Naked Lunch

'Morphine calls forth the antidote of back brain stimulation similar to schizo substance. (Note similarity between withdrawal syndrome and intoxication with Yage or LSD6.) Eventual result of junk use --especially true of heroin addiction where large doses are available to the addict --is permanent backbrain depression and a state much like terminal schizophrenia: complete lack of affect, autism, virtual absence of cerebral event. The addict can spend eight hours looking at a wall. He is conscious of his surroundings, hut they have no emotional connotation and in consequence no interest. Remembering a period of heavy addiction is like playing back a tape recording of events experienced by the front brain alone. Flat statements of external events. 'I went to the store and bought some brown sugar. I came home and ate half the box. I took a three grain shot etc.'

Complete absence of nostalgia in these memories. However, as soon as junk intake falls below par, the withdrawal substance floods the body.

'If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.

'Some of my learned colleagues (nameless assholes) have suggested that junk derives its euphoric effect from direct stimulation of the orgasm center. It seems more probable that junk 23

suspends the whole cycle of tension, discharge and rest. The orgasm has no function in the junky. Boredom, which always indicates an undischarged tension, never troubles the addict. He can look at his shoe for eight hours. He is only roused to action when the hourglass of junk runs out.' At the far end of the ward an attendant throws up an iron shutter and lets out a hog call. The junkies rush up grunting and squealing.

'Wise guy,' says Benway. 'No respect for human dignity. Now I'll show you the mild deviant and criminal ward. Yes, a criminal is a mild deviant here. He doesn't deny the Freeland contract. He merely seeks to circumvent some of the clauses. Reprehensible but not too serious. Down this hall... We'll skip wards 23, 86, 57 and 97... and the laboratory.'

'Are homosexuals classed as deviants?'

'No. Remember the Bismarck Archipelago. No overt homosexuality. A functioning police state needs no police. Homosexuality does not occur to anyone as conceivable behaviour.... Homosexuality is a political crime in a matriarchy. No society tolerates overt rejection of its basic tenets. We aren't a matriarchy here, Insh'allah. You know the experiment with rats where they are subject to this electric shock and dropped in cold water if they so much as move at a female. So they all become fruit rats and that's the way it is with the etiology. And shall such a rat squeak out, 'I'm queah and I luuuuuuuuve it' or 'Who cut yours off, you two-holed freak?' 'twere a square rat so to squeak. During my rather brief experience as a psychoanalyst --spot of bother with the Society -one patient ran amok in Grand Central with a flame thrower, two committed suicide and one died on the couch like a jungle rat (jungle rats are subject to die if confronted suddenly with a hopeless situation). So his relations beef and I tell them, 'It's all in the day's work. Get this stiff outa here. It's a bring down for my live patients' --I noticed that all my homosexual patients manifested strong unconscious heterosex trends and all my hetero patients unconscious homosexual trends. Makes the brain reel, don't it?'

'And what do you conclude from that?'

'Conclude? Nothing whatever. Just a passing observation.' We are eating lunch in Benway's office when he gets a call.

'What's that?... Monstrous! Fantastic!... Carry on and stand by.' He puts down the phone. 'I am prepared to accept immediate assignment with Islam Incorporated. It seems the electronic brain went berserk playing six-dimensional chess with the Technician and released every subject in the R.C. Leave us adjourn to the roof. Operation Helicopter is indicated.'

From the roof of the R.C. we survey a scene of unparalleled horror. IND's stand around in front of the cafe tables, long streamers of saliva hanging off their chins, stomachs noisily churning, others ejaculate at the sight of women. Latahs imitate the passers-by with monkey-like obscenity. Junkies have looted the drugstores and fix on every street corner.... Catatonics decorate the parks.... Agitated schizophrenics rush through the streets with mangled, inhuman cries. A group of P.R.'s -Partially Reconditioned --have surrounded some homosexual tourists with horrible knowing smiles showing the Nordic skull beneath in double exposure.

'What do you want?' snaps one of the queens.

'We want to understand you.'

A contingent of howling simopaths swing from chandeliers, balconies and trees, shitting and pissing on passers-by. (A simopath --the technical name for this disorder escapes me --is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it) Amoks trot along cutting off heads, faces sweet and remote with a dreamy half smile. ...Citizens with 24

incipient Bang-utot clutch their penises and call on the tourists for help.... Arab rioters yipe and howl, castrating, disembowelling, throw burning gasoline.... Dancing boys strip-tease with intestines, women stick severed genitals in their cunts, grind, bump and flick it at the man of their choice.... Religious fanatics harangue the crowd from helicopters and rain stone tablets on their heads, inscribed with meaningless messages.... Leopard Men tear people to pieces with iron claws, coughing and grunting.... Kwakiutl Cannibal Society initiates bite off noses and ears.... A coprophage calls for a plate, shits on it and eats the shit, exclaiming, 'Mmmm, that's my rich substance.'

A battalion of rampant bores prowls the streets and hotel lobbies in search of victims. An intellectual avantgardist --*'Of course the only writing worth considering now is to be found in scientific reports and periodicals' --has given someone a bulbocapnine injection and is preparing to read him a bulletin on 'the use of neo-hemoglobin in the control of multiple degenerative granuloma.' (Of course, the reports are all gibberish he has concocted and printed up.) His opening words: 'You look to me like a man of intelligence.' (Always ominous words, my boy ...When you