Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
Page 58
“2. Scenes that have the same enigmatic structure presented on one screen where the perspective remains constant. In a corner of the frames there are punctuation symbols. This material is being processed on a computer. I am in the presence of an unknown language spelling out the same message again and again in cryptic charades where I participate as an actor. There are also words on screen familiar words maybe we read them somewhere a long time ago written in sepia and silver letters that fade into pictures.
“3. Fragmentary glimpses linked by immediate visual impact. There is a sensation of speed as if the pictures were seen from a train window.
“4. Narrative sections in which the screens disappear. I experience a series of quite understandable and coherent events as one of the actors. The narrative sequences are preceded by the title on screen then I am in the film. The transition is painless like stepping into a dream. The structuralized peep show may intersperse the narrative and then I am back in front of the screen and moving in and out of it.”
Audrey looked at the screen in front of him. His lips parted and the thoughts stopped in his mind. It was all there on screen, sight sound touch, at once immediate and spectrally remote in past time.
THE PENNY ARCADE PEEP SHOW
On screen 1 a burning red pinwheel distant amusement park. The pinwheel is going away taking the lights the voices the roller coaster the smell of peanuts and gunpowder further and further away.
On screens 2 and 3 a white pinwheel and a blue pinwheel going away. Audrey catches a distant glimpse of two boys in the penny arcade. One laughs and points to the other’s pants sticking out straight at the crotch.
On screens 1 2 3 three pinwheels spinning away red white and blue. Young soldier at the rifle range beads of sweat in the down on his lip. Distant firecrackers burst on hot city pavements . . . night sky parks and ponds . . . blue sound in vacant lots.
On screens 1 2 3 4 four pinwheels spinning away, red, white, blue and red. A low-pressure area draws Audrey into the park. July 4, 1926, falls into a silent roller.
On screen 1 a red pinwheel coming in . . . smoky moon over the midway. A young red-haired sailor bites into an apple.
On screens 2 and 3 two pinwheels coming in white and blue light flickers on an adolescent face. The pitchman stirs uneasily. “Take over will you kid. Gotta see a man about a monkey.”
On screens 1 2 3 three pinwheels coming in red white and blue. A luminous postcard sky opens into a vast lagoon of summer evenings. A young soldier steps from the lake from the hill from the sky.
On screens 1 2 3 4 four pinwheels spinning in red white blue red. The night sky is full of bursting rockets lighting parks and ponds and the upturned faces.
“The rocket’s red glare the bombs bursting in air / Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”
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A light in his eyes. Must be Doctor Moor’s mirror with a hole in it.
* * *
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A flattened pyramid going away into distant birdcalls and dawn mist . . . Audrey glimpses bulbous misshapen trees . . . Indian boy standing there with a machete . . . The scene is a sketch from an explorer’s notebook . . . dim in on a stained yellow page . . . “No one was ever meant to know the unspeakable evil of this place and live to tell of it. . .”
Two pyramids going away . . . “The last of my Indian boys left before dawn. I am down with a bad attack of fever . . . and the sores . . . I can’t keep myself from scratching. I have even tried tying my hands at night when the dreams come, dreams so indescribably loathsome that I cannot bring myself to write down their content. I untie the knots in my sleep and wake up scratching . . .”
Three pyramids going away . . . “The sores have eaten through my flesh to the bone and still this hideous craving to scratch. Suicide is the only way out. I can only pray that the horrible secrets I have uncovered die with me forever . . .”
Four pyramids going away . . . Audrey experienced a feeling of vertigo like the sudden stopping of an elevator . . . skeleton clutches a rusty revolver in one fleshless hand . . .
A pyramid coming in . . . Audrey can see stonework like broken lace on top of the pyramid. Damp heat closes around his body a musty odor of vegetable ferment and animal decay. Figure in a white loincloth swims out of the dawn mist. An Indian boy with rose-colored flesh and delicate features stands in front of Audrey. Two muscular Indians with long arms carry jars and tools. “You crazy or something walk around alone? This bad place. This place of flesh plants.”
Two pyramids coming in . . . “You not careful you grow here. Look at that.” He points to a limp pink tube about two feet long growing from two purple mounds covered with fine red tendrils. As the boy points to the tube it turns toward him. The boy steps forward and rubs the tube which slowly stiffens into a phallus six feet high growing from two testicles . . . “Now I make him spurt. Jissom worth much dinero. Jissom make flesh” . . . He strips off his loincloth and steps onto the vegetable scrotum embracing the shaft. The red hairs twist around his legs reaching up to his groin and buttocks . . .
Three pyramids coming in . . . The mist is lifting. In the milky dawn light Audrey sees a blush spread through the boy’s body turning the skin to a swollen red wheal. Pearly lubricant pours from the head of the giant phallus and runs down the sides. The boy squirms against the shaft caressing the great pulsing head with both hands. There is a soft muffled sound, a groan of vegetable lust straining up from tumescent roots as the plant spurts ten feet in the air. The bearers run around catching the gobs in stone jars.
Four pyramids coming in . . . The flesh garden is located in a round crater, four pyramids spaced around it on higher ground North South East and West. Slowly the tendrils fall away the Phallus goes limp and the boy steps free . . .
“Over there ass tree” . . . He points to the tree of smooth red buttocks twisted together, between each buttock a quivering rectum. Opposite the orifices phallic orchids red, purple, orange sprout from the tree’s shaft . . . “Make him spurt too” . . . The boy turns to one of the bearers and says something in a language unknown to Audrey. The boy grins and slips offhis loincloth . . . The other bearer follows his movements . . . “He fuck tree. Other fuck him” . . . The two men dip lubricant from a jar and rub it on their stiffening phalluses. Now the first bearer steps forward and penetrates the tree wrapping his legs around the shaft. The second bearer pries his buttocks open with his thumbs and squirms slowly forward, men and plant moving together in a slow hydraulic peristalsis . . . The orchids pulse erect dripping colored drops of lubricant. . . “We catch spurts” . . . The boy hands Audrey a stone jar. The two boys seem to writhe into the tree, their faces swollen with blood. A choking sound bursts from tumescent lips as the orchids spurt like rain.
“This one very dangerous” . . . The boy points to a human body with vines growing through the flesh like veins. The body, of a green pink color, excretes a milky substance . . . The boy draws on parchment gloves . . . “You touch him you get sores itch you scratch spread sores feel good scratch more scratch self away” . . . Slowly the lids open on green pupils surrounded by black flower flesh. He is seeing them now you can tell. His body quivers with horrible eagerness . . . “He there long time. Need somebody pop him.”
. . . The boy reaches up takes the head in both hands and twists it sharply to one side. There is a sound like a stick breaking in wet towels as the spine snaps. The feet flutter and rainbow colors spiral from the eyes. The penis spurts again and again as the body twists in wrenching spasms. Finally the body hangs limp . . . “He dead now” . . . The bearers dig a hole. The boy cuts the body down and it plops into the grave . . . “Soon grow another” . . . said the boy matter-of-factly . . .
“Over there shit tree” . . . He points to a black bush in the shape of a man squatting. The bush is a maze of tentacles and caught in these tendrils Audrey sees animal skeletons . . . “Now I make him asshole” . . . The boy dips sperm from a jar and rubs
it between the parted buttocks. Nitrous fumes rise, the plant writhes in peristalsis and empties itself. . . “Very good for garden. Make flesh trees grow. Now I show you good place” . . .
He leads the way up a steep path to an open place by one of the pyramids . . . In niches carved from rock, Audrey sees vines growing in human forms. The figures give off a remote vegetable calm . . . “This place of vine people very calm very quiet. Live here long long time. Roots reach down to garden.”
* * *
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The rising sun hits Audrey in the face
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Dawn light on a naked youth poised to dive into a pond.—
A thousand Japanese youths leap from a balcony into a round swimming tank.
Audrey taking a shower. Water runs down his lean stomach. He is getting stiff.
Locker room toilet on five levels seen from ferris wheel . . . flash of white legs, shiny pubic hairs, lean brown arms . . . boys masturbating under a rusty shower.
Naked boy on yellow toilet seat sunlight in pubic hairs a twitching foot.
Boys masturbating in bleak public school toilets, outhouses, locker rooms . . . a blur of flesh.
Farja sighs deeply and rocks back hugging his knees against his chest. Nitrous fumes twist from pink rectal flesh in whorls of orange, sepia, rose.
Red fumes envelop the two bodies. A scream of roses bursts from tumescent lips roses growing through flesh tearing thorns of delight intertwined the quivering bodies crushed them together writhing gasping in an agony of roses.
What happens between my legs is like a cold drink to me it is just a feeling . . . cool round stones against my back sunshine and shadow of Mexico. It is just a feeling between the legs a sort of tingle. It is a feeling by which I am here at all.
We squat there our knees touching. Kiki looks down between his legs watching himself get stiff. I feel the tingle between my legs and I am getting stiff too.
* * *
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cadavers. Electron microscope shows cells, nerves, bone.
Telescope shows stars and planets and space. Click microscope. Click telescope.
* * *
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He wasn’t there really. Pale the picture was pale. I could see through him. In life used address I give you for that belated morning.
Young ghosts blurred faces boys and workshops the old February 5,1914.
I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I have to do before I can go.
The dead around like birdcalls rain in my face.
Flight of geese across a gleaming empty sky . . . Peter John S . . . 1882-1904 . . . the death of a child long ago . . . cool remote spirit to his world of shades . . . I was waiting there pale character in someone else’s writing breathing old pulp magazines. Turn your face a little to eyes like forget-me-nots . . . flickering silver smile melted into air. . . The boy did not speak again.
Cold stars splash the empty house faraway toys. Sad whispering spirits melt into coachmen and animals of dreams, mist from the lake, faded family photos.
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Museum bas-relief of the God Amen with erection. A thin boy in prep school clothes stands in the presence of the God. The boy in museum toilet takes down his pants phallic shadow on a distant wall.
All the Gods of Egypt
The God Amen the boy teeth bare gasping
Clear light touching marble porticos and fountains . . . the Gods of Greece . . . Mercury, Apollo, Pan
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Light drains into the red walls of Marrakech
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“MOTHER AND I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW”
The uneasy spring of 1988. Under the pretext of drug control, suppressive police states have been set up throughout the Western world. The precise programming of thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions by the technology outlined in bulletin 2332 enables the police states to maintain a democratic facade from behind which they loudly denounce as criminals, perverts and drug addicts anyone who opposes the control machine. Underground armies operate in the large cities, enturbulating the police with false information through anonymous phone calls and letters. Police with drawn guns irrupt at the Senator’s dinner party, a very special dinner party too, that would tie up a sweet thing in surplus planes.
“We been tipped off a nude reefer party is going on here. Take the place apart boys and you folks keep your clothes on or I’ll blow your filthy guts out.”
We put out false alarms on the police short wave, directing patrol cars to nonexistent crimes and riots, which enables us to strike somewhere else. Squads of false police search and beat the citizenry. False construction workers tear up streets, rupture water mains, cut power connections. Infra-sound installations set off every burglar alarm in the city. Our aim is total chaos.
Loft room, map of the city on the wall. Fifty boys with portable tape recorders record riots from TV. They are dressed in identical grey flannel suits. They strap on the recorders under gabardine topcoats and dust their clothes lightly with tear gas. They hit the rush hour in a flying wedge, riot recordings on full blast, police whistles, screams, breaking glass, crunch of nightsticks, tear gas flapping from their clothes. They scatter, put on press cards and come back to cover the action. Bearded Yippies rush down a street with hammers breaking every window on both sides, leave a wake of screaming burglar alarms, strip off the beards, reverse collars and they are fifty clean priests throwing petrol bombs under every car WHOOSH a block goes up behind them. Some in fireman uniforms arrive with axes and hoses to finish the good work.
In Mexico, South and Central America guerrilla units are forming an army of liberation to free the United States. In North Africa, from Tangier to Timbuctu, corresponding units prepare to liberate Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Despite disparate aims and personnel of its constituent members, the underground is agreed on basic objectives. We intend to march on the police machine everywhere. We intend to destroy the police machine and all its records. We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems. The family unit and its cancerous expansion into tribes, countries, nations we will eradicate at its vegetable roots. We don’t want to hear any more family talk, mother talk, father talk, cop talk, priest talk, country talk or party talk. To put it country simple, we have heard enough bullshit.
I am on my way from London to Tangier. In North Africa I will contact the wild-boy packs that range from the outskirts of Tangier to Timbuctu. Rotation and exchange is a keystone of the underground. I am bringing them modern weapons: laser guns, infra-sound installations, Deadly Orgone Radiation. I will learn their specialized skills and transfer wild-boy units to the Western cities. We know that the West will invade Africa and South America in an all-out attempt to crush the guerrilla units. Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz, in his four-volume treatise on the Authority Sickness, predicts these latter-day Crusades. We will be ready to strike in their cities and to resist in the territories we now hold. Meanwhile we watch and train and wait.
I have a thousand faces and a thousand names. I am nobody I am everybody. I am me I am you. I am here there forward back in out. I stay everywhere I stay nowhere. I stay present I stay absent.
Disguise is not a false beard dyed hair and plastic surgery. Disguise is clothes and bearing and behavior that leave no questions unanswered . . . American tourist with a wife he calls “Mother” . . . old queen on the make . . . dirty beatnik . . . marginal film producer. . . . Every article of my luggage and clothing is carefully planned to create a certain impression. Behind this impression I can operate without interference for a time. Just so long and long enough. So I walk down Boulevard Pasteur handing out money to guides and shoeshine boys. And that is only one of the civic things I did. I bought one of those souvenir matchlocks clearly destined to hang over a false fireplace in West Palm Beach, Florida, and I carried it around wrapped in brown paper with
the muzzle sticking out. I made inquiries at the Consulate:
“Now Mother and I would like to know.”
And “MOTHER AND I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW” in American Express and the Minzah, pulling wads of money out of my pocket. “How much shall I give them?” I asked the vice-consul, for a horde of guides had followed me into the Consulate. “I wonder if you’ve met my congressman Joe Link?”
Nobody gets through my cover, I assure you. There is no better cover than a nuisance and a bore. When you see my cover you don’t look further. You look the other way fast. For use on any foreign assignment there is nothing like the old reliable American tourist, cameras and light meters slung all over him.