THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED
WORKS BY WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
PUBLISHED BY GROVE PRESS
Naked Lunch
The Ticket That Exploded
The Soft Machine
Nova Express
The Wild Boys
Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
Last Words
THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED
William S. Burroughs
posed little time so
I’ll say
“good night”
Copyright © 1962, 1964, 1967 by William S. Burroughs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
An earlier version of this novel was first published in 1962 by The Olympia Press, Paris. Part of the section entitled silence to say good bye appeared in The Insect Trust Gazette, No. 1, Summer 1964; a portion of the Appendix was published in The International Times, London.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burroughs, William S., 1914– 1997.
The ticket that exploded.
Previously published: London: Calder & Boyars, 1968.
ISBN 0-8021-5150-7
I. Title.
PS3552.U75T487 1987 813’.54 86-33486
Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
03 15 14 13 12 11 10
Acknowledgment
The sections entitled in a strange bed and the black fruit were written in collaboration with Mr. Michael Portman of London. Mr. Ian Sommerville of London pointed out the use and significance of spliced tape and all the other tape recorder experiments suggested in this book. The film experiments suggested I owe to Mr. Anthony Balch of Balch Films, London. The closing message is by Brion Gysin.
“see the action, B.J.?”
It is a long trip. We are the only riders. So that is how we have come to know each other so well that the sound of his voice and his image flickering over the tape recorder are as familiar to me as the movement of my intestines the sound of my breathing the beating of my heart. Not that we love or even like each other. In fact murder is never out of my eyes when I look at him. And murder is never out of his eyes when he looks at me. Murder under a carbide lamp in Puya rain outside it’s a mighty wet place drinking aguardiente with tea and canella to cut that kerosene taste he called me a drunken son of a bitch and there it was across the table raw and bloody as a fresh used knife . . sitting torpid and quiescent in a canvas chair after reading last month’s Sunday comics “the jokes” he called them and read every word it sometimes took him a full hour by a tidal river in Mexico slow murder in his eyes maybe ten fifteen years later I see the move he made then he was a good amateur chess player it took up most of his time actually but he had plenty of that. I offered to play him once he looked at me and smiled and said: “You wouldn’t stand a chance with me.”
His smile was the most unattractive thing about him or at least it was one of the unattractive things about him it split his face open and something quite alien like a predatory mollusk looked out different well I took his queen in the first few minutes of play by making completely random moves. He won the game without his queen. I had made my point and lost interest. Panama under the ceiling fans, on the cold winds of Chimborazo, across the rubble of Lima, steaming up from the mud streets of Esmeraldas that flat synthetic vulgar CIA voice of his . . basically he was completely hard and self-seeking and thought entirely in terms of position and advantage an effective but Severely limited intelligence. Thinking on any other level simply did not interest him. He was by the way very cruel but not addicted to the practice of cruelty. He was cruel if the opportunity presented itself. Then he smiled his eyes narrowed and his sharp little ferret teeth showed between his thin lips which were a blue purple color in a smooth yellow face. But then who am I to be critical few things in my own past I’d just as soon forget..
What I am getting at is we do not like each other we simply find ourselves on the same ship sharing the same cabin and often the same bed welded together by a million shared meals and belches by the movement of intestines and the sound of breathing (he snored abominably. I turn him on his side or stomach to shut him up. He wakes and smiles in the dark room muttering “Don’t get ideas”) by the beating of our hearts. In fact his voice has been spliced in 24 times per second with the sound of my breathing and the beating of my heart so that my body is convinced that my breathing and heart will stop if his voice stops.
“Well,” he would say with his winsome smile, “it does give a certain position of advantage.”
My attempts to murder him were usually direct. . knife . . gun . . in some one elses hand of course I had no intention of getting into social difficulties . . car accident . . drowning . . once a shark surfaced in my mind as he plunged from a boat into the tidal river . . I will go to his aid and clutch his torn dying body in my arms like a vise he will be too weak from loss of blood to fight me off and my face will be his last picture. He always planned that his face should be my last picture and his plan called for cinerama film sequences featuring the Garden of Delights shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse young boys need it special its all electric and very technical you sit down anywhere some sex wheel sidles up your ass or clamps onto your spine centers and the electronic gallows will just kill you on a conveyor belt the Director there bellowing orders:
“I want you to shit and piss all over yourself when you see the gallows. Synchronize your castor oil will you? And give the pitiless hang boy an imploring look for Chrisakes he’s your ass hole buddy about to hang you and that’s the drama of it...”
“It’s a sick picture B.J.”
Well it seems this rotten young prince gives off whiffs of decay when he moves but he doesn’t move much as a rule has eyes for one of the prisoners wants him for his very own fish boy but the younger generators are on the way. Partisans have seized a wing of the studio and called in the Red Guards . . . “Now what do you boys feel about a situation like this? Well go on express yourselves . . This is a progressive school . . These youths of image and association now at entrance to the garden carrying banners of interlanguage . . Her fourth-grade class screamed in terror when I looked at the ‘dogs’ and I looked at the pavement decided the pavement was safer.. Attack enemy over instrument like pinball . . Shift tilt STOP the GOD film. Frame by frame take a good look boys . .”
“They got this awful mollusk eats the hanged boys body and soul in the orgasm and they love being eaten because of this liquefying gook it secretes and rubs all over them but maybe I’m talking too much about private things.”
“You boys going to stand still for this? Being slobbered down and shit out by an alien mollusk? Join the army and see the world I remember this one patrol had been liberating a river town and picked up the Sex Skin habit. This Sex Skin is a critter found in the rivers here wraps all around you like a second skin eats you slow and good . . Well these boys had the Sex Skin burned off by the sun crossing the plain they could just crawl when they reached the post quivering sores they was half eaten mostly shit and pieces of them falling off so I called the captain and he said best thing was bash th
eir skulls in and bury them in the privy where he hoped the smell might pass unnoticed but there was stink in congress about ‘unsung heroes’ and the President himself nailed a purple heart to that privy you can still see where the old privy used to be other side of those thistles there . .
“Now that should show you fellows something of the situation out here and the problems we have to face . . take the case of a young soldier who tried to rescue his buddy from a Sex Skin and it grew onto him and now his buddy turns from him in disgust . . anyone would you understand and that’s not the worst of it it’s knowing at any second your buddy may be took by the alien virus it’s happened cruel idiot smile over the corn flakes . . You gasp and reach for a side arm looking after your own soul like a good Catholic . . too late . . your nerve centers are paralyzed by the dreaded Bor-Bor he has slipped into your Nescafé . . He’s going to eat you slow and nasty . . This situation here has given rise to what the head shrinkers call ‘ideas of persecution’ among our personnel and a marked slump in morale . . As I write this I have barricaded myself in the ward room against the 2nd Lieutenant who claims he is ‘God’s little hang boy sent special to me’ that fucking shave tail I can hear him out there whimpering and slobbering and the Colonel is jacking off in front of the window pointing to a Gemini Sex Skin. The Captain’s corpse hangs naked at the flagpole. I am the only sane man left on the post. I know now when it is too late what we are up against: a biologic weapon that reduces healthy clean-minded men to abject slobbering inhuman things undoubtedly of virus origins. I have decided to kill myself rather than fall into their hands. I am sure the padre would approve if he knew how things are out here. Don’t know how much longer I can hold out. oxygen reserves almost exhausted. I am reading a science fiction book called The Ticket That Exploded. The story is close enough to what is going on here so now and again I make myself believe this ward room is just a scene in an old book far away and long ago might as well be that for all the support I’m getting from Base Headquarters.”
“You see the action, B.J.? All these patrols cut off light-years behind enemy lines trying to get through some fatassed gum-chewing comic-reading Technical Sergeant to Base Headquarters and there is no Base Headquarters everything is coming apart like a rotten undervest . . but the show goes on . . love . . romance . . stories that rip your heart out and eat it . . Now how’s this for an angle? Are you listening B.J.? This clean-living decent heavy metal kid and a cold glamorous agent from the Green Galaxy has been sent out to destroy him with a Sex Skin but she falls for the kid and she can’t do it and she can’t go back to her own people because of the unspeakable tortures meted out to those who fail on a Mission so they take off together in a Gemini space capsule perhaps to wander forever in trackless space or perhaps?”
winds of time
The room was on the roof of a ruined warehouse swept by winds of time through the open window trailing grey veils of curtain sounds and ectoplasmic flakes of old newspapers and newsreels swirling over the smooth concrete floor and under the bare iron frame of the dusty bed — the mattress twisted and molded by absent tenants — ghost rectums, spectral masturbating afternoons reflected in the tarnished mirror — The boy who owned this room stood naked, remote mineral silence like a blue mist in his eyes — sound and image flakes swirled round him and dusted his metal skin with grey powder — The other green boy dropped his pants and moved in swirls of poisonous color vapor, breathing the alien medium through sensitive purple gills lined with erectile hairs pulsing telepathic communications — The head was smaller than the neck and tapered to a point — A silver globe floated in front of him — The two beings approached each other wary and tentative — The green boy’s penis, which was the same purple color as his gills, rose and vibrated into the heavy metal substance of the other — The two beings twisted free of human coordinates rectums merging in a rusty swamp smell — spurts of semen fell through the blue twilight of the room like opal chips — The air was full of flicker ghosts who move with the speed of light through orgasms of the world — tentative beings taking form for a few seconds in copulations of light — Mineral silence through the two bodies stuck together in a smell of KY and rectal mucus fell apart in time currents swept back into human form — At first he could not remember — winds of time through curtain sounds — blue eyes blurred and twisted absent bodies — The blue metal boy naked now flooded back into his memory as the green boy-girl dropped spaceship controls in swirls of poisonous color — The blue boy reached out like an icy draught through the other apparatus — They twisted together paralyzed — He and Bradly grinding against each other in pressure seats, while heavy metal substance guided their ship through the sickening twist of human cloud belts — galaxy X chartering a rusty swamp smell — Their calculations went out in a smell of ozone — opal chip neighborhood of the flicker ghosts who travel the far flung edge of Galaxy X hover and land through orgasm — flickering form of his companion naked in copulation space suit that clung to his muscular blue silence — smell of KY and rectal mucus in eddies of translucent green light — his body flushed with spectral presences like fish of brilliant colors flashing through clear water — tentative beings that took form and color from the creatures skin membrane of light — pulsing veins crosscrossed the two bodies stuck together in slow motion time currents — lips of tentative faces, rectums merging structure one body in translucent green flesh —
Bradly’s left arm went numb and the tingling paralysis spread down his left side — He felt crushing weight of the Green Octopus who was there to block any composite being and maintain her flesh monopoly of birth and death — Her idiot camp followers drew him into the Garden of Delights — back into human flesh — The Garden of Delights is a vast tingling numbness surrounded by ovens of white-hot metal lattice with sloped funnels like a fish trap — Outside the oven funnels is a ruined area of sex booths, Turkish baths and transient hotels — orgasm addicts stacked in rubbish heaps like muttering burlap — phantom sex guides flashing dirty movies — sound of fear — dark street life of a place forgotten — “It might take a little while.” The Garden of Delights . . GOD . . Remember my old C.O. standing there with a hangman’s noose in his hands . . “You see this noose, Lee? This is a weapon.. an enemy weapon.”
That was in 1962. In the years that followed I contacted a number of undergrounds with various aims methods and organizational setups among which was an equivocal group of assassins called the “White Hunters.” Were they white supremacists or an anti-white movement far ahead of the Black Muslims? The extreme right or far left of the Chinese? Representatives of Hassan i Sabbah or the White Goddess? No one knew and in this uncertainty lay the particular terror they inspired. The District Supervisor received me in a paneled room with fireplace, a country house it would seem rain outside a misty landscape. After motioning me to a deep leather armchair the D.S. walked around behind me talking in a voice without accent or inflection, a voice that no one could connect to the speaker or recognize on hearing it again. The man who used that voice had no native language. He had learned the use of an alien tool. The words floated in the air behind him as he walked.
“In this organization, Mr Lee, we do not encourage togetherness, esprit de corps. We do not give our agents the impression of belonging. As you know most existing organizations stress such primitive reactions as unquestioning obedience. Their agents become addicted to orders. You will receive orders of course and in some cases you will be well-advised not to carry out the orders you receive. On the other hand your failure to obey certain orders could expose you to dangers of which you can have at this point in your training no conception. There are worse things than death Mr Lee for example to live under the conditions your enemies will endeavor to impose. And the members of all existing organizations are at some point your enemy. You will learn to know where this point is if you survive. You will receive your instructions in many ways. From books, street signs, films, in some cases from agents who purport to be and may actually be membe
rs of the organization. There is no certainty. Those who need certainty are of no interest to this department. This is in point of fact a non-organization the aim of which is to immunize our agents against fear despair and death. We intend to break the birth-death cycle. As you know inoculation is the weapon of choice against virus and inoculation can only be effected through exposure . . . exposure to the pleasures offered under enemy conditions: a computerized Garden of Delights: exposure to the pain posed as an alternative . . you remember the ovens I think . . exposure to despair: ‘The end is the beginning born knowing’ the unforgivable sin of despair. You attempted to be God that is to intervene and failed utterly . . . Exposure to death: sad shrinking face . . he had come a long way for something not exchanged born for something knowing not exchanged. He died during the night.”
A series of oblique references: “Zurich Saturday morning meet the so convenient Webber family at the B.P. Auto Stop. Hear realize that B.P. is not only and you’ll find them buying everything from organization Shannon believe they can tape recorded at 23 Mount St it is that’s what I thought and there’s a little boy that’s been reproduced in a lot of books hasn’t it? He has a plate camera is it going to be published in Vogue? Part of the city’s Friday child loving Tuesday for that matter oh really St. Louis Encephalitis of birth and nickname that’s the only time 19 have died but the disease quickly spread. What in Germany? He had been meaning Sexexcellency Sally Rand cunning Navy pilot Alan B. Weld two acts for three saints in outer space proudly registered in Phoenix was it are you sure that’s right infectious night biter Mo. 18 I’m going to answer the doorbell definitely definitely the first time in thirty years Houston’s outbreak the first time in who said Atlantic City? I was supposed to have done the sets for it and B. was supposed to acquire the virus from birds yeah then I think they paid a dollar for infectious disease processing the actual film but the disease quietly spread to all West Texas beauty unscheduled in outer space . . ‘You mean you did it yourself you didn’t have your assistant do it?’ . . ‘Nope just spreading epidemic of St Vacine maybe we should’ . . ‘How long did it take you to process this photo to squirt at anything that flew dyeing and all that it’s all part of the city’s sudden healthy people infectious beauty disease spreading epidemic of immune humans . . Half an hour? St. Louis Mo. giving hope you mean it’s not finished yet? This photo the stripper exuberance its going to fade away? You should have that have a page fading away Time September— (a number not clear)—It is a musical family . . parachute just in case . . I can now drink reservoirs of the disease is that a new play to get at the source spray everything? I heard Friday’s child loving a registered stripper nicknamed Conny oh are you going to remember this later that last of the last ditches like you came through the door in his moon suit maybe he’s there? Oh no . . It’s getting too spooky I’m getting the spinal cord and brain a male with female laughter they have this script he just dropped it like that they always start hissing it’s all part of the game of war infants pay the price female laughter just came out of Time Starlet Weld Tuesday what? That’s beautiful that is fogged out in distance there should be somebody so called actually this is how the old saw ‘I think sex is healthy’ just two stoned Germans naturally did the same long shuffle . . That’s the clock if you set it two hours in advance the last of the last like we are in London a sentence words together in and out you know Manic Goddess 18 of 19 was done the painting was done never look at a model uninhibited disease by us astonishing we had done it without ever having a model starlet trapped in the sentence with full stop young painter are models myself look have you been there already?”