A naked lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don’t hide the madness.
Peter Orlovsky
Me & Allen
Realize big difference between me & Allen—he
has such far verbal poetry image—
connecting images getting sap
realization that leads up
ladder to highness of realization—
I get high thro feeling
& feelings to more purer
feelings or some thing
like it.—it all takes
place in my torso stomache
& up to chest—got by
long talks with myself—but based not on deep
realization on verbal level
but I get realization on emotions pull—pull of
emotion—emotional sap
juce spreding thro out
body& makes me wigle in
joy—but the set back on
stage of my mind picture
big drips of sadness—sadness
drips—sadness comes forward
& pours buckets from
joints of connecting bone
brain drops into chest
void—chest void passes
it to it into stomache
stage void—tears
flow—bloody tears
flow in to void—
void of tears of Peters
tears based on knowing
void expainding in my
family members that
I’ve watched over years
but only come to feel
more sharply now—
death in rage handing out
rage to each member heart
face of my famiely—
my famiely disapears cause
heart turns hard & cant
expand into universe
of all time heart—all
big time heart (everybody)
thumping—thumping sadness
into my heart sadness—
no ladder across the heart
no ladder comming out of heart
just a nedle out
of heart jabing rib—
crying pain voice alive—
all day on all days—
September 10, 1958
NYC
Peter Orlovsky
Peter Jerking Allen Off (First Sex Experiment)
[Orlovsky, Ginsberg, Corso, and Burroughs—then together in Tangier—were supposed to be interviewing each other on world politics for a new City Lights magazine called Journal for the Protection of All Beings. Irritated by Burroughs’s misogyny, then in full flower, Orlovsky opted to “emphasize his commitment to love in the face of Bill and his gang”92 by transcribing a lovemaking session between himself and Ginsberg. Several of these transcriptions were made. Some record the lovers’ wistful postcoital conversations, in which Ginsberg confided his terror of never having a child, and his fears about aging: “I guess you get disgusted when you realize what male potbellied being you wound up with for wife.”—ed.]
AG: I feel horney. Ya better close the windows & the door otherwise it will be chilley & put on a robe. How are you going to jerk me off & do that typing at the same time or lay next to my body?
PO: That’s a problem, we did it once already, we have all the time in the world, no rush, I’ll use my right hand frist & type with left hand as best I can. OK?
AG: Uhha, Allen gives a sigh of pleasure. That’s not if you can keep that up.
PO: I continue jerking him off, his cock has a slight bend, as if a little warped—got that way when allen was fucking a spadechick, the girl moved her box just when allen was goig to come so that his cock came out of her cunt and ramed up against some bone above or below her cunt, when it happened it wasent too painful because—I am jerking him off all this time, he puts his hand to mine to make it go faster and puts his other hand into under my robe lays that hand atop my cock—lifts his legs like woman getting screwed and spreads them—takes the ashtrey from little tabol next to bed with my cig drags a puff—puts it out fast—it was
AG: Keep going pettey, don’t break the rythum
PO: he will be coming soon—he lifts his legs—lifts his body off bed ass behind part—I keep jerking him off & try to go faster—with rythum—sexey hotter that way
AG: ouch,
PO: am I herting you?
AG: yeaha, yr doing it so irregurlly—hold my balls
PO: he goes to grab my left hand, wants me to hold his balls—so I do
AG: I keep getting hot then all of a sudden it stops—its all so irregular—
PO : I go to stick my finger in his ass hole, figureing that this will get him hot—on the top of his cock—the lips start to usher up a little due drops of pre-expecting joy that seems about to come—I took my left hand now to jerk him off & with right hand fingered his ass hole—the due started to get more deweer, the cock harder—he raised his legs higher into the air as I started to go faster with my hand over his cock now—figureing if he dident come now he might not come because his cock might be getting sore by all this irregular jerking on his cock—starting to come—the come comes & flies out between wet lips like silver dragon flies & lands on white sheet—some come falls on his cock & some on my knuckles, as hes coming I say “at a boy” & he says in responce to that—a few seconds latter “thats great” & hugs me with both arms & gives maney a sigh. All over & wiped up come. It took 5:45 am to 6:10 am—calendar to keep track of how many cigs I smoke in a day & just before putting my hand to Allens cock I lit a cig & noted it & time when took. End of jerkoff secsson.
Tangers, 1961
Allen Ginsberg
Why Is God Love, Jack?
Because I lay my
head on pillows,
Because I weep in the
tombed studio
Because my heart
sinks below my navel
because I have an
old airy belly
filled with soft
sighing, and
remembered breast
sobs—or
a hands touch makes
tender—
Because I get scared—
Because I raise my
voice singing to
my beloved self—
Because I do love thee
my darling, my
other, my living
bride
my friend, my old lord
of soft tender eyes—
Because I am in the
Power of life & can
do no more than
submit to the feeling
that I am the One
Lost
Seeking still seeking the
thrill—delicious
bliss in the
heart abdomen loins
& thighs
Not refusing this
38 yr. 145 lb. head
arms & feet of meat
Nor one single Whitmanic
toenail condemn
nor hair prophetic banish
to remorseless Hell,
Because wrapped with machinery
I confess my ashamed desire.
1963
William Burroughs
Sexual Conditioning
The whole area of sex is still shrouded in mystery and ignorance. Any attempt to apply objective experimental methods to the study of sexual phenomena has been firmly discouraged. People who do not think of themselves as religious—doctors, sociologists, psychiatrists—are still thinking in terms laid down by the Christian Church. The church assumes that any sexual activity except intercourse with a legal spouse is absolutely wrong because the Bible says so. They condemn so-called deviant behavior in the strongest terms. Psychiatrists, substituting the word “sick” for “wrong,” follow the old Christian line. Recent experiments with electrical brain stimulation, however, has provided a much more precise me
ans of conditioning than psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo- and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money in that way.
In the same way, heterosexual males can be conditioned to react sexually to other men. Who is to say that one is more desirable than the other? Who is competent to lay down sexual dogmas and impose them on others? The latter-day apologists of St. Paul who call themselves psychiatrists have little to recommend them but their bad statistics. They couldn’t get away with statistics like that in any other line of business. Suppose you run a business and the traffic department isn’t getting the consignments out. They say they need more money and more personnel, and the situation gets worse. Consignments stack up like patients in a state hospital. They say they need yet more money and more personnel to cope with the evergrowing traffic problem. How long before you fire the entire traffic department and get someone in there who can do the job? Psychiatrists say they need more money and personnel to deal with the ever-growing problem of mental illness, and the more money and personnel that is channeled into this bottomless pit, the higher the statistics on mental illness climb. Personally I think that mental illness is largely a psychiatric invention.
On December 3rd, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental deviation. Well, if they have more mental patients now than they can handle, it would seem to be a step in the right direction to remove homosexuals from this category. But the decision has caused a storm of protest. One psychiatrist compared the decision to “a psychiatric Watergate which we hope won’t be our Waterloo…” They just don’t like to see any prospective patients escaping; it could start a mass walkout. Doctor Charles Socarides, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Clinic staunchly opposes the new A.P.A. approach: “The APA has done what all civilizations have trembled to do…tamper with the biologic role between the sexes.” Fancy that—and in a letter to Playboy in June of 1970, Dr Socarides says, “Five hundred million years of evolution have established the male/female standard as the functionally healthy pattern of human sexual fulfillment.”
Just a minute here, Doctor—the human species is not more than one million years old according to the earliest human remains so far discovered. Other species have had a longer run. Three hundred million years have established a big mouth that can bite off almost anything and a gut that can digest it, as a functionally healthy pattern for sharks. About 130 million years established large size as functionally healthy for dinosaurs. What may be functionally healthy at one time is not necessarily so under altered conditions, as the bones of discontinued models bear silent witness. But sharks, dinosaurs, and psychiatrists don’t want to change.
The sexual revolution is now moving into the electronic stage. Recent experiments in electric brain stimulation indicate that sexual excitement and orgasm can be produced at push-button control or push-button choice, depending on who is pushing the buttons. None of these bits of technology are in the future; the knowledge, and most of the hardware, exist today.
For example, there already exists a device that can be used in conjunction with bio-feedback and electric brain stimulation. I quote from an article by Patrick Carr, entitled “The Sonic Dildo: At Last, the No-Contact Orgasm,” about how a man named How Wachspress of San Francisco has developed an audio machine that puts sound into the human body through the skin: “He begins to play with the controls of his synthesizer, programming a series of sonic patterns for sensual effect, and this feeling begins to spread down from my stomach toward my crotch, most certainly turning me on and relaxing me at the same time. My instant desire is for the same, only louder. Lovely sensations spread over my hips, crotch, stomach, and spine, and I am beginning to sense surprisingly precise nuances of tone and pattern as How performs ‘frequency sweeps,’ a sharp attack with a long decay, a long rise with a sharp decay…oh, yes… ‘Very Indian, huh?’ says How. ‘Y’know, I’m certain that ragas would be great for the body…’ Afterward, disconnected from the unit, I experienced a wonderful body-buzzing calm.”
In terms of human sexuality what could it mean? Apparently there is no limit. A partner evoked by sophisticated electric brain stimulation could be as real and much more satisfying than the boy or girl next door. The machine can provide you with anything or anybody you want. All the stars in Hollywood living or dead are there for your pleasure. Sated with superstars, you can lay Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Isis, Madame Pompadour, or Aphrodite. You can get fucked by Pan, Jesus Christ, Apollo or the Devil himself. Anything you like likes you when you press the buttons. Boys, girls, gods, angels, devils. The appropriate sets can also be plugged in. Sex in an Egyptian palace? A Greek glade? A 1910 outhouse? Roman baths? Space capsule? 1920 rumble seat? Pirate ship? Log cabin? Mongol tent? And none of the sweat that goes with log cabins, tents and pirate ships. It’s ready built, waiting for you, and you can leave any time you want.
Could real partners compete? Well, maybe. Experiments in autonomic shaping have demonstrated that subjects can learn to control these responses and reproduce them at will once they learn where the neural buttons are located. Just decide what you want, and your local sex adjustment center will match your brain waves and provide you with a suitable mate of whatever sex, real or imaginary, while you wait. It is now possible to provide every man and woman with the best sex tricks he or she can tolerate without blowing a fuse. And any candidate running on that ticket should poll a lot of votes and bring a lot of issues right out into the open.
“I promise you that I will disband the Army and the Navy and channel the entire defense budget into setting up sexual adjustment centers throughout the United States. And I promise you further that the psychic energy generated in these centers will turn any and all prospective enemies into friends, into intimate friends, as other nations follow our shining example.”
“Control buttons to the People.”
Allen Ginsberg
Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass
lemme kiss your face, lick your neck
touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end
nose to nose, quiet questions
ever slept with a man before?
hand stroking your back slowly down to the cheeks’ moist hair soft asshole
eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing—
Come on boy, fingers thru my hair
Pull my beard, kiss my eyelids, tongue my ear, lips light on my forehead
—met you in the street you carried my package—
Put your hand down to my legs,
touch if it’s there, the prick shaft delicate
hot in your rounded palm, soft thumb on cockhead—
Come on come on kiss my full lipped, wet tongue, eyes open—
animal in the zoo looking out of skull cage—you
smile, I’m here so are you, hand tracing your abdomen
from nipple down rib cage smooth skinn’d past belly veins, along muscle
to your silk-shiny groin
across your long prick down your right thigh
up the smooth road muscle wall to titty again—
Come on go down on me your throat
swallowing my shaft to the base tongue
cock solid suck—
I’ll do the same your stiff prick’s soft skin, lick your ass—
Come on Come on, open up, legs apart here this pillow
under your buttock
Come on take it here’s vaseline the hard on here’s
your old ass lying easy up in the air—here’s
a hot prick at yr soft-mouthed asshole—just relax and let it in—
Yeah just relax hey Carlos lemme in, I love you, yeah how come
you came here anyway except this kiss this hug this mouth these
two eyes looking up, thi
s hard slow thrust this
softness this relaxed sweet sigh?
3 January 1974, to C. R.
Jane Bowles
Going to Massachusetts
[The brilliant and witty Jane Bowles had an incomparable literary voice that is still underappreciated except by other writers. Although mostly lesbian, she married the mostly gay Paul Bowles in 1937. They settled in Tangier in 1948, where they became the center of expatriate literary life, hosting friends like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Gore Vidal. When the far less glamorous Ginsberg called, he introduced himself as “Allen Ginsberg, the bop poet” and asked Jane if she believed in God. “Well, if I do I’m certainly not discussing it on the telephone,” she said before hanging up on him. Although friends with both Paul and Jane Bowles, Burroughs grew especially fond of Jane, and recalled, “She was very, very funny, and she had a sort of chic quality that everyone commented on… she has this very admiring set of [followers] whose eyes would get all misty when they said, ‘Oh, Janie!’ ” Her story “Going to Massachusetts” dates from 1966 and is a fragment of a larger, unfinished work.—ed.]
Bozoe rubbed away some tears with a closed fist.
“Come along, Bozoe,” said Janet. “You’re not going to the North Pole.”
Bozoe tugged at the woolly fur, and pulled a little of it out.
“Leave your coat alone,” said Janet.
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