Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  THE BEGINNING IS ALSO THE END

  “I am not an addict. I am the addict. The addict I invented to keep this show on the junk road. I am all the addicts and all the junk in the world. I am junk and I am hooked forever. Now I am using junk as a basic illustration. Extend it. I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality. Give me an old wall and a garbage can and I can by God sit there forever. Because I am the wall and I am the garbage can. But I need someone to sit there and look at the wall and the garbage can. That is, I need a human host. I can’t look at anything. I am blind. I can’t sit anywhere. I have nothing to sit on. And let me take this opportunity of replying to my creeping opponents. It is not true that I hate the human species. I just don’t like human beings. I don’t like animals. What I feel is not hate. In your verbal garbage the closest word is distaste. Still I must live in and on human bodies. An intolerable situation you will agree. To make that situation clearer suppose you were stranded on a planet populated by insects. You are blind. You are a drug addict. But you find a way to make the insects bring you junk. Even after thousands of years living there you still feel that basic structural distaste for your insect servants. You feel it every time they touch you. Well that is exactly the way I feel about my human servants. Consequently since my arrival some five hundred thousand years ago I have had one thought in mind. What you call the history of mankind is the history of my escape plan. I don’t want ‘love.’ I don’t want forgiveness. All I want is out of here.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, how did all this start? How did you get here in the first place? If you found conditions so distasteful why didn’t you leave at once?”

  “Good questions I mean good questions, young man. Obviously I am not omnipotent. My arrival here was a wreck. The ship came apart like a rotten undervest. The accident in which I lost my sight. I was the only survivor. The other members of the crew. . . well. . . you understand . . . uh sooner or later. . . So I decided to act sooner. And I have acted sooner ever since. The entire human film was prerecorded. I will explain briefly how this is done. Take a simple virus illness like hepatitis. This illness has an incubation period of two weeks. So if I know when the virus is in (and I do because I put it there) I know how you will look two weeks from now: yellow. To put it another way: I take a picture or rather a series of pictures of you with hepatitis. Now I put my virus negatives into your liver to develop. Not far to reach: remember I live in your body. The whole hepatitis film is prerecorded two weeks before the opening scene when you notice your eyes are a little yellower than usual. Now this is a simple operation. Not all of my negatives develop by any means. All right now back to basic junk. Some character takes a bang of heroin for the first time. It takes maybe sixty consecutive shots before I can welcome another addict. (Room for one more inside, sir.) Having taken one shot it becomes mathematically probable that taken, he will take another given the opportunity and I can always arrange that. Having taken two shots it becomes more probable that he will take a third. One negative developed makes others almost unavoidable. The same procedure can be applied to any human activity. If a man makes a certain amount of money by certain means he will go on making more money by the same means and so forth. Human activities are drearily predictable. It should now be obvious that what you call ‘reality’ is a function of these precisely predictable because prerecorded human activities. Now what could louse up a prerecorded biologic film? Obviously random factors. That is someone cutting my word and image lines at random. In short the cut up method of Brion Gysin which derives from Hassan I Sabbah and the planet Saturn. Well I’ve had a spot of trouble before but nothing serious. There was Rimbaud. And a lot of people you never heard of for good reasons. People who got too close one way or another. There was Tristan Tzara and the Surrealist Lark. I soon threw a block into that. Broke them all down to window dressers. So why didn’t I stop Mr. Gysin in his tracks? I have ways of dealing with wise guys or I wouldn’t be here. Early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere. Tricks I learned after the crash. Well perhaps I didn’t take it seriously at first. And maybe I wanted to hear what he had to say about getting out. Always keep as many alternative moves open as possible. Next thing the blockade on planet earth is broken. Explorers moving in whole armies. And the usual do-good missions talk about educating the natives for self government. And some hick sheriff from the nova heat charging me with ‘outrageous colonial mismanagement and attempted nova.’ Well they can’t hang a nova rap on me. What I planned was simply to move out the biologic film to planet Venus and start over. Take along a few good natives to stock the new pitch and for the rest total disposal. That’s not nova that’s manslaughter. Second degree. And I planned it painless. I dislike screaming. Disturbs my medications.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, in the face of the evidence, no one can deny that nova was planned. The reports reek of nova.”

  “It will be obvious that I myself as an addict can only be a determined factor in someone else’s equation. It’s the old army game. Now you see me now you don’t.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, you say ‘give me a wall and a garbage can and I can sit there forever.’ Almost in the next sentence you say ‘All I want is out of here.’ Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”

  “You are confused about the word ‘self.’ I could by God sit there forever if I had a self to sit in that would sit still for it. I don’t. As soon as I move in on any self all that self wants is to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Now there you sit in your so-called ‘self.’ Suppose you could walk out of that self. Some people can incidentally. I don’t encourage this but it happens and threatens to become pandemic. So you walk out of your body and stand across the room. Now what form would the being that walks out of your body have? Obviously it would have precisely your form. So all you have done is take the same form from one place to another. You have taken great trouble and pain (believe me there is no pain like flesh withdrawal consciously experienced) and you have gotten precisely back where you started. To really leave human form you would have to leave human form that is leave the whole concept of word and image. You cannot leave the human image in the human image. You cannot leave human form in human form. And you cannot think or conceive in non-image terms by mathematical definition of a being in my biologic film which is a series of images. Does that answer your question? I thought not.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, tell us something about yourself. Do you have any vices other than junk? Any hobbies? Any diversions?”

  “Your vices other than junk I manipulate but do not share. Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my uh mineral origins. Hobbies? Chess. Diversions? I enjoy a good show and a good performer. Just an old showman. Well when you have to kill your audience every few years to keep them in their seats it’s about time to pack it in.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, I gather that your plan to move the show to planet Venus has, uh, miscarried. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah it looks that way. The entire film is clogged.”

  Question: “In that case, Mr. Martin, where will you go when you go if you go?”

  “That’s quite a problem. You see I’m on the undesirable list with every immigration department in the galaxy. ‘Who him? Don’t let him out here.’”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, don’t you have any friends?”

  “There are no friends. I found that out after the crash. I found that out before the others. That’s why I’m still here. There are no friends. There are allies. There are accomplices. No one wants friends unless he is shit scared or unless he is planning a caper he can’t pull off by himself.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, what about the others who were involved in this crash? Aren’t they still alive somewhere in some form?”

  “You don’t have to look far. They are sitting right here.”

  Question: “Who were these others?”

  “There was an army colonel, a technician and a woman.”

  Question: “Won’t you have to come to some sort of t
erms with your, uh, former accomplices?”

  “To my disgruntled former associates I have this to say. You were all set to cross me up for the countdown. You think I can’t read your stupid virus mind lady? And you, you technical bastard with your mind full of formulae I can’t read. And you Colonel Bradly waiting to shoot me in the back. The lot of you. Blind and paralyzed I still beat you to the draw.”

  Question: “Mr. Martin, what sort of place did you people come from?”

  “What sort of place did we come from. Well if you want the answer to that question, just look around, buster. Just look around.”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, you have just heard an interview with Mr. Martin, sole survivor of the first attempt to send up a space capsule from planet earth. Mr. Martin has been called The Man Of A Thousand Lies. Well, he didn’t have time for a thousand but I think he did pretty well in the time allotted. And I feel reasonably sure that if the other crew members could be here with us tonight they would also do a pretty good job of lying. But please remember that nothing is true in space. That there is no time in space—that what goes up under such auspices must come down—that the beginning is also the end.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, these our actors bid you a long last good night.”

  WHO IS THE THIRD THAT WALKS BESIDE YOU

  “Now it might surprise you to know there was another man in your position some thirty-five years ago today” his voice trails off. The ash gathers on his Havana held in a delicate grey cone the way it does on a really expensive cigar. “Yes, he wanted to give it all back, everything he’s ever taken anywhere. Oh he’d walk down the street giving a smile back here, a gracious nod over there, and a firm young ass over here (stay in line Gertie). He’d breathe life and sweetness back into bones rotten with strontium and even understandably top secret ‘Operation Pee Pee,’ the bones and blood and brains of a hundred million more or less gooks down the drain in green cancer piss, would be reversed. Tomorrow when he was properly rested he would have a talk first with his bankers and later of course with Winkhorst in the Technical department to set ‘Operation Rewrite’ going round the clock” (“/laser guns washing in present time/rockets across the valley / whole sky burning / “. His sad servant stands on the burning buckling deck of an exploding star, last glimpse through gun smoke in streets of war and death long ago and far away. You see, Mr. Bradly, that boy was your servant who did what you were afraid to do yourself and you laughed at him for doing it and joked about Operation Expendable in the urinals of present time.)

  “/In fact that man had always experienced difficulty in dealing with his social inferiors. Like now standing in the shop, his casting roll and fishing plug slung over open shoulder, trying with the most lamentable results to impersonate a barefoot boy with his string of bull-heads or is it just plain old country bullshit from a Saturday Evening Post cover? He twisted rapidly, scooping up the change like a boy who has just heard ‘last one in is a sissy’ and maladroitly snagged an old peasant in the scrotum with his fishing plug. Then in a mistimed attempt at easy joviality he snapped open his Hollywood switch blade and said: ‘Well I guess we’ll just have to cut the whole thing off.’ He muttered something about calling a doctor, made a vague ineffectual gesture from a New Yorker cartoon inadvertently blinding the proprietor’s infant son. Finding that all his overtures of goodwill had fallen quite flat he ran back to the 1920s where he took refuge in Sid’s, soothing his shattered nerves with long cool draughts of needle beer. All the old tunes and sad old showmen stand there in blue twilight Silver Dollar Dan and Little Boy Blue dead stars fading sad train whistles a distant sky./”

  “/Stranger, forget seventy tons to the square inch and be gone at the flutes. Death takes over in busy lands ashes gutted cities of America and Europe. Empty air marks authority over all antagonists late afternoon on white steps of the set. See, the chains are fallen. Long long radio silence on Portland Place. Light years of youth flapping down a windy street with the torn September sky.”

  “Remember when you were a kid and Relative Albert was just writing two plus two equals nova on the blackboard and you told the other boys if you were ten light years away you would be able to see your birthplace and yourself as a baby? Well, it’s all out there, the refuse of all past time on earth worked flints empty condoms needle beer in Sid’s all the old names. They want to eat and they want to eat regular because they are trapped in image and image is an eating virus. Now you understand about time? After a certain point you can’t go on feeding the past; too much past and not enough present because ‘present time’ is the point where the image virus of past time finds traction in present host. So the host walks out on the past, he walks out on the present pre sent at the same time you got the point now you dumb hick the intersection point in the urinal of present time? Well it’s all urine and about time to retire. Some things I find myself doing I’ll just pack in is all. Now look, this whole time thing, past image feeding on the present, we knew it had to end some time but remember when you were on the junk yourself sure you knew you had to kick some time but you said: “Premature. Premature. Give me a little more junk a little more time.” Time is junk. Junk is time moving at the speed of light. You remember the first few shots before you are hooked again the speedkick flashing through 1920 streets in a fast car but you can’t see the car just the old warehouses and cobblestone streets rushing past you in a silent river of past time? When you take a shot you are in the time-film moving back in time at the speed of light. Now look, a blast does not move at the speed of light but light from the blast does. You understand now? We are staying ahead of the blast in our image moving at the speed of light. Oh say can you see exploding star here/“blighted fingertips unfinished cigarette” / Look any place. Breathe the lack of vagrant ball players. Breathe? Well, like you say: nothing nothing. You see now what you breathe you dumb hick? You breathe in Paco Joselito Henrique; in their soiled clothes in their soccer scores in their dusty flesh. Flash of bombs must tell you in their eyes? I am the Director. You have known me for a long time. “Mister, leave cigarette money.” Sad muttering street boy voices on the white steps:

  “You come with me Meester?”

  “J’s words once. Yes all the words were mine once. You heard in this Morocco night last voices hopelessly calling. Come closer smell of blood and excrement communicate directly.

  “Good-bye Mister. I must go. The tide is coming in at Hiroshima. Exploded star between us.”

  “Who is the third that walks beside you? The third column of time? Some wise guy come around to your own people with these 1920 scraps? Have been in desperate battle. We want to hear pay talk Daddy, and we want to hear pay talk now.”

  “So those mutinous troops broke into the beauty-banks of time and distributed our personal exquisitries to the bloody apes before they could go and get physical and all sort a awful contest pile up like a Most Graceful Movement Contest and a registered junky could hardly get through to Boot’s for the fag ballet dancers leaping about. All of us looking about for some refuge maybe some evil old bitch at least in a kiosk spitting the black stuff cold and heavy but when we go to connect she is a “Sweet Old Flower Lady” get a fix of her. “Kiosk Kate” can wilt and sag the croissant on your plate “/I saw it move I tell you/” two hundred yard range if the wind is right is now a “Sweet Old Flower Lady” pim-pam just like that a filthy shambles why “Gracious Waiter Day” up-called a pestilent cloud of singing waiters from the pontine marshes can the Cutest Old Clochard be far behind? Perhaps the most distasteful thing was the Benevolent Presence Contest in the course which “Sad Poison Nice Guy” irradiated the galaxy right into a taffy-pull of the sweet sick stuff and the citizens still belching it out two weeks later.

  “Well every whistlestop had its Quality Champ and you know who wins a quality contest because he includes the other contestants in or out as the case may be the winner stands there in the empty ring . . . and Final Quality Day when all the winners of local and specialized contests met in a
vast arena . . . scarcely a man is now alive . . . just one shot that’s all it took . . . don’t ask me who won because I wasn’t there./”

  “/You may infer his absence by that or this in exactly the same relation as before the contest he retroactively did not take part in. ‘The Not There Kid’ was not there, empty turnstile marks the spot. So disinterest yourself in my words. Disinterest yourself in anybody’s words, In the beginning was the word and the word was bullshit. Yes sir, boys, it’s hard to stop that old writing arm more of a habit than using. Been writing these RX’s five hundred thousand years and sure hate to pack you boys in with a burning-down word habit. But I am of course guided by my medical ethics and the uh intervention of The Board of Health no more no mas. My writing arm is paralyzed ash, blown from an empty sleeve do our work and go./”

  Here comes the old knife-sharpener in lemon sun, light blue eyes reflected from a thin blade, blood on white steps of the sea-wall, afternoon shadow in dying eyes. “Good-bye, Mister. Get off the point. It is precisely time. It’s you who have assembled from the broken streets of war and death the burning buckling deck of an exploding star. With wind and dust good-bye.”

  THE LAST POST DANGER AHEAD

  Fort Charles

  Sunday, September 17, 1899

  A silent Sunday to the post our flag at half mast against tall black windows of the dormitory a distant voice so painful to scan out: ‘/Enemy inter