. American rottenness, spurting out like breaking boils, throwing out globs of that un-D.T. to fall anywhere and grow into some degenerate cancerous life-form, reproducing a hideous random image. Some would be entirely made of penis-like erectile tissue, others viscera barely covered over with skin, clusters of 3 and 4 eyes together, criss-cross of mouth and assholes,
human parts shaken around and poured out any way they fell.
‘The end result of complete cellular representation is
cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live
without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand
can
live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principle of
inventing needs
to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human
evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action, to the complete parasitism of a virus.
‘(It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from a more complex life form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now it has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host,
but using the life of another – the renunciation of life itself, a
falling
towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.)
‘Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapses. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existences as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.
‘In Timbuktu I once saw an Arab boy who could play a flute with his ass, and the fairies
told me he was really an individual in bed. He could play a tune up and down the organ hitting the most erogenously sensitive spots, which are different on everyone, of course. Every lover had his special theme song which was perfect for him and rose to his climax. The boy was a great artist when it came to improvising new combines and special climaxes, some of them notes in the unknown, tie-ups
of seeming discords that would suddenly break through each other and crash together with a stunning, hot sweet impact.’
‘Fats’ Terminal has organized a purple-assed baboon stick from motorcycles.
The Huntsmen have gathered for the Hunt Breakfast in The Swarm Bar, a hang-out for elegant pansies. The Huntsmen strut about with imbecile narcissism in black leather jackets and studded belts, flexing
their muscles for the fags to feel. They all wear enormous falsie baskets. Every now and then one of them throws a fag to the floor and pisses on him.
They are drinking Victory Punch, compounded of paregoric, Spanish Fly, heavy black rum, Napoleon brandy and canned heat. The punch is served from a great, hollow, gold baboon, crouched in snarling terror, snapping at a spear in his side. You twist
the baboon’s balls and punch runs out his cock. From time to time hot hors-d’oeuvres pop out the baboon’s ass with a loud farting noise. When this happens the Huntsmen roar with bestial laughter, and the fags shriek and twitch.
Master of the Hunt is Captain Everhard, who was drummed out of the Queen’s 69th for palming a jock-strap in a game of strip poker. Motorcycles careening, jumping, overturning.
Spitting, shrieking, shitting baboons fighting hand to hand with the Huntsmen. Riderless cycles scrabbling about in the dust like crippled insects, attacking baboon and Huntsman.…
The Party Leader rides in triumph through yiping crowds. A dignified old man shits at sight of him and tries to sacrifice himself under the wheels of the car.
P
ARTY
L
EADER:
‘Don’t sacrifice your dried up person under
the wheels of my brand new Buick Roadmaster Convertible with white-walled tires, hydraulic windows and all the trimmings. It’s a chip Arab trick – look to thy accent, Ivan – save it for fertilizer.… We refer you to the conservation department to consummate your swell purpose.…’
The washing boards are down, and the sheets are sent
to the Laundromat to lose those guilty stains – Emmanuel prophesies
a Second Coming.…
There’s a boy across the river with an ass like a peach; alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine.
The junky sits with needle poised to the message of blood, and the con man palpates the mark with fingers of rotten ectoplasm.…
Dr. Berger’s Mental Hour.… Fadeout.
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Now listen, I’ll say it again, and I’ll say it slow. “Yes.”’ He nods. ‘And make with the smile.…
The
smile.’
He shows his false teeth in hideous parody of a toothpaste ad. ‘“We like apple pie, and we like each other. It’s just as simple as that,” – and make it sound
simple
, country simple.… Look bovine, whyncha? You want the switchboard again? Or the pail?’
S
UBJECT
– Cured Criminal Psychopath – ‘No! … No! … What’s this bovine?’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Look like a cow.’
S
UBJECT
– with cow’s head –
‘Moooo Moooo.’
T
ECHNICIAN
(starting back): ‘Too much!! No! Just look square, you dig, like a nice popcorn John.…’
S
UBJECT:
‘A mark?’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Well, not exactly a mark. Not enough larceny in this citizen. He is after light concussion.… You know the type. Telepathic sender and receiver excised. The Service Man Look … Action, camera.’
S
UBJECT:
‘Yes, we like apple pie.’ His stomach rumbles
loud and long. Streamers of saliva hang off his chin.…
Dr. Berger looks up from some notes. He look like Jewish owl with black glasses, the light hurt his eyes: ‘I think he is an unsuitable subject.… See he reports to Disposal.’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Well, we could cut that rumble out of the sound track, stick a drain in his mouth and …’
D
R
. B
ERGER:
‘No … He’s
unsuitable.’
He looks at the subject with
distaste as if he commit some terrible faux-pas
like look for crabs in Mrs. Worldly’s drawing room.
T
ECHNICIAN
(resigned and exasperated): ‘Bring in the cured swish.’
The cured homosexual is brought in.… He walks through invisible contours of hot metal. He sits in front of the camera and starts arranging his body in a countrified sprawl. Muscles move into place like autonomous parts of a severed
insect. Blank stupidity blurs and softens his face: ‘Yes,’ he nods and smiles, ‘we like apple pie and we like each other. It’s just as simple as that.’ He nods and smiles and nods and smiles and –
‘Cut! …’ screams the Technician. The cured homosexual is led out nodding and smiling.
‘Play it back.’
The Artistic Adviser shakes his head: ‘It lacks something. To be specific, it lacks health.’
B
ERGER
(leaps to his feet): ‘Preposterous! It’s health incarnate! …’
A
RTISTIC
A
DVISER
(primly): ‘Well if you have anything to enlighten me on this subject I’ll be very glad to hear it,
Doctor
Berger.… If you with your brilliant mind can carry the project alone, I don’t know why you
need
an Art Adviser at all.’ He exits with hand on hip singing softly: ‘I’ll be around when you’re gone.’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Send in the cured writer.… He’s got
what
? Buddhism? … Oh, he can’t talk. Say so at first, whyncha?’ He turns to Berger: ‘The writer can’t talk.… Overliberated, you might say. Of course we can dub him.…’
B
ERGER
(sharply): ‘No, that wouldn’t do at all.… Send in someone else.’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘Those two was my white-haired boys. I put in a hundred hours overtime on those kids for which I am not yet
compensate.…’
B
ERGER:
‘Apply triplicate.… Form 6090.’
T
ECHNICIAN:
‘You telling me how to apply already?
Now look, Doc, you say something once. “To speak of a healthy homosexual it’s like how can a citizen be perfectly healthy with terminal cirrhosis.” Remember?’
B
ERGER:
‘Oh yes. Very well put, of course,’ he snarls viciously. ‘I don’t pretend to be a
writer.’
He spits the word out with such
ugly hate that the Technician reels back appalled.…
T
ECHNICIAN
(aside): ‘I can’t bear the smell of him. Like old rotten replica cultures.… Like the farts of a maneating plant.… Like Schafer’s hurumph’ (parodies academic manner) ‘Strange Serpent … What I’m getting at, Doc, is how can you expect a body to be healthy with its brains washed out? … Or put it another way. Can a subject be healthy
in abstentia
by proxy already?’
B
ERGER
(leaps up): ‘I got the health! … All the health! Enough health for the whole world, the whole fucking world!! I cure everybody!’
The Technician looks at him sourly. He mixes a bicarbonate of soda and drinks it and belches into his hand. ‘Twenty years I’ve been a martyr to dyspepsia.’
Lovable Lu your brainwashed poppa say: ‘I’m strictly for fish, and I luuuuuve
it.… Confidentially, girls, I use Steely Dan’s Yokohama, wouldn’t you? Danny Boy never lets you down. Besides it’s more hygienic that way and avoids all kinda awful contacts leave a man paralyzed from the waist down. Women have poison juices.…’
‘So I told him, I said
“Doctor
Berger, don’t think you can pass your tired old brainwashed belles on me. I’m the oldest faggot in the Upper Baboon’s Asshole.…”’
Switch envelopes in clip clap joint where fradulent girls put the B on you in favor of the House 666 and there is no health in them clap broads rotten to the apple corer of my unconsummate cock. Who shot Cock Robin? … The sparrow falls to my trustful Webley, and a drop of blood gathers at his beak.…
Lord Jim has turned bright yellow in the woe withered moon of morning like white smoke against
the blue stuff, and shirts whip in a cold spring wind on limestone cliffs across the river, Mary, and the dawn is broken in two pieces like Dillinger on the lamster way to the Biograph. Smell of neon and atrophied gangsters, and the criminal
manqué
nerves himself to crack a pay toilet sniffing ammonia in a bucket.…‘A caper,’ he says. ‘I’ll pull this capon I mean caper.’