The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead

by William S. Burroughs

  Look at that compass of age and wind. Mister about? Dim jerky bed is there. I am the empty room pieces of the dim picture a rustle of darkness fading. Now I remember so intense it hurts. Mrs Murphy’s rooming house. They got up remembered “Thank you.” Room eighteen on the top floor background grainy like an old movie. The film breaks. Kid standing there talking to another. There are two. They got up naked shorts and shirts there room eighteen on the top floor my flesh steaming.

  We tried various ways of slipping the tight blue shorts down over the Mercury sandals but any way you slip the feathers are being rubbed the wrong way. It is not hot. It is not cold. There are no noxious animals or insects. A fresh wind sprang up and wafted my blue shorts away. So we wave good-by to shirt and shorts. Ali is fucking Farja on all fours. His wolfish eyes light up inside and the hair stands up on his head. Then they did a hot Mercury crackling all over with blue fire and a classic Mercury with porticos and glades and pools. We lie there on the magic carpet of shared bodies the old fear of the border cities still heard still felt. Farja shudders in his sleep.

  We are in an area of electric sex currents. Suddenly we get prickles in the crotch and then pictures start of what we are going to do like you are watching a picture of yourself doing it and you plop right into the screen with a delicious squeeze, Ali and Farja chasing and wrestling each other in and out of the film. We camped in a ruined signal tower on a promontory of land jutting out over the desert. We reached it at twilight a blue mist settling on the narrow flagstone path, a rusty gate a sign overgrown with vines: U.S. Army Reservation. Authorized Personnel Only. The old M.P. box still there. The boys give it a push and it crashes into the valley. Here is the old tower. We climb up to the control room great laser guns broken the top of the tower blasted away. We camp there and after the evening meal Ali brings out his flute and we follow the music further and further out into the silence.

  The following day we find ourselves walking down a country road red clay pieces of flint here and there. Farja finds an arrowhead. We came to a deserted village of red-brick houses with slate roofs by a stream.

  1. An Easter egg with a peephole going away … bits of vivid and vanishing detail … rainbow a post card road … boy there by the creek bare feet twisted on a fence.

  2. Two Easter eggs going away … ghostly flower smell by the stagnant creek the boy still there waiting.

  3. Three Easter eggs going away … click of distant heels … footsteps on a windy street … sad open hand.

  4. Four Easter eggs going away … empty streets half-buried in sand … a house … a weed-grown golf course … blue prep school clothes further and further away.

  1. An egg coming in … Road corner stone bridge rainbow over a stream green fields … Boy there naked. He is lying on his stomach eating an apple legs curled over his thighs. He claps his feet together. A book is open in front of him on the grass.

  2. Two eggs coming in … sad old human papers I carry … two adolescents by the garage faraway toy cars.

  3. Three eggs coming in … Smell of carbolic soap … Three boys in shower. A boy turns mocking him off.

  4. Four eggs coming in. Audrey squeezes through the peephole wet dream tension tingling in his crotch. He is in the shower with John on a Saturday afternoon. They are facing each other Audrey uneasy feeling John’s eyes on his body … “Wanta feel something nice Audrey?” … John reaches forward with soapy fingers feeling Audrey’s crotch … sudden raw hard-on.

  Dim dead boy so I haunted your old flower smell of young nights on musty curtains empty prep school clothes further and further away. Come closer. Listen across empty back yards and ash pits.

  He is bending over in the shower while John washes his back glancing down along his stomach to the crotch biting his lip hoping that John will finish before he gets out of control. John is rubbing soap just above the buttocks. He leans forward and says in Audrey’s ear … “Wanta feel something nice Audrey?” … John slides a finger up his ass and jiggles it to a car horn outside. Audrey drops his head gasping as his body contracts squeezing out the hot spurts.

  American house … rain outside … boy standing by the ghost car … sunset … blue clothes … the phone rings … child voice across a distant sky … “Long long expected call from you” … fingers from the phone like wood. Audrey drying himself carefully trying to keep it down. He turned away holding a towel in front of him. John reached out and pulled the towel away looking at Audrey’s half-erection … “You ever been goosed Audrey?” … Audrey shook his head blushing … “Lean over and brace your hands on your knees” … He heard John unscrew a jar then felt the greased finger slide up him. He gasped and threw his head back … “You ever been rosed Audrey?” … Thumbs prying his buttocks apart as John squirmed forward. Pink eggs popped in his crotch.

  Souvenir post cards a violet evening sky rising from the boy’s groin … sad 1920 scraps … dim jerky faraway stars splash the stagnant creek … “I was waiting there” … held a little-boy photo in his withered hand … The boy was footsteps down the windy street a long time ago.

  * * *

  Silver light popped in his eyes.

  * * *

  A Silver Smile

  Tonight Reggie and I had dinner with the Great Slastobitch and he expounded the new look in blue movies. “The movies must first be written if we are to have living characters. A writer may find it difficult to make the reader see a scene clearly and it would seem easier to show pictures. No. The scene must be written before it is filmed. “The new look in blue movies stresses story and character. This is the space age and sex movies must express the longing to escape from flesh through sex. The way out is the way through.” He switches on a projector. “The scene where Johnny has crabs and Mark makes him undress …

  “Who are these boys? Where will they go? They will become astronauts playing the part of American married idiots until the moment when they take off on a Gemini expedition bound for Mars, disconnect and leave the earth behind forever” … (It happened a few minutes after take-off. The screen went dead. The radio went dead. The astronauts had disconnected. There was a talk of space madness.)

  Mark’s wife told reporters: “He frightened me at times. There was something in him I could never quite reach.” John’s wife said: “He was a dutiful husband but I never got any warmth out of him.” (The FBI did not publicize the fact that they had found in a locked drawer of John’s desk a number of muscle magazines.)

  The sex scenes of their adolescence are seen as image dust in space through which they pass to other planets. The set is the 1920’s. Sex scenes are intercut with lawn sprinklers, country clubs, summer golf courses, classrooms, silver stars, morning sleep of detour, frogs in 1920 roads, cocktail shakers, black Cadillacs, cool basement toilets, a boy’s twitching foot, the Charleston, iced tea and fried chicken at The Green Inn, 1920 ponds, naked boy hugging his knees sunlight in pubic hairs.

  A suburban room afternoon light bleakly clear. Mark is eighteen. He is stripped to his shorts reading a copy of Amazing Stories one leg thrown over the arm of a chair. He is smoking a cigarette. The other boy John is fifteen, thin, pale, his face spattered with adolescent pimples. He is barefoot dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt. Without looking up from his magazine Mark says: “I heard you got laid the other night.”

  “Oh! uh! yes … down on Westminster Place.”

  “Like it?”

  “Well uh! I guess it was all right,” says the boy dubiously.

  “Maybe it isn’t what you want.”

  The boy John is standing by the window looking out.

  He scratches his crotch.

  “I itch something awful.”

  Lazily Mark drops his magazine on the floor. He looks at Johnny through cigarette smoke. “You itch Johnny? Where?”

  John turns from the window. “Right here” he says scratching his crotch.

  “Come over here Johnny.”

  Johnny walks over in front of the chair. Mark spreads his leg
s. Right here.” Johnny stands in front of him between his knees.

  “Drop your pants Johnny.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Just drop your pants like I tell you. I wanta see something.”

  Johnny fumbles awkwardly with his belt.

  “I’ll do it.” Mark unbuckles Johnny’s belt. With gentle precise fingers he unbuttons pants and shorts and shoves them down. They fall to Johnny’s ankles. Johnny stands there his cock half-up from the scratching mouth dry heart pounding. Mark reaches forward and takes Johnny’s cock by the tip with two fingers moving it to one side and with the other hand parts pubic hairs. He points to red mark … “Look there Johnny” … Oh! Christ! it is happening he can’t stop it. Mark looks up at him and Johnny blushes bright red biting his lip. Mark smiles slow and brings his finger up in three jerks as Johnny’s cock stands out all the way up and throbs to his pounding heart.

  Sunlight in pubic hairs sad muscle magazines over the florist shop pants down green snakes under rusty iron in the vacant lot the old family soap opera lock of yellow hair stirs in September wind shirt open on the golf course grass squeezed under quivering hard-ons wet grass between his legs pale buttocks sex sweat dim jerky faraway toilet pants down looking down now twisted slow smile … “Relax Johnny. It happens” … The old film stops … naked boy on yellow toilet seat buttocks quivering smell of rectal mucous windy oranges I remember a dim building overgrown with disuse and later in Mexico City I see myself looking at him as if trying to focus to remember who the stranger was standing under a dusty tree lean and ragged ruffled brown hair blue eyes vacant blank I remember London stairs worn red carpeting and I could see his pants were sticking up between his legs colored photo had something written on it … “Vuelvete y aganchete” … I let myself go limp inside blank factual he slid it in out through the little dusty window afternoon hills the old broken point of origin St Louis Missouri emaciated body head on the grimy pillow my face … The film stops in his eyes … blue morning naked boy on yellow toilet seat a quivering foot in front of the wash stand soapy hands turned to me and finished machine gun noises as he came street shadows his distant hand there it is just to my shoulder smell of sickness in the room a shooting star silence floats down on falling leaves and blood spit the smell of decay shredded to dust and memories pieces of legs and cocks and assholes drifting fragments in sunlight ass hairs spread on the bed dust of young hand fading flickering thighs and buttocks smell of young nights.

  One day we come home very tired and fall asleep naked in the bed. We wake up and the room is full of moon light. Kiki is lying there on his face and says he is very stiff and sore from carrying clubs all day will I rub his back. I start at the shoulder and work down to his ass and run my hands along the back of his thighs and he says … “Más Johnny … Más” … So I shove his ass apart with both hands and jiggle it and he keeps saying … “Más … Más” … I dip my finger in Vaseline not letting him see what I am doing and rub my finger around his ass outside at first and he says … “Más … Más” … So I twist my finger around until it sinks all the way in up to his pearl and he sighs and says … “Más … Más” … And I say … “Qué más Kiki?” … He doesn’t want to say it but I keep twisting my finger and he is squirming and finally he says … “Fucking me Johnny” … “Apartate las piernas”. …He spreads his legs and I slide it in slow feeling the ring squeeze me and I can tell when he spurts. Afterward he doesn’t want to turn over and show me but I turn him over and his juice is silver in the moonlight.

  Next day he says it didn’t happen and slaps me when I try to do it but a few nights later he gets out of bed to put out a cigarette leaning forward on the table and I stand up behind him spit on my finger and slide it up his ass all the way and he just sighs and falls forward with his elbows on the table and looks at me over his shoulder and says … “Qué me haces Johnny?” … I get the Vaseline and rub it in standing behind him hitch my arms around his hips and shove it in we are standing in front of the mirror I can see my white rump pumping and he had his head down on his hands biting his knuckles and whimpering. I reach around and play with his eggs and pull his foreskin back gently he gasps and I am feeling the scratchy pressure all the way up pumping him inside we are both coming. I can feel goose pimples on my back and then suddenly an electric shiver and my hair stands up straight and I can see my eyes light up inside like a cat.

  Johnny stands in front of Mark tight pants slow finger reaches up and unbuttons his fly parting pubic hairs points to a red mark … “You got crabs Johnny. Come in the bathroom” … Mark locks the door … “All right Johnny. Strip down” … Awkwardly Johnny takes off his shirt and hangs it on the bathroom door. Mark spreads a yellow towel on the toilet seat … “Take off your pants and shorts and sit there” … Johnny swallows feeling cold in the stomach … “All right” … Mouth dry heart pounding he sits down naked on the toilet seat. Mark selects a bottle of Campho-Phenique from the medicine cabinet. He squats in front of Johnny. Their knees touch … “Spread your legs apart so I can see what I’m doing” … He opens the bottle and tips it against his finger. He lifts Johnny’s penis by the tip moving it around as he rubs the camphorated oil in pubic hairs at the root. The oil leaves a cold burn. Johnny licks his lips and blushes … “Christ Mark” … Mark rests his hands on Johnny’s and looks up at Johnny who blushes to his bare feet as his cock floats up throbbing … “Relax Johnny. It happens” … He rubs the oil around Johnny’s tight nuts. Johnny’s embarrassment changes to excitement. He squirms and a drop of lubricant squeezes slowly out the end of his phallus and glitters in the afternoon sun … “You take off your shorts” … “Sure Johnny” … Mark squirms his shorts off … “Like I say it happens” … The two boys look at each other. “You probably got them in your ass too. Come over here” … He points to the bath mat … “Lie down on your back” … He shoves Johnny’s knees up … “Hold them there against your chest” … He squats with the bottle of Campho-Phenique … “Spread your legs apart so I can see what I’m doing … That’s right” … He rubs the oil in Johnny’s ass hairs and lightly around the rectum. Johnny sighs feeling the cold burn and looks down at his throbbing cock … “Like that Johnny?” … Mark takes a jar of mentholated Vaseline from the medicine cabinet. He rubs the Vaseline around Johnny’s ass parting the soft pink flesh and shoves the middle finger all the way up vibrating the finger. Burning inside Johnny squirms and whimpers. His body pulls up his ass contracts spasmodically hot white spurts cover his thin stomach.

  Feet twitching in the air shred to dust and memories pieces of legs and cocks and assholes drifting fragments falling softly through penny arcades and basement toilets playground finger stained with grass points to a red mark … “And there’s another. Spread your legs” … Oh! Christ! it is happening a little whimper brings his finger up in three jerks blushes to his pounding heart looks down pointing naked boy on yellow toilet seat and later in Mexico City trying to remember who the stranger was in front of him ruffled brown hair blue eyes pants open far pale sun colored photo unbuttoned his shirt.

  He looked at his young cousin just in from the country wondering if the boy would let him. They shared a room on the roof. They went to a movie that night and afterward in the roof room he got his cousin to smoke marijuana for the first time the boy laughing and rolling on the floor until he pissed in his pants sharp smell of urine in the Mexican night … “Desnudate chico” … The boy peeled off his wet pants and shorts and stood there naked and suddenly embarrassed under Kiki’s knowing eyes. Then Kiki pulled him down on the bed tickling him in the ribs the boy laughing out of control … “Por favor Kiki … Por favor” … Trying to hide his hard-on turned over on his stomach Kiki straddled him and spread his ass cheeks and felt the body go limp under him and the boy said … “Bueno, Kiki, haz’ lo” … Kiki put a pillow under the boy’s crotch to get his ass up and spread the legs and greased the boy’s ass panting and squirming as Kiki slid it in ten strokes and they came together in a
red pull teeth bared cocks crowing in the summer night musky smell of the boy’s greased ass.

  Unexpected rising of the curtain can begin with the apartment building lonely young face in the hall standing under a dusty name … “Abrupt question brought me Mister” … Princes Arcade closing the lost past hung in his eyes boys and workshops pointing down the pale skies … “Through the dead I trust you” … The stairs stretched out a shadow. It was 6:40 P.M. Young face looking for a name hand holding the door open memory noises dim sky the lonely 1920 afternoon jerky bed twisted I remember the other straddles rectum palpable odor fills the room the past hangs in the air rubbish and weeds drift of time a child laughing blurred faces the dying sun through a bathroom window.

  “Come over here Johnny. Down on your hands and knees. That’s right. Spread your legs apart” … Cold burn on his rectum nuts aching Johnny sighs and looks down at his throbbing cock … “Like that Johnny?” … Mark gets a jar of mentholated Vaseline from the medicine cabinet rubbing it around pulling Johnny’s ass open two greased fingers all the way up twisting burning Johnny spurts across the bath mat.

  Buttocks dim trying to focus Johnny’s ass the cold burn blankness a hotel on the outskirts of East St Louis. Johnny has just taken a shower. Flesh steaming he walks across the room to his suitcase. He takes out a package of Band-Aids and bends down to put one on a blister. Bending down like that it begins to get stiff between his legs. Mark is in an adjoining room and Johnny hopes he won’t come in now but suddenly he knows that Mark is standing in the doorway and then he hears Mark’s voice right behind him … “You look like a statue of Mercury Johnny. Why don’t you stand up?” … Johnny blushes it is all the way up between his legs. Now Mark is in front of him. Johnny closes his knees looking up at Mark helplessly. Mark shoves him and he falls on his back legs in the air. Laughing Mark pries his legs apart naked boy hugging his knees sunlight in pubic hairs the two boys have been swimming they were standing naked arms around each other’s shoulders looking at a redheaded woodpecker drumming on a persimmon tree sixty feet up in the summer sky. Suddenly Johnny began to feel uncomfortable with the other’s arm around his shoulder. He shifted and glanced down Oh! Christ! it was happening he blushed bright red and the other boy smiled … “Your pecker’s getting hard” … the woodpecker drumming frogs croaking the two boys were cousins but they had just met they were riding donkeys across the plateau and came to a stream under the bridge of an abandoned railroad the politicos stole all the money and then the railroad was built somewhere else rusty tracks overgrown with weeds and vines the older boy slid off his donkey … “Nadamos” … The younger boy had a hard-on from riding the donkey. Very slowly he took off his shirt and shoved his pants down it was still half-up he turned away to hide it. The older boy was already naked … “Qué te pasa chico?” … The older boy turned him around and laughed … “Tú te empalmas” … In water up to the knees the older boy was washing his back slid the bar of soap down across his ass something melted in his stomach and the other boy was inside him. The sky dimmed out of focus as he came hearing an ass bray from a great distance music across the golf course the boy had been swimming in the pond he sat on the concrete dam dangling his feet in the water he got up dried himself and caught a gleam of white in the summer twilight a golf ball he picked it up and soon found another bending over to pick up the ball he felt someone behind him he turned and an older boy was standing there he recognized one of the townies who hung out in front of Jake’s Pool Hall the boy smiled and walked toward him he stood there feeling his nakedness under the knowing eyes the boy stopped just in front of him … “What’s your name?” … “John” … the boy reached forward and cupped his crotch … “Hello! Johnny” … the boy took a deep breath and let’s see you’re sure the townie stripped slowly turned him around with a quick knee dropped him forward on hands and knees in the wet grass finger rubbing something on his ass rectum spread frogs croaking he was coming in a red pull through a labyrinth of pink eggs sobbing gasps frogs in his head the two bodies stuck together twitching feeling the soft night air on his naked body two white balls in wet grass I remember a thin pale boy last sad smile dust of dead hope in his hands the proposition bleakly clear pointed to the bed I remember hope of strange flesh the mouth dim room pants rip quick and silent coming another scene in the shed rubbish and weeds the drift of time a child’s room pieces of a blurred face the dark city dying sun naked boy hugging his knees sunlight in pubic hairs sad muscle magazines over the florist shop corduroy pants down green snakes under rusty iron in the vacant lot the old family soap opera phosphorescent clock hands tick away to basement walls back yards and ash pits a silver crescent moon cuts the film sky machinegun noises as he came one of the boys looks up hands mocking me off an old book with gilt edges the drawer stuck his distant hand there it is just to my shoulder twilight boy with violet eyes shredded to dust and memories paper fingers peanuts 1920 movie the old film stops A SILVER SMILE.