DISPATCH: This’ll Have to Do (Scaffold at KGB)

That’s when the night pivoted. The screamers and smirkers had their moment, and then the quiet burned hotter.

It was 90 degrees and I was loitering outside KGB Bar with two guys who didn’t know each other, and only barely knew what they’d walked into. One didn’t know the scene at all. He knew me before I ever started writing, back when we bonded over dating people from the same cult and somehow making it out with jokes instead of trauma tattoos. The other was Scott Laudati, a writer from Brooklyn I’d meant to read with earlier when he was in town, but life got in the way. He’s got this punk energy, like someone who probably made a zine in 2004 and might sell you bootlegs outside a show. The kind of guy who's got books, a "fuck it" attitude, and shirts to prove it. Probably one of the kindest people I’ve met.

I wasn’t planning to write this. I was supposed to be covering Chicago events. But life’s weird and I was in New York, about to read in a bar lit up like the Cold War never ended.

The bartender was already inside but wouldn’t let us in yet. We waited on the stoop with jazz blaring across the street and a pile of readers who half-knew each other. Everything felt slightly too loud, and no one really knew what to do with their hands. I heard a few names but immediately forgot them. I’m always five seconds behind in group situations.

That’s the thing about these nights. You show up thinking it’ll be one thing and it immediately starts warping into something else.

I was wearing a retro MTV shirt. I never figured out how to be the type of woman people expect at readings. The ones who know how to dress for the occasion. I always leaned weird instead. Pop culture trash tees. Anything that signals I’m not trying to be palatable. If men can wear old band shirts and be called geniuses, I can wear this.

I’d brought two pieces: a funny Beetlejuice parody and a literary horror excerpt from a novel in progress. I asked my niece which I should read. She didn’t hesitate. The horror one. The one I’d never read out loud.

The reading took place in the main bar, lit in red with Soviet propaganda everywhere. Lenin stared out over the liquor like a dare. Inside was a relief. Cooler than outside, less chaotic. Somehow both too much and just right.

Bernard Cohen read first. He wore an ARMY shirt and handled the mic like someone who’d practiced letting go. A little swagger, a little shrug. It didn’t feel staged. It felt like someone who’d done this before and didn’t need to prove anything.

Then me. I told the audience right before that I’d be throwing pages into the crowd. I apologized in advance. Then I did it. Each page signed. One person got hit twice. He smiled and kept them. I had meant to just let them fall, but the way the lectern was angled, I had to toss them. The last page I threw to Scott. No one clapped during. No one shifted. They just watched. Then they clapped. It was the quietest, most focused set I’ve ever done.

A few people came up afterward saying they already knew who I was. I’m bad at faces and worse at pretending otherwise. Graham Irvin said hi and I stared at him like he was a waiter I thought I went to high school with. I’d just posted about our interview on Textual Healing earlier that day. It happens a lot. People know me, and I don’t know them, but not in an aloof way, more like my brain buffers too slowly for literary Twitter in real life. I smiled, nodded, acted normal. That’s the trick. It’s like playing a walk-on role in someone else’s dream, and pretending it’s fine.

Then Z.H. Gill. He screamed the second he touched the mic. Said something. I don’t know what. But it came out sharp and wild. He did it a few more times. Screams dropped into the middle of the piece like traps. The room didn’t know how to react. I didn’t either. It felt like a dare no one explained.

That’s when the night pivoted. The screamers and smirkers had their moment, and then the quiet burned hotter.

Cameron Darc read like she was letting us in on something. There was softness, but not fragility. She played with her hair, smiled when the room reacted. She didn’t push anything. She just let it sit. And the room got quiet in a different way. Not stunned, just fully tuned in.

Vivi Hayes came next. I’d never heard of her before, but her piece moved like someone who didn’t need your approval to speak. It was confessional, a little jagged, but in control. There was nothing precious about it. Just presence. I made a note to remember her name.

Then Katie Frank. Her piece was a perfect kind of mess. God, sex, psych wards. Everything at once and none of it performative. She dropped lines like "I want to be a perfect pervert" and "I’m not saying gut health came before sanity" without waiting for a laugh. She read like someone who’s been holding something in and finally cracked the lid. It was funny, but the kind of funny that lingers because you know it came from something real. She read like she didn’t care if we liked her. That’s what made everyone love her. I meant to tell her after, but I never found her. I blink and the good ones are always gone. She wrecked me in the best way.

Zac Smith closed it out. The walking Twitter thing that he is, reading horse poems in sunglasses. Said "thank you," then launched into another poem with the exact same name.

During the break, I asked if anyone had something to smoke. There were shrugs. My friend handed me his dab pen in the most casual way, like we were passing notes in class.

Afterward, I left for a bit. Went to Beetle House. The Tim Burton bar. Took shots. Shared stories. One guy was dressed like Beetlejuice. Beetlebro, I’ve since decided. He told me I had serious Libra energy. I told him I was a Virgo. He said, "Even worse."

I tipped with author copies of a poetry book I wrote in 2017. They’d been handed to me earlier that night by the roommate of my old publisher, someone who hasn’t spoken to me since a weird Twitter thing. Maybe it was a peace offering. Either way, it felt right to leave them behind.

Then I came back. Waited at KGB until Paradise Lost texted us that they had an opening. We didn’t know where else to go. Made small talk. Some compliments landed. Some felt like someone handing you a receipt for a thing you didn’t buy. A few of the people I really wanted to talk to had already ghosted out, and mostly the lit bros remained.

But this part I know:

The women shifted the room. Not by volume or force, but by doing something quieter and stranger. Cameron. Vivi. Katie. They didn’t play to the crowd. They didn’t ask us to clap. They just let something real unfold and didn’t flinch when we saw it. It stayed with me like static in your shirt you only notice when you're home and the lights are off. It didn’t ask for noise, but it deserved it. This’ll have to do.