Oblique Addict suffers a whole spectrum of subjective horror, silent protoplasmic frenzy, hideous agony of the bones. Tensions build up, pure energy without emotional content finally tears through the body throwing him about like a man in contact with high tension wires. If his charge connection is cut off cold,the Oblique Addict falls into such violent electric convulsions that his bones shake loose, and he dies with skeleton straining to climb out of his unendurable flesh and run in a straight line to the nearest cemetery. The relation between an O.A. (Oblique Addict ) and his R.C. ( Recharge Connection )  is so intense that they can only endure each other’s company for brief and infrequent intervals- I mean aside from recharge meets, when all personal contact is eclipsed by the recharge process.

Reading the paper. . . Something about a triple murder in the Rue de la Merde,Paris:” An adjusting of scores.”. . . I keep slipping away. . . “The police have identified the author . . . Pepe El Culito. . . The Little Ass Hole, an affectionate diminuitive.” Does it really say that?. . . I try to focus  the words. . .they preparate in meaningless mosaic. . .

LAZARUS GO HOME

Fumbling through faded tape at the pick up frontier, a languid grey area of hiatus miasmic with yawns and gaping goof holes, Lee found out that the young junky

my dirty bare foot. . . . Junkies have no shame. . . .
They are impervious to the repugnance of others. It
is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual
libido. . . . The junky’s shame disappears with his nonsexual sociability which is also dependent on libido. . . .
The addict regards his body impersonally as an instrument to absorb the medium in which he lives, evaluates
his tissue with the cold hands of a horse trader. “No use
trying to hit there.” Dead fish eyes flick over a ravaged
vein.
Using a new type sleeping pill called Soneryl. . . .
You don’t feel sleepy. . . . You shift to sleep without
transition, fall abruptly into the middle of a dream. . . .
I have been years in a prison camp suffering from malnutrition. . . .
The President is a junky but can’t take it direct
because of his position. So he gets fixed through
me. . . . From time to time we make contact, and I
recharge him. These contacts look, to the casual observer, like homosexual practices, but the actual excitement is not primarily sexual, and the climax is the
separation when the recharge is completed. The erect
penises are brought into contact—at least we used that
method in the beginning, but contact points wear out
like veins. Now I sometimes have to slip my penis
under his left eyelid. Of course I can always fix him
with an Osmosis Recharge, which corresponds to a
skin shot, but that is admitting defeat. An O.R. will put
the President in a bad mood for weeks, and might well
precipitate an atomic shambles. And the President pays
a high price for the Oblique Habit. He has sacrificed
all control, and is dependent as an unborn child. The

A red orchid bloomed at the bottom of the dropper.
He hesitated for a full second, then pressed the bulb,
watching the liquid rush into the vein as if sucked by
the silent thirst of his blood. There was an iridescent,
thin coat of blood left in the dropper, and the white
paper collar was soaked through with blood like a
bandage. He reached over and filled the dropper with
water. As he squirted the water out, the shot hit him
in the stomach, a soft sweet blow.
Look down at my filthy trousers, haven’t been
changed in months. . . . The days glide by strung on
a syringe with a long thread of blood. . . . I am forgetting sex and all sharp pleasures of the body—a grey,
junk-bound ghost. The Spanish boys call me El Hombre Invisible—the Invisible Man. . . .
Twenty push ups every morning. Use of junk removes fat, leaves muscle more or less intact. The addict
seems to need less tissue. . . .Would it be possible to
isolate the fat-removing molecule of junk?
More and more static at the Drug Store, mutterings
of control like a telephone off the hook . . . Spent all
day until 8 p.m . to score for two boxes of Eukodol. . . .
Running out of veins and out of money.
Keep going on the nod. Last night I woke up with
someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand. . . .
Fall asleep reading and the words take on code significance. . . . Obsessed with codes. . . . Man contracts a
series of diseases which spell out a code message. . . .
Take a shot in front of D.L. Probing for a vein in

pleasure to the head. . . . Ten minutes later you want
another shot. . . . The pleasure of morphine is in the
viscera. . . . You listen down into yourself after a shot.
. . . But intravenous C is electricity through the brain,
activating cocaine pleasure connections. . . .There is no
withdrawal syndrome with C. It is a need of the brain
alone—a need without body and without feeling. Earthbound ghost need. The craving for C lasts only a few
hours as long as the C channels are stimulated. Then
you forget it. Eukodol is like a combination of junk
and C. Trust the Germans to concoct some really evil
shit. Eukodol like morphine is six times stronger than
codeine. Heroin six times stronger than morphine. Dihydro-oxy-heroin should be six times stronger than
heroin. Quite possible to develop a drug so habit-forming that one shot would cause lifelong addiction.
Habit Note continued: Picking up needle I reach
spontaneously for the tie-up cord with my left hand;
This I take as a sign I can hit the one useable vein
in my left arm. (The movements of tying up are such
that you normally tie up the arm with which you
reach for the cord.) The needle slides in easily on the
edge of a callous. I feel around. Suddenly a thin column
of blood shoots up into the syringe, for a moment sharp
and solid as a red cord.
The body knows what veins you can hit and conveys
this knowledge in the spontaneous movements you
make preparing to take a shot. . . . Sometimes the
needle points like a dowzer’s wand. Sometime I must
wait for the message. But when it comes I always hit
blood.

ling around on the control room floor looking for his plate and shouting unitelligible orders: “Thess thupper thonic!! Thut ur oth thu thair!”The Diplomat (wiping sweat from his brow): “To any creature of any type or description . . .”“And the home of the brave.”The diplomat’s face is grey. He staggers, trips in the scroll, sags against the rail, blood pouring from’ eyes, nose and mouth, dying of cerebral hemorrhage.The Diplomat (barely audible): “The Department denies . . . un-American . . . It’s been destroyed . . .I mean it never was . . . Categor . . .” Dies.In the Control Room instrument panels are blow­ing out. . . great streamers of electricity crackle through the room. . . . The Technician, naked, his body burned black, staggers about like a figure in Gotterdammerung, screaming: “Thubber thonic!! Oth thu thair!!!” A final blast reduces the Technician to a cinder.

Gave proof through the night

                   That our flag was still there. . . .

Habit Notes. Shooting Eukodol every two hours. I have a place where I can slip my needle right into a vein, it stays open like a red, festering mouth, swollen and obscene, gathers a slow drop of blood and pus after the shot—–Eukodol is a chemical variation of codeine—dihydro- oxy-codeine.This stuff comes on more like C than M. . . . When you shoot Coke in the mainline there is a rush of pure

watha? . . . No, that’s not right. Some citizen cracks wise about giving it back to the Indians. … A Civil War uniform, the coat North and the pants South like it show thev got together again? She can come on like Buffalo Bill or Paul Revere or that citizen wouldn’t give up the shit, I mean the ship, or a G.I. or a Dough­boy or the Unknown Soldier. . . . That’s the best deal. . . . Cover her with a monument, that way nobody has to look at her…The Lesbian, concealed in a papier mdche Arc de Triomphe fills her great lungs and looses a tremendous bellow.“Oh say do that Star Spangled Banner yet wave . . .”A great rent rips the Arc de Triomphe from top to bottom. The Diplomat puts a hand to his fore­head. . . .The Diplomat: “That any male citizen of theUnited States has given birth in Interzone or at any other place. . ..”“O’er the land of the FREEEEEEEEEEE . . .”The Diplomant’s mouth is moving but no one can hear him. The Technician clasps his hands over his ears: “Mother of God!” he screams. His plate begins to vibrate like a Jew’s harp, suddenly flies out of his mouth. . . . He snaps at it irritably, misses and covers his mouth with one hand.The Arc de Triomphe falls with a ripping, splinter­ing crash, reveals the Lesbian standing on a pedestal clad only in a leopard-skin jockstrap with enormous falsie basket. . . . She stands there smiling stupidly and flexing her huge muscles. . . . The Technician is craw-

I am passing room 10 They moved me out of yesterday. . . Maternity case I assume. . . Bedpans full of blood and Kotex and nameless female substances, enough to pollute a continent. . . If someone comes to visit me in my old room he will think I gave birth to a monster and the State Department  is trying to hush it up. . . Music from I am an American. . . An elderly man in the striped pants and cutaway of a diplomat stands on a platform draped with the American flag.A decayed, corseted tenor-brusting out of a Daniel Boone costume- is singing the Star sprangled Banner,accompanied by a full orchestra. He sings with a slight lips. . . THE DIPLOMAT ( reading from a great skroll of ticker tape that keeps growning and tangling around his feet ):” And we categorically deny that any male citizen of the United States of America. . .”

Tenor:”oh thay can you thee. . .” His voice breaks and shoots up to a high falsetto. In the control room the Technician mixes  a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hands : ” God damned tenor’s a brown artist!” he mutters sourly. “Mike! rumph,” the shouts end in a belch.”Cut that swish fart off the air and give him his purple slip. He’s through as of riight now. . . Put in that sex changed Liz athlete. . . She’s a fulltime tenor at least. . .Costume? How in the fuck should I know? I’m no dress designer swish from the costume department! What’s that? The entire costume department occluded as a security risk? What am I, an octopus? Let’s see . . . How about an Indian routine? Pocahontas or Hia-

students: “Now, boys, you won’t see this operation performed very often and there’s a reason for that. . . . You see it has absolutely no medical value. No one knows what the purpose of it originally was or if it had a purpose at all. Personally I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning.“Just as a bull fighter with his skill and knowledge extricates himself from danger he has himself invoked, so in this operation the surgeon deliberately endangers his patient, and then, with incredible speed and celer­ity, rescues him from death at the last possible split second. . . . Did any of you ever see Dr. Tetrazzini per­form? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start bv throwing a scal­pel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance like a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: T don’t give them time to die,’ he would sav. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. ‘Fucking undisciplined cells!’ he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter.”A young man leaps down into the operating theatre and, whipping out a scalpel, advances on the patient.Dr. Benway: “An espontaneo! Stop him before he guts my patient!”(Espontaneo is a bull-fighting term for a member of the audience who leaps down into the ring, pulls out a concealed cape and attempts a few passes with the bull before he is dragged out of the ring.)The orderlies scuffle with the espontaneo, who is finally ejected from the hall. The anesthetist takes ad­vantage of the confusion to prv a large gold filling from the patient’s mouth. .. .

rubber vacuum cups at the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets. . . . He advances on the patient. . . . “Make an incision, Doctor Limpf,” he says to his ap­palled assistant. . . . “I’m going to massage the heart.” Dr. Limpf shrugs and begins the incision. Dr. Ben- way washes the suction cup by swishing it around in the toilet-bowl….Nurse: “Shouldn’t it be sterilized, doctor?”Dr. Benway: “Very likely but there’s no time.” He sits on the suction cup like a cane seat watching his assistant make the incision. . . . “You young squirts couldn’t lance a pimple without an electric vibrating scalpel with automatic drain and suture. . . . Soon we’ll be operating by remote control on patients we never see. . . . We’ll be nothing but button pushers. All the skill is going out of surgery. . . . All the know-how and make-do . . . Did I ever tell you about the time I per­formed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can? And once J was caught short without instrument one and removed a uterine tumor with my teeth. That was in the Upper Effendi, and besides . . .”Dr. Lim pf: “The incision is ready, doctor.”Dr. Benway forces the cup into the incision and works it up and down. Blood spurts all over the doctors, the nurse and the wall. . . . The cup makes a horrible sucking sound.Nurse: “I think she’s gone, doctor.”Dr. Benway: “Well, it’s all in the day’s work.” He walks across the room to a medicine cabinet. . . . “Some fucking drug addict has cut my cocaine with Saniflush! Nurse! Send the boy out to fill this RX on the double!” Dr. Benway is operating in an auditorium filled with

s said to be unspeakably toothsome. . . . An Interzone coroner known as Autopsy Ahmed made a fortune traf­ficking The Worm.The French school is opposite my window and I dig the boys with my eight-power field glasses. . . . So close I could reach out and touch them. . . . They wear shorts. . . . I can see the goose-pimples on their legs in the cold Spring morning. . . . I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, tom with disembodied lust.Did I ever tell you about the time Marv and me pay two Arab kids sixty cents to watch them screw each other? So I ask Marv, “Do you think they will do it?”And he says, “I think so. They are hungry.”And I say, “That’s the way I like to see them.”Makes me feel sorta like a dirty old man but, “Son cosas de la vida,” as Soberba de la Flor said when the fuzz upbraids him for blasting this cunt and taking the dead body to the Bar O Motel and fucking it. . . .“She play hard to get already,” he say . . . “I don’t hafta take that sound.” (Soberba de la Flor was a Mexican criminal convict of several rather pointless murders.)The lavatory has been locked for three hours solid. . . . I think they are using it for an operating room. . . .Nurse: “I can’t find her pulse, doctor.”Dr. Benway: “Maybe she got it up her snatch ina finger stall.”Nurse: “Adrenalin, doctor?”Dr. Benway: “The night porter shot it all up for kicks.” He looks around and picks up one of those