on the fly; As a waitress at Max's Kansas City in the late sixties, writer Joan Silber floated among the stars of art and rock.

Byline: Joan Silber

When I first came to New York, I knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know much else. One evening, a sculptor boyfriend took me to Max's Kansas City, and watching those waitresses whiz by in their miniskirts, I saw the brilliance of leaving my underpaid job as a copy editor to work nights in a place that hip.

In the late sixties, Max's was huge, crowded, smoky, noisy. It is hard to believe now how much time we had to hang out then-rents were lower, and extravagance was reserved for excesses of behavior. Though Max's owner, Mickey Ruskin, was a tyrant, he liked artists and would let anyone run a tab who knew someone he knew. The place's chaotic energy got heavier as the night went on; everyone got drunker at Max's than anywhere else.

The motif of the place was red and black: red cloths and napkins on the tables, waitresses in black. My legs were covered with dark, textured stockings. I remember being happy to see those legs leaping across Vogue's page, sheathed in black like mine in the heat of summer.

New girls were put on the top floor, the less stylish district of the restaurant, so we had to do a lot of running to the kitchen, downstairs. I kind of liked all the physical activity, but my stockings rarely got through the night without having holes gouged in the net. I'd go home smelling of broiler smoke and lobsters and tobacco, with bits of the signature dried chickpeas in the pockets of my black taffeta apron, a tattered victor of the night.

When I had the late shift, I'd get stuck working the back room. This was where the Warhol group hung out-not easy to wait on. They had their own dramas, their own flamboyance; interruptions about ordering or paying tended to startle them. Warhol himself was still recovering from being shot by Valerie Solanas. Sometimes an outsider would ask me how Andy was doing, and I'd pretend I knew. "Doing much better," I'd say.

I wasn't a very good waitress. Nothing in my commendable education at Sarah Lawrence (the same college where I now teach) prepared me for the multitasking involved in getting orders straight for seven tables at once. A bartender who saw me put a maraschino cherry in a martini said, "What are you going to do, dear, when your looks run out and you have to depend on your brains?"