Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  Life is a dream in which the same person may appear at various times in different roles. Years before I met Kerouac, a friend from high school and college, Kells Elvins, told me repeatedly that I should write and that I was not suited to do anything else. When I was doing graduate work at Harvard in 1938, we wrote a story in collaboration, entitled “Twilight’s Last Gleamings,” which I used many years later almost verbatim in Nova Express. We acted out the parts, sitting on a side porch of the white frame house we rented together, and this was the birthplace of Doctor Benway.

  “‘Are you all right?’ he shouted, seating himself in the first lifeboat among the women. ‘I’m the doctor!’”

  Years later in Tangier, Kells told me the truth: “I know I am dead and you are too. . . .” Writers are all dead, and all writing is posthumous. We are really from beyond the tomb and no commissions. . . . (All this I am writing just as I think of it, according to Kerouac’s own manner of writing. He says the first version is always the best.)

  In 1945 or thereabouts, Kerouac and I collaborated on a novel that was never published. Some of the material covered in this lost opus was later used by Jack in The Town and the City and Vanity of Duluoz. At that time, the anonymous grey character of William Lee was taking shape: Lee, who is there just so long and long enough to see and hear what he needs to see and hear for some scene or character he will use twenty or thirty years later in his writing. No, he wasn’t there as a private detective, a bartender, a cotton farmer, a pickpocket, an exterminator; he was there in his capacity as a writer. I did not know that until later. Kerouac, it seems, was born knowing. And he told me what I already knew, which is the only thing you can tell anybody.

  I am speaking of the role Kerouac played in my script, and the role I played in his can be inferred from the enigmatically pompous Hubbard Bull Lee portrayals, which readily adapt themselves to the scenes between Carl and Doctor Benway in Naked Lunch. Kerouac may have felt that I did not include him in my cast of characters, but he is of course the anonymous William Lee as defined in our collaboration—a spy in someone else’s body where nobody knows who is spying on whom. Sitting on a side porch, Lee was there in his capacity as a writer. So Doctor Benway told me what I knew already: “I’m the doctor. . .”

  from the burroughs file

  THE BAY OF PIGS

  John turned slowly and noticed in the far corner of the bar room what he thought for a moment was a piece of statuary. A slight movement like breathing told him that the creature was alive. It was a girl with bright green eyes and the immobility of a lizard. He thought of a beautiful green reptile from remote crossroads of time.

  The Southerner winked broadly. “Don’t be shy, young man. Better go over and join her before some of those Mexican coyotes beat you to the jump. . . . She’s been giving you the eye for the last half hour.”

  The man turned and made his way through the crowded bar with extraordinary agility for a man of his bulk.

  John picked up his drink and walked over to the corner. The girl looked at him steadily.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Not at all,” she said in a curiously unaccented English.

  He sat down.

  “What will you have to drink?”

  “Crème de menthe, I think.”

  She gave him a look of cool appraisal from hooded green eyes deeply set in high cheekbones. Her eyes caught points of light in the room like an opal, and her jet black pupils converged and he had a feeling of being touched right at the source point inside his skull. The skin of her face was transparent, smooth, of a greenish pallor.

  She sat absolutely immobile, looking at him. Slowly she smiled.

  “The Bay of Pigs intends to make use of you,” she said.

  “You think he is CIA?”

  “He’s not trying to hide it. . .”

  “But what use could he make of me?”

  “He is looking for the books of course.”

  “That story about the Mayan books being still in existence somewhere? You think there is any truth in it?”

  “He thinks so, or he wouldn’t waste time with you. That means that others think so as well.”

  She looked around the room. A sprinkling of politicians with Chapultepec blondes, a table of loud Americans.

  “Come, I will take you to a party. . . . It happens only once a year and you should see some of the real Mexico, something that will not last much longer . . . folklore you might call it.”

  They walked out and turned right along the Paseo. Across the streets in the Alameda people strolled and talked and sat on benches. They walked down to the intersection and turned right again on Niño Perdido.

  She was wearing flexible low-heeled shoes of green lizard skin that gripped the pavement as she glided along. He found it difficult to keep up with her.

  It was a neighborhood of pulquerias sandwich booths and market stalls. Men in white cotton pants, in from the country. The sour smell of ’pulque and sweet urine was heavy in the air.

  They were walking now on unpaved streets. They had reached a large dilapidated building, a black and empty warehouse, straight walls of masonry rose into the darkness.

  She knocked at a heavy door with a little barred window. A man peeped out, opened the door and they walked into a corridor.

  “Buenas noches,” said the doorman.

  They walked down the corridor into a large room where a number of people were standing sitting laughing talking. Several of them greeted her and stared curiously at John.

  Seated behind a desk in a dentist’s chair was a massive woman like an Aztec earth goddess. She stretched out a hand to the girl, “Buenas noches, Iguana,” she said. She turned her hard black eyes on John.

  “Buenas noches, Gringüito. Bienvenido a la casa de Lola la Chata.”

  She took his hand in a powerful grip, her eyes with pinpoint pupils heavy and cold on his face and body.

  The girl took his arm. “Let’s get a drink.”

  He looked around.

  There were bottles of tequila on a table, washtubs full of beer bottles on ice. On a long table beside Lola’s desk he saw a number of syringes in glasses of alcohol. Men would come in and shake hands with Lola and she would reach in between her massive breasts and pull out a little packet and give it to them. Then they proceeded to the syringe table for a shot, nonchalantly administered in full view of the guests.

  Mariachi singers were singing ranchero songs and several couples were dancing.

  The addicts sat in chairs with hooded eyes like drowsy lizards. Sharp reek of marijuana drifted through the room.

  Suddenly John saw several uniformed police.

  “Police!” he cried. “It’s a raid!”

  The Iguana laughed. “They have come for their uh little present. . .”

  He saw that the police went to Lola’s desk and after shaking hands she opened a drawer and handed each policeman an envelope. The police were drinking beer and joking with the guests. One of them puffed on a marijuana cigarette letting the smoke out slowly through his mustache.

  “Quite a party,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s once a year on her birthday that Lola la Chata gives this party and on that day everything is free. On that day she gives. On other days she takes.”

  She took his arm. “Come, it will be noisy here.”

  She led the way through a back door upstairs and through a maze of corridors and empty rooms with the windows boarded up. Finally she took out a key and opened a door.

  The room was small but well furnished with rugs and low tables and a large bed.

  “Take off your shoes,” she told him.

  She sat down crosslegged on the bed and indicated that he was to sit opposite her.

  Once again he felt the strange touch inside his skull that made him feel at once excited and uncomfortable as if he were a small boy naked before his gym instructor.

  “Have you taken LSD?” she asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t like it. That meta
llic taste in the mouth.”

  She nodded. “LSD lets you out into a bad area. The plants are better. And they must be prepared in a certain way.”

  She got up and walked over to a corner of the room. He saw jars on shelves filled with herbs and dried mushrooms, and a table with earthenware pots and a spirit stove.

  “I will now prepare for you the sacred mushrooms according to the ancient formula.”

  She lit the spirit stove and placed a pot of water on to boil, selecting pinches of herbs and dried mushroom, adding a little more, crooning over the mixture, an odd little tune.

  He lost track of time. Perhaps it was the marijuana cigarette he had smoked at the party. There was a sudden hiatus, it seemed ten minutes but it must have been much longer.

  “The mushrooms are ready,” she said and handed him a little gourd of liquid.

  He drank it down.

  She poured one for herself and drank it.

  They sat down on the bed.

  Almost at once he felt a rush of dizziness that was not at all unpleasant, in fact it was he decided very pleasant indeed.

  Now the walls and rugs were twisting in strange shapes, and then suddenly sensuality hit him in a wave, his flesh was writhing, dissolving in green fire. He wanted to tear off his clothes. His lips swelled with blood and blood sang in his ears.

  He looked at her helplessly.

  “Stand up,” she told him.

  “I uh. . .”

  “Stand up.”

  He obeyed and stood there in front of her, his pants bulging.

  With cool precise fingers she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off.

  She unhooked his belt, opened his pants and with a quick movement slid his pants and shorts down. He stood there blushing as the blood rushed to his crotch and his penis began to stir and stiffen.

  She stood there and watched. Suddenly he remembered an incident of his early adolescence. He had been barely fourteen at the time. A gym instructor had visited the house. His parents were away. It was after dinner and the man was looking at him and he felt something uncomfortable. Then the man said, “I’d like to see you stripped.” He said, all right, his mouth was dry and his heart was pounding as he led the way to his room, Oh god, he thought, suppose it happens? He tried to think of something else. Then he was in the room, the man sitting down on the bed, he took off his shoes and socks and shirt. “Come over here,” the man said. He stood in front of the man who ran his hands over his arms and shoulders. He was feeling very relieved that he didn’t have to take down his pants. And then the man was undoing his belt and pants and suddenly his pants and shorts dropped and he was standing there naked blushing furiously, and it was happening, he couldn’t stop it. The man looked down. He glanced down and bit his lip and a little whimper burst from him. The man said, “Your little pecker is getting hard.” And then knowing it was all right he felt a rush of excitement feeling the man’s hand on his buttocks and thighs, it was all the way up now pulsing throbbing, and he didn’t care. Then the man sat him down beside him on the bed, and as he sat down a drop of lubricant squeezed out. At that time he had never masturbated. Then the man’s hand was on his nuts and penis. “You’ve been playing with this?” He leaned back on his elbow, legs stretched out. “Well. . . yes . . . a little bit. . .” “Did you ever play with it until it went off?” “No. How long do you have to play with it before that happens?” The man’s hand was rubbing the lubricant around the tip of his penis. It happened in a few seconds and he was spurting hot gobs up onto his stomach. Afterwards, the man left town and he had put the incident out of his mind. Now standing there naked the memory came back and the excitement.

  And suddenly he had a curious feeling that perhaps she wasn’t a girl, and a feeling too that there was somebody else in the room.

  She was slowly stripping and when she stood naked her body was almost inhumanly beautiful, the smooth green flesh and the obvious strength of her breasts like green fruit. She pulled him down onto the bed and suddenly they were rolling in an ecstasy of lust.

  He felt penetrated and penetrating the soft gelatin between her legs that pulled him in further and further, they twisted from one end of the bed to the other, she was on top, on her side, silver light popped in his eyes and his head seemed to fly to pieces. He glimpsed a sky rocket bursting in someone’s head, in his brain. The Van Allen Belt.

  When he got back to the hotel the landlady told him that his friend had arrived. As he walked up the stairs his heart was pounding with excitement feeling the ache and stiffness in his groin.

  He opened the door.

  She got up off the bed laying down a book and walked to the middle of the room to meet him. She was dressed in men’s clothes, khaki pants and shirt, jodhpurs, a green tie.

  He threw his arms around her kissed her on the lips . . .

  Suddenly a shock went through him. The chest was hard, he could feel the ribs. This was a man’s body.

  He shoved the other back. “Why, you’re . . . !”

  “I am the Iguana’s twin brother.”

  John stood there blushing furiously, his pants sticking out straight at the fly.

  “Why be embarrassed? After all, I was there . . .”

  He remembered the presence of another person in the room, and the feeling that it was all right like the time with the gym instructor. His embarrassment turned to lust. Why not? They were in tune, how could it matter?

  “Let’s have a look at you,” the boy said. He reached out with his long cool fingers with precise movements performed at unbelievable speed. He unhooked John’s belt unbuttoned his pants.

  Before he fully realized what was happening his pants and shorts fell to his ankles and he stood there his shirt moving slightly in a wind through the open window.

  The boy looked at him and licked his lips with a little red tongue. His black eyes shone with an inner light. He walked around John touching his buttocks and genitals with fingers that left a cool burn like menthol. He brought a chair and placed it behind John who sat down.

  The boy slipped off his soft boots; shirt, pants, and shorts followed, and he was standing there naked while John was still fumbling with his shoelaces.

  The boy knelt at his feet, quickly removed John’s shoes and socks, pulled his pants and shorts off and hung them on a wooden peg.

  John stood up and took off his shirt.

  The boy was thinner than his sister, he had the same smooth green skin, his penis erect throbbing was a pink purple color, the pubic hairs jet black and shiny.

  Then the boy was kissing him, running his tongue inside John’s mouth. A musty odor came off his body.

  The boy led him to the bed. He was rubbing an unguent on John’s penis that left a cold burn. John felt suddenly strong and confident, he shoved the boy on his back, pulled a pillow under him and pushed his legs up. The rectum was the same purple brown color as the boy’s penis. John rubbed some vaseline on and slowly shoved it in, feeling the rectum pull him in with a soft muscular pressure. As he moved in and out feeling the gathering tightness in his groin, John was suddenly holding the girl, feeling her breast against him and then the boy again, feeling the hot gobs hit his chest.

  They quivered together a few seconds. They lay there looking at the ceiling.

  “I had to make it with you, you understand.”

  John did not understand.

  “Let’s get dressed. I want to give you some idea as to what is going on here.”

  After they were dressed, the boy began: “We know a good deal about your background, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you this. For example, we know about the gym instructor.”

  John looked at him in amazement. “How could you know that?”

  “There are ways to find these things out. Ways which you will learn and learn quickly if you are to be of use to us. The story about the books being still in existence is true. That is why the Bay of Pigs is here. And others as well. . . Russians, Chinese, Swiss . . . very clever, the Swiss. . .
. In consequence, Mayan scholars are now at a premium.”

  He got a briefcase and took out three packages tied with a ribbon.

  “Copies of the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices. You have seen them of course.”

  John nodded.

  “Now look here.” He pointed to a priest who was making an incision in what looked like a man plant. “What do you make of it?”

  “Nothing much. They worshipped a corn god. No doubt this is some mythological representation.”

  “It is a representation of something quite definite. It is a flesh tree.”

  “A flesh tree. . .?”

  “Yes. What we call flesh is in point of fact a vegetable. It literally grows on trees, or rather it did.”

  “But that’s fantastic!”

  “The agents of five countries don’t think so. You have already had a visit from the police, have you not?”

  “Yes . . . they were looking for drugs.”

  “They were looking for any pretext to get you out of Mexico. They take orders from B.O.P., The Bay of Pigs.”

  “But why? After all, they need Mayan scholars . . .”

  “They already have the best. Besides, I don’t think you would care to work for them when you learn what they are doing or what they intend to do. . . . They intend to keep the books secret. Top secret. Classified. To monopolize the knowledge contained in these books.”

  “But how could they do that if it is as important as you say?”

  “Quite easily. Don’t be misled into thinking it is just rivalry, to be the first to claim an important discovery.”

  “Just how do you and your sister fit into this? And what do you want from me?”

  “We represent the Academy.”

  John was about to ask what this was when he noticed a change in the boy’s face. The face blurred out and a middle-aged man was sitting there, sharp birdlike face, cool imperturbable grey eyes.