Interzone

by William S. Burroughs

  “Oh land’s sake!” say the sheriff. “I shoulda never hang a woman. A man can only come off a second best he tangle assholes with a gash. Well, I guess I can see with my mouth from here on in. Hehe hehe heh.”

  So the sheriff have glass eyes made up with filthy pictures built in—her is walking penny arcade—and feel the kid up, and that hot blood hit the young cock, and the kid’s breath get short, and the sheriff’s steady finger (best shot in Dead Coon County) unbutton his fly slow and just ease the cock out stand up there pulsing in the Old Privy all overgrown with weeds and vines, rusty smell of shit turning back to soil.

  Come in at the door after delouse treatment. Don’t give halo lice to your fellow angels. They will sneer at you and hamstring your harp.

  “You want to lose that proboscis?” she say. Her cunt click open like a snap-knife.

  Don’t offend with innocence. Need Life Boy soap. Body smell of life a nasty odor in the snooze of a decent American gash.

  See this Liz fuck a kid with a April Fool exploding prick, and it go off inside and blow his guts right outa navel. The Liz roll on the floor laughing, yell, “Oh! Oh! Give me ribs of steel.”

  Any woman get gay with me after all I suffer from the fairy-making sex bite off more than she can chew, even with my lymphogranuloma I can still kick shit out of Brubeck the Unsteady lose his in the thervith of junk and the slunk traffic.

  “The gimmick is this, Doc: tell a farmer his cow give birth to a monster and you had to burn it already, goosed by your Veterinary Ethics. We can’t miss.”

  … It’s the only way to live … a few chickens … jug of paregoric and thou under the swamp cypress. Sweet screams of burning Nigra drift in on the warm spring wind fans our hot bodies like a Nubian slave. How obliging can you get?

  The boy trots along the curb with tireless amok trot of the Indian-giver to a perilous scaffold of rusty iron, termite-eaten wood, rotten rope. Meets a young junky—black hair uncombed, black eyes with pinpoint green pupils open on the Green Death Room (one reference, gentle reader, is to the Green Room in San Quentin where cyanide executions are consummated under civil leers of the witnesses).

  Papers of heroin stashed in the history book, he fixes in the school toilet. Narcotics agent, peeping through the glory hole, has caught a kid in the junk act, slaps the cuffs on his ankles.

  I ask the boy how old he is and he say, “I’m seventeen.”

  I nod with dark understanding and say, “Junkies always look younger than they are.”

  “How they hangin’, Herman?” Old fat junky cheat on his rope with cyanide.

  It’s the Plastic Age, folks. ’Tain’t no sin take off your new skin and clown around in your bone-ons.

  That good Black Gum with hot Arab tea hits you ten minutes like a ton of shit…. Black Death Terry called his Ford the river of sticks to Reynosa Boy’s Town where the mangy lioness was to break his neck with one quick claw…. That’s what happen when you wake a sleeping lioness with the flashbulb of urgency. She don’t like it. And the Chinaman don’t like it. Don’t ever wake that Chinaman with a heroin flash.

  (Young friend of mine name of Terry have this 1936 Ford he call the Black Death. One night he get in the Black Death and cross the Rio Grande to Reynosa, where a mangy old lioness stood in a cage in Joe’s patio. So Terry goes in the cage, throw a flashlight in the lioness’ face, who leap on him and break his neck, and the bartender vault over the bar with a forty-five blast the lioness. But Mr. Terry he dead.)

  The blond woman came in through the white door with a holly wreath on it, and took down my wine-colored pants. Drank champagne from the living cunt with breakfast sausage and scrambled eggs.

  Where you been? This young cat eat sausages out of a woman’s cunt (prominent actress) at a Berlin party in Weimar days. Later he run into this same cunt fully dressed at another party and say, “Wie gehts?” or something…and she draw herself up and sneer: “Where is your culture, you nameless asshole? I don’t know you.”

  And he says, “But Fräulein, I have et the blood sausage from your cunt at Mitzi’s Comming-off and Going-away Party.”

  And she says, “Oh dahling! … Of course! Mitzi’s such an old castrate.” Such was life in the Weimar Republic.

  Boy on the way to Lexington jacks off in the shuddering junk-sick toilet. Girls scream by on the scenic railway over the edge of space into the night…. “Put out your condom, kid, and Santa drop a cunt in it.”

  So I say to this broad, I say, “Listen baby you ought to take a picture. Do you dye your cunt or shave it?”

  The Caid in gasoline screams up the Midway to the burning roller coaster where the boy stood on the heroin deck proclaiming his habit to the sneers of sick physicians.

  The trap falls with tremendous speed, no time for breakfast. Let it come down and fix the black bone yen.

  Burning high yeller boy tied to a packing crate with barbed wire at wrist and ankle, screams out of his flesh and runs across the red clay of Georgia in black bones.

  London Bridge is falling, slow trap through the long white nerves and green intestine jungles and the pearly glands…. Slow fall….

  In the Closed Garden the Boy runs in a curved fold, pants of Nexus burn with jellied Narcissism—incandescent pelvis among the geraniums…. Outside yipping Arabs barbecue sad-eyed Indians in pink Cadillacs.

  Junk yacks at our heels a silent riot, and predated checks bounce all around us like fossil skulls in a Mayan ball court.

  “Dicks scream for dope fiend lover”—A savage spot haunted by a woman scream for her demon lover, Coleridge, “Xanadu”—another old-time schmecker.

  Dead bird, quail in the slipper, money in the bank. Fossil cunts of predated chicks bounce around us in Queens Plaza. Lay them in the crapper—just shove it in, vibration does the rest. Old stove burn nostalgia, and black dust rain down over us cancer curse of switch. Cock under the nut shell.

  “Step right up. Now you see it, now you don’t.”

  The penis is not of mine to give is passport of cunt. Past port and petal crowned with calm leaves she stand there across the river under the trees.

  “Come,” she says. “Come, and you can suck my marshmallows, and I will show my little black box of Turkish Exquisitries.” (.32 prick cover this caper, penis in hand.)

  (Proprietor of a Turkish Exquisitries shop shot by holdup man with .32.)

  The light shakes over the lake, and the wild cataract leaps through the Glory Hole, blinding the old queen in the next cavity. Spitting cobras, patronize your neighborhood toilet.

  Adolescent angels sing on shithouse walls of the world: “Come and Jack Off … 1929.” “Gimpy pushes milk sugar shit … Johnny Hung Lately, 1952.” Deserted farm outhouse (shit turn back dust to dust).

  Telegram from your boy buried under the outhouse forty-year shit strata … sing over the deep river into K-Y Inferno (female impersonator joint).

  “I got the calling,” scream the female impersonator like a horse kicked in the nuts. Orient Express screaming train whistle, and the chic young agent summarily hanged at the Turkish border for possession of Exquisitries turns out to be female impersonator from Yokohama with a strap-on cunt fly off in last orgasm. Bullfighter’s cap caught by The Witness … hiatus of time out when the banana slip up his ass, goose him onto the long horn.

  Come in at the Door Jam. Don’t worry about a Thing Man. Where’d you get it? Shaking that thing. The prostate back trap door let it down, shit out the marines like a landing barge, nail it shut with cobwebs.

  Frontier moves out into space-time—phantom riders, chili joints, saloon and the Quick Draw, hangings from horseback to the jeers of Sporting Women. Black Smoke on the hip in the Chinese Laundry…. No tickee, no washee. Clom Fliday.

  Chinese pushers stopped serving Occidentals in the 1920s. When a junky want to score off the Chink, he say, “No glot. Come Fliday.”

  Golden horses copulate in black clouds of West.

  The quaint English gangster is in the marl hole of th
e world.

  In front of the mutilated limestone fragments of museum, Indian boys with bright red gums are eating the green ices.

  Mr. Gilly looks for his brindle-faced cow across the Piney Woods where armadillos innocent of a cortex frolic under the .22 of black Stetson and pale blue eyes.

  When the author was raising marijuana in East Texas, he unwillingly made the acquaintance of one Mr. Gilly, a rural mooch leave low pressure area in his wake like an impotent cyclone, toothless snarl of blackmail, weak and intermittent like music down a windy street. “Lawd Lawd, have you seen my brindle-faced cow? Guess I’m taking up too much of your time. Must be busy doing something, feller say. Good stand you got, whatever it is. Maybe I’m asking too many questions. Weell, guess I’ll be getting along. You wouldn’t have a rope, would you? A hemp rope? Don’t know how I’d hold that old brindle-faced cow without a rope if I did come on him. No, I guess not. Well, now you got that new Chevy, I guess you’d most give your old jeep to a poor man. You wouldn’t have a cold drink, would you?”

  In England are bottomless holes used as public tips (dumps), known as marl holes, where English gangsters dump copper’s narks in oil tins—until the busies put a watchman on the hole to prevent such violations of the sanitary code.

  The museum at Guatemala City, looted by Mayan collectors of the world, has left a few old beat-up pieces of stelae. Set in a little park grove of trees.

  Money all over him like shit you can smell it. And Rocky smell so sweet of junk always leave that selfish smell never come off a man handle it, use it, junk cling to him like jellied ectoplasm, burns out whiffs of black smoke.

  The Operator want to suck the emergent maleness of the passing queen … wise prick know when the bones will change and jump on that wagon break its ass with his weight of centuries, sit and take his cut and never never give nothing back. Got the Big Fix up his ass in a finger stall with 14-carat diamonds, antibiotics and heroin. Under Corn Hole Sign of carny lot caretaker toolshed.

  “Drop your pants, kid.” Over the broken chair and out through the dusty window—Midway boarded up for winter, whitewash whip in a cold wind on limestone cliff over the river—pieces of moon hang like smoke in the cold blue substance of sky out on a long line of jissom spurt across the dusty floor.

  “See you Joe’s Lunch. Treat you meal. What’ll you have, kid? Two chilis with cherry crumb pie and white coffee.”

  “Like this,” he say on all fours, cup the boy’s tits with hard palms, shove it in with a slow sideways wiggle, pull the boy’s body on to him with long strokes sculpt stomach, arch like a cat pulling up into his stomach, up and in.

  Balls squeezed dry black lemon rind pest rim the ass with a knife cut off piece of hash for the water pipe bubble tube indicate what used to be me.

  “The river is served, sir.”

  In the barn attic came on the wetback sleep with hard-on under thick cotton pants…sits up with fierce eyes, smile sweet, bright red gums, look down and stretch his body, and I reach slow and touch it. He sit me down and make the strip motion, and I undo belt silent and shaking and shove my pants down slow. Cock spring out hard, turn me around, sink slow fence post in hole, quicksand, rubber boots slow in, the boy shudder and sigh. Black widow fall on the wetback’s copper neck, bite him; die in quick convulsions allergic shock—come five times.

  The young rustler say to his friend, “You do it.” And the friend take the noose, looking into his friend’s eyes, put it over his head and adjust behind the left ear—ritual gentleness of sacrifice. “You’d better stand up in the saddle.” Help him up with tied hands, leaning against his friend’s hard young body keep him from falling on the hemp (premature ejaculation unhealthy practice the experts say). Stand now like a young god ready: “Well, go ahead, Greg.” They stand there, one steadying the other with hand on his shoulder, young males gentle and sad, and the wind ripples through their hair in a vibrating soundless hum under the cottonwoods. The two boys change middle-aged hennaed fags, start back from each other appalled by the hideous sea change, and Johnny falls from the saddle. Mandrakes pop up with pathic screams.

  Crawl out and identify yourselves before we throw in a Mills Brothers cough drop or a chocolate éclair, and the third time he go down for the long count tangled in seaweed, down there looking for his fish dinner.

  “Let’s shake the joint down.” Freudian dicks burst in like burning lions.

  “Ground floor dining room, so-called living room, den, kitchen, pantry, toilet under the stairs.”

  “We been over this a million times. Really, Doctor, if you have nothing further to enlighten us, shut your doddering mouth whyncha?”

  “Second floor.”

  “Don’t make with the room layout again, or I shall scream.”

  “Toilet lead right into our lady’s dressing room soft silky smells perfume and cold cream and whiff of diarrhea shit smell yellow, the way old three-day vintage smell black. Ever whiff green shit? A sort of shiny green-black glows in the dark? But that was in another country, and besides—”

  “Shut up already, murder never outlaws. The fuzz try hanging this meatball rap on me as notorious Blue Ball and Torso Artist.”

  “Never outlaws.” I.e., the statute of limitations does not run. Blue balls are a symptom of real evil clap.

  The arrow right through his eye and out the back of that adorable head. Shrunk down I keep it up my ass in a plastic cover on a long gold chain. Lovely mouth falls open as if petulant wake from sleep with a sulky hard-on, he dead falls with a soft plop in the Amazon mud.

  “Well,” she says, “I got this vibrator off my cousin Fred connect with the black market for these coupons entitle him all different gadgets—folding bidet carry up your ass, open out like an umbrella. And the handbag cream separator, second as weapon a girl caught short-armed with a prick up her.”

  Long line of black boys march up the ramp to the hidden gallows singing spirituals. And when they open the door underneath cut them down with a Kansas combo the warm wheaty odor of semen drifts out across the blighted continent, South of the Border, wanders in miasmal mists and ambrosial fogs flowers in a clear green switch.

  Jim goose Brad, say “Oooooooooh,” and his teeth pop out with a fart into the clear blue mountain lake, turn into a lamprey and swim away to suck a silver trout.

  The face strangles (audience gags and stick out tongues), veins pop in the brain like little red firecrackers, blue sparks fly from broken connections, lights go off in square blocks of power failure. Light across Long Island park and trees in the bright sun seen from the El shake through the young body. (America a great plain under the wings of vultures husk in the dry air.)

  Cool as blue-eyed young junky spectral in the sun. Hot as blood leap to mouth and cock, and the eyes go black and blood sing in the ears sweet as little pink conchs.

  “The question is this,” said the philosophic doctor, that old tired prop him up, downing a mason jar of corn. “Can the pleasure of a sex act, deeply repressed say like MacArthur we have returned and squeeze out the jet at tremendous pressure, be qualitatively more intense than the normally charged act?”

  Blast of trumpets, drool of drums and dead march. And decayed corseted tenor sings “Danny Deever” in drag: “They have taken all his buttons off and cut his pants away. Bastard browned the colonel sleeping, the man’s ass is all agley. And he’ll swing in harf a minute for a sneaking, shooting fay. They are ’angin’ Danny Deever in the morning.”

  Lights: a stage stretching to the neon skyline. Golden gallows towers a thousand feet against the Grand Canyon, Pikes Peak, Niagara Falls and Chrysler Building, vast souvenir postcards light up slow with neon.

  Motel. Motel. Motel loneliness moans across the continent like foghorns over still oily waters of tidal rivers. Violet’s Massage Parlour in green neon. The Girl in White greases up a vibrator. The boy watches her face black down to a little green dot.

  Hanging togs at Antoine’s, emporium for young fags of good family. We have litera
lly thousands of escape suits for the—tee hee—bride.

  “May I kiss the bride?”

  The skull nods knowingly. Antoine claps imperious hands, and the Fashion Show is on.

  Boy drops on a blue rope. Blue flame burns round his waist, and his pants fall free, burning, into a dark lagoon in the empty park. Shirt burns in blue flare light his grinding bone grins. The separate spine squeeze the soft body up and out the cock.

  Escape suit burn blue all over, cook the boy while he come, spit hot balls out his cock. (Negro smile malevolently, catch them on a skewer. “Hot balls, folks! Hot balls!” He moves up through the aisles. Circus, Stadium, Plaza.)

  Our Snow Drop Suit guaranteed to liquefy. We have never had a failure. When you shoot that rusty dark load cross the night like a shooting star.

  Cowboy suit dissolves in a mist of powder smoke, clear to show bunkmate reverently pull off the boots … and with beatified face receive the benediction of sperm sweet as warm summer rain on the face and hair.

  The Preaching Hangman touches the boy’s neck with hands, sweet slime like a snail. “Now, ladies and gentles of this congregation. When I hang a man and think of his lluuuuuvelay soul bear his rusty load right up God’s ass—how old did you say, sheriff?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Looks younger.—Sometimes I really haaaaate this job.” He wipes the foam from his lips with an eiderdown.

  Soldier suit dissolve, run down the body. Our permanent plating process guarantee you an interested niche in any park, hang off the limp foot in a bronze tear.

  Suits turn to shit and drip off you swung out over the privies of the world on a long black bolo. Angel suits made of marshmallows and spun sugar sweet burn, leave the little naked boy twitching. (Sweet young breath quick through the teeth, stomach hard as marble spits it out in soft sweet blobs. Spurty boy comes, slower and slower and slower turn to a long yellow beard in the old man’s hands.)

  Socially conscious Negroes hang themselves over a fire of packing crates singing “Strange Fruit” slow and fruity, while serious Negroes with rimless glasses and fat smooth coffee faces hand out bills among the audience, well-dressed and vaguely embarrassed. (Whiff of dried jissom in a bandanna rises out of a hotel drawer, ghost town twenty years shut down, covered with dust.)