Benway’s Surgery

Benway’s Surgery

A transcription; for an adaptation of a live reading by William S. Burroughs, by Eric C. Keast (for puppet? or live? theatre).

(applause)

WSB: Uhh. a little short, short selection..
along the same lines from “Naked Lunch”

{Eric: Link to Naked Lunch blog entry for Kuro5hin articles?}

Narrator: The lavoratory’s been locked for three hours, solid.
I think they’re using it for an operating room.

Narrator: Nurse:
Nurse: I can’t find her pulse, doctor.

Narrator: Doctor Benway looks around... then picks up one of those rubber vacuum cups... at the end of a stick they use to (garbled edit) ...nces on the patient.

Benway: “Make an incision, Dr. Lymph!”
Narrator he says, to his appalled assistant,
Benway: “... I’m goinna massage the heart!”

(audience chuckles)
Narrator: Doctor Lymph shrugs and begins the incision. Dr. Benway washes the suction cup by swishing it around in the toilet bowl.

Narrator: Nurse:
Nurse: Shouldn’t it be sterilised, doctor?

Benway: Very likely...
But there’s no time! Mmmphh. Huhh, hgh.

Narrator: He sits on the suction cup, like a cane seat, watching his assistant make the incision.

Benway: You young squirts couldn’t lance a pimple without an electric vibrating skappel,
with automatic drain and suture.
Soon we’ll be operating by remote control, on patients we never see...
We’ll be nothing but button-pushers.

All the skill is going out of surgery,
all the “know-how” and “make-do”.

Did I ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can?
(audience chuckles)
Once: I was cort short...
without instrument one, and removed an ooterine tumour with my teeth...
(audience chuckles)
uhhhh...
That was in the Upper Effendi... aaand besides.



Dr. Lymph: The incision is ready, doctor.


Narrator: Dr. Benway forces the cup into the incision,
works it up and down.

Blood spurts all over the doctors, the nurse
and the wall...

The cup makes a horrible sucking sound.

Nurse: I think she’s gaawwn, doctor.

Narrator: Dr. Benway:
Benway: Well it’s all inna day’s work.

Narrator: He walks across the room to a medicine cabinet.

Dr. Benway: Some fucking drug addict’s cut my cocaine with Sannee-Flush!...

Nurse!
Send the boy out to fill this RX, on the double!

(applause)

WSB: (fading) Thank you.



Technorati Tags:
literature
blog