Naked Lunch Read Free

… his metabolism approaching Absolute ZERO TERMINAL addicts often go two months without a bowel move and the intestines make with sit-down-adhesions – Wouldn’t you? – requiring the intervention of an applecorer or its surgical equivalent.… Such is life in The Old Ice House. Why move around and waste TIME?
    Room for One More Inside, Sir.
    Some entities are on thermodynamic kicks. They invented thermodynamics.… Wouldn’t you?
    And some of us are on Different Kicks and that’s a thing out in the open the way I like to see what I eat and visa versa mutatis mutandis as the case may be.
Bill’s Naked LunchRoom
.… Step right up.… Good for young and old, man and bestial. Nothing like a little snake oil to grease the wheels and get a show on the track Jack. Which side are you on? Fro-Zen Hydraulic? Or you want to take a look around with Honest Bill?
    So that’s the World Health Problem I was talking about back in The Article. The Prospect Before Us Friends of MINE. Do I hear muttering about a personalrazor and some bush league short con artist who is known to have invented The Bill? Wouldn’t You? The razor belonged toa 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 than junk if You Don’t Need it?’
    Answer
? ‘Junkies, if youare 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 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 in there like hibernating reptiles keep the temperature up toTalking 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 warm in here nice and warm nice and IN HERE and nice and OUTSIDE ITS COLD.… ITS 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 HEREand never increase the DOSE … never – never increase the dose never except TONIGHT is a SPECIAL OCCASION with all the dross eaters and 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 theother 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 iscome over HERE and shack up with Charybdis.… Treat you right kid.… Candy and cigarettes.
    I am after fifteen yearsin 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 co-ordinates. Got my training early … wouldn’t you?
    Paregoric Babies of the World Unite. We have nothing to lose but Our Pushers. AndTHEY are NOT NECESSARY.
    Look 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

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