The Bohemian

by Bill Bowler

Chapter 9: My Career

Young Walter Wobble quits school to go out into the world and find the People. With no money or prospects, he works as a busboy while writing poetry and dreaming of success. Through his tenement window, he watches from afar a young woman who lives across the street until, one day, they meet. Unfortunately there is already another man in Cynthia’s life, a man Wobble knows: he is Josef Mrak, and he has some very bad karma.

Some people were holding a benefit concert and poetry reading on behalf of the homeless at an old rock club on The Bowery. My brother’s girlfriend mentioned me to the organizers and I got invited to read. My name was in the Village Voice in the club ad that week.

I thought it was a non-event and expected the club to be empty, at least when I was reading. I figured the crowd, if any, would show up for the name acts later in the evening. One old-time New York poet, Elvin Feinberg, was scheduled to appear, and I was proud to see my name in the ad below his.

I took a causal approach to the reading, waiting until the last minute to select the poems and not bothering to memorize them. Cynthia agreed to come with me and looked ravishing in a tight sheer black jumpsuit and gray boots.

When we arrived at the club, I was shocked to find a huge crowd of people milling outside the door of a sold-out event. The benefit had apparently become the “in” scene for this particular evening. The nocturnal young denizens of downtown Manhattan’s rock and roll underground had heard the buzz on the grapevine and answered the call by gathering at the club entrance en masse as if on cue, dressed to the gills, each one cooler and more hip than the next.

We pushed our way in. The bar was so jammed, I could barely make my way back to the stage area. The crowd was so big, I decided they wouldn’t want me to go on at all, considering nobody knew who I was. I found the event organizer and introduced myself. He shook my hand, checked my name off a list on a yellow pad, and, to my horror, told me to stick close by.

There were some folk singers on stage doing a couple of songs and the thing was moving along at a good pace. The organizer turned to me and said, “You ready to go on? You’re next.”

The cold clammy hand of stage fright gripped my nervous system, fueled by the certainty that I had underestimated the circumstances and was totally unprepared.

I had selected three poems: “War Fever,” “The Death of Mendoza,” and “World War III.” I had them on three typewritten sheets and was frantically going over them, but was in such a panic, I went completely blank and couldn’t remember a single word.

The folk singers on stage finished their number and the MC took the mic.

“Well, folks. We have a poet now, and I admit I’ve never heard him read. But he comes very highly recommended so won’t you please welcome Walter Wobble!”

In a daze, I climbed the steps and crossed the stage, under the spotlights, to the mic, searching frantically in my pockets to find the folded up poems I had been holding just a moment earlier and which had now disappeared into thin air as if they had never existed. I gazed out at a sea of faces swirling in the darkness. The crowd was blasé, not unruly or noisy, just not particularly interested in me as the hundreds of conversations hummed and buzzed and the little dramas unfolded.

“Good-evening, poetry fans.”

No response, just the impersonal din of talking and drinking. In desperation, I began with “War Fever.”

Granma’s got it. Granpa too.
It’s worse than zits, B.O. or flu.
It’s worse than, um... than...

“Sorry,” I mumbled, searching the page for the forgotten line.

“Well, make up your mind!” someone shouted from the front row.

“OK...”

It’s worse than zits, B.O. or flu.
It’s them evil Russians comin’
After me and after you
And you and me know what they’ll do...”

I got through it somehow, reading it woodenly from the page in a kind of catatonic panic. The crowd deserved better. When I finished, I mumbled “Thank you very much” and slunk off stage with my tail between my legs to a smattering of applause and with a huge sense of having been unbelievably uninteresting.

I stood near the side of the stage as I drifted slowly back to Earth and resumed normal functioning. After another folk singer or two, a bald bearded disheveled middle-aged man in wrinkled khakis, who had been standing in the crowd back stage, moved towards the steps and was introduced by the MC. Elvin Feinberg! Feinberg went on stage, with no notes, no papers, and delivered a schtick, in character, with emotion, with clarity and diction, weaving the intricate songlike patterns of symbols, images, sounds.

He declaimed verse for ten minutes, from memory, as if ignoring the crowd or unaware of their presence. He communicated to all present the luminous vestiges of the inspiration that had visited him. He walked off the stage humbly, with a nod to the crowd, to thunderous applause.

In the commotion, I had forgotten about Cynthia. I shoved my way through the dense crowd to the front of the bar where I had left her and where you at least had some breathing room, though not much. I found her there, nursing a beer. She gave me a nice kiss.

“How was I? How did I look? Could you hear me?”

“Yes. You were fine. I’m very proud of you.” She took a sip of beer. “Some guy was trying to pick me up. He was nice. Not pushy. But if I just talk to be friendly, they get ideas and then they get nasty when you tell them to lay off. I told him you were my husband, the poet who just read. He said you looked like a businessman.”

“Whaaaat?!” I was mortified.

“I guess because of your nice white shirt and vest.”

I had expropriated my restaurant clothes for the event. Well that didn’t work. Wrong image. Cynthia and I stood, drinking beers and listening to the other acts. Someone passed a joint around and we both took a couple of hits. Around midnight, they must have opened the doors for the headliner’s crowd because, as packed as it had been, it was nothing to the massive, stifling, suffocating log jam it became.

Cynthia took my arm. “I’m going to faint.”

“What?”

“Please, let’s get out of here. I’m going to faint.”

She leaned on me and we started to push our way towards the door. She was swooning. I tried to hold her up, but she was blacking out, and I was having difficulty dragging her to the entrance.

“Cyndi!” I shouted, “Cyndi!” I slapped her face to try to revive her, but I suddenly had in my arms a heavy and unwieldy mass I could not hold. She crumpled to the floor, out cold.

A little guy next to me said, “You better get her outside.”

“Help me, will you?”

He took her arms, I took her legs, and we struggled to lift her. It was dead weight, a heavy shifting bean bag we could not get a grip on and could not lift. As we struggled towards the door, half dragging her, Cyndi’s coat fell to the floor, and another guy picked it up and followed us out. Both guys were very nice. I was scared and wanted to call an ambulance. I was hoping there would be a cop outside. When we got her out the entrance, there was still a big crowd congregating around the front door. We began to lay her out on the cold concrete with her coat for a pillow, but at that moment she came to.

Proceed to Chapter 10...