Naked Lunch

The Bill? Wouldn’t You? The razor belonged to a man named Ockham and he was not a scar collector. Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus: 'If a proposition is NOT NECESSARY it is MEANINGLESS and approaching MEANING ZERO.'

'And what is More UNNECESSARY that junk if You Don’t Need it ?' Answer? 'Junkies, if you are not ON JUNK.'

I tell you boys, I’ve heard some tired conversation but no other OCCUPATION GROUP can approximate that old thermodynamic junk Slow-DOWN. Now your heroin addict does not say 7

hardly anything and that I can stand. But your Opium 'Smoker' is more active since he still has a tent and a lamp... and maybe 7-9-10 lying up there like hibernating reptiles keep the temperature up to Talking Level : How Low the other junkies are 'whereas We – WE have this tent and this lamp and this tent and this lamp and this tent and nice and OUTSIDE IT’S COLD... IT’S COLD OUTSIDE where the dross eaters and the needle boys won’t last two years not six months hardly won’t last stumble bum around and there is no class in them... But WE SIT HERE and never increase the DOSE... never – never increase the dose never except TONIGHT is a SPECIAL OCCASION

with all the dross eaters and the needle boys out there in the cold... And we never eat it never never never never eat it... Excuse please while I take a trip to The Source of Living Drops they all have in pocket and opium pellets shoved up the ass in a finger stall with the Family Jewels and the other shit. Room for one more inside, Sir.

Well when that record starts around for the billionth light year and never the tape shall change us non-junkies take drastic action and the men separate out from the Junk boys. Only way to protect yourself against this horrid peril is come over HERE and shack up with Charybdis... Treat you right kid... Candy and cigarettes.

I am after fifteen years in that tent. In and out in and out in and OUT. Over and Out. So listen to Old Uncle Bill Burroughs who invented the Burroughs Adding Machine Regulator Gimmick on the Hydraulic Jack Principle no matter how you jerk the handle result is always the same for given coordinates. Got my training early... wouldn’t you? Paregoric Babes of the World Unite. We have nothing to lose but Our Pushers. And THEY are NOT NECESSARY.

Lookd down LOOK DOWN along that junk road before you travel there and get in with the Wrong Mob...

A word to the wise guy.

-- William S. Burroughs

8

AFTERTHOUGHTS ON A DEPOSITION

When I say I have no memory of writing Naked Lunch, this is of course an exaggeration, and it is to be kept in mind that there are various areas of memory. Junk is a pain-killer, it also kills the pain and pleasure implicit in awareness. While the factual memory of an addict may be quite accurate and extensive, his emotional memory may be scanty and, in the case of heavy addiction, approaching affective zero.

When I say 'the junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today,' I refer not just to the actual ill effects of opiates upon the individual’s health (which, in cases of controlled dosage may be minimal), but also to the hysteria that drug use often occasions in populaces who are prepared by the media and narcotics officials for a hysterical reaction. The junk problem, in its present form, began with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 in the U.S.A. Anti-drug hysteria is now worldwide, and it poses a deadly threat to personal freedoms and due-process protections of the law everywhere.

-- William S. Burroughs

October 1991

9

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train...Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character. You know the type comes on with bartenders and cab drivers, talking about right hooks and the Dodgers, call the counterman in Nedick's by his first name. A real asshole. And right on time this narcotics dick in a white trench coat (imagine tailing somebody in a white trench coat -trying to pass as a fag I guess) hit the platform. I can hear the way he would say it holding my outfit in his left hand, right hand on his piece: 'I think you dropped something, fella' But the subway is moving.

'So long flatfoot!' I yell, giving the fruit his B production. I look into the fruit's eyes, take in the white teeth, the Florida tan, the two hundred dollar sharkskin suit, the button-down Brooks Brothers shirt and carrying The News as a prop. 'Only thing I read is Little Abner.' A square wants to come on hip....Talks about 'pod,' and smoke it now and then, and keeps some around to offer the fast Hollywood types.

'Thanks, kid,' I say, 'I can see you're one of our own.' His face lights up like a pinball machine, with stupid, pink effect.

'Grassed on me he did,' I said morosely. ( Note: Grass is English thief slang for inform.) I drew closer and laid my dirty junky fingers on his sharkskin sleeve. 'And us blood brothers in the same dirty needle, I can tell you in confidence he is due for a hot shot.'(Note: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often