Naked Lunch

none, except to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible. And that is precisely what we attempt to do in these cases.' Once again Carl felt the impact of that cold interest on his face. 'That is to say reassurance when reassurance is necessary... and, of course, suitable outlets with other individuals of similar tendencies. No isolation is indicated... the condition is no more directly contagious than cancer. Cancer, my first love,' the doctor's voice receded. He seemed actually to have gone away through an invisible door leaving his empty body sitting there at the desk. Suddenly he spoke again in a crisp voice. 'And so you may well wonder why we concern ourselves with the matter at all?' He flashed a smile bright and cold as snow in sunlight. Carl shrugged: 'That is not my business... what I am wondering is why you have asked me to come here and why you tell me all this... this...'

'Nonsense?'

Carl was annoyed to find himself blushing.

The doctor leaned back and placed the ends of his fingers together:

'The young,' he said indulgently. 'Always they are in a hurry. One day perhaps you will learn the meaning of patience. No, Carl... I may call you Carl'? I am not evading your question. In cases of suspected tuberculosis we -- that is the appropriate department --may ask, even request, someone to appear for a fluoroscopic examination. This is routine, you understand. Most of such examinations turn up negative. So you have been asked to report here for, should I say a psychic fluoroscope? I may add that after talking with you I feel relatively sure that the result will be, for practical purposes, negative....

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'But the whole thing is ridiculous. I have always interested myself only in girls. I have a steady girl now and we plan to marry.'

'Yes Carl, I know. And that is why you are here. A blood test prior to marriage, this is reasonable, no?'

'Please doctor, speak directly.'

The doctor did not seem to hear. He drifted out of his chair and began walking around behind Carl, his voice languid and intermittent like music down a windy street.

'I may tell you in strictest confidence that there is definite evidence of a hereditary factor. Social pressure. Many homosexuals latent and overt do, unfortunately, marry. Such marriages often result in... Factor of infantile environment.' The doctor's voice went on and on. He was talking about schizophrenia, cancer, hereditary disfunction of the hypothalamus. Carl dozed off. He was opening a green door. A horrible smell grabbed his lungs and he woke up with a shock. The doctor's voice was strangely flat and lifeless, a whispering junky voice:

'The Kleiberg-Stanislouski semen floculation test... a diagnostic tool... indicative at least in a negative sense. In certain cases useful --taken as part of the whole picture.... Perhaps under the uh circumstances.' The doctor's voice shot up to a pathic scream. 'The nurse will take your uh specimen.'

'This way please....' The nurse opened the door into a bare white walled cubicle. She handed him a jar.

'Use this please. Just yell when you're ready.' There was a jar of K.Y. on a glass shelf. Carl felt ashamed as if his mother had laid out a handkerchief for him. Some coy little message stitched on like: 'If I was a cunt we could open a dry goods store.' Ignoring the K.Y., he ejaculated into the jar, a cold brutal fuck of the nurse standing her up against a glass brick wall. 'Old Glass Cunt,' he sneered, and saw a cunt full of colored glass splinters under the Northern Lights.

He washed his penis and buttoned up his pants.

Something was watching his every thought and movement with cold, sneering hate, the shifting of his testes, the contractions of his rectum. He was in a room filled with green light. There was a stained wood double bed, a black wardrobe with full length mirror. Carl could not see his face. Someone was sitting in a black hotel chair. He was wearing a stiff bosomed white shirt and a dirty paper tie. The face swollen, skul-less, eyes like burning pus.

'Something wrong?' said the nurse indifferently. She was holding a glass of water out to him. She watched him drink with aloof contempt. She turned and picked up the jar with obvious distaste. The nurse turned to him: 'Are you waiting for something special?' she snapped. Carl had never been spoken to like that in his adult life. 'Why no....' 'You can go then,' she turned back to the jar. With a little exclamation of disgust she wiped a gob of semen off her hand. Carl crossed the room and stood at the door.

'Do I have another appointment?'

She looked at him in disapproving surprise: 'You'll be notified of course.' She stood in the doorway of the cubicle and watched him walk through the outer office and open the door. He turned and attempted a jaunty wave. The nurse did not move or change her expression. As he walked down the stairs the broken, false grin burned his face with shame. A homosexual tourist looked at him and raised a knowing eyebrow. 'Some-thing wrong?' Carl ran into a park and found an empty bench beside a bronze faun with cymbals.

'Let your hair down, chicken. You'll feel better.' The tourist was leaning over him, his camera swinging in Carl's face like a great dangling tit.

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