Naked Lunch Read Free Page A

memory may be scanty and, in the case ofheavy 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 ahysterical 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

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 ideaof 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 outfitin 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.’
    Asquare 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 fingerson 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 given to informers. Usually the hot shot is strychnine since it tastes and looks like junk.)
    ‘Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room witha one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don’t if the shot is right. That’s the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit – Kid, it was tasty.…
    ‘Recollect when I am travelling with the Vigilante, best Shake Man in the industry. Out in Chi … We is working the fagsin Lincoln Park. So one night the Vigilante turns up for work in cowboy boots and a black vest with a hunka tin on it and a lariat slung over his shoulder.
    ‘So I says: “What’s with you? You wig already?”
    ‘He just looks at me and says: “Fill your hand stranger” and hauls out an old rusty six shooter and I take off across Lincoln Park, bullets cutting all around me. And he hang three fags beforethe fuzz nail him. I mean the Vigilante earned his moniker.…
    ‘Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like “raise,” letting someone know you are in the same line?
    ‘“Get her!”
    ‘“Get the Paregoric Kid giving that mark the build up!”
    ‘“Eager Beaver wooing him much too fast.”
    ‘The Shoe Store Kid (he got that moniker shaking down fetishists in