From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,rec.arts.movies,alt.cult-movies
Subject: Re: Naked Lunch
Summary: The Talking Asshole Routine
Date: 26 Aug 92 06:32:10 GMT
 <1992Aug15.173836.12965@henson.cc.wwu.edu> <71294@apple.Apple.COM> <jamesp.714099146@bison> <l9aitgINNiba@news.bbn.com> <1992Aug24.080730.10533@cs.aukuni.ac.nz>
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
In-reply-to: mnor1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz's message of Mon, 24 Aug 1992 08:07:30 GMT

In article <1992Aug24.080730.10533@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> mnor1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Mark Hiro           Norman         ) writes:
   In <l9aitgINNiba@news.bbn.com> ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria) writes:

   >the ``talking asshole'' is from _Naked Lunch_ (told by Dr. Benway in
   >the novel)) or acted out (e.g. the discussion of pyrethrum vs.

   I don't suppose you could post the talking asshole story? It and the
   story of Professor Fingerbottom gave some friends and I great laughs.

Herewith, the talking asshole routine from _Naked Lunch_, pp.
131--133.  Portions deleted from the movie are in [].  A bit added in
the movie, is in {}.

======================================================================

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk?  His
whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words.
It was unlike anything I ever heard[.

This ass talk had a sort of gut frequency.  It hit you right down
there like you gotta go.  You know when the old colon gives you the
elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do
is turn loose?  Well this talking hit you right down there], a bubbly,
thick stagnant sound, a sound you could _smell_.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like
a novelty ventriloquist act.  [Real funny, too, at first.  He had a
number he called ``The Better 'Ole'' that was a scream, I tell you.  I
forget most of it but it was clever.  Like, ``Oh I say, are you still
down there, old thing?''

``Nah!  I had to go relieve myself.'']

After a while the ass started talking on its own.  He would go in
without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags
back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks and
started eating.  He thought this was cute at first and built an act
around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and
start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights.  It
would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it
wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth.  Finally it talked all
the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it
to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it,
but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: ``It's you who
will shut up in the end.  Not me.  Because we don't need you around
here any more.  I can talk and eat _and_ shit.''

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly
like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth.  [This tissue was what the
scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into
any kind of flesh on the human body.]  He would tear it off his mouth
and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly
and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell.  So finally
his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated
spontaneous{ly}[---(did you know there is a condition occurs in parts
of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates
spontaneously?)---]except for the _eyes_ you dig.  That's one thing
the asshole _couldn't_ do was see.  It needed the eyes.  But nerve
connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain
couldn't give orders any more.  It was trapped in the skull, sealed
off.  For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the
brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because
the eyes _went out_, and there was no more feeling in them than a
crab's eye on the end of a stalk.

-30-
Bob
Newsgroups: alt.drugs