"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There was me, that is Alex, and in the spot where my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, would sit was nobody. Those gloopy mates had got themselves picked up by the millicents and such as it was I is all alone in the Korova Milk bar, nursing my moloko and synthemesc and trying to make up my rasoodock what to do with the evening without them. I told the barkeep to put knives in the moloko, I want to feel that pricky prick, but he viddied me with a squinty eye and slid my moloko over the bar without saying not a word and went back to drying glasses and I should have cracked him a good one over the gulliver for it but I was in a charitable mood and decided to peet and wait for the synthemesc to kick in before kicking the great brachney's face in. I would enjoy it more that way.

But that brachney must have doped me because instead of my gulliver swimming with angels and atomics and the great stereophonic heroin voice of Bog after a few swallows I got dizzy and gloopy, my yahzick thick in my mouth and I could barely hold up my chin to light the cancer between my goobers. O that fucker. He'll be sorry-worry he put that vellocet in Alex DeLarge's gulliver, sorry like that woman and the two girls and the veck in the alley was sorry, horrorshow sorry in a pool of their own krovvy.

But then I was all a tangle trying to rise from the sofa and I spilled my moloko and it spread like a galaxy being birthed across the Korova's tile floor and the cancer dropped from my goobers and fizzled itself out in the moloko spread like a dying star when across the room what do I see but some strange chelloveck one seat over giving me the glazz, viddying me viddy the spreading moloko, giving me a good smirk. "Looks like you've got a drinking problem," says the chelloveck, and while the room is spinning this veck's face is perfectly clear.

"Milk," he says. "Did you know humans are the only species that routinely drink milk into adulthood? Lactose intolerance is the most common dietary complaint in the world. We lose our ability to digest milk past infancy. The stomach stops making enzymes. We grow new teeth for solid food." He pointed to the moloko on the floor, cancer twixt his fingers like a professor's pointer. "Our adult bodies know we don't need milk. So how come we keep drinking it?"

I had no clue what this veck was saying. I pay no attention to yabbers gobbing on and on while they're on the mesc. He slid in close on the slick seats of the milk bar. He was a tall veck, face battered but kraceevy. And dressed sharp, not like my droogs with their jelly mould and flip horrorshow boots but ragged denim and a shirt what covered with, if you viddied close, hundreds of photos of kraceevy ptitsa doing the in-out in-out with a hundred different vecks, I could barely make out what the veck was saying, so swimming before my eyes was a hundred different cunts and rots and hanks of luscious glory lubbilubbing over and over again.

"Think about it. Every single serving yogurt, every individually wrapped sliced of processed cheese is our refusal of maturity. The entire dairy industry is built on our addiction to our mothers. Our refusal of separation from the world of women. A morphine fix from some eternal tit." The veck fixed me with a viddy so sharp that I looked up from the in-out on his shirt and caught him with a viddy back hoping to scare him something horrorshow but he wasn't scared and instantly I knew I liked him.

"I don't like the moloko. I like what they put in it." I said, meaning the vellocet knives that should go pricky prick and make me jump to do all sorts of ultraviolence.

"You like the permission."

I squinted up my face. "Permission for what?"

"Permission for violence," the veck said, patient like a schoolmaster type. "Permission to indulge your true nature." He pointed to the moloko on the floor. "Permission from Mom."

I said nothing.

The veck reached into his jacket, took out another cancer, lit it, handed it to me and I put it in my rot and smoked deep.

"That's the problem," he said. "Three thousand years ago men like us – men who like violence, who like to hurt, who like to rape – we'd be an evolutionary success. You'd have progeny across the gene pool. Your DNA'd be making the rounds of so many family trees, they'd trace whole races back to you. Now, we sit in bars and drink milk souped up with drugs so we can forget that back on the savannah we'd be supermen. How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Eighteen." He shook his gulliver in disdain. "For an Australopithecus, that's middle age. You're genetically primed to go for the gusto, in a society that doesn't need it anymore. Useless as an overbred poodle."

I decided I changed my mind about this veck and wanted to crack him something horrowshow and I turned to the corner of the room like I was thinking and yelped up and came smash down on his head with the empty glass and he just grinned and I was shocked he didn't crumple like the others but I liked it. I liked to see the spraying glass and the moloko rivulets white-pink in the krovvy running down his face.

"That's the spirit," he smiled, and he pulled back and fist me cross the table, sprawling into the mannequins with the moloko fountains in the grudees, crumple me into a heap tangle on the floor.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" he said. "Violence feels good. It's purifying. It's the only thing that can save us. You're lucky enough to be male. Vagina dentata's just a myth. We're the ones whose bodies can be weaponized."

I was sprawled on the floor when he leaned tight to me and said, "You're used to giving pain. But you know what?" He pressed up to me, litso to litso like. "You have to give up. You have to realize that someday you will die. Until you know that? You're useless."

I fist his face again and he took it with radosty in his glazzers and said, "That's it. I want you to hit me as hard as you can." And I did, again and again, and each time he sucked it up and the krovvy flowed sticky and dark across his face and across my fist and stuck my fingers together and splattered on my whites and he gave me a good go and then laid into me, fist me again and again in the face and it felt so pure radosty I thought, is this what they felt? The woman and the two girls and the veck in the alley and everyone else who crossed my path when I was prickly with the mesc ready for the twenty-and-one. And the truth reared up. I didn't care what they felt and I never did. All I cared was right now, with that veck's fist beating me in the face and my own nose popping, krovvy running hot down my goobers tasting metal like that I was pure like a needle run red through a red hot flame.

Then the barkeep sees what a mess us droogs are making of his bar and he runs over but the veck cracks him a good one and he drops to the ground and I kick his guttiwuts until he spits up krovvy bile and lays still and and as we run out of the bar into Boothby Avenue, that merzky tunnel where me and my droogs beat that doddery starry schoolmaster type just last week, andI ask finally "What's your name?" and the veck says "Tyler." And I am fairly busting with radosty who needs me gloopy droogs when I've got this veck who loves the ultraviolence like I do. And I say, "O my Tyler let us run the night and find us some of the old in-out" and Tyler shakes his head and says "Still looking for women to solve your problems."

And I'm to ask what he means, I'm so itched to get going and find some ptista, that krovvy round my rot got me a pan-handle up against the inside of the old jelly mould when he presses me up to the alleyway wall and hisses in my ear "You have to trust me."

His rookers crawled around the old jelly mould around my crutch and I stiffened thinking no gollyboy is going to take me and I headbutted him and ran but he was too quick like, he tackled me and pressed me again up the wall and now I knew I was spoogy in over me gulliver and opened my rot to creech but he pressed his rot over mine and I jumped when I felt his yahzick crest over mine so stunned was I, I forgot to creech for help. I'm no gollyboy I thought. I'm not I'm not I'm not but Bog help me no ptitsa kisses like a fine young malchickiwick and O my pan-handle did not mind one bit what flavor rot kissed mine.

"See?" Tyler said. When his rookers went round my jelly mould this time I did not stop him, not when his fingers crept round my neezhnies down to my yarblockos that jumped under his touch neither. "Who needs women?" he said. "We waste our lives accumulating things we don’t want trying to impress them. But we've got everything right here." I did not listen as my glazzies were rolling up in the back of my head. I liked what he did to my pan-handle fine but I had better ideas.

"I like the ultraviolence," I said. "I mean, the in-out is horrorshow but I like it best when there's a bit of krovvy to go with." And Tyler smirked and said, "Don't worry, there'll be plenty of that" and flipped me over and wrapped his arm round my shiyah so my chin buried into his elbow whilst he held me tight like a scotina to be branded and pulled down my pants to just below and I could feel his pan-handle up between the sharries and as he pushed inside hot sweat ran down my litso and I felt a surge of radosty I only felt once before, whilst listening for the first time to the great 9th of Ludwig Van.

And then the moloko fog in me gulliver cleared and the chokehold round my shiyah melted away and there I was in the alleyway, my trousers down to my sharries like I was about to dung but got caught. Nobody was there. O when my droogs get out of the Staja O what fun we will have. I was cured all right.