to those beastly exhibitions for which the sheriff levy a pound of fiesh.' Sheriff: 'I'll lower his pants for a pound, folks. Step right up. A serious and scientific exhibit concerning the locality of the Life Center. This character has nine inches, ladies and gentlemen, measure them yourself inside. Only one pound, one queer three dollar bill to see a young boy come three times at least --I never demean myself to process a eunuch --
The boy stands on the trap shifting his weight from one leg to the other: 'Gawd! What a boy hasta put up with in this business. Sure as shit some horrible old character get physical.' Traps falls, rope sings like wind in wire, neck snaps loud and clear as a Chinese gong. The boy cuts himself down with a switch-blade, chases a screaming fag down the midway. The faggot dives through the glass of a penny arcade peep-show and rims a grinning Negro. Fadeout. (Mary, Johnny and Mark take a bow with the ropes around their necks. They are not as young as they appear in the Blue Movies.... They look tired and petulant.) 53
MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL
PSYCHIATRY
Doctor 'Fingers' Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conferents the cold blue blast of his gaze:
'Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix.... I give you my Master Work:
Schafer wrings his hands sobbing: 'Clarence !! How can you do this to me?? Ingrates!! Every one of them ingrates!!'
The Conferents start back muttering in dismay:
'I'm afraid Schafer has gone a bit too far....'
'I sounded a word of warning....'
'Brilliant chap Schafer... but...'
'Man will do anything for publicity....'
'Gentlemen, this unspeakable and in every sense illegitimate child of Doctor Schafer's perverted brain must not see the light.... Our duty to the human race is clear....'
'Man he done seen the light,' said one of the Negro Bearers.
'We must stomp out the Un-American crittah,' says a fat, frog-faced Southern doctor who has been drinking corn out of a mason jar.He advances drunkenly, then halts, appalled by the formidable size and menacing aspect of the centipede....
'Fetch gasoline!' he bellows. 'We gotta burn the son of a bitch like an uppity Nigra!'
'I'm not sticking my neck out, me,' says a cool hip young doctor high on LSD25.... 'Why a smart D.A. could...'
Fadeout. 'Order in The Court1'
D.A.: 'Gentlemen of the jury, these 'learned gentlemen' claim that the innocent human creature they have so wantonly slain suddenly turned himself into a huge black centipede and it was 'their duty to the human race' to destroy this monster before it could, by any means at its disposal, perpetrate its kind....
'Are we to gulp down this tissue of horse shit! Are we to take these glib lies like a greased and nameless asshole? Where is this wondrous centipede?
' 'We have destroyed it,' they say smugly.... And I would like to remind you, Gentlemen and Hermaphrodites of the Jury, that this Great Beast' --he points to Doctor Schafer --'has, on several previous occasions, appeared in this court charged with the unspeakable crime of brain rape.... In plain English' --he pounds the rail of the jury box, his voice rises to a scream --'in plain English, Gentlemen,
The Jury gasps..., One dies of a heart attack.... Three fall to the floor writhing in orgasms of prurience....
54
The D.A. points dramatically: 'He it is.... He and no other who has reduced whole provinces of our fair land to a state bordering on the far side of idiocy.... He it is who has filled great warehouses with row on row, tier on tier of
