Horse Badorties Goes Out

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. —Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," 1936

We decided to spend a few minutes analyzing our motives–something we often do when there’s nothing good on television. —Calvin Trillin, "A Day at the Spaces," 1977

But wait!  there’s more at Esquire’s 70 Greatest Sentences, which I stumbled upon looking for that immortal epic “Horse Badorties Goes Out”, by William Kotzwinkle.  He penned the immortal lines

“I am all alone in my pad, man, my piled-up-to-the-ceiling-with-junk pad. Piled with sheet music, piled with. garbage bags bursting with rubbish, piled with unnameable flecks of putrified wretchedness in grease. My pad, my own little Lower East Side Horse Badorties pad.

I just woke up, man. Horse Badorties just woke up and is crawling around in the sea of abominated filth, man, which he calls home. Walking through the rooms of my pad. man, from which. I shall select my wardrobe for the day. Here, stuffed in a trash basket, is a pair of incredibly wrinkled-up muck-pants. And here, man, beneath a pile of wet newspapers is a shirt, man, with one sleeve. All I need now, man, is a tie, and here is a perfectly good rubber Japanese toy snake, man, which I can easily form into an acceptable knot.

SPAGHETTI! MAN! Now I remember. That is why I have arisen from my cesspool bed, man, because of the growlings of my stomach. It is time for breakfast, man. But first I rnust make a telephone call to Alaska,

Must find telephone. Important deal in the making. Looking around for telephone, man. And here is án electric extension cord, man, which will serve perfectly as a belt to hold up my falling-down Horse Badorties pants, simply by running the cord through the belt loops and plugging it together.”

That, and so much more.  Go read it.  Remember, it was funny as hell when I read it in 1973—but then again, I was sixteen.