Naked Lunch

area. Never located any. Didn't try very hard.... The same citizen tells me about a bug like a big grasshopper known as the Xiucutil: 'Such a powerful aphrodisiac if one flies on you and you can't get a woman right away you will die. I have seen the Indians running around pulling themselves off from the contact with this animal.' Unfortunately I never score for a Xiucutil....)

On opening night of the New York Metropolitan, A. J., protected by bug repellent, released a swarm of Xiucutils.

Mrs. Vanderbligh swatting at a Xiucutil: 'Oh!... Oh!...OOOOOOOOOOOH!1!' Screams, breaking glass, ripping cloth. A rising crescendo of grunts and squeals and moans and whimpers and gasps.... Reek of semen and cunts and sweat and the musty odor of penetrated rectums,... Diamonds and fur pieces, evening dresses, orchids, suits and underwear litter the floor covered by a writhing, frenzied, heaving mass of naked bodies. A. J. once reserved a table a year in advance Chez Robert where a huge, icy gourmet broods over the greatest cuisine in the world. So baneful and derogatory is his gaze that many a client, under that withering blast, has rolled on the floor and pissed all over himself in convulsive attempts to ingratiate.

So A. J. arrives with six Bolivian Indians who chew coca leaves between courses. And when Robert, in all his gourmet majesty, bears down on the table, A. J. looks up and yells: 'Hey, Boy!

Bring me some ketchup.'

(Alternative: A. J. whips out a bottle of ketchup and douses the haute cuisine. ) Thirty gourmets stop chewing at once. You could have heard a s ouffle drop. As for Robert, he lets out a bellow of rage like a wounded elephant, runs to the kitchen and arms himself with a meat cleaver.... The Sommelier snarls hideously, his face turning a strange iridescent purple.... He breaks off a bottle of Brut Champagne... '26.... Pierre, the Head Waiter, snatches up a boning knife. All three chase A. J. through the restaurant with mangled inhuman screams of rage.... Tables overturn, vintage wines and matchless food crash to the floor.... Cries of 'Lynch him!' ring through the air. An elderly gourmet with the insane bloodshot eyes of a mandril, is fashioning a hangman's knot with a red velvet curtain cord.... Seeing himself cornered and in imminent danger of dismemberment at least, A.J. plays his trump card.... He throws back his head and lets out a hog call; and a hundred famished hogs he had stationed nearby rush into the restaurant, slopping the haute cuisine. Like a great tree Robert falls to the floor in a stroke where he is eaten by the hogs: 'Poor bastards don't know enough to appreciate him,' says A. J.

Robert's brother Paul emerges from retirement in a local nut house and takes over the restaurant to dispense something he calls the 'Transcendental Cuisine.' ...Imperceptibly the quality of the food declines until he is serving literal garbage, the clients being too intimidated by the reputation of Chez Robert to protest.

75

Sample Menu:

The Clear Camel Piss Soup with boiled Earth Worms

The Filet of Sun-Ripened Sting Ray

basted with Eau de Cologne and garnished with nettles

The After-Birth Supreme de Boeuf,

cooked in drained crank case oil,

served with a piquant sauce of rotten egg yolks

and crushed bed bugs

The Limburger Cheese sugar cured in diabetic urine

doused in Canned Heat Flamboyant....

So the clients are quietly dying of botulism.... Then A. J. returns with an entourage of Arab refugees from the Middle East. He takes one mouthful and screams:

'Garbage God damn it. Cook this wise citizen in his own swill!' And so the legend of A. J. the laughable, lovable eccentric grew and grew.... Fadeout to Venice....Gondoliers singing and pathic cries swell up from San Marco and Harry's. Charming old Venetian anecdote about this bridge, it seems some Venetian sailors take a trip around the world and all turn into fruits they fuck the cabin boy already, so when they get back to Venice it is necessary women walk over this bridge with their lungs hanging out to arouse the desires of these dubious citizens. So get a battalion of shock troops up to San Marco on the double.

'Girls, this is O.A.O., Operation All Out. If your tits won't stop them bring up your cunts and confound these faggots.'

'Oh Gertie it's true. It's all true. They've got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing.'

'I can't face it.'