Free The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle Page A

I will get myself together, flap my arms, and split the cosmos. Go into nirvana, man, get me some rest on the big white couch of bliss. Not today though, man, today I must go to NBC.
    But first, man, I must sit down on this isolated park bench, man, flung up here in the bushes by some thoughtful juvenile delinquent. And even though my brief case is filled with water, fortunately, man, my herbal leaves and twigs are all contained in handy plastic bags recommended by Good Housekeeping, man, and hermetically sealed against the onslaughts of the Puerto Rican frogmen who tried to drown me. I have dry smoke, man, and now that I am in this quiet little spot, let me roll a tremendous joint of banana flakes in licorice paper, and though it is as big as a gorilla’s finger, smoke it all completely entirely down to the last stub-end, which I shall swallow. And then, fortifed by the life-giving brain-fog of banana smoke, I rise.
    But before I rise, man, why not roll still another one, to make sure I’m really stoned, because sometimes, man, in my condition, it is hard to tell.
    Sprinkle flakes into paper, make cylinders of fingers, roll perfect joint, and light.
    I am still sitting, man, not walking. Walk, Horse Badorties, walk in your wet suit. OK, man, I’m going, I’m moving, the big bird is floating down the day. I seem to be coming out of the park, man, as well as out of my mind. What, man, does that sign say …
    76th Street
    Jesus, man, what am I doing up here, NBC is down in Rockefeller Center. But there ahead of me, man, is the Museum of Natural History. Let’s go look at the stuffed animals.
    Go up the steps of the museum and enter the dark building into dark hallway, where a herd of old gray elephants are walking along tall, man, with glass eyeballs.
    Look, man, they have a stuffed gorilla family here, standing in a fantastically vivid life-like arrangement of foliage and rocks to simulate an African mountain range. The grass slopes down, and beyond it, curving in incredibly real fashion is a painting of great and further distances, the African plains. A gorilla is standing in his garden of Eden, man, looking down the hillside. Couple little baby gorillas sitting around fucking with some berries and the old lady gorilla is sitting in the doorway with her saggy gorilla tits. And coming up the hill through the far-away jungle trees of this marvelously accurate and beautifully arranged diorama of jungle life is a natural biologist scientist collector, man, with his net, and he is coming to stuff the apes and take them back to his weird house.
    Faint smell of decay in the air. Hides must give off a little stink every day. But dig, man, the sound of the great ventilators, making a tremendous hum in the background. Man, I must find the source of that sound. Here’s the office of the curator, man, go directly in. Secretary sitting at a desk, looks up. “Yes, may I help you?”
    “Fan Man. Here to repair the fan. Some trouble with the ventilator, we received a call at the main office.”
    “Oh, let me see … that would be maintenance. I’ll ring them …
hello
…
this is the curator’s office. There’s a fan repairman up here . There’s some trouble with the ventilator
… . ”
    “The pitch is slightly off, baby. We can always tell this sort of thing by the sound it makes.”
    “
Very good, thank you.
A guard will be here in a few minutes, sir, to take you.”
    “Thanks you so much.”
    “I’ve noticed it has been a bit stuffy in here today.”
    “Yes, the pitch is probably slightly off in the main blade.” Dig into satchel, bring out tuning fork, strike on kneecap, hold it up to secretary’s ear, give her A440 vibrations per second in her ear canal. “There, baby, that’s the proper pitch.”
    “How interesting. You tune it like … a musical instrument?”
    “Exactly, there is an amazing correspondence between fans and musical instruments, excluding, of course, the violin.”
    “Here is the