Lee, a gay drug user and dealer, and the narrator of Naked Lunch, is trying to elude an undercover police officer in Greenwich Village, New York. Aware of the tail, Lee manages to escape by jumping over a subway turnstile and getting on a departing train before his pursuer. Lee then describes various strange characters in what he calls “the industry,” which refers to the underground world of drugs, criminality, and madness he inhabits. One of these characters, the Vigilante, is a man who hung three gay men in a public park before the police caught him. Lee explains how a police informer and agent called “Willy the Disk” (7) is also following him. Instead of a mouth, “Willy has a round disk […] lined with sensitive erectile black hairs” (7). Knowing that Willy is tracking him and that he’s close to arrest, Lee buys a second-hand car, stocks up on heroin, and “start[s] west,” leaving New York.

Police apprehend the Vigilante for the possession of heroin. He’s then sent by a judge to a federal institute for people with mental health conditions. There, he faces an absolute “dead end,” with nothing to look at but a toilet, a washstand, and the bars of his cell.