The Wild Boys

by William S. Burroughs

  4. Four copper coils going away … Seen from above as a Saturday Evening Post cover … Pinkie waves to a distant train. Audrey laughed in the afternoon sky. Was a window of laughter shook the valley.

  1. A copper coil coming in spatters Audrey’s naked body with little bubbles of light that break and tingle his ass opens in a stream of yellow light laughter jumps phallic shadows sun licks flesh naked legs whispering light.

  2. Two copper coils coming in … “Let’s see you naked” … He licks his lips feeling the locker room pressure in his groin out of control knowing drops his pants and shorts swaying cock stiffens eyes shining sketches and water colors his ass opens a pink wheel soft clinging Audrey has him to the hilt.

  3. Three copper coils coming in … “Didn’t I see you at Webber’s Post?” … Bleakly clear I am the boy as a child lying naked on his underwear rubbing himself my room and me there faded pink curtains yellow wallpaper three sketches. Flesh opens a silent door.

  4. Four copper coils coming in … We’re going to give you the last boy … yellow light late afternoon rubbing himself my room and me there dropped his pants and shorts eyes shining excitement … “Didn’t I see you at Webber’s Post?” … Bleakly clear I am the boy figure on the post card road faded down a street of memories blue light frayed sky … “You see this?” … Dim in on a stained silent door … “All yours Audrey” … tree house color pictures can see the red ass hairs buttocks carbolic soap in a stream down the shaft two boys laughing makes me think back child rubbing his pants pressure the swaying pink curtains and yellow wallpaper afternoon hills this whispering dust sea shells in an attic room face seen from a train maybe … the last boy.

  * * *

  The setting sun lights Audrey’s dead burnt-out face.

  * * *

  Colonel Bradly advised me to contact the roller-skate and bicycle gangs operating in the suburbs of Casablanca.

  “They are close enough to the regular guerrilla units so you can orient yourself. Through them you can arrange the special training necessary to contact the more inaccessible groups. Some of the wild boys do not talk at all. Others have developed cries, songs, words as weapons. Words that cut like buzz saws. Words that vibrate the entrails to jelly. Cold strange words that fall like icy nets on the mind. Virus words that eat the brain to muttering shreds. Idiot tunes that stick in the throat round and round night and day.

  “ ‘here me is’ ‘HERE ME IS’ ‘here ME IS’ ‘HERE me is’ ‘HERE me IS’ ’HERE ME is.’ ”

  Ever hear the CIA talking baby talk? Ever see Narcotics Agents hula-hooping to idiot mambo? Ever seen a China Watcher clawing at the words in his throat? It gives you a funny feeling. You need special training to contact those boys … When you get to Casa go to the Cafe Azar on Niño Perdido where the old Fell Bridge Hotel used to be. The shoeshine boy is your contact there. He is known as the Dib.”

  Owing to the shortage of petrol there is no air service and very few cars on the ground. More primitive methods of transport have come back into use: stage coaches, balloons, camel- and mule trains, litters, rickshaws, covered wagons. There are a few steam railways in operation privately owned by the rich who live in feudal splendor on vast estates. When you want to travel you go to the Travel Pool a square surrounded by inns and brothels. You look around. There is always some way of getting where you want to go. Here is a steam truck that looks as if it will explode without more ado. I give it a wide berth. There are several obviously lethal rocket ships, a band of twenty Swedes with rucksacks on their way to the Atlas mountains, a mule train of guerrillas headed for Guillamine. A Commander with yachting cap supervises a lethargic Arab who is sewing patches on his balloon. “We’ve got a jolly good south wind coming up” he tells me. I decide to chance the Commander’s balloon and settle down at a nearby inn for a long wait. About four in the afternoon his Arab wheels out a gas cylinder and by five the balloon is ready and we cast off. The balloon leaks audibly and the Commander reels about in the basket dead drunk smoking a cigar. The leak brings us down fifty miles north of Casa. I leave the Commander there and take a stage coach the rest of the way.

  The Penny Arcade Peep Show

  The Chicago atomic scientists insist that the atom bomb should not be used under any circumstances.

  The atom bomb explodes over Hiroshima spreading radioactive particles.

  * * *

  The old tycoon sat on a high balcony in a deck chair, his dark glasses glinting enigmatically in the afternoon sun. He was obsessed with immortality and spent vast sums on secret research. He didn’t intend to share it with any groveling peasants. Serums, replacements of worn-out parts, were only a makeshift reprieve. He wanted more than that. He wanted to live forever. If the speed of light could be achieved or approached . . He was impatient with scientists who said this was impossible. “I don’t pay them to tell me what they can’t do … Why a rocket with enough push behind it…” He did not like to hear the word DEATH spoken in his presence and suddenly boyish voices were singing “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out.”

  He looked up to see a fleet of gliders drifting toward him on the afternoon wind piloted by youths in skeleton suits. Silver arrows rained from the sky.

  Audrey was in an Eastern market. Steep wooden ramps sloped dizzily down like a roller coaster lined with fruit-and-vegetable stalls. He was sitting at the wheel of a heavy wooden cart with iron wheels and bumper. The cart picked up speed, crashing into stalls, spilling fruit and vegetables which rolled down the ramp. Dogs and chickens and children scattered out from under his wheels “I don’t care who I run into” he thought. He was possessed by an ugly spirit of destroying speed. He caught sight of a large cobra by the side of the ramp and swerved to run over it. Writhing fragments flew up in his face. He screamed.

  Armored cars, sirens screaming converge on a rocket installation.

  Too late. The rocket blasts off a mad tycoon at the controls. The earth blows up behind him. As his ship rides the blast he screams: “HI HO SILVER YIPPEEE.” He is riding ahead of a posse tossing sticks of dynamite over his shoulder. Sharp smell of weeds from old Westerns.

  * * *

  House of the General city of Resht in Northern Persia 1023 A.D. The General is poring over maps as he plans an expedition against Alamout. The Old Man of the Mountain represented for the General pure demonic evil. Certainly this man had committed the terrible sin referred to in the Koran of aspiring to be God. The whole Ishmaelian sect was a perfect curse, hidden, lurking, ready to strike, defying all authority … “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

  “Blasphemy” the General screamed starting to his feet. “Man is made to submit and obey.”

  Acting out a final confrontation with this Satan he paces the room fingering the jeweled handle of his sword. He cannot return to his maps. Still muttering imprecations he steps into the garden. Under the orange trees an old man is cutting weeds stopping from time to time to hone his knife on a stone, hands like brown silk unhurried and steady. He has worked there as a gardener for ten years and the General has stopped seeing him years ago. He is as much a part of the garden as the orange trees and the irrigation ditch flashing like a sword in sun. The House of the General is built on a high hill. Orange groves, date palms, rosebushes, pools and opium poppies stretch down to massive walls. The Caspian Sea gleams in the distance. But the General can find no peace in his garden today. The Old Man peers at this through the orange leaves with laughing blue eyes and stabs up at him from the irrigation ditch. Forgetting the presence of his servant the General raises his clenched fist to a distant mountain and screams: “Satan, I will destroy you forever.”

  Squatting in front of the sharpening stone the old gardener tests the edge of his blade against his thumb. The old gardener tested the edge of ten years unhurried eyes seeing the General long ago in a blaze of white light. He straightens up with all the power of his bent knees thrusting up under the rib cage knife seeking a distant point beyond the general’s sagging b
ody, HIS knife flashing like a compass needle straight from Alamout.

  The Wild Boys Smile

  June 25, 1988 Casablanca 4 P.M. The Café Azar was on a rundown suburban street you could find in Fort Worth Texas. CAFÉ AZAR in red letters on plate glass the interior hidden from the street by faded pink curtains. Inside a few Europeans and Arabs drinking tea and soft drinks. The shoeshine boy came over and pointed to my shoes. He was naked except for a dirty white jockstrap and leather sandals. His head was shaved and a tuft of hair sprouted from the crown. His face had been beautiful at some other time and place now broken and twisted by altered pressure, the teeth stuck out at angles features wrenched out of focus body emaciated by distant hungers. He sat on his box and looked up at me squinting snub-nosed legs sprawled apart one finger scratching his jock. The skin was white as paper hairs black and shiny lay flat on his skinny legs. As he shined my shoes with deft precise movements his body gave off a dry musty smell. In one corner of the room I saw a green curtain in front of which two boys were undressing. The corner was apparently at a level below the café floor since I could not see their legs below the knee. One of the boys had stripped to pink underwear sticking out straight at the fly. The other patrons paid no attention to this tableau. The boy jerked his head toward the two actors who were now fucking in upright position lips parted in silent gasps. He put a finger to one eye and shook his head. The others could not see the boys. I handed the boy a coin. He checked the date and nodded. The Dib checked the date of nettles feet twisted by the altered disk.

  “Long time nobody use jump” he said leg hairs covered with mold. The gun jumping, crumpled twisted body, his face floating there the soldier’s identification card and skinny in picture.

  “I was too.” He pointed to his thin body. He picked up his box. I followed him through the cafe. When I walk with the Dib they can’t see me. Buttocks were smooth and white as old ivory. The corner of the green curtain was a sunken limestone square two steps down from the café floor dry musty smell of empty waiting rooms a worn wood bench along one wall. Embedded in the stone floor was an iron disk about five feet in diameter degrees and numbers cut in its edges brass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. This compass floated on a hydraulic medium. In the center of the disk a marine compass occupied a teakwood socket. Two pairs of sandals worn smooth and black mounted on spring stilts eight inches in height were spaced eighteen inches apart so that two people standing in the sandals would be one behind the other the center of the disk and the marine compass exactly between them. The springs were bolted to pistons which projected on shafts from the iron disk. The sandals were at different levels. Evidently they could be adjusted by raising or lowering the shafts. At a sign from the boy I stripped off my clothes smooth hands guided by film tracks I was to bend over and brace my hands on my knees. The boy reached in his box and took out a tape measure that ended in a little knob. He measured the distance from my rectum to the floor. With a round key which fitted into locks in the support shafts he adjusted the level of the two pairs of sandals on the spring stilts. He stood up and stripped off his jockstrap scraping erection. He mounted one pair of spring stilts and strapped his feet into the sandals poised on the springs nuts tight and precise as bearings his phallus projected needle of the compass the disk turned until it was facing the green curtain which moved slightly as if it might cover an opening, ass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. feet a taste of metal in the mouth 18 penis floated I stepped in the sandals from behind knees his skinny arms and I was seeing the take from outside at different levels soft machine my ass a rusty cylinder pearly glands electric click blue sparks my spine into his I bend over and brace vibrating on the springs iron smell of rectal mucus streaking across the sky a wrench spurting soft tracks a distant gun jumping the soldier’s identification disk covered with mold his smile across tears of pain squinting up at me snub-nosed hands at the crotch worn metal smell of the gun as my feet touched the iron disk a soft shock tingled up my legs to the crotch. The penis floated. I stepped onto the stilts in front of the boy and he adjusted the straps from behind. I bent over and braced my hands on my knees. He hooked his skinny arms under my shoulders leg hairs twisted together a slow greased pressure and I was seeing the take from outside transparent soft machine ass a rusty cylinder phallus a piston pumping the pearly glands blue sparks and my spine clicked back into his then forward his head in mine eyes steering through a maze of turnstiles. Stop. Click. Start. Stop. Click. Start streaking across the sky a smear of pain gun jumping out trees weed-grown tracks rusty identification disk covered with mold. Click. Green Pullman curtain. Click. “You wanta see something?” Click. Penis floated. Click. Distant 1920 wind and dust. Click. Bits of silver paper in a wind across the park. Click. Summer afternoon on car seat to the thin brown knees. Click. His smile across the golf course. Click. Click. Click. See on back what I mean each time place dim jerky faraway. The curtain stirs slightly. Click. Sharp smell of weeds. The curtain was gone. The feeling in my stomach when a fast elevator stops as we landed in a stone kiosk by an abandoned railroad dried shit urine initials

  KILROY JACKED OFF HERE B. J. MARTIN D & D

  BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR QUIÉN ES? A.D. KJD

  We unlaced our feet and stepped down from the springs. The disk was rusty and rust had stained the stone around its edges.

  “Long time nobody use jump” the boy said pointing. I saw my clothes in a corner covered with mold. The boy shook his head and handed me a white jockstrap from his box.

  “Clothes no good here. Easy see clothes. Very hard see this.” He pointed to his thin body.

  Then I felt the thirst my body dry and brittle as a dead leaf.

  “Jump take your last water Meester. We find spring.” Above the kiosk was a steep hillside. The boy made his way through brush that seemed to move aside for him leaving a tunnel of leaves. He dropped on his knees and parted a tangle of vines. A deep black spring flowed from a limestone cleft. We scooped up clear cold water with our hands. The boy wiped his mouth. From the hillside we could see a railroad bridge, a stream, ruined suburbs.

  “This bad place Meester. Patrols out here.”

  The boy reached into his box and brought out two packages of oiled paper tied with cord. He undid the cord and unwrapped two snub-nosed thirty-eight revolvers the hammers filed off, the grips cut short, the checked walnut stocks worn smooth. The revolvers could only be used double action. The grip came to the middle of my palm held precisely in place by two converging mounds of hard flesh like part of my hand. The boy pointed with his revolver indicating the path we were going to take into the town under the bridge along the stream. There was no sign of life in the town ruined villas overgrown with vines empty cafés and courtyards. The boy led the way. He would move forward in a burst of speed for fifty feet or so then stop poised sniffing quivering. We were walking along a path by a white wall.

  “DOWN MEESTER!”

  A burst of machine-gun fire ripped into the wall. I threw myself into a ditch full of nettles. Pain poured out my arm like a fire hose gun jumping. Three soldiers about forty feet away crumpled twisted and fell. The boy got up blowing smoke from his gun barrel body covered with red welts. In a burst of speed his feet reached the bodies. I had fired twice. He had fired four times. Every bullet had found a vital spot. One soldier lay on his back legs twisted under him a hole in the middle of his forehead. Another was still alive twitching convulsively as blood spurted from a neck wound. The third had been shot three times in the stomach. He lay face down hands clasped over his stomach, his machine gun still smoking three yards away white smoke curling up from the grass. It was a subdivision street, lawns, palm trees, bungalows built along one side vacant lot opposite could have been Palm Beach Florida empty ten years weeds palm branches in the driveways, windows broken, no sign of life. The boy went through pockets with expert fingers: a knife, identification papers, cigarettes, a packet of kif. Two of the soldiers had been carrying carbines the third a submachine gun. “No good Czech grease gun�
� the boy said and kicked it aside after unclipping the magazine. The carbines he propped against a palm tree. We dragged the bodies into a ditch. The pressure of pain lent maniac power and precision to our movements. We rushed about dragging palm branches to heap on the bodies. We couldn’t stop. We found a Christmas tree bits of silver paper twisted in its brown needles and heaved it over onto the dead soldiers. We paused panting shivering and looked at each other. Spots boiled in front of my eyes blood pounded to neck and crotch feeling the strap tighten hot squeezing pressure inside stomach intestines a muffled explosion as scalding diarrhea spurted down the backs of our trembling thighs the Boy Scout Manual floated across summer afternoons the boy’s cracked broken film voice seeing the take from outside the shelf I rummaged in the shelf knew what I was looking for along a flagstone path feet like blocks of wood trailing black oily shit this must be the kitchen door open rusty electric stove moldy chili dishes food containers silver paper knew what I was looking for rummaged in the shelves fingers numb wet-dream tension in my crotch and I knew there was not much time found a can of baking powder emptied it into a porcelain fruit bowl painted roses no water silver pies choking in a red haze not much time out into the ruined garden fish pond stagnant water green slime a frog jumped the boy was tearing at his jockstrap I sat down and slipped my strap off strap halfway down his thighs cock flipped out stiff he lost balance fell on his side I pulled the strap down off his feet he turned on his back knees up body arched pulled together spurted neck tumescent choking I dipped water and green slime into the bowl with both hands mixed a paste slapped the paste on both sides of his neck and down the chest to the heart ejaculated across his quivering stomach I dipped more paste held it to the sides of my throbbing neck then down the chest I could breathe now easier to move more paste down the boy’s stomach and thighs to the feet turned him over and rubbed the paste down his back where the nettles had whipped great welts across the back he sighed simpered body went limp and emptied again. I stood up and rubbed the paste over my body the pain was going and the numbness. I flopped down beside the boy and fell into a deep sleep.