The Fan Man Read Free Page A

onto it all day and bring it with you tonight to St. Nancy’s Church on the Bowery. Sing this music, baby, and be filled with thrill-vibrations.”
    “Oh, I can’t read music.”
    “This music is waiting for you, baby, just below the surface of your waking mind. By coming to St. Nancy’s Church tonight at eight o’clock you will be taking the rapid upward path to instant musicianship. After rehearsal, Maestro Badorties will give you a private lesson at his Fourth Street Music Academy, above the Puerto Rican grocery store where, with unlimited credit he and his staff have purchased party sandwiches and will be brewing select teas from brightly painted tins in the Academy kitchen. Look at this music all day, baby … I’ll see you tonight… .”
    “Can I bring a friend?”
    “The Academy opens its arms to all students under the age of sixteen, who are given special scholarships, including her own room. We are presently negotiating with the landlord for the entire top floor of the building. Sing it tonight, baby, and bring your friends.”
    I feel like I’m passing out, man. Too much exertion of the precious contents of my energies inside this fifty pound black overcoat. I’ve got to get some food, man, or I will pass out. Get out of this park, man, and go to a grocery store, QUICK, and get a bottle of piña-colada soft drink. As a four-star general in the Puerto Rican Liberation Forces, man, Commander Schmuck is entitled to one bottle a day.
    But first I had better stop in the drugstore, man, and buy an astrology book for this month, to find out what’s happening to me, man. Because something must be happening, man.
    “What’s happening, man.” Smack fifty cents down on drugstore counter and walk off with my Horse Badorties genuine Aries natal program starbook, for today, let’s see:
    A mixed or muddled order
    and chaos threatens
    Another wonderful average Horse Badorties day, man. I’m mixed, muddled, and don’t know where I’m going. I’d better rewind my tape recorder, man, and find out where I’m going. Because right now I’m standing on a street corner, going nowhere.

    Little wheels of tape recorder spinning around. Click
on
button, hear:
    “Chinatown for dinner, man. It’s in The Plan.”
    “Right, man, I dig.” Horse Badorties is completely oriented now. Chinatown. The only question is: Chinatown in San Francisco or New York City? I could catch a plane to Frisco and be there by morning. Here is a chick, man, another chick who wants to sing.
    “Hey, baby, dig this music … tonight … St. Nancy’s on the Bowery … . ”
    The thing, man, that holds me together is my MISSION, man, for chicks and music. Without that, man, I am an empty bottle of piña-colada, which is what I must do immediately, man, enter my local Puerto Rican grocery store and empty a bottle of piña-colada.
    “May I halp you?” On a shelf over the head of the grocery lady, man, is a radio, and even through the Commander Schmuck earflaps, man, I hear the insufferable chicken-rhythms of Puerto Rican music. It’s too much, man. I’ll have to get out of here and skip the bottle of piña-colada.

Chapter 4
A Knight of the Hot Dog
    I am going downtown toward Chinatown, man. What a lovely day for a long walk twenty or thirty blocks down to Chinatown. I better take a subway, man.
    Going down the subway steps the oh no man dark subway steps down into the subway. Why, man, am I going down into the subway when I could be up in the fresh air? Here comes the Japanese No-play again, man: I’m moving in the slowest possible way, man, like a slow-motion dream, on the landing between the sidewalk above and the subway below, wondering, man, in my own hopelessly compulsive Horse Badorties way, what is the best thing to do with the day? I know of only one solution, man, and that is my fan.
    Digging into satchel and withdrawing fan. Turning on the little blades, man, and the warm air is blown against my face and I am alive again, man, in