Green (Classic William S. Burroughs)

by Billectric

Posted to Utterances on 2003-06-03 12:12:00

” ‘Daddy Longlegs’ looked like Uncle Sam on stilts and he ran this osteopath clinic outside East St. Louis and took in a few junky patients. For two notes a week they could stay on the nod in green lawn chairs and look at the oaks and grass stretching down to a little lake in the sun and the nurse moved around the lawn with her silver trays feeding the junk in- We called her ‘Mother’- Wouldn’t you?- Doc Benway and me was holed up there after a rumble in Dallas involving this aphrodisiac ointment and Doc goofed on ether and mixed in too much Spanish Fly and burned the prick off the Police Commissioner straight away- So we come to ‘Daddy Longlegs’ to cool off and found him cool and casual in a dark room with potted rubber plants and a silver tray on the table where he like to see a week in advance- The nurse showed us to a room with rose wallpaper and we had this bell any hour of the day or night ring and the nurse charged in with a loaded hypo- Well one day we were sitting out in the lawn chairs with lap robes and it was a fall day trees turning and the sun cold on the lake- Doc picks up a piece of grass- “Junk turns you on vegetable- It’s green, see?- A green fix should last a long time.”

We checked out of the clinic and rented a house and Doc starts cooking up this green junk and the basement was of tanks smelled like a compost heap of junkies- So finally he draws off this heavy green fluid and loads it into a hypo big as a bicycle pump- “Now we must find a worthy vessel,” he said and we flush out this old goof ball artist and told him it was pure Chinese H from the Ling Dynasty and Doc shoots the whole pint of green into the main line and the Yellow Jacket turns fibrous grey green and withered up like an old turnip and I said: “I’m getting out of here, me”, and Doc said: “An unworthy vessel obviously- So I have now decided that junk is not green but blue.”

-William S. Burroughs (I’d like to thank novalark for sharing this WSB quote with us over a year ago. Haven’t heard from nova in a while).