Read Online Junky by William S. Burroughs - Free Book Online Page A

with the skin drawn tight over his face and a spot of color on each cheekbone. Another of Izzy’s friends was a young ex-paratrooper named Matty, a husky, handsome, hard-faced young man who bore none of the marks of a drug addict. There were also two whores that Bill took care of. Generally, whores are not a good deal at all. They attract heat, and most of them will talk. But Bill insisted that these particular whores were O.K.
    Another of our customers was Old Bart. He took a few caps every day which he sold on commission. I didn’t know his customers, but I didn’t worry about it. Bart was O.K. If there was a beef, he would take the rap without talking. Anyway, he had thirty years’ experience in junk and he knew what he was doing.
    When I arrived at the cafeteria where we had our meet, there was Bill sitting at a table, his skinny frame huddled in someone else’s overcoat. Old Bart, shabby and inconspicuous, was dunking a doughnut in his coffee. Bill told me he had already taken care of Izzy so I gave Bart ten caps to sell, and Bill and I took a cab to my apartment. There we had a shot and checked over the stock, setting aside ninety dollars for the next ¼-ounce.
    After Bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. It was a gruesome sight. I remember once he told me how he’d been propositioned by a queer who offered him twenty dollars. Bill declined, saying, “I don’t think you would be very well satisfied.” Bill twitched his fleshless hips. “You should see me in the nude,” he said. “I’m really cute.”
    One of Bill’s most distasteful conversation routines consisted of detailed bulletins on the state of his bowels. “Sometimes it gets so I have to reach my fingers in and pull it out. Hard as porcelain, you understand. The pain is terrible.”
    â€œListen,” I said, “this connection keeps giving us a short count. I only got eighty caps out of the last batch after it was cut.”
    â€œWell, you can’t expect too much. If I could go to a hospital and get a good enema! But they won’t do a thing for you unless you check into the hospital and, of course, I can’t do that. They keep you at least twenty-four hours. I told them, ‘You’re supposed to be a hospital. I’m in pain and I need treatment. Why can’t you just call an attendant and . . . ’ ”
    There was no stopping him. When people start talking about their bowel movements they are as inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
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    Things went on like this for several weeks. One by one, Nick’s contacts located me. They were tired of scoring through Nick and having him steal the head off their caps. What a crew! Mooches, fags, four-flushers, stool pigeons, bums—unwilling to work, unable to steal, always short of money, always whining for credit. In the whole lot there was not one who wouldn’t wilt and spill as soon as someone belted him in the mouth and said “Where did you get it?”
    The worst of the lot was Gene Doolie, a scrawny little Irishman with a manner between fag and pimp. Gene was informer to the bone. He probably pulled out dirty lists of people—his hands were always dirty—and read them off to the law. You could see him bustling into Black and Tan headquarters during the Irish Trouble, in a dirty gray toga turning in Christians, giving information to the Gestapo, the GPU, sitting in a cafeteria talking to a narcotics agent. Always the same thin, ratty face, shabby, out-of-date clothes, whiny, penetrating voice.
    The most unbearable thing about Gene was his voice. It went all through you. This voice was my first knowledge of his existence. Nick had just arrived at my apartment with some score money when I was called to the hall phone by the buzzer.
    â€œI’m Gene Doolie,” said the voice. “I’m waiting for Nick, and I’ve been