Naked Lunch Serenade

Scene 1:
STRAWBERRY GIRL

To be impaired is to be enhanced, said the white dot of yang to its yin surrounding’s. Were I as brave as Hunter Thompson, she’d be passed out, leaning up against a wall in some unheated warehouse getting finger-fucked by some bouncer or a DJ and the shame of that is that then the bitch might never put pen to paper. She’s spent too long entombed as the wu chi zygote waiting for the birth of her own selfish demise and divide.Yes. To be impaired is to be enhanced for how else does brilliance over come insecurity and fear if not via an altered consciousness? Magic happens when she gets a massage, when she comes, when she’s rolling a spliff or tooting a spoon of wonder dust up her nose. Magic happens every time she chooses not to believe the archetypal philosophies of modern culture. Drugs are bad. Sex is great but too much is bad. Bad girls are still bad girls, and the Mick Jaggers and Kid Rocks of the world are still heralded for their sexual prowess. Well I say no more. I am Madonna’s daughter before Lola was ever born. I am her maculate conception and her bloody matted after birth. I am covered with placenta and pitocin and eye wash. I am a woman and I have lust in my brain and sense in my body. I am cellular memory that remembered to take notes. Never mind some aging crazed hippy and his ether filled escapades to fucking Vegas. That escapade can be had in the mind’s eye anytime day or night, anywhere. Even in mother fucking Ohio. So here we are pondering, pondering mistakes and excuses and wondering if there’s such a thing as regret, keeping his face in our mind’s eye. His sweet face and that honey tipped smile that just makes a woman think he’s perfect. Here we sit pondering regret with our yin surroundings and yet that little white dot keeps typing, keeps typing and he knows this is where she needs to be. She misses the sounds of traffic and the loud echoing splatter of his first morning shit. Daily routines… daily routines that were eleven years in the making and they’re gone, gone, gone. Sinks full of dishes have been traded for…daily routines, daily routines, daily routines …ah, domestic bliss. Here in this stale red state I’ve come to grow old and find myself somehow, without and in spite of him. My truest love was my greatest downfall. My Oedipus; my fault.
Scene 2:
CARRIE

Well, after I read the first chapter, I was like, 'wow, that's fucked up”. He just seems really repressed and the party is a parallel to his drug addiction. To get off, to get to Nirvana or whatever, they end up tearing each other apart even though they all have the same goal.
GABBY
What do you mean by parallel?
CARRIE
Well, like on page 80, he seems to parallel death to a time lapse. Look, here ... “He stands up screaming and black blood spurts solid from his last erection, a pale white statue standing there, as if he had stepped whole across the Great Fence”.
GABBY
Why is the Great Fence capitalized? I wonder if that's allegory for something.
CARRIE
See that's what I mean ... “climbed it innocent and calm as a boy climbs the fence to fish a forbidden pond-” He seems like he's paralleling death or a cross over to the high or something or other ...
GABBY
To like a childhood memory...
CARRIE
Ya think?
GABBY
Well that's what I see, like he's remembering fishing as a kid. You know how when you smoke a joint and your thoughts are just coming so many so fast and you can't keep up with them? Maybe it's just flashes of sex and death and childhood memories...
CARRIE
Uh huh, yeah exactly yeah, that's what I think it is. He doesn't seem like he likes himself.
GABBY
Yeah I got that too.
CARRIE
And the thing with Mary on page 84 where he's cleaning out her twat. It seems like a purification type thing. It's weird that he has such opposite view points on the same thing. First it's dirty, then it's clean.
GABBY
I thought of Jane's Addiction too on the bottom of 84 there, you know, “Gonna kick tomorrow”
CARRIE
Yeah, yeah ... The Party Leader reminded me of Pink Floyd's wish you were here, right here, “Come in boy have a cigar.”
GABBY
I got Pink Floyd a lot during this book actually but The Wall more than any other album. You know with the drones after the forced conformity machine.
CARRIE
Look at this, this is Toward Stonewall and it's by the guy Nicholas C. Edsall. I've been reading this book and it talks about gay culture all leading up to Stonewall and I think reading this helped me not be so freaked out by some the the gay sex in here. Like in The Exterminator does a good Job, two random guys hooking up for a blow job for money. Edsall's book helped some of this pre-Stonewall world make some sense.
GABBY
Yeah, 'cause I mean can you imagine, not being able to come out at all? I mean they put gay people in asylums for Christ's sake back them.
CARRIE
Yeah and even now, I mean, I was just coming out of Bounce the other night and there were these two gay guys and they're talking about their asses and their cocks and I'm just this prudish little lesbian girl and I'm like freaking out. Oh, yeah they were talking about schegma. We couldn't decide what that was.
GABBY (laughing)
It's mucus.
CARRIE
Is it? That's what we thought.
GABBY
Yeah, you don't get as much of that with girl on girl action.
CARRIE
Yeah, oh, and Doc Scranton's prolapsed asshole was hysterical.
GABBY
I thought so too!
CARRIE
And the fuck the establishment theme was loud and clear. Like on page 114 where the party leader was like don't dirty up my brand new car! 'cause some guy was gonna throw himself underneath it.
GABBY
Yeah, “Don't sacrifice your old dried up person under the wheels of my brand new Buick” Man that's just every fucking investment banker with their mammoth Park Avenue apartments. Mother fuckers, like they would give a goddamn about this kind of guy.
CARRIE
Totally. You know the main stream's dark side can never be hidden from the social deviants. The deviants see everything that going down. Like when the Red Necks burn the black man and they climax at the sight of him. I mean that's what they're doing. They say right here, “They really got relief.”
GABBY
Where are you?
CARRIE
I'm on page 106.
GABBY
Okay. Yeah, I see. And Red Necks and Nigra are both capitalized like they're cultural archetypes.
CARRIE
I guess. Yeah, they get off on his misery because they're not the ones burning.
GABBY
Yeah, he's doing exactly what Hamlet says an artist is supposed to do. He's holding a mirror up to society. And if you don't like what you see in the mirror ...
CARRIE
It's your own problem. Is the Sailor the dealer, in the exterminator does a good job?
GABBY
Yeah, I think so.
CARRIE
“Cause he's talking about “at fourteen lost two fingers”. Is the junk eating him or ...
GABBY
Maybe, or it's just another childhood memory but why would he mention it if it didn't have to do with ...
CARRIE
What the junk was doing to him, cause it really seems like he's trying to kick at this point.
GABBY
He is.
CARRIE
Yeah, right here. I thought it was really beautiful. “Junk is a one-way street. No U-turn. You can't go back no more.” You know he reminds me of this visual artist. I think I might make this the guy, I have to pick a master painter and then I have to copy his paintings, like the same size and everything. His name is Justin Bua and his book is called The Beat Of Urban Art. He takes images of reality and then distorts them so they become really like his own subjective reality. Naked Lunch reminds me of that.
Scene 3:
VAGRANT
You see this? Can you see it? You see how my hand's all swollen right there? You can see, can't you? Let me tell you how this happened. See I was ridin' the buses the other day, just passin' time ... wasn't botherin' nobody, and this cop, this er ... police officer, rather, got himself in a verbal altercation with another man ... an I was just sittin' there, you know, right across from 'em, and I had nothin' to do with this, but the cop, the police officer, he turned around and he seen me, you know, and he tells me when the bus stopped, he say, “You. Get out.” And I say, “But I ain't got nothin' to do with this, man.” And he grabs me by the arms and he pushes me from the bus ... with all his force, I'm talkin' 'bout now, with all his force ... and I can hear within the perimeters of the remainin' conversation, 'cause the doors haven't closed yet, I hear this very conservative young man, with whom the policeman has ... had gotten involved in this verbal altercation with, say, “I refuse to coexist with those people” And , you see, this mentality I ... I ... I really can't understand... because it is my belief that ... that we all as homo-sapians, we are all on this earth together and we must ... we must coexist in order to survive, you know ... it is imperative that we uh ... uh ...you know, agree to live in harmony now. And, the thing is ... what I am sayin' is that I am no better than any other grain of sand on this earth. Can you understand this? And if I see a rat out here on the street, I ain't gonna pay him no mind, alright? Because, because ... that rat, that rat can go his way and I can go mine. In fact, that rat has every right to go his way as I have every right to go mine. Yeah! Boy, an' you know I don't like rats, in fact I just might have the mind to kill that rat ... no, no, I don't know what I'm sayin' because I would never hurt that rat. I don't like 'em. I definitely do not like 'em 'cause you know I like dogs but I sure a s hell don't like rats. But no, no, ... I wouldn't never do nothin' to hurt 'em ... “cause I... I can coexist with them just like they all ... you all can coexist with me, right? Huh? Oh, oh sure sir, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was in your way. I didn't mean to be no trouble. I ... yes sir, I am a burden. I do realize that sir. I ... yes sir I do. You, you have a nice day, sir. You go on an’ have a nice day, a g'night sir. You just step over me like that sir ... go on an' step on over this rat. 'Cause that's all I am to you sir. That's all I'll ever be is a rat. But I don't mean you no harm, sir. I don't mean you no harm.