The Fan Man (10 page)

“This is the music, Mr. Reynolds … which we will be singing on the show.”

“Show?”

“Didn’t my secretary … my appointment was for this afternoon.”

“I don’t recall. …”

“On the Lower East Side, Mr. Reynolds, in the slums, run-away teen-age chicks are singing church music … the concert is just two days away … I seem to have dislocated my head … Love Concert in Tompkins Square Park… .”

“Run-away teenagers?”

“Fifteen-year-old chicks … fracture of the kneecap, see it protruding … singing church music, man … one million sheets of the music you have in your hand have been distributed all over the city, we expect a considerable crowd… .”

“Concert?”

“The day and hour is written on that sheet … possible laceration of the greater fibula… .”

“I think we’d better get you to the hospital, Mister …”

“Badorties, Maestro Badorties of the Fourth Street Music Academy . . contusions of the … young girls who have run away from home come to live and sing at the Academy, which welcomes them with broken arms. If you could help me to my feet… .”

“Yes, of course … can you walk… ?”

“I will use my umbrella as a cane … a most important concert … I assure you it has news value, can you help me to the elevator … I will go directly to my family doctor … over at Bellevue… .”

On the street once again, man, with satchel and umbrella, and I have gone to NBC, man. I have informed the network of the Love Concert. Now it is up to the gods, man, to make it happen. Look, man, it is quitting time, and all the secretaries and executives are on the street, man, hustling along. Everybody flooding into the subway, man, and Vice-president Badorties must descend into the darkness with the rest of the working class.

Going through the turnstile, standing on the platform, and here comes the impossibly-crowded car into which not a single more person can fit, they are already hanging out the windows. It stops and a hundred more people get on and I am one of them, man, and my umbrella is another one, and we are inside, standing straight up, crushed together in the car.

It is the middle of summer and we are packed stuffed wedged in the subway, and there is absolutely no air, man, to breathe. And I cannot get to my fan, man, my arms are pinned.

Riding, riding, five hundred people in this car, man, all of them pissed-off, hate the boss, going nuts, dropping dead, fainting outright but supported by the crowd.

Mumble mumble kill somebody fiendish energies collect down in this tunnel thrown off by countless workers every day. Kill the boss death push in front of subway car fart sweat foul. Can’t stand this subway, man, it overloads the brain, man, but I cannot get out, even when the doors open, I am jammed too much in the center and my umbrella is stuck up in a strap handle. Reading the subway ads, people getting off, getting less crowded, reading the subway ads, shrink your hemorrhoid, easy terms borrow needlessly when you must, our family makes this sauce for generations out of stenographers, you’ve come a long way, baby. A LONG WAY! Jesus Christ, man, where am I, I must be at the Lower East Side by now, man. It does not
… L
ook familiar, man, as I step out of the subway car.

Up the subway steps, man, walk up, see where I am.

I am on Brooklyn Heights, man, there is the sea below. A wild wind is blowing and the sun is dropping toward the ocean. The water is gold and the tugboat goes through the gold.

I am with you again on the Heights, man.

I am sitting on a park bench, man, on the cliff-heights of Brooklyn, looking out across the water. How peaceful, man, I’ve got to get out of here, Brooklyn is the end of nowhere. Alright, man, I’m off the bench and walking. Lead weights in my brain, man. It is nearly impossible, man, to function with shrinking Japanese-Chinese shoes and my head on backwards. Carrying satchel and umbrella, flopping along the street. Horse Badorties coming apart, going along. When I was a little kid, man, I used to dig a hole in Van Cortlandt Park everyday and crawl into it.

What is this I see, man, it is a toy store. Must go in, man, and look around. I’m in the store, man, a little old Brooklyn toy store, and I am buying not one, but two music boxes, man.

“Thank you, sir, and your change.”

Out of the store, man, before I buy more. What a wonderful purchase. Little music box, you are my little orchestra of steel men, man. Play same notes over and over, perfect coordination. Let me now wind up the box with this Japanese key–seems to be stuck, man. The motherfucker is stuck already. I am not five yards away from the store and the music box is jammed. I cannot take it back, man, that would not be playing the game. This is my music box, man. It’s a good thing I have another one.

This other one is working, man, the two little figures on top of the box are dancing around, round and round and the little steel musicians are playing, plinka-plinka. This toy, man, will afford me hours of musical pleasure.

Booooooiiiiinnnnnnnnggggggggggg

What is that sound, boooooiiiiiinnnnnnnggggg, man, like a broken spring. It is a broken spring, man. What a tremendous deal I just made, man. Two Japanese music boxes that don’t work. Four figures waiting for the music. A perfect moment, man. Everlasting No-Play.
Waiting for the dance
. It’s nirvana music, man. Complete silence.

Here is the subway entrance again, man. So much of my life, rnan, is spent underground. “One token, pleak.” Give token-lady freak-face, see her eyes pop, and I am going through the turnstile and here comes the train and I am on it and going all the way back to the Lower East Side.

Here I am, man, getting out of the subway on the Lower East Side, man, climbing the steps, hitting the street once again, man, at Cooper Union and St. Mark’s Place, back to my people, man. Feel the filth and dust, man, blowing into my eyes and the stench of piss and shit and vomit and old beer cans, man, up my nose. We’re back, man, where we belong.

St. Mark’s Place, man, with one headshop after another, man, where I will SELL A FEW FANS! Go into this weird psychedelic emporium, man, with rotating lights give me a headache and incense make my eyes water, how wonderful, man. Over to the counter, man, where the manager is sitting in a high silk hat.

“Listen, man, what you need to stimulate sales is one of these fans, man, dig.”

Hauling out fan, clicking the switch, nothing happens. “The batteries are dead at the moment, man, and it is filled with water, but anyway, man, you get the idea–for heads to cool themselves.”

“How much you want for the thing?”

“I buy them for one dollar and ninety-five cents and I sell them for one dollar and ninety-five cents. People ask me why. I’ll tell you why, man–they are holy objects, which make music, a little humming note, and that is why I cannot allow myself any profit on them.”

“I’ll give you a buck and a half.”

“Terrific, man, that’s even better for my soul, I’ll be losing money on the deal.”

“How many you got with you?”

“Just this one, man, and I’d leave it with you, but it’s my only sample. However, I have a tremendous shipment coming in any moment, man.”

“I’ll take a dozen.”

“Groovy, man. How much do you want for this special battery-powered back-scratcher in the showcase, man?”

“Cost you one dollar and ninety-five cents.”

“A necessary item, man, haul it out.”

And now I have made another purchase and filled my already incredibly heavy satchel with yet another precious valuable object, a battery-powered back-scratcher with a long handle, man, and a little plastic hand on the end of it, which vibrates back and forth. Apply to third eye, stimulate visions. I will sell it as a chakra-massager, man, and that way it will be a holy object for which I will not be able to charge more than one dollar and ninety-five cents. Another Horse Badorties scheme, man, by which I can’t make any money. Get out of this store, man, before you turn into a saint.

Across Second Avenue, man, and down the street to First Avenue, and further down–to Tompkins Square Park, man. And dig, man, there is the saxophone player blowing some notes on a park bench with a trombonist, man, and the trombone sounds like an elephant coming through the jungle, man, and the saxophone sounds like some weird prehistoric bird. Man, these are musicians.

I must get this on tape, man, it is essential, sound like animals gathering around a waterhole, wild, wonderful, quite a crowd gathering around, man, and I am setting up my two tape recorders, and now, man, I am also taking out of my satchel my incredibly weird instrument, man, my moon-lute. It’s got a round thin sounding box on it, man, and four strings that go up a bridge shaped like the neck of a snake with a dragon’s head on top of it. The strings are tightened by four huge wooden knobs, man, which look like ears. It is the weirdest fucking instrument I have ever seen, man, and when you play it it sounds like you are choking a hundred Chinamen. The incredible moon-lute is tuned, man, with the saxophone and trombone. Saxophone smile, man, and the trombone slides open his eyes and smiles too, man, and now, man, we will play some music.

Moon-lute rhythms, man, to drive you crazy. Intricate plinka-plinka, man, all those Chinese cats, man, in the moon-lute strings, dancing and jumping around screaming, man, plinky-plink.

It is an incredibly weird sound, man, the likes of which no one in Tompkins Square Park has ever heard. It is so weird, man, it is driving me crazy to play it, but at the same time it is so perfectly beautiful, man, because I am master of every opening and closing rhythm pattern known to the mind of man, and in moments like these, man, when I am playing them all, I know, man, that music should be the only thing I ever do. Which is why I am going to become a used-car salesman instead, man. What a wonderful sound, man, the Horse Badorties omniscient musical genius moon-lute sound, I should be hiring a mechanic at this very moment, man, to fix my mail trucks when I buy them.

Fingers going, man, fifty fingers, all over the strings, progressions, outward, upward, backward, downward, resolution of chords in unthought-of never-before-discovered hierarchies of Horse Badorties specialized musical perfections, man, how I wish I was eating a clam sandwich instead of fucking around with this blissful ecstasy, man.

This is so beautiful, man, I have to split over to my pads immediately, someone might be trying to phone me about some carrots. Loveliness abounding, man, in superb musicianship of moon-lute, saxophone, and trombone, crowd standing awestruck, man. Man, these cats know how to play.

Yes, man, Horse Badorties knows how to play, been playing since two years old, and now we are playing back two thousand years, man, back through the centuries, man, in musical excursion back through the ages, different lifetimes coinciding–I knew you there, man, when we played lyre and were thrown out of the gates of Athens, and further back, man, I used to bang an Egyptian piano while you played the dog-headed flute and you played the Etruscan bagpipe, man, and we ran through the woods with the Babylonian police after us.

This is simply marvelous music, man, I’m so happy, I’d better stop now, man, I have to go and buy a submarine. Oh, man, how this little moon-lute performs, in petite figurations, first position second position barre chords of unearthly beauty learned in a Pompeian jail. And the trombone and saxophone are gut musicians, man, go anywhere, play anything, not afraid to leap around with their axes, man, they don’t give a damn, they’ve been shuffling around spaced-out for ages, man, the trombone sounds like an old hippopotamus, man, saying good morning

HOPPOPITAMUS? Man, that was my dream last night, man, I was playing music with an elephant and a hippopotamus, man, and here we are, man, saxophone and trombone and moon-lute, man, making jungle sounds in the park, fingering and sliding, microtone picking of supreme swiftness, saxophone making jungle rivers of smooth notes and a hollow wooden boat going along on that river, what music, man, vision music ineffable. Horse Badorties, man, though he is fucked-up, knocked-down, turned-around, blown-apart, worked-over, pasted-together, and falling apart, can play. In spite of all luckless stars, man, we are making great music. This is when I feel really free, man, but I don’t deserve it, I should be making a telephone call to my dentist.