Summary Torochok
US Burroughs
Torch
William Li was born and raised in a fashionable quiet suburb of one of the big cities of the Midwest. In childhood and adolescence, he did not stand out among peers, except that he read them much more. At the end of Harvard, William staggered for a year on pre-war Europe, the benefit of a stable monthly income of one hundred and fifty dollars saved him from having to make a living. When the war began, he volunteered for the army, but there he did not like, and he was commissioned with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. After the army, for the sake of curiosity, he tried many professions – from a private detective to a bartender, from a worker at a factory to an office clerk – and it was at this time, at the end of the war, that he first learned what drugs were.
A person tries drugs, and then dependence is developed. This happens, as a rule, when nothing else in life attracts much interest, really does not inspire at least such nonsense, as
Unlike alcohol or grass, real dope is not a source of buzz and not a stimulant. Foolishness is a way of life.
William had a friend who worked in the port and regularly dragged out everything that badly lies. One day, this friend came to him with a machine and a package of five ampoules of morphine – he had fifteen more such packages at home – and asked to help find a buyer for this “good.” At the machine, the buyer found it easy, with morphia had to tinker. However, quite quickly through another friend of his, William came out on two types, Roy and Herman, who took part of the goods. A few days later he injected one of the remaining ampoules.
Following the wave of William’s warm, nonexistent relaxation, he was seized by a wild fear – some terrifying image loomed side by side, never getting in sight and thus becoming even more terrible. And then the
For a month, William was gradually using the rest of his morphine; after the third dose, the attacks of horror ceased. When the stock was exhausted, he began to buy the potion from Roy. The same Roy taught him all the technical wisdom of the addict’s life, including the ability to get recipes for morphine and to digest them in pharmacies: some doctors were caught trying to simulate kidney stones, for others who did not have a different clientele, prescription addicts was the main income item for addicts. Gradually, and spend time, William was in a bar, where mostly blue parties hung around, getting money for the next dose, shuffling into the pockets of drunks in the subway.
Somehow Roy’s friend, Hermann, invited William to steal a whole kilogram of New Orleans marijuana. He agreed. They later sold the herb with the help of a lesbian from Greenwich Village, who was a poetess. The case was advantageous, but too boring: unlike normal addicts, grass lovers, who used to take it usually for a couple of dollars at a time, certainly wanted the seller to smoke and pobazaril with them – did not break off the buzz, in short. In general, the grass is considered to be a waste of drugs: there is no getting used to it, and it does not harm health. Just behind the wheel, after smoking, it is better not to sit down, as the usual sense of space and time from the jamb-another is completely lost.
As was to be expected, eventually William finally sat on the needle, he now had to be pricked thrice a day to maintain the norm. He settled with two of the same torments; Together they took out money and recipes, bought nonsense, grew together. The process of obtaining the drug and its consumption limited the entire sphere of their interests, the interval of time between doses was filled only with the expectation of the next.
The first time William was burned and received a term – four months probation – for the fact that he incorrectly specified the name and address in the morphine recipes. To continue and further to bomb the drunk was too risky, and he decided to do street trading, the benefit of one of his buddies, Bill Heine, brought him down with a good wholesale seller of heroin. Get rich on this business will not get rich, except that you will always earn the amount of potion you need, and the constant cash of its stock eliminates the fear of one day not getting a dose. Soon he and Bill got their clientele, and things went more or less normally. The trouble is that among the customers sooner or later there are unreliable types: some time and again strive to beg, others do not observe the elementary care, others are ready at the slightest risk to lay the seller. Because of such unreliable types, the police eventually overlaid them with Bill from all sides. It was necessary to tear from New York.
Bill Heine went to the treatment in Lexington, and William Lee went to Texas, where his farm was located. He thought to break the narcotic dependence independently, using the so-called Chinese method: after each injection, the bottle with the solution is filled with distilled water, the dose gradually decreases, and after a while you already drive clean water through the veins. This method did not work, a wild breakage began. There are other intolerable pains – dental or in genitals – but they are not close to those that you experience when suddenly you stop pricking. After all, breaking is the same death, the death of all the cells hanging from the drug; until these cells die, and in their place do not live healthy, you writhe in hell.
Having thrown the car in the parking lot, William got on a train to Lexington. Treatment in this closed institution was reduced to a week course of synthetic surrogate morphine, the dose of which was lowered from the injection to the injection; From the next after the course of the rehabilitation period of complete abstinence from drugs, William evaded and went out sick. With the help of wheels, he somehow interrupted and then lived for several weeks without drugs. Even moving to New Orleans, he first led there the existence of a normal person – drinking, which drug addicts never do, wandered around the taverns, but somehow on drunk all the same, he once opened and everything returned to normal. If you once already had an addiction, it takes very little to get it back – and again, day after day, there were rhythms of doses and pauses between them, filled with fuss with clients, the same, in fact, scum,
The life of the people and the more merchants day after day became more and more stiff: the police were furious, and under the new law you could be screwed up even for traces of punctures on your hands. One day, William and his partners thoroughly stuck. He shone a long time, and the lawyer hinted that it was prudent to spit on the bail, under which he was released from prison, and to find himself on the other side of the Mexican border.
In Mexico City, it became clear that all the foolish trade here is held by a certain person named Lupita, who got along so well with the police that she not only turned a blind eye to her business, but also regularly eliminated competitors. So William had to not only abandon the idea of his own business, but also buy from Lupity’s rotten quality and godlessly expensive potion. Over time, however, began to help out recipes.
For a year that he was in Mexico City sat on a needle, William tried to tie five times, but nothing came of it. The last time he scrambled on a mixture of alcohol and wheels and got rid of drugs, but for a few weeks he was incredibly drunk. Having got wind of it one morning, he almost choked with the smell of urine and with horror realized that this stench comes from himself. How people die from uremia, William saw; the doctor who examined him said that there would be one more bottle of tequila – and the end.
One way or another, but for several months, William was not pricking. Kaif, who gave just come into fashion cactus-peyote, he somehow did not come. In the States to return was completely without a mazue: there he was waiting for a court, and besides, the country was swept by a real anti-drug paranoia, from old acquaintances who sat down, who disappeared somewhere, who rushed… In short, it remained to move further south, to Colombia, where they say they learned from some Amazonian greenery to make a new drug that aggravates telepathic receptivity – they were even interested in the Russians and used to control millions of slaves in the camps. William also had telepathy problems.
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