“Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry", by William Burroughs

MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
by William Burroughs
From Naked Lunch (1959)

Doctor “Fingers” Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conferents the cold blue blast of his gaze:

“Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix – I give you my Master Work: The Complete All American Deanxietized Man.”

Blast of trumpets: The man is carried in naked by two bearers who drop him on the platform with bestial, sneering brutality – The Man wriggles – His flesh turns to viscid, transparent jelly that drifts away in green mist, unveiling a monster black centipede. Waves of unknown stench fill the room, searing the lungs, grabbing the stomach.

Schafer wrings his hands sobbing: “Clarence!! How can you do this to me?? Ingrates!! Every one of them ingrates!!”

The Conferents start back muttering in dismay:

“I’m afraid Schafer has gone a bit too far.”

“I sounded a word of warning.”

“Brilliant chap Schafer – but.”

“Man will do anything for publicity.”

“Gentlemen, this unspeakable and in every sense illegitimate child of Doctor Schafer’s perverted brain must not see the light – Out duty to the human race is clear.”

“Man, he done seen the light,” said one of the bearers.

“We must stomp out the Un-American critter,” says a fat, frog-faced Southern doctor who has been drinking corn out of a mason jar. He advances drunkenly, then halts, appalled by the formidable size and menacing aspect of the centipede.

“Fetch gasoline!” he bellows. “We gotta burn the son of a bitch like an uppity Nigra!”

“I’m not sticking my neck out, me,” says a cool hip young doctor high on LSD25 – “Why a smart D.A. could.”

Fadeout. “Order in The Court.”

D.A.: “Gentlemen of the jury, these ‘learned gentlemen’ claim that the innocent human creature they have so wantonly slain suddenly turned himself into a huge black centipede and it was ‘their duty to the human race’ to destroy this monster before it could, by any means at its disposal, perpetrate its kind.

“Are we to gulp down this tissue of horse shit? Are we to take these glib lies like a greased and nameless asshole? Where is this wondrous centipede?

“‘We have destroyed it,’ they say smugly – And I would like to remind you, Gentlemen and Hermaphrodites of the Jury, that this Great Beast” – he points to Doctor Schafer – “has, on several previous occasions, appeared in this court charged with the unspeakable crime of brain rape – in plain English” – he pounds the rail of the jury box, his voice rises to a scream – “in plain English, Gentlemen, forcible lobotomy.”

The Jury gasps – One dies of a heart attack – Three fall to the floor writhing in orgasms of prurience.

The D.A. points dramatically: “He it is – He and no other who has reduced whole providences of our fair land to a state bordering on the far side of idiocy – He it is who has filled great warehouses with row on row, tier on tier of helpless creatures who must have their every want attended – ‘The Drones’ he calls them with a cynical leer of pure educated evil – Gentlemen, I say to you that the wanton murder of Clarence Cowie must not go unavanged! This foul crime shrieks like a wounded faggot for justice at least!”

The centipede is rushing about in agitation.

“Man, that motherfucker’s hungry,” screams one of the Bearers.

“I’m getting out of here, me.”

A wave of electric horror sweeps through the Conferents – They storm the exits screaming and clawing.