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Pass on… Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I'll be here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There's a hotel and a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began – for no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each other off! Wipe this street out of my mind for ever – it hasn't an ounce of meaning in it.
The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and deeper into the South. I'm coming away from a little town by a short road leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might. I stand there a moment, wondering what it's all about. I hear another man coming on the trot; he's an older man and he's carrying a gun. He breathes fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He's a man hunter. I stand back as the others come up behind him. I'm trembling with fear. It's the sheriff, I hear a man say, and he's going to get him. Horrible. I move on towards the highway waiting to hear the shot that will end it all. I hear nothing – just this heavy breathing of the young man and the quick eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very quietly. “Where yer goin', son,” he says, quiet like and almost tenderly. I stammer out something about the next town. “Better stay right here, son,” he says. I didn't say another word. I let him take me back into town and hand me over like a thief. I lay on the floor with about fifty other blokes. I had a marvellous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine.
I plug on … It's just as hard to go back as to go forward. I don't have the feeling of being an American citizen any more. The part of America I came from, where I had some rights, where I felt free, is so far behind me that it's begi
Yes sir, I reached the Gulf of Mexico and I walked right into it and drowned myself. I did it gratis. When they fished the corpse out they found it was marked F.O.B. Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn; it was returned C.O.D. When I was asked later why I had killed myself I could only think to say – because I wanted to electrify the cosmos! I meant by that a very simple thing -The Delaware, Lackawa
When I woke up to the fact that as far as the scheme of things goes I was less than dirt I really became quite happy. I quickly lost all sense of responsibility. And if it weren't for the fact that my friends got tired of lending me money I might have gone on indefinitely pissing the time away. The world was like a museum to me: I saw nothing to do but eat into this marvellous chocolate layer cake which the men of the past had dumped on our hands. It a