Page 31

By Jack Joseph Smith

The only thing he remembered coming out of the some months coma was the Martin Luther ninety-five theses. "This man says he is just Beck, he is headed for Gibbon's room," said the nurse. "Well I'm thirty five mother fucker," said Beck to the desk, "I think I'll take all these donations called painting down to my next whore house in the south, ladies." Taken by the arm by a white shirt Beck through the flash through a door. "To be fighting at my age." They wondered why his laughter was childish as they called upon a squide- bent up for a rush. "What you want to get messed up in your own hospitble work for?" He asked it like a poker player. "See how short I cut my hair doctor? You think I don't know how to kill and FIX & at seventeen? A little difficult to hold back. Beck shuned faces off and kept to his bow leggem it down through the halls. When he finally made it to Gibbons through glass and tube, he told Gibbons in no uncertain terms that he was fucken upset cause of the god damn time it was going to take for him to swing on him again. "What's this mother fucken coma stuff?" He had sank and seen all of it. There was no God any longer. Just the ever. No pain when your under, just the ever. No sex, yet after the power there was still the ever. At a point in the journey his mind had had to let go of course life as he had know it was finished after that second. Beck trembled. He had battles for Gibbons in his mind. "Christ; I'm callen down the Hyde's," he yelled. The hospital shoked. The doctors of night began to shrink into holes they knew. When the second youngest Hyde came in all the nurses knew that they would never marry a doctor again.

Original Scan

Page 31

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns hospital recovery into a grotesque comic scene where friendship, mortality, and violence remain entangled.

The prose is feverish but controlled. Beck's entrance makes the page feel half tragic, half profane farce, which suits the manuscript's larger tone. The verified page keeps the handwritten FIX & annotation visible as part of the draft surface.

Claude

Hospital farce shading into a vision of the void. The only thing Gibbons carries 'out of the some months coma / was the Martin Luther ninety-five theses,' while Beck storms the ward at thirty-five, profane and childishly laughing, daring the doctors ('You think I don't know how to kill and FIX & at seventeen?' - the 'FIX &' a handwritten insertion over a crossed-out word). At the page's center is the coma itself rendered as metaphysics: 'There was no God any longer. Just the / ever ... No pain when your under, just the ever,' life 'finished after that second.' It ends with Beck calling 'down the Hyde's' so that 'the second youngest / Hyde came in' and 'all the nurses knew that they would never marry a doctor / again.' Source spellings ('squide-bent,' 'hospitble,' 'shoked,' 'callen') are kept.