The Soft Machine

by William S. Burroughs

  “I am dying, Meester?”

  Flashes in front of my eyes naked and sullen—rotten dawn wind in sleep—death rot on Panama photo where the awning flaps.

  Sad servant stood on the sea wall in sepia clouds of Panama.

  “Boy I was washed face in Panama maybe undressed there. money. good bye.”

  Johnny Yen’s last adiós out of focus.

  1920 Movies

  Film Union sub spirit couldn’t find the cobbled road content with an occasional Mexican in the afternoon a body sadness to say good bye smell of blood and excrement with the wind sad distant voices infer his absence as wind and dust in empty streets of Mexico.

  “I am the Director. You have known me for a long time. Mister, leave cigarette money.”

  Iron cell wall painted flaking rust—Grifa smoke through the high grate window of blue night—Two prisoners sit on lower iron shelf bunk smoking. One is American the other Mexican—The Cell vibrates with silent blue motion of prison and all detention in time.

  “Johnny I think you little bit puto queer.”

  “Sí.” Johnny held up thumb and finger an inch apart.

  “I screw Johnny up ass? Bueno Johnny?” His fingers flicked Johnny’s shirt. They stood up. José hung his shirt on a nail, Johnny passed shirt and José hung one shirt over the other. “Ven acá.” He caught Johnny’s belt-end with one hand and flipped the belt-tongue out and opened fly buttons with pickpocket fingers.

  “Johnny pants down. Ya duro. Johnny hard. I think like mucho be screwed.”

  “Claro.”

  “Fuck Johnny, Johnny come too?”

  José moved into the bunk on knees: “Like this Johnny,” he slapped his thighs. “Como perros.”

  He opened a tin of vaseline as the other moved into place and shoved a slow twisting finger up Johnny’s ass.

  “Johnny like?”

  “Mucho.”

  “Johnny flip now.”

  He held Johnny’s thighs and moved his cock in slow.

  “Breathe in deep Johnny.”

  His cock slid in as Johnny breathed in. They froze there breathing: “Bueno, Johnny?”

  “Bueno.”

  “Vámanos.” Shadow bodies twisted on the blue wall. “Johnny sure start now.”

  “You is coming Johnny?”

  “Siiiiiii.”

  “Here goes Johnny.” Spurts cross the surplus blanket smell of iron prison flesh and clogged toilets. Pickpocket finger on his balls squeezing the spurts, cock throbbing against his spine, he squeezed through a maze of penny arcades and dirty pictures in the blue Mexican night. The two bodies fell languidly apart bare feet on the Army blanket. Grifa smoke blown down over black shiny pubic hairs copper and freckle flesh. Paco’s cock came up in smoke.

  “Otra vez Johnny?” He put his hands behind Johnny’s knees.

  “Johnny hear knees now.”

  Mexico thighs: “Como perros I fuck you.”

  Walls painted blue smoke through the grate. Finger up Johnny’s ass moved two prisoners. He held Johnny’s thighs and vibrated silent deep Johnny. His cock slid: “Johnny, I in.”

  “Let’s go,” twisted the iron frame. “Porqué no?”

  “Bueno, Johnny.” Candle shadow bodies. “Johnny sure desnudate por completo. . . Johnny?”

  “Siiii?”

  “Here goes completo.” Plus blankets smell of iron and shirt on nail. Mexican pickpocket one shirt over the other. Spurts maze of dirty pictures. He pushed toe blue Mexican night Johnny pants down.

  Part bare feet on the blanket. Black shiny pubic hairs.

  “I think like mucho be José—Paco—Enrique.”

  “Como perros Johnny like? Breathe José in there deep Johnny.”

  His cock iron frame for what not breathing: “Let’s go bunk.”

  “You is coming plus Paco.” Cross blanket smell of Johnny flicked one shirt. Go completo plus Kiki. He flipped the Tongue Street: “You is coming for Johnny.”

  One shirt spilling head. The bodies feel cock flip out and up.

  “Como eso I fuck you.” One shirt spilling Johnny. Finger on his balls. Cock flipped out and up. Black shiny pubic head. The bodies smoke.

  “Fuck on knees. Lie down blanket. Como eso through the iron.” He feel tongue on knees. Smoke fuck on knees.

  “Mucho be Angelo como eso.”

  “Deep Johnny.”

  Shoved white knees. Vaseline finger vibrate thighs. “Flip now.”

  “Paco? slow.”

  “Sí, the ass Johnny? I screw Johnny up ass?”

  Spurts prison flesh to Mexican night: “Vibrate, Johnny.”

  “I screw Johnny.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Johnny knees down. Boca abajo. You is coming como eso?”

  “Hard bunk Johnny. Me up in Freckles. Como perros like on knees.”

  “I screw Johnny Mexican. Smoke fuck Johnny. Como eso Johnny fuck on knees.”

  He feel flipped the knees. “You is coming otra vez Johnny?” He flipped Johnny. Vaseline finger see the ass. One shirt spilling Johnny flicked out and up.

  “One mucho Johnny flip now.”

  “Breathe José into hilt ass Johnny.”

  “Start now.”

  “You is coming?”

  Spurts cross calzoncillos todo. José hung his prison flesh. Finger on his balls feel “come here.” He caught Johnny belt spine. He feel flipped the belt-tongue cross pickpocket fingers. The bodies fell languidly. Cock flipped out and up. Grifa smoke blown down line. “A ver like this.” He clipped into the bunk on knees like: “Como perros come Johnny.”

  José knees. Vaseline finger twisting Johnny’s thighs.

  “Flip now. José slow deep Johnny.” His cock slid ass Johnny.

  “Bueno Johnny?”

  Breathing: “Let’s go bunk. Johnny candle shadow now.”

  “You is coming por completo.”

  “Siiii,” spurts spilling cross pickpocket toe Mexican night cock flipped out and up. Part bare feet.

  “Fuck on knees like” (Moving two prisoners in the blue? Is American bunk?)

  “Mucho Johnny vibrate blue pressure. Breathe José in there. Sí iron frame.”

  “Porqué no?”

  “Johnny here go completo plus Kiki.” Hung his prison flesh on nail.

  Johnny toilet finger on his balls feel other spurts cock. He fell flipped the pictures. The bodies fell street.

  “Claro you like mucho be Kiki. A ver. Como eso.” Just hula hoop through each other to idiot Mambo . . all idiot Mambo spattered to control mechanization.

  “Salt Chunk Mary” had all the “nos” and none of them ever meant “yes.” She named a price heavy and cold as a cop’s blackjack on a winter night and that was it. She didn’t name another. Mary didn’t like talk and she didn’t like talkers. She received and did business in the kitchen. And she kept it in a sugar bowl. Nobody thought about that. Her cold grey eyes would have seen the thought and maybe something goes wrong on the next lay John Citizen come up with a load of 00 into your soft and tenders or Johnny Law just happens by. She sat there and heard. When you spread the gear out on her kitchen table she already knows where you sloped it. She looks at the gear and a price falls out heavy and cold and her mouth closes and stays shut. If she doesn’t want to do business she just wraps the gear up and shoves it back across the table and that is that. Mary keeps a blue coffee pot and a pot of salt pork and beans always on the wood stove. When you fall in she gets up without a word and puts a mug of coffee and plate of salt chunk in front of you. You eat and then you talk business. Or maybe you take a room for a week to cool off. room 18 on the top floor I was sitting in the top room rose wall paper smoky sunset across the river. I was new in the game and like all young thieves thoug
ht I had a license to steal. It didn’t last. Sitting there waiting on the Japanese girl works in the Chink laundry a soft knock and I open the door naked with a hard-on it was the top floor all the way up you understand nobody on that landing. “Ooooh” she says feeling it up to my oysters a drop of lubricant squeezed out and took the smoky sunset on rose wall paper I’d been sitting there naked thinking about what we were going to do in the rocking chair rocks off down the line she could get out of her dry goods faster than a junky can fix when his blood is right so we rocked away into the sunset across the river just before blast off that old knock on the door and I shoot this fear load like I never feel it wind up is her young brother at the door in his cop suit been watching through the key hole and learn about the birds and the bees some bee I was in those days good looking kid had all my teeth and she knew all the sex currents goose for pimple always made her entrance when your nuts are tight and aching a red haired boy smoky rose sunset one bare knee rubbing greasy pink wall paper he was naked with a hard-on waiting on the Mexican girl from Marty’s a pearl of lubricant squeezed slowly out and glittered on the tip of his cock. There was a soft knock at the door. He got up off the crumpled bed and opened the door. The girl’s brother stood there smiling. The red haired boy made a slight choking sound as blood rushed to his face pounded and sang in his ears. The young face there on the landing turned black around the edges. The red haired boy sagged against the door jamb. He came to on the bed the Mexican kid standing over him.

  “All right now? Sis can’t come.”

  The Mexican kid unbuttoned his shirt. He kicked off his sandals dropped his pants and shorts grinning and his cock flipped out half up. The Mexican kid brought his finger up in three jerks and his cock came up with it nuts tight pubic hairs glistening black he sat down on the bed.

  “Vaseline?”

  The red haired boy pointed to the night table. He was lying on the bed breathing deeply his knees up. The Mexican kid took a jar of vaseline out of a drawer. He kneeled on the bed and put his hands behind the freckled knees and shoved the boy’s knees up to his trembling red ears. He rubbed vaseline on the pink rectum with a slow circular pull. The red haired boy gasped and his rectum spread open. The Mexican kid slid his cock in. The two boys locked together breathing in each other’s lungs. After the girl left I walk down to Marty’s where I meet this Johnson has a disgruntled former chauffeur map indicates where a diamond necklace waits for me wall safe behind the Blue Period. Or maybe you Picasso on Rembrandt and cool off like I was sitting in a Turner sunset on the Japanese girl doing my simple artisan job hot and heavy. Mary she kept the guide ready her eyes heavy and cold as a cop’s come around with the old birds and bees business. Nobody thought about that cold outside agent call. Recall John Citizen came up on her. Johnny Law just happens by magic shop in Westbourne Grove. Smell these conditions of ash? I twig that old knack. Klinker is dead. Blackout fell on these foreign suburbs here.

  “Be careful of the old man. kinda special deputy carries a gun in the car.”

  Music fading in the East St. Louis night broken junk of exploded star sad servant of the inland side shirt flapping in a wind across the golf course a black silver sky of broken film precarious streets of yesterday back from shadows the boy solid now I could touch almost you know both of us use the copper luster basin in the blue attic room now Johnny’s back. Who else put a slow cold hand on your shoulder shirt flapping shadows on a wall long ago fading streets a distant sky?

  They walked through a city of black and white movies fading streets of thousand-run smoke faces. Figures of the world slow down to catatonic limestone.

  City blocks speed up out in photo flash. Hotel lobbies 1920 Time fill with slow grey film fallout and funeral urns of Hollywood. Never learn? The Guide clicked him through a silent turnstile into a cubicle of blue glass and mirrors so that any panel of the room was at alternate intervals synchronized with the client’s sex-pulse mirror or wall of glass into the next cell on all sides and the arrangement was an elaborate permutation and very technical. . . So Johnny The Guide said: “The first clause in our Blue Contract is known as The Examination to which both parties must submit. . . We call it The Probing Period, now isn’t that cute?”

  The Guide put on helmet of photo goggles and antennae of orange neon flickering, smelling bat wings: “Johnny pants down. Johnny cock hard.” He brought his arm up from the elbow swimming in for close-ups of Johnny’s erection: take slow and take fast under flickering vowel colors: I Red / U Green / E White / O Blue / A Black / “Bend over Johnny.” The Examiner floats up from the floor, swims down through heavy water from the ceiling, shoots up from toilet bowl, English baths, underwater takes of genitals and pubic hairs in warm spermy water. The Goggles lick over his body phosphorescent moths, through rectal hairs orange halos flicker around his penis. In his sleep, naked Panama nights, the camera pulsing in blue silence and ozone smells, sometimes the cubicle open out on all sides into purple space. X-ray photos of viscera and fecal movements, his body a transparent blue fish.

  “So that’s The Examination we call it, sees all your processes. You can’t deceive us in any way at all and now you got the right to examine me.”

  Lee put on the photo goggles melt in head and saw the Guide now blond with brown eyes slender and tilted forward. He moved in for a close-up of the boy’s flank and took his shirt off followed the pants down, circled the pubic hair forest in slow autogyros, zeroed in for the first stirrings of tumescence, swooping from the stiffening blood tube to the boy’s face, sucking eyes with neon proboscis, licking testicles and rectum. The goggles and antennae fade in smoke and slow street-eyes swim up from grey dust and funeral urns. And in his sleep naked blue movies slow motion. Pulsing blue silence photos genitals and pubic hairs in rectal mucus and carbolic soap. Alternate Mirror and Screen Guide put on goggles walked through grey-filled shadows that melted in his head. In Time Focus The Natives. Like flickering bat wings over faded thousand-run faces, hearing, smelling through them like: “Johnny cock hard.” Slow down to statues with catatonic erection slow falling through colors Red Green Black. A Hot Spread: cheeks close-up. And felt over Johnny’s body the slow float down from Hollywood. Came to the hot Panama nights. They clicked in through a squat toilet with walls of blue glass and underwater shots of warm soapy spermy water smell. So felt the boy neon fingers on sex spots breathing through sponge rock penis-flesh and brown intestine jungles lined with flesh-eating vines and frantic parasites of the area. . .

  Naked in the Panama night, rectal mucus and carbolic soap. A Blue Screen Guide put on goggles. Pale panels of shadow melted his head on all sides into blue silent wings over The Clock of Fecal Movement smelling through them like transparent.

  “A Hot Spread Examination we call it. Johnny’s body can’t deceive us in any way. Came to the hot Panama nights to examine me.”

  Clicked into his head of blue glass. Close-up neon finger over the scar-impressions learning The Instrument Panels, recording on the transparent flesh of Present Time. It is happening right now. Slow 1920 finger rubbing vaseline on the cobra lamps, flickering movie shadows into the blue void. Pulling Finger rolls a cuneiform cylinder. Lens eye drank the boy’s jissom in yellow light.

  “Now Meester we flick fluck i me you cut.” The two film tracks ran through Impression Screen. One track flash on other cut out in dark until cut back: “Me finish Johnny’s shit. . . Clom through Johnny. . .” Hear rectums merging in flicks and orgasm of mutual processes. And pulsed in and out of each other’s body on slow gills of sleep in the naked Panama nights and bent over the washstand in East St. Louis junk-sick dawn. Smell of carbolic soap and rectal mucus and train whistle wake of blue silence and piss through my cock “i-you-me-fuck-up-ass-all-same-time-four-eyes.” Phantom cleavage crude and rampant. Every Citizen can now grow Sex Forms in his bidet: in the night of Talara felt his hard-on against my khaki pants as we shifted slots and i browned a strange Danish dog under T
he Nudes of Sweden. Warm spermy smell, room of blue glass strung together on light-lines of jissom and shit, shared meals and belches, the shifting of testes and contractions of rectum, flick-fluck back and forth.

  “Here goes Johnny. We fluck now first run”: in Blue Silence saw the two one track out: Blue. Each meet image coming round the other erection-fucked-self and came other shit both.

  “We flick fluck i-you-film-tracks through rectal mucus and carbolic soap. Cut out pale panels of shadow.” Blue silent bat wings over rectums blending in transparent erection. A hot shit and all process together.

  “Johnny’s body can’t deceive us in other body. Slow night to examine me.” Sick dawn smell of carbolic finger. Close-up finger on all cocks.

  “I-you-me fuck up neon blind fingers phantom cleavage of boy impressions Witch Board of Present Time.”

  The Idiot Green Boys leaped on Johnny like tree frogs clinging to his chest with sucker paws fungoid gills and red mushroom penis pulsing to the sex waves from Johnny eyes. Warm spermy smell, lamps and flicker movies strung together on a million fingers shared meals and belches and lens-eye drank jissom. Contract of Rectum Flight: “Here goes Johnny. One flight out.” Screen other rectum naked in Panama night.

  Ghost of Panama clung to our throats, coughing and spitting on separate spasm, phosphorescent breath fades in fractured air—Sick flesh strung together on a million fingers shared meals and belches—Nothing here now but circling word dust—dead post card falling through space between worlds—This road in this sharp smell of carrion—

  We twisted slowly to black lagoons, flower floats and gondolas—Tentative crystal city iridescent in the dawn wind—(Adolescents ejaculate over the tide flats)

  In the blue windy morning masturbating a soiled idiot body of cold scar tissue—Catatonic limestone hands folded over his yen—A friend of any boy structure cut by a species of mollusk—Street boys of the green gathered—Slow bronze smiles from a land of grass without memory—Cool casual little ghosts of adolescent spasm—Metal excrement and crystal glooms of the fish city—Under a purple twilight our clothes shredded mummy linen on obsidian floors—Panama clung to our bodies—