The Wild Boys

by William S. Burroughs

  The doctor was a Southern gentleman of the old school. Rather like John Barrymore in appearance and manner he fancied himself as a witty raconteur which at times he was. The doctor had charm which Audrey so sadly lacked. No doorman would ever stop him no shopkeeper forget his thank you under eyes that could suddenly go cold as ice. It was impossible for the doctor to like Audrey. “He looks like a homosexual sheep-killing dog” he thought but he did not say this. He looked up from his paper in his dim gloomy drawing room and pontificated “the child is not wholesome.”

  His wife went further: “It is a walking corpse,” she said. Audrey was inclined to agree with her but he didn’t know whose corpse he was. And he was painfully aware of being unwholesome.

  There is a screen directly in front of him, a screen to his left, a screen to his right, and a screen in back of his head. He can see all four screens from a point above his head.

  Later Audrey wrote these notes: “The scenes presented and the manner of presentation varies according to an underlying pattern.

  “1. Objects and scenes move away and come in with a slow hydraulic movement always at the same speed. The screens are three-dimensional visual sections punctuated by flashing lights. I once saw the Great Thurston who could make an elephant disappear do an act with a screen on stage. He shoots a man in the film. The actor clutches his ketchup to his tuxedo shirt and falls then Thurston steps into the screen as a detective to investigate the murder, steps back outside to commit more murders, busts in as a brash young tabloid reporter, moves out to make a phone call that will collapse the market, back in as ruined broker. I am pulled into the film in a stream of yellow light and I can pull people out of the film withdrawal shots pulling the flesh off naked boys. Sequences are linked by the presence of some arbitrary object a pin wheel, a Christmas-tree ornament, a pyramid, an Easter egg, a copper coil going away and coming in always in the same numerical order. Movement in and out of the screen can be very painful like acid in the face and electric sex tingles.

  “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

  1. On screen 1 a burning red pin wheel distant amusement park. The pin wheel is going away taking the lights the voices the roller coaster the smell of peanuts and gunpowder further and further away.

  2. On screens 2 and 3 a white pin wheel and a blue pin wheel 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.

  3. On screens 1 2 3 three pin wheels 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.

  4. On screens 1 2 3 4 four pin wheels spinning away, red, white, blue and red. A low-pressure area draws Audrey into the park. July 4, 1926 falls into a silent roller.

  1. On screen 1 a red pin wheel coming in … smoky moon over the midway. A young red-haired sailor bites into an apple.

  2. On screens 2 and 3 two pin wheels coming in white and blue light flickers an adolescent face. The pitchman stirs uneasily. “Take over will you kid. Gotta see a man about a monkey.”

  3. On screens 1 2 3 three pin wheels coming in red white and blue. A luminous post card sky opens into a vast lagoon of summer evenings. A young soldier steps from the lake from the hill from the sky.

  4. On screens 1 2 3 4 four pin wheels 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.”

  * * *

  A light in his eyes. Must be Doctor Moor’s mirror with a hole in it.

  * * *

  1. 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 …”

  2. 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 …”

  3. 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 …”

  4. 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 …

  1. A pyramid coming in … Audrey can see stonework like broken lace on top of the pyramid. Damp heat closes round 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.”

  2. 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 …

  3. 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.

  4. 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 a 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 off his loincloth … The other bearer followed 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 dipped sperm from a jar and rubbed 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.”

  * * *

  The rising sun hits Audrey in the face

  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  cadavers. Electron microscope shows cells, nerves, bone.

  Telescope shows stars and planets and space. Click microscope. Click telescope.

  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  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

  * * *

  Light drains into the red walls of Marrakech

  * * *

  Le Gran Luxe

  April 3, 1989 Marrakech … Unlighted streets carriages with carbide lamps. It looks like an 1890 print from some explorer’s travel book. Wild boys in the streets whole packs of them vicious as famished dogs. There is almost no police force in operation and everyone who can afford it has private guards. My Marrakech contact has kindly lent me two good Nubians and found me suitable quarters.

  Waves of decoration and architecture have left a series of strata-like exposed geologic formations. There isn’t a place in the world you can’t find a piece of it in Marrakech, a St Louis street, a Mexican cantina, that house straight from England, Alpine huts in the mountains, a vast film set where the props are continually shifting. The city has spread in all directions up into the Atlas mountains to the east, south to the Sahara, westward to the coastal cities, up into the industrial reservations of the north. There are fantastic parties, vast estates and luxury such as we read about in the annals of the Roman Empire.

  The chic thing is to dress in expensive tailor-made rags and all the queens are camping about in wild-boy drag. There are Bowery suits that appear to be stained with urine and vomit which on closer inspection turn out to be intricate embroideries of fine gold thread. There are clochard suits of the finest linen, shabby-gentility suits, Graham Greene outfits for seedy agents who are bad Catholics on a mission they don’t really believe in, felt hats seasoned by old junkies, dungarees faded on farm boys, coolie clothes of yellow pongee silk, loud cheap pimp suits that turn out to be not so cheap the loudness is a subtle harmony of colors only the very best Poor Boy Shops can turn out tailored to your way of walking sitting down bending over the color of your hair and eyes your house and backdrop. It is the double take and many carry it much further to as many as six takes. Looks like an expensive suit trying rather crudely to look cheap humm the cheapness is rather carefully planned on closer inspection suits that shift changing color and texture before your eyes he is standing in what looks like a rented dress suit now the Billy Graham look no it is 120 dollar knocked down to 69.23 FBI agent suit or it could be a smooth Mexican ‘pocho’ beyond the Glen Plaid stage on the other hand something of an uncomfortable young cop first day in plain clothes the collar too tight the sleeves too short. All these suits were full of gimmicks, retractable sleeves, invisible pockets and not a few of the looners keep some concealed pet about their person a rat, a mongoose, a cobra, a nest of scorpions that can be suddenly released to enliven a social gathering. He appears say in a raccoon-skin coat from which leaps a live raccoon to kill Bubbles de Cocuera’s six prize Chihuahuas. And Reggie in a blue mutation mongoose cape killed every cobra in th
e Djemalfna. Funny at first but they run it into the ground. “My God here comes Reggie in a tiger suit! Run for your lives chaps!” They will put on armor or protect themselves some way and dump almost anything into your lap. You learn to stay away from fat citizens in python suits, any swelling or protuberance is something to avoid and pregnant women have the street to themselves. Everyone has reversible linings and concealed pockets and a way to pass a pet from one pocket to the other thus foiling the searches which are now routine at the door of any gathering. The next step is skin suits and men are hunted like animals for their pelts. Then synthetics hit the market. Think of it termite-proof moth-proof age-proof in sixteen tasteful shades furniture and walls to match. People start buying anything they want a red-haired ass a Mexican crotch a Chinese stomach folks is going piebald thin black arms cracker farm boy smile then horns and goat hooves wolf boys lizard boys some frantic character got arms smooth and red as terra cotta ending in lobster claws.

  There is almost no petroleum left and gasoline engines are a rarity. Steam cars and electrics are coming back. The silent electric dirigibles of the rich sail majestically across the evening sky the cabin an open-air restaurant wafting a scent of wet lawns and golf courses calm happy voices 1920 music. Le gran luxe flourishes as never before in history on the vast estates of the rich. The foremost advocate and practitioner of luxury is A.J. who owns a private steam railroad which he stocks with 1890 drummers and bankers, 1920 prep school boys on vacation, 1918 card sharps and con men according to his whim, anyone wishing to travel A.J. is required to report to casting.