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NAKED LUNCH

William Burroughs

OPENING REMARKS:

Some say that William Burroughs' surreal and bizarre tales serve only to create a literary objective correlative for the experience of hallucinogenic drug intoxication -- but I think you'll find the following piece addresses the QUITE VITAL question of substance abuse--in the medical profession.

BENWAY

I am assigned to engage the services of Dr. Benway for Islam, Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, co-operative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic facade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing, and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D. -- Total Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest, and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, often in a bathing suit or pyjamas, sometimes sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper would stamp it. [...CUT...]

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.

All benches were removed from the city, all fountains turned off, all flowers and trees destroyed. Huge electric buzzers on top of every apartment house (everyone lived in apartments) rang the quarter hour. Often the vibrations would throw people out of bed. Searchlights played over the town all night (no one was permitted to use curtains, shutters or blinds). [...CUT...]

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Of course the Annexia police processed suspected agents, saboteurs and political deviants on an assembly line basis. As regards the interrogation of suspects, Benway has this to say:

"While in general I avoid the use of torture -- torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance -- the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I developed several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded thinking machine.

"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets. [...CUT...] Ever pop coke in the mainline? It hits you right in the brain, activating connections of pure pleasure. [...CUT...] The C-charged brain is a berserk pinball machine, flashing blue and pink lights in electric orgasm [...CUT...] But brain cells don't come back once they're gone, and when the addict runs out of brain cells he's in a terrible fucking position.

'Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence -- their speech centers are destroyed -- except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.

"I digress as usual. Pending more precise knowledge of brain electronics, drugs remain an essential tool of the interrogator in his assault on the subject's personal identity. The barbiturates are, of course, virtually useless. That is, anyone who can be broken down by such means would succumb to the puerile methods used in an American precinct. Scopolamine is often effective in dissolving resistance, but it impairs the memory; an agent might be prepared to reveal his secrets but quite unable to remember them, or cover story and secret life info might be inextricably garbled. Mescaline, harmaline, LSD6, bufotenine, muscarine successful in many cases. Bulbocapnine induces a state approximating schizophrenic catatonia. [...CUT...] In schizophrenia the backbrain is alternately stimulated and depressed. Catatonia is often followed by a period of excitement and motor activity during which the nut rushes through the wards giving everyone a bad time. [...CUT...]

"There are other procedures. The subject can be reduced to deep depression by administering large doses of benzedrine for several days. Psychosis can be induced by continual large doses of cocaine or demerol or by the abrupt withdrawal of barbiturates after prolonged administration. [...CUT...]

"Many subjects are vulnerable to sexual humiliation. Nakedness, stimulation with aphrodisiacs, constant supervision to embarrass subject and prevent relief of masturbation (erections during sleep automatically turn on an enormous vibrating electric buzzer that throws the subject out of bed into cold water, thus reducing the incidence of wet dreams to a minimum). [...CUT...] Well, as you can plainly see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths in a great big beautiful garden." [...CUT...]

I reach Freeland, which is clean and dull my God. Benway is directing the R.C., the Reconditioning Center. [...CUT...]

Benway's face retains its form in the flash bulb of urgency, subject at any moment to unspeakable cleavage or metamorphosis. It flickers like a picture moving in and out of focus.

"Come on," says Benway, "and I'll show you around the R.C."

We are walking down a long white hall. Benway's voice drifts into my consciousness from no particular place...a disembodied voice that is sometimes loud and clear, sometimes barely audible like music down a windy street.

"Isolated groups like natives of the Bismarck Archipelago. No overt homosexuality among them. God damned matriarchy. All matriarchies anti-homosexual, conformist and prosaic. Find yourself in a matriarchy walk don't run to the nearest frontier. If you run, some frustrated latent queer cop will likely shoot you. So somebody wants to establish a beach head of homogeneity in a shambles of potential like West Europe and the U.S.A.? Another fucking matriarchy, Margaret Mead notwithstanding...Spot of bother there. Scalpel fight with a colleague in the operating room. And my baboon assistant leaped on the patient and tore him to pieces. Baboons always attack the weakest party in an altercation. Quite right too. We must never forget our glorious simian heritage. Doc Browbeck was party inna second part. A retired abortionist and junk pusher (he was a veterinarian actually) recalled to service during the manpower shortage. Well, Doc had been in the hospital kitchen all morning goosing the nurses and tanking up on coal gas and Klim -- and just before the operation he sneaked a double shot of nutmeg to nerve himself up. [...CUT...]

"I had a Yage hangover, me, and in no condition to take any of Browbeck's shit. First thing he comes on with I should start the incision from the back instead of the front, muttering some garbled nonsense about being sure to cut out the gall bladder it would fuck up the meat. Thought he was on a farm cleaning a chicken. I told him to go put his head back in the oven, whereupon he had the effrontery to push my hand severing the patient's femoral artery. Blood spurted up and blinded the anesthetist, who ran out through the halls screaming. Browbeck tried to knee me in the groin, and I managed to hamstring him with my scalpel. He crawled about the floor stabbing at my feet and legs. Violet, that's my baboon assistant -- only woman I ever cared a damn about -- really wigged. I climbed up on the table and poised myself to jump on Browbeck with both feet and stomp him when the cops rushed in.

"Well, this rumble in the operating room, this 'unspeakable occurrence' as the Super called it, you might say was the blow off. A crucifixion, that's the only word for it. Of course I'd made a few 'dumheits' here and there. Who hasn't? There was the time me and the anesthetist drank up all the ether and the patient came up on us, and I was accused of cutting the cocaine with Saniflush. Violet did it actually. Had to protect her of course...

"So the wind-up is we are all drummed out of the industry. Not that Violet was a bona fide croaker, neither was Browbeck for that matter, and even my own certificate was called into question. But Violet knew more medicine than the Mayo Clinic. She had an extraordinary intuition and a high sense of duty.

"So there I was flat on my ass with no certificate. Should I turn to another trade? No. Doctoring was in my blood. I managed to keep up my habits performing cutrate abortions in subway toilets. I even descended to hustling pregnant women in the public streets. It was positively unethical. Then I met a great guy, Placenta Juan the After Birth Tycoon. Made his in slunks during the war (Slunks are underage calves trailing afterbirths and bacteria, generally in an unsanitary and unfit condition. [...CUT...] Slunk trafficking is subject to a heavy penalty). Well, Juanito controlled a fleet of cargo boats he registered under the Abyssinian flag to avoid bothersome restrictions. He gives me a job as ship's doctor on the S.S. Filiarisis, as filthy a craft as ever sailed the seas. Operating with one hand, beating the rats offa my patient and bedbugs and scorpions rained down from the ceiling.

"So somebody wants homogeneity at this juncture. Can do but it costs. Bored with the whole project, me....Here we are...Drag Alley."

Benway traces a pattern in the air with his hand and a door swings open. We step through and the door closes. A long ward gleaming with stainless steel, white tile floors, glass brick walls. Beds along one wall. No one smokes, no one reads, no one talks.

"Come and take a close look," says Benway. "You won't embarrass anybody."

I walk over and stand in front of a man who is sitting on his bed. I look at the man's eyes. Nobody, nothing looks back.

"IND's," says Benway. "Irreversible Neural Damage. Overliberated, you might say...a drag on the industry."

I pass a hand in front of the man's eyes.

"Yes," says Benway, "they still have reflexes. Watch this." Benway takes a chocolate bar from his pocket, removes the wrapper and holds it in front of the man's nose. The man sniffs. His jaws begin to work. He makes snatching motions with his hands. Saliva drips from his mouth and hangs off his chin in long streamers. His stomach rumbles. His whole body writhes in peristalsis. Benway steps back and holds up the chocolate. The man drops to his knees, throws back his head and barks. Benway tosses the chocolate. The man snaps at it, misses, scrambles around on the floor making slobbering noises. He crawls under the bed, finds the chocolate and crams it into his mouth with both hands.

"Jesus! These ID's got no class to them."

Benway calls over the attendant who is sitting at one end of the ward reading a book of J.M. Barrie's plays.

"Get these fucking ID's out of here. It's a bring down already. Bad for the tourist business."

"What should I do with them?"

"How in the fuck should I know? I'm a scientist. A pure scientist."

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