MARC LEVY

ON STAGE AT THE KNITTING FACTORY 2002

Inside, standing room only, the large stage appears like the inside of Tiny Tim's head: abundant white gauze graced thick wood planks, shimmering tinsel bouquets hugged cracked plaster walls, large ungainly serpentine letters shaped from crumpled aluminum foil hung from thin steel wire enigmatically spelling out COLD CHANGE. Ninety percent of those who read or sang or told tales should have been shit canned on the spot: big women with big hair and matching attitude; agitated pseudo rappers aggressively laying down da deal; pup tent intellectuals speaking big words which did not impress; an impeccably white man proclaiming, “I'm going to read a poem about Billy Holiday. She just came out with a ten CD set.”

The audience smirks and the poem is long but he meant well and beat the clock since readers have three minutes ‘till a young flatulent girl stage left waves a big red flag, a gong honks from Radio Shack speakers, followed by a deep synthesized electric laugh.

I must have seen fifty readers that night. Eeriest was a tall thirtyish woman leading her graceful nine year old daughter, blue eyed with perfectly plaited blonde hair, out from the wings. The girl sat on a musicians stool, straddled her child sized cello between her legs, tenderly drew the bow, lowing out mournful 'om' sounds while Mom, a young looking Joni Mitchell, emitted a series of yearning yelps and susurrant screams graduating to full fledged incandescent rapture.

They clapped when it appeared she had finished but daughter, so cute, so dear, scowled and hissed, “She's not done yet.” At which point Mom ramped her quasi verbal mono gospel uber cantata to ultra overdrive, until the aforementioned flatulent girl flags her, the proud gong reverberates, the electronic laugh peals its voo doo laughter: but she doesn’t stop. Can you believe that? Fist shaking, body atremble, Mom screeches, “Praise Jesus, King of Kings, Praise him, praise him...” Her unruly face contorted by each frenzied word, her blazing forehead encircled by a halo of salty sweat. They gave her a good round of applause.

Next, a very sexy red head, mid twenties, trots out a new age folk tune, ripping off the Stones, but her boobs shook when she strummed that pine wood gee tar, which struck a tidy note in not a few male hearts.

A thick, pudgy middle aged man told a mindless story which lead absolutely nowhere. When finished he thanked the audience, who warmly applauded.

I could tell you about the sad, junked out, strange looking, wonderfully tressed, tin voiced, two chord, deaths head, urban cowgirl who could not sing if they gave her voice lessons on Mt. Rushmore; or the gray haired woman who six hundred times repeated, “Do it again,” inflecting her voice to convey a rainbow of feelings, not just orgasm; or the classical pianist booted off stage, the piano off limits and Bach's Symphony No. 10 not wanted, “No thanks,” said the stage manager, “I said, NO THANKS.”

But great too was the full house crowd and excellent vibes, though it all started out side when fifty four year old schizophrenic pal Tom, now on stronger meds but still hallucinating, tells me his latest: the spinning lights like arch angels wings that are actually his neighbors; the unknown entity which inhabits his house and wakes him at midnight; his LL Bean tassel fringed leather jacket, bought by Shoshana, who has email.

“Let’s go inside,” Tom said. Four hours later I trudged back to the subway. It was cold. Dumb fuck cold. It was New Years.

Marc Levy served with the First Cavalry Division as an infantry medic in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1970. He has studied writing with Larry Heinemann, Tim O’Brien, and Stratis Haviaras at the William Joiner Center. His work has appeared in: Slant, Peregrine, Masquerade Books, nycBigCityLit, Slowtrains, Cleansheets, Rattapallax, Viet Nam War Generation Journal, Skidrow Penthouse, and PLACES magazine. His work appears in the anthologies Stories From the Infirmary, Will Work for Peace and Best American Erotica 2000 and is forth coming in The Mammoth Book of Erotica, and Off the Cuffs (ed. by Jackie Sheeler). He was accepted to attend an ACA residence with Spalding Gray. A video of his war related prose and photographs, The Real Deal, is distributed by The Cinema Guild.

More of Marc's fabulous work can be found on Poetz 2000.