He lived now in varying degrees of transparency. While not exactly invisible he was at least difficult to see. His presence attracted no special notice. People covered him with a project or dismissed him as a reflection, a shadow: ,,Some kinda light trick or a neon advertisement.''
- William S. Burroughs, "Naked Lunch", 1959
Dr. Benway //
"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 cut-rate abortions in subway toilets. Operating with one hand, beating the rats offa my patient with the other and bedbugs and scorpions rain down from the ceiling."
- William S. Burroughs, "Naked Lunch", 1959
'Gentlemen, the human brain can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix. I give you my Master Work: The Complete All American De-Anxietized Man.'
The Jury gasps... One dies of a heart attack... Three fall to the floor writhing in orgasms of prurience.
The centipede is rushing about in agitation.
- William S. Burroughs, "Naked Lunch", 1959
In Cuernavaca or was it Taxco? Jane meets a pimp trombone player and disappears in a cloud of tea smoke. I take three drags, she looked at him and her flesh crystallized. I leaped up screaming "I got the fear" and ran out of the house. Drank a beer in a little restaurant - - mosaic bar, arabesques and bullfight posters - - and waited for the bus to town.
A year later in Tangier I heard she was dead.
- William S. Burroughs, "Naked Lunch", 1959
The game of William Tell //
White flash...
Mangled insect screams
I woke up with a taste of metal in my mouth back from the dead
Trailing the colorless death smell
Afterbirth of a withered grey monkey - -
Phantom twinges of amputation
"Taxi boys waiting for a pickup," he said and died of an overdose in Madrid.
