The Soft Machine

by William Seward Burroughs

  "Always he eat way out. And now if you will excuse me the soccer scores are coming in from the Capital. One must pretend an interest."

  The Comandante had aged from remote crossroads of Time crawled into a metal locker and shut the door whimpering with fears, emerged in a moldy green jockstrap his body painted I-red, U-green.

  The Assistant flared out of a broom closet high on ammonia with a green goatee and marble face.

  He removed Carl's clothes in a series of locks and throws. Carl could feel his body move to the muscle orders. The Assistant put a pail over his head and screamed away into distant hammers.

  The Comandante spread jelly over Carl's naked paralyzed body. The Comandante was molding a woman. Carl could feel his body draining into the woman mold. His genitals dissolving, tits swelling as the Comandante penetrated applying a few touches to face and hair—(Jissom across the mud wall in the dawn sound of barking dogs and running water—) Down there the Comandante going through his incantations around Carl's empty body. The body rose presenting an erection, masturbates in front of the Comandante. Penis flesh spreads through his body bursting in orgasm explosions granite cocks ejaculate lava under a black cloud boiling with monster crustaceans. Cold grey undersea eyes and hands touched Carl's body. The Comandante flipped him over with sucker hands and fastened his disk mouth to Carl's asshole. He was lying in a hammock of green hair, penis-flesh hammers bursting his body. Hairs licked his rectum, spiraling tendrils scraping pleasure centers, Carl's body emptied in orgasm after orgasm, bones lit up green through flesh dissolved into the disk mouth with a fluid plop. He quivers red now in boneless spasms, pink waves through his body at touch of the green hairs.

  The Comandante stripped Carl's body and smeared on green jelly nipples that pulled the flesh up and in. Carl's genitals wither to dry shit he sweeps clear with a little whisk broom to white flesh and black shiny pubic hairs. The Comandante parts the hairs and makes Incision with a little curved knife. Now he is modeling a face from the picture of his novia in the Capital.

  "And now, how you say, 'the sound effects.'" He puts on a record of her voice, Carl's lips follow and the female substance breathed in the words.

  "Oh love of my alma! Oh wind of morning!"

  "Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for." Carl made words in the air without a throat, without a tongue. "I hope there is a farmacia in the area."

  The Comandante looked at him with annoyance: "You could wait in the office please."

  He came out putting on his tunic and strapping on a Luger.

  "A drugstore? Yes I creo. . . Across the lagoon. . . I will call the guide."

  Carl walked through a carnival city along canals where giant pink salamanders and goldfish stirred slowly, penny arcades, tattoo booths, massage parlors, side shows, blue movies, processions, floats, performers, pitchmen to the sky.

  Puerto Joselito is located Dead Water. Inactive oil wells and mine shafts, strata of abandoned machinery and gutted boats, garbage of stranded operations and expeditions that died at this point of dead land where sting rays bask in brown water and grey crabs walk the mud flats on brittle stilt legs. The town crops up from the mud flats to the silent temple of high jungle streams of clear water cut deep clefts in yellow clay and falling orchids endanger the traveler.

  In a green savanna stand two vast penis figures in black stone, legs and arms vestigial, slow blue smoke rings pulsing from the stone heads. A limestone road winds through the pillars and into The City. A rack of rusty iron and concrete set in vacant lots and rubble, dotted with chemical gardens.

  A smell of junky hat and death about the town deadens and weight these sentences with "disgust you to see it." Carl walked through footpaths of a vast shanty town. A dry wind blows hot and cold down from Chimborazo a soiled post card in the prop blue sky. Crab men peer out of abandoned quarries and shag heaps some sort of vestigial eye growing cheek bone and a look about them as if they could take root and grow on anybody, muttering addicts of the orgasm drug, boneless in the sun, gurgling throat gristle, heart pulsing slowly in transparent flesh eaten alive by the crab men.

  Carl walked through the penis posts into a town of limestone huts. A ring of priests sat around the posts legs spread, erections pulsing to flicker light from their eyes. As he walked through the electric eyes his lips swelled and his lungs rubbed against the soft inner ribs. He walked over and touched one of the priests and a shock threw him across the road into a sewage ditch. Maize fields surround the town with stone figures of the Young Corn God erect penis spurting maize shoots looks down with young cruelty and innocent lips parted slightly terminal caress in the dropping eyes. The Young Corn God is led out and his robes of corn silk stripped from his body by lobster priests. A vine rope is attached to the stone penis of the Maize God. The boy's cock rises iridescent in the morning sun and you can see the other room from there by a mirror on the wardrobe. . . Well now, in the city a group of them came to this valley grow corn do a bit of hunting fishing in the river.

  Carl walked a long row of living penis urns made from men whose penis has absorbed the body with vestigial arms and legs breathing through purple fungoid gills and dropping a slow metal excrement like melted solder forms a solid plaque under the urns stand about three feet high on rusty iron shelves wire mesh cubicles joined by catwalks and ladders a vast warehouse of living penis urns slowly transmuting to smooth red terra cotta. Others secrete from the head crystal pearls of lubricant that forms a shell of solid crystal over the red penis flesh.

  A blast of golden horns: "The Druid priest emerges from the Sacred Grove, rotting bodies hang about him like Spanish moss. His eyes blue and cold as liquid air expand and contract eating light."

  The boy sacrifice is chosen by erection acclaim, universal erection feeling for him until all pricks point to "Yes." Boy feels the "Yes" run through him and melt his bones to "Yes" stripped naked in the Sacred Grove shivering and twitching under the Hanging Tree green disk mouths sucking his last bone meal. He goes to the Tree naked on flower floats through the obsidian streets red stone buildings and copper pagodas of the Fish City stopping in Turkish Baths and sex rooms to make blue movies with youths. The entire city is in heat during this ceremony, faces swollen with tumescent purple penis flesh. Lightning fucks flash on any street corner leave a smell of burning metal blue sparks up and down the spine. A vast bath-town of red clay cubicles over twisting geological orgasm with the green crab boys disk mouths' slow rasping tongues on spine centers twisting in the warm black ooze.

  Noteworthy is the Glazing Ceremony when certain of the living urns are covered with terra cotta and baked in red brick ovens by the women who pull the soft red meat out with their penis forks and decorate house and garden with the empty urns. The urnings for the Glazing Ceremony are chosen each day by locker number from the public urn and numbers read out over the soft speaker inside the head. Helpless urns listening to the number call charge our soft terror-eating substance, our rich substance.

  Now it is possible to beat the number before call by fixing the urn or after call by the retroactive fix which few are competent to practice. There is also a Ceremonial Massage in which the penis flesh is rubbed in orgasm after orgasm until Death in Centipede occurs. Death in Centipede is the severest sentence of the Insect Court and of course all urnings are awaiting sentence for various male crimes.

  Pues, every year a few experienced urnings beat the house and make Crystal Grade. When the crystal cover reaches a certain thickness the urning is exempt from ceremonial roll call and becomes immortal with nothing to do but slowly accrete a thicker cover in the Crystal Hall of Fame.

  Few beat the house, a vast limestone bat. High mountain valley cut off by severest sentence of symbiotic cannibalism. So the game with one another.

  "I dunno me. Only work here. Technical Sergeant."

  "Throw it into wind Jack."

  A pimp leans in through the Country Club window. "Visit the House of David boys and watch the girls eat shit. Makes a man
feel good all over. Just tell the madam a personal friend of mine." He drops a cuneiform cylinder into the boy's hip pocket feeling his ass with lost tongue of the penis urn people in a high mountain valley of symbiotic cannibalism. The natives are blond and blue-eyed sex in occupation. It is unlawful to have orgasm alone and the inhabitants live in a hive of sex rooms and flickering blue movie cubicles. You can spot one on the cubicle skyline miles away. We all live in the blue image forever. The cubicles fade out in underground steam baths where lurk the Thurlings, malicious boys' spirits fugitive from the blue movie who mislead into underground rivers. (The traveler is eaten by aquatic centipedes and carnivorous underwater vines.) Orgasm death spurts over the flower floats—Limestone God a mile away—Descent into penis flesh cut off by a group of them came to this game under the Hanging Tree—Insect legs under red Arctic night—He wore my clothes and terror—

  The boy ejaculates blood over the flower floats. Slow vine rope drops him in a phallic fountain, wire mesh cubicles against the soft inner ribs, vast warehouse of penis and the shock threw him ten feet to smooth dirt and flak. God with erect penis spurting crystal young cruelty and foe solid, dazzling terminal caress in silent corridors of Corn God. erection feeling for descent in the morning sun feels the "Yes" from there by a mirror on you stripped naked. In the city a group of them came to this last bone meal under the Hanging Tree.

  "Pretty familiar."

  The Priests came through the Limestone Gates playing green flutes: translucent lobster men with wild blue eyes and shells of flexible copper. A soundless vibration in the spine touched center of erection and the natives moved toward the flute notes on a stiffening blood tube for the Centipede Rites. A stone penis body straddles the opening to the cave room of steam baths and sex cubicles and the green cab boys who go all the way on any line.

  The Natives insert a grill of silver wires deep into the sinus where a crystal slowly forms. They strum the wires with insect hairs growing through flesh weaving cold cocaine sex frequencies.

  From The Living God Cock flows a stream of lubricant into a limestone trough green with algae.

  The priests arrange the initiates into long dog-fuck lines molding them together with green jelly from the lubricant tanks. Now the centipede skin is strapped on each body a segment and the centipede whips and cracks in electric spasms of pleasure throwing off segments kicking spasmodically uncontrolled diarrhea spurting orgasm after orgasm synchronized with the flicker lights. Carl is taken by the centipede legs and pulled into flesh jelly dissolving bones—Thick black hair sprouts through his tumescent flesh—He falls through a maze of penny arcades and dirty pictures, locker rooms, barracks, and prison flesh empty with the colorless smell of death—

  Cold metal excrement on all the walls and benches, silver sky raining the metal word fallout—Sex sweat like iron in the mouth. Scores are coming in. Pretend an interest.

  In a puppet booth the manipulator takes pictures of bored insolent catatonics with eight-hour erections reading comics and chewing gum. The impresario is a bony Nordic with green fuzz on his chest and legs. "I get mine later with the pictures. I can't touch the performers. Wall of glass you know show you something interesting."

  He pulls aside curtain: schoolboy room with a banner and pin-ups, on the bed naked boy puppet reading comics and chewing gum with a hypo.

  Ghost your German. Spit penny arcades, tattoo booths, Nordic processions, human performers, trapeze artists. Whores of all sexes importune from scenic railways and ferris wheels where they rent cubicles, push up manhole covers in a puff of steam, pull at passing pant cuffs, careen out of the Tunnel of Love waving condoms of jissom. Old blind queens with dirty peep shows built into their eye sockets disguise themselves as penny arcades and feel for a young boy's throbbing cock with cold metal hands, sniff pensively at bicycle seats in Afghan Hound drag, Puerto Joselito is located through legs. Ghost slime sitting naked on tattoo booths, virus flesh of curse, suffocating town, this. Ways to bury explorer.

  Old junky street cleaners push little red wagons sweeping up condoms and empty H caps, KY

  tubes, broken trusses and sex devices, kif garbage and confetti, moldy jockstraps and bloody Kotex, shit-stained color comics, dead kitten and afterbirths, jenshe babies of berdache and junky.

  Everywhere the soft insidious voice of the Pitchman delayed action language lesson muttering under all your pillows "Shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse. Young boys need it special."

  Last Hints

  Carl descended a spiral iron stairwell into a labyrinth of lockers, tier on tier of wire mesh and steel cubicles joined by catwalks and ladders and moving cable cars as far as he could see, tiers shifting interpenetrating swinging beams of construction, blue flare of torches on the intent young faces, locker room smell of moldy jockstraps, chlorine and burning metal, escalators and moving floors start stop change course, synchronize with balconies and perilous platforms eaten with rust. Ferris wheels silently penetrate the structure, roller coasters catapult through to the clear sky—a young workman walks the steel beams with the sun in his hair out of sight in a maze of catwalks and platforms where coffee fires smoke in rusty barrels and the workers blow on their black cotton gloves in the clear cold morning through to the sky beams with sun in his hair the workers blow on their cold morning, dropped down into the clicking turnstiles, buzzers, lights and stuttering torches smell of ozone. Breakage is constant. Whole tiers shift and crash in a yellow cloud of rust, spill boys masturbating on careening toilets, iron urinals trailing a wake of indecent exposure, old men in rocking chairs screaming antifluoride slogans, a Southern Senator sticks his fat frog face out of the outhouse and brays with inflexible authority: "And Ah advocates the extreme penalty in the worst form there is for anyone convicted of trafficking in, transporting, selling or caught in using the narcotic substance known as nutmeg. . . I wanna say further that ahm a true friend of the Nigra and understand all his simple wants. Why, I got a good Darkie in here now wiping my ass."

  Wreckage and broken bodies litter the girders, slowly collected by old junkies pushing little red wagons patient and calm with gentle larcenous old woman fingers, gathering blue torch flares light the calm intent young worker faces.

  Carl descended a spiral iron smell of ozone. Breakage is of lockers tier on tier crash in yellow cloud as far as he could see of indecent exposure on toilets. Swinging beams construct the intent young faces.

  Locker room toilet on five levels seen from the ferris wheel, flash of white legs, shiny pubic hairs and lean brown arms, boys masturbating with soap under rusty showers form a serpent line beating on the lockers, vibrates through all the tiers and cubicles unguarded platforms and dead-end ladders dangling in space, workers straddling beams beat out runic tunes with shiny ball peen hammers.

  The universe shakes with metallic adolescent lust. The line disappears through a green door slide down to the subterranean baths twisting through torch flares the melodious boy-cries drift out of ventilators in all the locker rooms, barracks, schools and prisons of the world. "Joselito, Paco, Enrique."

  Jacking off he is whiff stateroom that is always kept locked—and word dust dirtied his body falling through the space between worlds—

  The third kif pipe he went through the urinal sick and dizzy. He just down from the country. He just down from the green place by the dog's mirror. Sometimes came to a place by the dogs... Jungle sounds and smells drift from his coat lapels. A lovely Sub that boy.

  Ghosts of Panama clung to our bodies—"You come with me, Meester?"—On the boy's breath a flesh—His body slid from my hands in soap bubbles—We twisted slowly to the yellow sands, traced fossils of orgasm—

  "You win something like jellyfish, Meester."

  Under a ceiling fan, naked and sullen, stranger color through his eyes the lookout different—fading Panama photos swept out by an old junky coughing spitting in the sick dawn—

  (phosphorescent metal excrement of the city—brain eating birds patrol the iron streets.) H
ospital smell of dawn powder—dead rainbow post cards swept out by an old junky in backward countries.

  "I don't know if you got my last hints as we shifted commissions, passing where the awning flaps from the Cafe de France—Hurry up—Perhaps Carl still has his magic lantern—Dark overtakes someone walking—I don't know exactly where you made this dream— Sending letter to a coffin is like posting it in last terrace of the garden—I would never have believed realms and frontiers of light exist—I'm so badly informed and totally green troops—B.B., hurry up please—"

  (Stopped suddenly to show me a hideous leather body)—"I'm almost without medicine."

  It was still good bye then against the window outside 1920's movie, flesh tracks broken—Sitting at a long table where the doctor couldn't reach and I said: "He has your voice and end of the line—

  Fading breath on bed showing symptoms of suffocation—I have tuned them out—How many plots have been forestalled before they could take shape in boy haunted by the iron claws?— Meanwhile a tape recorder cuts old newspapers." Panama clung to our bodies naked under the ceiling fan—

  excrement at the far end of forgotten streets— hospital smell on the dawn wind—

  (Peeled his phosphorescent metal knees, brain broiled in carrion hunger.) On the sea wall under fading Panama photo casual ghost of adolescent T-shirt traced fossil-like jellyfish—

  "On the sea wall if you got my last hints over the tide flats—I don't know exactly where—woke up in other flesh—shirt with Chinese characters—breeze from the Café de France—lantern burning insect wings— I'm almost without medicine—far away—storms— crackling sounds—Nothing here now but the circling albatross—dead post card waiting a place forgotten—" On the sea wall met a boy under the circling albatross—Peeled his red-and-white T-shirt to brown flesh and grey under like ash and passed a joint back and forth as we dropped each other's pants and he looked down face like Mayan limestone in the kerosene lamp sputter of burning insect wings over the tide flats—