Naked Lunch (21 page)

T.B. – Tentative
Bulletin – Liquefaction: ‘We must not reject or deny our protoplasmic core, striving at all times to maintain a maximum of flexibility without falling into the morass of liquefaction.…’ Tentative and Incomplete Bulletin: ‘Emphatically we do not oppose telepathic research. In fact, telepathy properly used and understood could be the ultimate defense against any form of organized coercion or
tyranny on the part of pressure groups or individual control addicts. We oppose, as we oppose atomic war, the use of such knowledge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or annihilate the individuality of another living creature. Telepathy is not, by its nature, a one-way process. To attempt to set up a one-way telepathic broadcast must be regarded as an unqualified evil.…’

D.B. – Definitive Bulletin:
‘The Sender will be defined by negatives. A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentously anonymous, faceless, colorless. He will – probably – be born with smooth disks of skin instead of eyes. He always knows where he is going like a virus knows. He doesn’t need eyes.’

‘Couldn’t there be more than one Sender?’

‘Oh yes, many of them at first. But not for long. Some maudlin
citizens will think they can send something edifying, not realizing that sending
is
evil. Scientists will say: “Sending is like atomic power…. If properly harnessed.” At this point an anal technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and pulls the switch that reduces the earth to cosmic dust. (“Belch … They’ll hear this fart on Jupiter.”) … Artists will confuse sending with creation. They will camp
around screeching “A new medium” until their rating drops off.… Philosophers will bat around the ends and means hassle not knowing that
sending can never be a means to anything but more sending, like Junk.
Try using junk as
a means to something else.… Some dozens with “Coca Cola and aspirin” control habits will be talking about the evil glamor of sending. But no one will talk about anything very
long.
The Sender
, he don’t like talking.’

The Sender is not a human individual.… It is The Human Virus. (All viruses are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic existence.… They have specific affinity for the Mother Cell; thus deteriorated liver cells seek the home place of hepatitis, etc. So every species has a Master Virus: Deteriorated Image of that species.)

The broken image of Man moves
in minute by minute and cell by cell.… Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.

The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.

The County Clerk

The County Clerk has his office in a huge red brick building known as the Old Court House. Civil cases are, in fact, tried there, the proceeding inexorably dragging out until the contestants die
or abandon litigation. This is due to the vast number of records pertaining to absolutely everything, all filed in the wrong place so that no one but the County Clerk and his staff of assistants can find them, and he often spends years in the search. In fact, he is still looking for material relative to a damage suit that was settled out of court in 1910. Large sections of the Old Court House have
fallen in ruins, and others are highly dangerous owing to frequent cave-ins. The County Clerk assigns the more dangerous missions to his assistants, many of whom have lost their lives in the service. In 1912 two hundred and seven assistants were trapped in a collapse of the North-by-North-East wing.

When suit is brought against anyone in the Zone, his lawyers connive to have the case transferred
to the Old Court House. Once this is done, the plaintiff has lost the case, so the only cases that actually go to trial in the Old Court House are those instigated by eccentrics and paranoias who want ‘a public hearing,’ which they rarely get since only the most desperate famine of news will bring a reporter to the Old Court House.

The Old Court House is located in the town of Pigeon Hole outside
the urban zone. The inhabitants of this town and the surrounding area of swamps and heavy timber are people of such great stupidity and such barbarous practices that the Administration has seen fit to quarantine them in a reservation surrounded by a radioactive wall of iron bricks. In retaliation the citizens of Pigeon Hole plaster their town with signs:
‘Urbanite Don’t Let The Sun Set On You
Here,’
an unnecessary injunction, since nothing but urgent business would take any urbanite to Pigeon Hole.

Lee’s case is urgent. He has to file an immediate affidavit that he is suffering from bubonic plague to avoid eviction from the house he has occupied ten years without paying the rent. He exists in perpetual quarantine. So he packs his suitcase of affidavits and petitions and injunctions
and certificates and takes a bus to the Frontier. The Urbanite customs inspector waves him through: ‘I hope you’ve got an atom bomb in that suitcase.’

Lee swallows a handful of tranquilizing pills and steps into the Pigeon Hole customs shed. The inspectors spend three hours pawing through his papers, consulting dusty books of regulations and duties from which they read incomprehensible and ominous
excerpts ending with: ‘And as such is subject to fine and penalty under act 666.’ They look at him significantly.

They go through his papers with a magnifying glass.

‘Sometimes they slip dirty limericks between the lines.’

‘Maybe he figure to sell them for toilet paper. Is this crap for your own personal use?’

‘Yes.’

‘He says yes.’

‘And how do we know that?’

‘I gotta affidavit.’

‘Wise
guy. Take off your clothes.’

‘Yeah. Maybe he got dirty tattoos.’

They paw over his body probing his ass for contraband and examine it for evidence of sodomy. They dunk his hair and send the water out to be analyzed. ‘Maybe he’s got dope in his hair.’

Finally, they impound his suitcase; and he staggers out of the shed with a fifty pound bale of documents.

A dozen or so Recordites sit on the
Old Court House steps of rotten wood. They watch his approach with pale blue eyes, turning their heads slow on wrinkled necks (the wrinkles full of dust) to follow his body up the steps and through the door. Inside, dust hangs in the air like fog, sifting down from the ceiling, rising in clouds from the floor as he walks. He mounts a perilous staircase – condemned in 1929. Once his foot goes through,
and the dry splinters tear into the flesh of his leg. The staircase ends in a painter’s scaffold, attached with frayed rope and pullies to a beam almost invisible in dusty distance. He pulls himself up cautiously to a ferris wheel cabin. His weight sets in motion hydraulic machinery (sound of running water). The wheel moves smooth and silent to stop by a rusty iron balcony, worn through here
and there like an old shoe sole. He walks down a long corridor lined with doors, most of them nailed or boarded shut. In one office,
Near East Exquisitries
on a green brass plaque, the Mugwump is catching termites with his long black tongue. The door of the County Clerk’s office is open. The County Clerk sits inside gumming snuff, surrounded by six assistants.
Lee stands in the doorway. The County
Clerk goes on talking without looking up.

‘I run into Ted Spigot the other day … a good old boy, too. Not a finer man in the Zone than Ted Spigot.… Now it was a Friday I happen to remember because the Old Lady was down with the menstral cramps and I went to Doc Parker’s drugstore on Dalton Street, just opposite Ma Green’s Ethical Massage Parlor, where Jed’s old livery stable used to be.… Now,
Jed, I’ll remember his second name directly, had a cast in the left eye and his wife came from some place out East, Algiers I believe it was, and after Jed died she married up again, and she married one of the Hoot boys, Clem Hoot if my memory serves, a good old boy too, now Hoot was around fifty-four fifty-five year old at the time.… So I says to Doc Parker: “My old lady is down bad with the menstral
cramps. Sell me two ounces of paregoric.”

‘So Doc says, “Well, Arch, you gotta sign the book. Name, address and date of purchase. It’s the law.”

‘So I asked Doc what the day was, and he said, “Friday the 12th.”

‘So I said, “I guess I already had mine.”

‘“Well,” Doc says, “there was a feller in here this morning. City feller. Dressed kinda flashy. So he’s got him a RX for a mason jar of morphine.…
Kinda funny looking prescription writ out on toilet paper.… And I told him straight out: ‘Mister, I suspect you to be a dope fiend.’

‘“‘I got the ingrowing toe nails, Pop. I’m in agony,’ he says.

‘“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I gotta be careful. But so long as you got a legitimate condition and an RX from a certified bona feedy M.D., I’m honored to serve you.’

‘“‘That croaker’s really certified,’ he say.…
Well, I guess one hand didn’t know what the other was doing when I give him ajar of Saniflush by error.… So I reckon he’s had his too.”

‘“Just the thing to clean a man’s blood.”

‘“You know, that very thing occurred to me. Should be a sight better than sulphur and molasses.… Now, Arch, don’t think I’m nosey; but a man don’t have no secrets from God and his druggist I always say.… Is you still
humping the Old Gray Mare?”

‘“Why, Doc Parker … I’ll have you know I’m a family man and an Elder in the First Denominational Nonsextarian Church and I ain’t had a piecea hoss ass since we was kids together.”

‘“Them was the days, Arch. Remember the time I got the goose grease mixed up with the mustard? Always was a one to grab the wrong jar, feller say. They could have heard you squealing over
in Cunt Lick County, just a squealing like a stoat with his stones cut off.”

‘“You’re in the wrong hole, Doc. It was you took the mustard and me as had to wait till you cooled off.”

‘“Wistful thinking, Arch. I read about it one time inna magazin settin’ in that green out house behind the station.… Now what I meant awhile back, Arch, you didn’t rightly understand me.… I was referring to your
wife as the Old Gray Mare.… I mean she ain’t what she used to be what with all them carbuncles and cataracts and chilblains and hemorrhoids and aftosa.”

‘“Yas, Doc, Liz is right sickly. Never was the same after her eleventh miscarriaging.… There was something right strange about that Doc Ferris he told me straight, he said: ‘Arch, ‘tain’t fitting you should see that critter.’ And he gives me
a long look made my flesh crawl.… Well, you sure said it right. Doc. She ain’t what she used to be. And your medicines don’t seem to ease her none. In fact, she ain’t been able to tell night from day since using them eye drops you sold her last month.… But, Doc, you oughta know I wouldn’t be humping Liz, the old cow, meaning no disrespect to the mother of my dead monsters. Not when I got that sweet
little ol’ fifteen year old thing.… You
know that yaller girl used to work in Marylou’s Hair Straightening and Skin Bleach Parlor over in Nigga town.”

‘“Getting that dark chicken meat, Arch? Gettin’ that coon pone?”

‘“Gettin’ it steady, Doc. Gettin’ it steady. Well, feller say duty is goosing me. Gotta get back to the old crank case.”

‘“I’ll bet she needs a grease job worst way.”

‘“Doc, she
sure is a dry hole.… Well, thanks for the paregoric.”

‘“And thanks for the trade. Arch.… He he he … Say, Archy boy, some night when you get caught short with a rusty load drop around and have a drink of Yohimbiny with me.”

‘“I’ll do that, Doc, I sure will. It’ll be just like old times.”

‘So I went on back to my place and heated up some water and mixed up some paregoric and cloves and cinnamon
and sassyfrass and give it to Liz, and it eased her some I reckon. Leastwise she let up aggravatin’ me.… Well, later on I went down to Doc Parker’s again to get me a rubber … and just as I was leaving I run into Roy Bane, a good ol’ boy too. There’s not a finer man in this Zone than Roy Bane.… So he said to me he says, “Arch, you see that ol’ nigger over there in that vacant lot? Well, sure as
shit and taxes, he comes there every night just as regular you can set your watch by him. See him behind them nettles? Every night round about eight thirty he goes over into that lot yonder and pulls himself off with steel wool.… Preachin’ Nigger, they tell me.”

‘So that’s how I come to know the hour more or less on Friday the 13th and it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes half an hour
after that, I’d took some Spanish Fly in Doc’s store and it was jest beginning to work on me down by Grennel Bog on my way to Nigger town.… Well the bog makes a bend, used to be nigger shack there.… They burned that ol’ nigger over in Cunt Lick. Nigger had
the aftosa and it left him stone blind.… So this white girl down from Texarkana screeches out:

‘“Roy, that ol’ nigger is looking at me so
nasty. Land’s sake I feel just dirty all over.”

‘“Now, Sweet Thing, don’t you fret yourself. Me an’ the boys will burn him.”

‘“Do it slow, Honey Face. Do it slow. He’s give me a sick headache.”

‘So they burned the nigger and that ol’ boy took his wife and went back up to Texarkana without paying for the gasoline and old Whispering Lou runs the service station couldn’t talk about nothing else
all Fall: “These city fellers come down here and burn a nigger and don’t even settle up for the gasoline.”

‘Well, Chester Hoot tore that nigger shack down and rebuilt it just back of his house up in Bled Valley. Covered up all the windows with black cloth, and what goes on in there ain’t fittin’ to speak of.… Now Chester he’s got some right strange ways.… Well it was just where the nigger shack
used to be, right across from the Old Brooks place floods out every Spring, only it wasn’t the Brooks place then … belonged to a feller name of Scranton. Now that piece of land was surveyed back in 1919.… I reckon you know the man did the job too.… Feller name of Hump Clarence used to witch out wells on the side.… Good ol’ boy too, not a finer man in this Zone than Hump Clarence.… Well it was just
around about in there I come on Ted Spigot a-screwin’ a mud puppy.’