Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  “You’re quitting? Well I hope you make it, kid. May I fall down and be paralyzed if I don’t mean it. . . . You gotta friend in me. A real friend and if.”

  Well the traffic builds up and boosters falling in with jackets shirts and ties, kids with a radio turn from the living car trailing tubes and wires, lush-workers flash rings and wrist watches falling in sick all hours. I had the janitor cooled, an old rummy, but it couldn’t last with that crowd.

  “Say you’re looking great kid. Now do yourself a favor and stay off. I been getting some really great shit lately. Remember that brown shit sorta yellow like snuff cooks up brown and clear . . .”

  Junky in east bath room . . . invisible and persistent dream body . . . familiar face maybe . . . scored for some time or body . . . in that grey smell of rectal mucus . . . night cafeterias and junky room dawn smells. Three hours from Lexington made it five times . . . soapy egg flesh . . .

  “These double papers he claims of withdrawal.”

  “Well I thought you was quitting . . .”

  “I can’t make it.”

  “Imposible quitar eso.”

  Got up and fixed in the sick dawn flutes of Ramadan.

  “¿ William tu tomas más medicina? . . . No me hagas caso, William.”

  Casbah house in the smell of dust and we made it . . . empty Eukodol boxes stacked four feet along the walls . . . dead on the surplus blankets . . . girl screaming . . . vecinos rush in . . .

  “What did she die of?”

  “I don’t know she just died.”

  Bill Gains in Mexico City room with his douche bag and his stash of codeine pills powdered in a bicarbonate can. “I’ll just say I suffer from indigestion.” Coffee and blood spilled all over the place. Cigarette holes in the pink blanket. . . . The Consul would give me no information other than place of burial in The American Cemetery.

  “Broke? Have you no pride? Go to your Consul.” He gave me an alarm clock ran for a year after his death.

  Leif repatriated by the Danish, freight boat out of Casa for Copenhagen sank off England with all hands. Remember my medium of distant fingers?—

  “What did she die of?”

  “End.”

  “Some things I find myself.”

  The Sailor went wrong in the end. Hanged to a cell door by his principles: “Some things I find myself doing I’ll pack in is all.”

  Bread knife in the heart . . . rub and die . . . repatriated by morphine script . . . those out of Casa for Copenhagen on special yellow note . . .

  “All hands broke? Have you no pride?” Alarm clock ran for a year. “He just sit down on the curb and die.” Esperanza told me on Niño Perdido and we cashed a morphine script, those Mexican Nar. scripts on special yellow banknote paper . . . like a thousand dollar bill . . . or a Dishonorable Discharge from the US Army. . . . And fixed in the cubicle room you reach by climbing this ladder.

  Yesterday call flutes of Ramadan: “No me hagas caso.”

  Blood spill over shirts and light. The American trailing in form. . . . He went to Madrid. This frantic Cuban fruit finds Kiki with a novia and stabs him with a kitchen knife in the heart. (Girl screaming. Enter the nabors.)

  “Quédase con su medicina, William.”

  Half bottle of Fundador after half cure in the Jew Hospital. Shots of demerol by candlelight. They turned off the lights and water. Paper-like dust we made it. Empty walls. Look anywhere. No good. No bueno.

  He went to Madrid. . . . Alarm clock ran for yesterday. . . . “No me hagas caso.” Dead on arrival. . . you might say at the Jew Hospital. . . blood spilled over the American . . . trailing lights and water. . . . The Sailor went so wrong somewhere in that grey flesh. . . . He just sit down on zero. . . . I nodded on Niño Perdido his coffee over three hours late. . . . They all went away and sent papers. . . . The Dead Man write for you like a major. . . . Enter vecinos. . . . Freight boat smell of rectal mucus went down off England with all dawn smell of distant fingers. . . . About this time I went to your Consul. He gave me a Mexican after his death. . . . Five times of dust we made it. . . with soap bubbles of withdrawal crossed by a thousand junky nights. . . . Soon after the half maps came in by candlelight. . . OCCUPY. . . . Junk lines falling . . . Stay off. . . Bill Gains in the Yellow Sickness . . . Looking at dirty pictures casual as a ceiling fan short-timing the dawn we made it in the corn smell of rectal mucus and carbolic soap . . . familiar face maybe from the vacant lot . . . trailing tubes and wires. . . . “You fucking can’t-wait hungry junkies! . . .” Burial in the American Cemetery. “Quédase con su medicina. . . . On Niño Perdido the girl screaming. . . . They all went way through Casbah House. . . . “Couldn’t you write me any better than that? Gone away. . . . You can look any place.”

  No good. No Bueno.

  You wouldn’t believe how hot things were when I left the States—I knew this one pusher wouldn’t carry any shit on his person just shoot it in the line—Ten twenty grains over and above his own absorption according to the route he was servicing and piss it out in bottles for his customers so if the heat came up on them they cop out as degenerates—So Doc Benway assessed the situation and came up with this brain child—

  “Once in the Upper Baboonasshole I was stung by a scorpion—the sensation is not dissimilar to a fix—Hummm.”

  So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed. “Now we must find a worthy vessel,” he said—So we flush out this old goofball artist and put the scorpion to him and he turned sort of blue and you could see he was fixed right to metal—These scorpions could travel on a radar beam and service the clients after Doc copped for the bread—It was a good thing while it lasted and the heat couldn’t touch us—However all these scorpion junkies began to glow in the dark and if they didn’t score on the hour metamorphosed into scorpions straight away—So there was a spot of bother and we had to move on disguised as young junkies on the way to Lexington—Bill and Johnny we sorted out the names but they keep changing like one day I would wake up as Bill the next day as Johnny—So there we are in the train compartment shivering junk sick our eyes watering and burning.

  CASE OF THE CELLULOID KALI

  The name is Clem Snide—I am a Private Ass Hole—I will take on any job any identity any body—I will do anything difficult dangerous or downright dirty for a price.

  The man opposite me didn’t look like much—A thin grey man in a long coat that flickered like old film—He just happens to be the biggest operator in any time universe—

  “I don’t care myself you understand”—He watched the ash spiraling down from the end of his Havana—It hit the floor in a puff of grey dust—

  “Just like that—Just time—Just time—Don’t care myself if the whole fucking shithouse goes up in chunks—I’ve sat out novas before—I was born in a nova.”

  “Well Mr. Martin, I guess that’s what birth is you might say.”

  “I wouldn’t say—Have to be moving along any case—The ticket that exploded posed little time—Point is they are trying to cross me up—small timers—still on the old evacuation plan—Know what the old evacuation plan is, Mr. Snide?”

  “Not in detail.”

  “The hanging gimmick—death in orgasm—gills—No bones and elementary nervous system—evacuation to the Drenched Lands—a bad deal on the level and it’s not on the level with Sammy sitting in—small timers trying to cross me up—Me, Bradly-Martin, who invented the double-cross—Step right up—Now you see me now you don’t—A few scores to settle before I travel—a few things to tidy up and that’s where you come in—I want you to contact the Venus Mob, the Vegetable People and spill the whole fucking compost heap through Times Square and Piccadilly—I’m not taking any rap for that green bitch—I’m going to rat on everybody and split this dead whistle stop planet wide open—I’m clean for once with the nova heat—like clean fall out—”

  He faded in spiraling patterns of cigar smoke—
There was a knock at the door—Registered letter from Antwerp—Ten thousand dollar check for film rights to a novel I hadn’t written called The Soft Ticket—Letter from somebody I never heard of who is acting as my agent suggests I contact the Copenhagen office to discuss the Danish rights on my novel Expense Account—bar backed by pink shell—New Orleans jazz thin in the Northern night.

  A boy slid off a white silk bar stool and held out the hand: “Hello, I’m Johnny Yen, a friend of—well, just about everybody. I was more physical before my accident you can see from this interesting picture. Only the head was reduced to this jelly but like I say it the impression on my face was taken by the other man’s eyes drive the car head-on it was and the Big Physician (he’s very technical) rushed him off to a surgery and took out his eyes and made a quick impression and slapped it on me like a pancake before I started to dry out and curl around the edges. So now I’m back in harness you might say: and I have all of ‘you’ that what I want from my audience is the last drop then bring me another. The place is hermetic. We think so blockade we thought nobody could get thru our flak thing. They thought. Switch Artist me. Oh, there goes my frequency. I’m on now . . .”

  The lights dimmed and Johnny pranced out in goggles flickering Northern Lights wearing a jockstrap of undifferentiated tissue that must be in constant movement to avoid crystallization. A penis rose out of the jock and dissolved in pink light back to a clitoris, balls retract into cunt with a fluid plop. Three times he did this to wild “Olés!” from the audience. Drifted to the bar and ordered a heavy blue drink. D noted patches of white crystal formed along the scar lines on Johnny’s copy face.

  “Just like canals. Maybe I’m a Martian when the Crystals are down.”

  You will die there a screwdriver through the head. The thought like looking at me over steak and explain it all like that stay right here. She was also a Reichian analyst. Disappear more or less remain in acceptable form to you the face.

  “We could go on cutting my cleavage act, but genug basta assez dice fall hombre long switch street . . . I had this terrible accident in a car a Bentley it was I think they’re so nice that’s what you pay for when you buy one it’s yours and you can be sure nobody will pull it out from under our assets. Of course we don’t have assholes here you understand somebody might go and get physical. So we are strictly from urine. And that narrows things to a fine line down the middle fifty feefty and what could be fairer than that my Uncle Eyetooth always says he committed fornication but I don’t believe it me, old heavy water junky like him. . . . So anyhoo to get back to my accident in my Bentley once I get my thing in a Bentley it’s mine already.

  “So we had this terrible accident or rather he did. Oh dear what am I saying? It wasn’t my first accident you understand yearly wounded or was it monthly Oh dear I must stay on that middle line . . .

  “Survivor. Survivor. Not the first in my childhood. Three thousand years in show business and always keep my nose clean. Why I was a dancing boy for the Cannibal Trog Women in the Ice Age. Remember? All that meat stacked up in the caves and the Blue Queen covered with limestone flesh creeps into your bones like cold grey honey . . . that’s the way they keep them not dead but paralyzed with this awful stuff they cook down from vampire bats get in your hair Gertie always keep your hair way up inside with a vampire on premises bad to get in other alien premises. The Spanish have this word for it, something about props ajeno or something like that I know so am ya la yo mixa everything allup. They call me Puto the Cement Mixer, now isn’t that cute? Some people think I’m just silly but I’m not silly at all. . . and this boyfriend told me I looked just like a shrew ears quivering hot and eager like burning leaves and those were his last words engraved on my back tape—along with a lot of other old memories that disgust me, you wouldn’t believe the horrible routines I been involved through my profession of Survival Artist. . . and they think that’s funny, but I don’t laugh except real quick between words no time you understand laughing they could get at me doesn’t keep them off like talking does, now watch—”

  A flicker pause and the light shrank and the audience sound a vast muttering in Johnny’s voice.

  “You see”—Shadows moved back into nightclub seats and drank nightclub drinks and talked nightclub talk—“They’d just best is all. So I was this dancing boy for these dangerous old cunts paralyzed men and boys they dug special stacked right up to the ceiling like the pictures I saw of Belsen or one of those awful contracted places and I said they are at it again . . . I said the Old Army Game. I said ‘Pass the buck.’ Now you see it, now you don’t. . . . Paralyzed with this awful gook the Sapphire Goddess let out through this cold sore she always kept open on her lips, that is a hole in the limestone you understand she was like entirely covered with one of those stag mites. . . . Real concentrated in there and irradiated to prevent an accident owing to some virus come lately wander in from Podunk Hepatitis. . . . But I guess I’m talking too much about private things. . . . But I know this big atomic professor, he’s very technical too, says: ‘There are no secrets any more, Pet,’ when I was smooching around him for a quickie. My Uncle still gives me a sawski for a hot nuclear secret and ten years isn’t hay, dahling, in these times when practically anybody is subject to wander in from the desert with a quit claim deed and snatch a girl’s snatch right out from under her assets . . . over really I should say but some of we boys are so sick we got this awful cunt instead of a decent human asshole disgust you to see it. . . . So I just say anything I hear on the old party line.

  “I used to keep those old Cave Cunts at bay with my Impersonation Number where I play this American Mate Dance in Black Widow drag and I could make my face flap around you wouldn’t believe it and the noises I made in uh orgasm when SHE ate me—I played both parts you unnerstand, imitated the Goddess Herself and turn right into stone for security. . . . And SHE couldn’t give me enough juice running out of this hole was her only orifice and she was transported dais and all, die ass and all, by blind uniques with no balls, had to crawl under HER dais dressed in Centipede Suit of the Bearer which was put on them as a great honor and they was always fighting over matters of crawl protocol or protocrawl . . .

  “So all these boys stacked to the ceiling covered with limestone . . . you understand they weren’t dead anymore than a fresh oyster is dead, but died in the moment when the shell was cracked and they were eaten all quivering sweet and tasty. Vitamins the right way . . . eaten with little jeweled adzes jade and sapphires and chicken blood rubies all really magnificent. Of course I pinched everything I could latch onto with my prehensile piles I learned it boosting in Chi to pay the Luxury Tax on C. Three thousand years in show business. . . . Later or was it earlier, the Mayan Calendar is all loused up you know. . . . I was a star Corn God inna Sacred Hanging Ceremony to fructify the Corn devised by this impresario who specializes in these far out bit parts which fit me like a condom, he says the cutest things. He’s a doctor too. A big physician made my face over after ‘the accident’ collided with my Bentley head on . . . the cops say they never see anything so intense and it is a special pass I must be carrying I wasn’t completely obliterated.

  “Oh there’s my doctor made the face over after my accident. He calls me Pygmalion now, isn’t that cute? You’ll love him.”

  The doctor was sitting in a surgical chair of gleaming nickel. His soft boneless head was covered with grey green fuzz, the right side of his face an inch lower than the left side swollen smooth as a boil around a dead, cold undersea eye.

  “Doctor, I want you to meet my friend Mister D the Agent, and he’s a lovely fellow too.”

  (“Some time he don’t hardly hear what you saying. He’s very technical.”)

  The doctor reached out his abbreviated fibrous fingers in which surgical instruments caught neon and cut Johnny’s face into fragments of light.

  “Jelly,” the doctor said, liquid gurgles through his hardened purple gums. His tongue was split and the two sections curled over each other
as he talked: “Life jelly. It sticks and grows on you like Johnny.”

  Little papules of tissue were embedded in the doctor’s hands. The doctor pulled a scalpel out of Johnny’s ear and trimmed the papules into an ash tray where they stirred slowly exuding a green juice.

  “They say his prick didn’t synchronize at all so he cut it off and made some kinda awful cunt between the two sides of him. He got a whole ward full of his ‘fans’ he call them already. When the wind is right you can hear them scream in Town Hall Square. And everybody says ‘But this is interesting.’

  “I was more physical before my accident, you can see from this interesting picture.”

  Lee looked from the picture to the face, saw the flickering phosphorescent scars—

  “Yes,” he said, “I know you—You’re dead nada walking around visible.”

  So the boy is rebuilt and gives me the eye and there he is again walking around some day later across the street and “No dice” flickered across his face—The copy there is a different being, something ready to slip in—boys empty and banal as sunlight her way always—So he is exact replica is he not?—empty space of the original—

  So I tailed the double to London on the Hook Von Holland and caught him out strangling a naked faggot in the bed sitter—I slip on the antibiotic hand cuffs and we adjourn to the Mandrake Club for an informative little chat—

  “What do you get out of this?” I ask bluntly.

  “A smell I always feel when their eyes pop out”—The boy looked at me his mouth a little open showing the whitest teeth this Private Eye ever saw—naval uniform buttoned in the wrong holes quilted with sea mist and powder smoke, smell of chlorine, rum and moldy jockstraps—and probably a narcotics agent is hiding in the spare stateroom that is always locked—There are the stairs to the attic room he looked out of and his mother moving around—dead she was they say—dead—with such hair too—red.