The Fan Man Read Free Page B

the humming breezes.
    Blue-haired old lady going down the steps. She needs a fan, man. Walk down beside her and cool her with gentle air currents.
    “What a lovely breeze.”
    “Yes, ma’m. Everyone needs a Horse Badorties fan. Take it with you on the subway and never be oppressed. Special buy-of-a-lifetime today, only $1.95. I wish I could sell you this one, but it’s my only sample. Pick one up sometime.”
    “I must do that. It’s so cool.”
    Going through the turnstile, man, clak-a-cruntcha through the turnstile, and into the dark tunnel. Lunatics everywhere. Happily I am fanning myself and wearing an overcoat so as not to be mistaken for a lunatic. I’m in the subway, man. What, man, am I doing in the subway? Here comes the train, I can feel the wind against my face, the great vacuum fan, pushing the air along ahead of it, rippling my beard. There is the subway driver, man, in his little control room, looking out the window. I salute him with my fan, man, and now I am getting in the subway car and am actually going to Chinatown when I should be going to Van Cortlandt Park to climb through the bushes. I was born up there, man. And soon I will return there to walk in the grass and have dreams, man!
    Directly across from me, man, is the subway window. And since it is dark in the tunnel and lighted in the subway car, I can see my Horse Badorties head reflected with hair sticking out in ninety different directions. Weird-looking Horse Badorties. Horse Badorties making demon little ratty face, crawling eyeballs into corners, wrinkling nose up rodentlike, pulling gums back, sticking teeth out, making slow chewing movements. Freaking myself out, man, and several other people in the car.
    Fanning myself with plastic breezes, making weird faces, what else, man, is needed? Only one other thing, man, and that is a tremendously deep and resonant Horse Badorties Tibetan lama bass note which he is now going to make:
    ‘‘Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnn.”
    Mothers with their children look at me, man, and then explain to their kiddies that if you don’t learn to blow silent farts in church you will turn out like that awful man. But the kids know, man, they know it is better to freely release the energies.
    However, while other passengers are sweltering in the summer heat, Horse Badorties swelters twice as much because he is wearing an overcoat. Subway doors opening see sign says
    CANAL STREET
    I must get satchel closed this is my Horse Badorties stop.
    “HOLD THE DOORS, MAN!” Putting away fan, trying to stand up, trying to get moving in gigantic overcoat, moving toward doors, which are closing on my Horse Badorties beard, entrapping the hairs and forcing me to stand here, man, without moving lest I receive the exquisite pain, man, of tearing out my beard by the roots.
    I am going an extra stop, man, with my beard caught in the door, so I can approach Chinatown from ten or fifteen blocks below. To stimulate the appetite, man.
    Here is the next stop, man, my beard is released and I am going out of the car and up the steps, man, coming out among the many warehouses below Chinatown. Streets are empty. The workday is over. Horse Badorties is completely alone, man, and in that case, it is time to step into a doorway.
    Open satchel take out special Montgomery Ward mail-order glass-enclosed water-filled wire-screened rubber-hosed lung-preserving mother-fucking hookah. And out of my moisture-proof herbalist’s pouch I am removing a generous pinch of Mexican papaya leaf, man, to get my enzymes flowing, sprinkling the leaves into the bowl of the hookah. And then I dig out the World’s Fair award-winning best-design Japanese perpetual match–a small square metal container filled with lighter fluid, in which a slender steel-supported wick of flint and cotton is immersed. By simply pulling out this match of cotton-steel and striking it along the abrasive face of the container, I shall have fire with which to