Story for performance #527
webcast from Sydney at 07:49PM, 29 Nov 06

Crystal Leir was dancing up a storm. Mr. Jonny Spencer the coolest man in Rock and Roll was screaming out from the stage in all his beautiful form,

‘I LOVE YOU.’

Crystal yelled back, shaking her b-hind like a shimmy dancer.

‘I WUV YOU.’

Crystal, although now 19, had never learnt to pronounce her ‘L’s.’ This is because her mother, Silver Lining had never learnt how to pronounce her ‘L’s’ either. Her grandmother was from some strange and faraway place called Watvia, where even though the Watvians were a reasonably intelligent race of people, even though they spoke English, they had never learnt that Love is not pronounced Wuv and…

Crystal Leir was bopping up and down in her little white ruffled mini and black boob tube. Her blonde curls swinging like a mass of Hassidic tendrils.

‘I WUV you’, she called back again.

Mr. Johnny Spencer couldn’t of course see Crystal, because as usual, his crowd was large and Crystal Leir was only an inch taller than the average midget.

But her lack of height never shortened any of Crystal’s fun.

She was a bombshell exploding, a white kitten on Coca Cola, a Gidget with the gidge.

Uh huh.

Crystal was a showstopper.

Crystal shrugged her bare shoulders up and down to the music and then she blinked like a baby who has just seen bedroom ghosts cooking up fairy floss.

Uh huh.

Rocky D Angeles had fingers as long as cactus stems. Rocky D Angeles was born in the Antilles, his mother was a missionary who opened her bedroom door one night and the angel of heaven came in and left her Rocky. Rocky’s father was actually a visiting reggae artist, who had sought refuge at the missionary on a dark and stormy night; but because Sister de Angeles didn’t really know the difference between Reggae and Rock and Roll she called her boy, Rocky D.

Rocky D Angeles was standing behind Crystal Leir at the concert.

When Mr. Jonny Spencer called out once more ‘Ladies and Gentleman, I Love You.’ Rocky’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down so fast it could have played the squeezebox.

‘I Love You,’ yelled Jonny again.

And Rocky gulped. You see, although Jonny loved Rocky; Rocky didn’t know anybody else that did. His mother had now died, his father he’d never seen, and he had never been in love, because he thought no woman would want a man whose fingers were as long as cactus stems.

‘Now Ladies and gentleman, I want you all to DANCE! Yeah, let’s dance man’, yelled Jonny at the crowd.

So there they were: Crystal bopping around like a kitten on Coca Cola, Rocky D’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down so fast it could have played the squeezebox, when…

BOOM.

Big Ted, Rocky’s friend, stamped his big feet so hard it opened a tiny crack in the floor down through which Crystal fell.

Unfortunately nobody saw this, because as I said before, Crystal was so small that one moment she was there and the next moment she wasn’t.

So although the band rocked, the crowd bopped, nobody could hear little Crystal Leir stuck yelling up at them all in her near-midget’s might for somebody to hear.

‘Ladies and Gentleman, I want you to all to sit down.’

Mr Jonny Spencer, the coolest man in Rock and Roll has this song where he makes everybody get down on the floor and then he crawls around like a rattlesnake on heat. So there they were, everybody on the floor, legs crossed and waiting.

And then, in that single most important moment of a good Rock and Roll show, that silent moment; when the guitars stop, the drums pause, the keyboards wait, that silent, single moment before the climax, the magic, the alchemy, where nothing should be heard, where nobody should utter a word, especially nothing like,

‘HELP! Please help me, I’m down here.’

It was Rocky D that heard her. He was sitting right on top of the little hole in the floor through which only Crystal could have fallen through and in his big, baritone voice said,

‘Hey Man, something is moving down there.’

Five hundred faces turned from Jonny to Rocky and then back again,

And Jonny, the master, the coolest man in Rock and Roll said,

‘Yeah, it’s love man, shifting the earth on its axis.’

And it was love. It was love because Rocky D pulled open the crack in the floor and reached down with his long, cactus stemmed fingers and pulled little Crystal Leir right back out again.

Eyeballs did somersaults, hearts glued like magnets. Ten giant fingers and ten teeny-weeny ones intertwined like forever-fitting puzzles.

‘Wow,’ said Crystal to Rocky D, ‘You’re Wovely.’

Rocky gushed, Jonny screamed and the crowd went nuts.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Amelie Bird.