It’s not something that really surprises me, in all honesty. The post-covid world is a strange and unpredictable place, and so I don’t blame the sudden uptick in the popularity of a remake. After all, people like something familiar in times of unfamiliarity.

And many of these remakes aren’t just a simple translation from original material to stage; there’s a lot of work that goes into moving something from one media form to another. These shows take characters and plot in a new direction due to this transfer.

Take some of the more popular adaptations right now: The Lost Boys, Stranger Things, The Outsiders, etc. All of these shows—while based on an original piece of media—have taken that story and drawn out new perspectives and nuances within the transfer from screen to stage. In some ways, it’s a similar concept to the question of if you take a ship and replace all its boards, is it still the same ship?

I’d say that the answer is no.

Within these adaptations, there is always some new light shed on the original material that makes it something different. It is not a direct retelling as the lyricists, script writers, directors, and all others involved in the transfer have their own ideas and interpretations of the original work. They view certain plot beats as important, want to expand or detract certain character arcs, and it makes for a very different version of a story that’s been told previously.

However, I won’t dismiss fears about the amount of adaptations on broadway, especially in light of the AI boom (don’t even speak to me if you’re a creative and you use AI to write “original” material). The lack of new, original material worries me to some degree; it indicates either an issue in accessibility or a sharp decline in our ability to digest new stories. Perhaps both.

But I do have hope that it won’t last forever. I’ve seen some phenomenal new and original plays this season, especially off-broadway.

That’s where it really matters most, I think.

Broadway itself is an entity: a large corporation disguised as independent theaters. But the fact of the matter is that “Broadway” in New York is an organization that aims to keep the most money coming in as they can; if another season of The Lion King is what sells, then they’ll keep that show on for as long as they can. It doesn’t matter if a new show could sell more or, more importantly, create engagement from both frequent and infrequent theater-goers; you will see The Lion King, and you will like it.

As a result, mainstream theater (what you could consider “the big stages”) isn’t as accessible as it used to be; it isn’t just that audiences can’t afford shows ( that’s a whole other essay), it’s also that many creatives are being kept out of the industry due to a lack of finances, good enough connections, or previous big name experiences. And so, the realm of possibility for large scale shows has shrunk drastically in the past few years.

But this talent isn’t just disappearing (after all, artists will find a way to create their art no matter what), instead it’s migrating off-broadway to smaller production teams and even smaller theaters.

I specifically think of places like The Tank that aim to allow new playwrights to stage their shows, many for the first time. And I’ve seen some truly phenomenal performances there. The only difference between the creatives there and on broadway is that one group doesn’t have the budget or the resources to put their show up on a larger scale stage.

That gap is something that’s gotten much worse in the arts over the past decade.

But, even with this all having been said, the upcoming broadway season has quite a few original musicals: Wanted and Galileo come to mind immediately. I think that this is a sign that things are shifting, however slightly.

So while it is alarming that most of the newest broadway productions are adaptations, I don’t think that it’s anything to worry about quite yet. There will always be adaptations and revivals; it’s human nature to retell and remake stories that we enjoy.

But, new talent does exist out there, and it’s pushing its way through the doors whether big theaters like it or not. And it won’t be ignored.

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I always try my best to make it if I can—if not because I know the understudy or swing going on, then because I simply enjoy a new iteration of a story I’ve seen before.

As lovers of both The Lost Boys musical—and seeing understudies and swings go on—my friends and I decided that we had to go to at least one of the two debuts this past weekend for Star. The way things worked out, we ended up going to Carissa’s debut (Liesie was so fantastic in their debut as well, and non-binary Star means the world to me).

I got lucky enough to be sitting front row.

^{(Thank you to my friend who braved the rush line while I was just returning from out of state, and sorry to my other friend who was banished to another section—we missed you terribly during the show, but could feel your telepathic communication throughout and were so excited to debrief with you after.)}

I love seeing understudies and swings—so much so that I have favorites in each show that I watch—simply because they showcase a new version of a character that I’ve come to love. And, just as importantly, they are just as talented as the actor cast in that principal role. After all, there’s a reason they’re allowed to go on.

Up until this point, Maria’s star was the only one I’d been able to see in person. She is extraordinarily talented and truly knows Star’s character inside and out; every night that I’ve seen her has been a true pleasure, and has reminded me why I love Star so much.

But I was so excited to be able to see a new Star shine on stage, just to see what would be different (maybe even what was the same).

Carissa’s star this past Sunday was vulnerable in a way that I hadn’t seen before. She wore her heart fully on her sleeve, and carried the weight of each and every action she made, long before those actions had been completed. It was almost as if she were aware of where this would lead and what the worst outcome would be, but felt powerless to stop it; her destiny was a one way street that she had little control over.

In many ways, she felt young: less hardened by the world and its weight. And this was clear to me in the way she sang—as if she were throwing her whole form into each and every note, trying to expel all of her emotions and have someone, anyone, listen to her—and the tears that I could see in her eyes at multiple points in the show cemented this.

Her riffs, and runs, and opt ups were so electric, so packed with emotion that at multiple points in the show, my friend and I would point out the goosebumps on our arms and the tears on our faces.

It was an energy, an almost naïve openness, I hadn’t seen before from Star. And it was especially prevalent in her solo song.

For Star, “War” is one of the most difficult songs in the show simply because of the sheer power it requires (in my humble, non-singer opinion). It’s emotional, it’s loud, and it’s very physically draining.

Carissa sang it in a way that I’m still thinking about, days later.

^{(My friend remarks, while helping me edit this writing, that, in her humble, very much a singer opinion: that song is so incredibly difficult—to let all those emotions live in you and to be able to let the audience feel them is such a feat that Carissa crushed effortlessly. I agree.)}

But one of the most important differences to me in Maria and Carissa’s Stars is in the anger.

Carissa’s Star is still angry, of course (how could she not be), but there’s a fresh sort of anger that she carries instead of an anger that’s had time to settle into something deeper; it’s like an open wound instead of scar tissue.

It’s as if Star is realizing, for the first time, that this is how the world works, that she will always be under the thumb of men who hold all the power.

It was haunting in an entirely new way.

I’ve seen the show far too many times now, and this version of Star made me cry at times that I’d never cried before, made me experience seeing the show for the first time all over again. It was something that reminded me why I love live theater so much.

This is the beauty of it: the ability to see a new actor in a role that you’ve come to know, and, as a result, seeing the show for the first time all over again.

Getting to see an understudy, a swing, or even a new principal in the role means that there’s a high chance I’ll discover something new about the character, think about them differently than I had before.

And while I could say millions of things about this performance, about the minute details that she made during this show, I’ll just say one last thing:

Carissa’s Star shone so brightly that even the spotlights looked dim.

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At first, I was excited; I love when traditional musicals and stories are reimagined and reinterpreted as queer, and I love it even more when new stories are made with queerness being the original. There is not enough queerness in the world, despite it being 2026, and I will absolutely take any type of representation that shows queer people as nuanced individuals that I can get.

However, a few hours later (after a long walk and much time to ruminate—too much time, I think) I thought about the production again. I had no idea why this specific reinterpretation was lingering so long in my mind, why it left me feeling odd in a way that queer retellings hadn’t in the past. And then it hit me:

The story was yet another male centered love story.

I want to reiterate that I am glad that this new production of the Fantasticks is gay. But it isn’t queer. And that’s the important distinction to make.

Both characters are cis men, will most likely be white men, and they will get the happy ending that queer people—people of color, trans people, non-binary people, and all the other identities that do not fit neatly into “cis, white man”—have been trying to get for decades.

It’s a frustrating thought to linger with.

After all, there are more fingers on one hand than queer love stories on Broadway that center women and non-binary individuals. And, the ones the do exist are often sidelined for their straight or gay male love story counterparts.

Take, for example, The Falsettos. Two of the main characters are queer women, and are just as important—if not more so—as Marvin, Whizzer, and Trina. They take care of the well-being of the other characters in more ways than one, making sure that Whizzer and Marvin are as comfortable as they can be, making sure that the family remains in tact.

And while there is a show of solidarity in the song “Unlikely Lovers”—showcasing how queer women were just as affected by the AIDs crisis as gay men were—it’s brief and, somehow, still almost entirely focused on Marvin and Whizzer.

These women don’t show up until the second act, nor do they have much character development of their own outside of the main, gay relationship.

Their songs are mostly—aside from the one song that Dr. Cordelia has on her lonesome—grouped with other characters, and do not allow them the room to grow and change as the others in the musical do. They don’t truly exist as their own, individual people—always either grouped together, or with the other characters.

And, while both women have names—Dr. Cordelia and Charlotte—these aren’t central to the story (to the point where I even had to look the characters up to make sure I was remembering them correctly). Upon their entrance to stage, they’re simply named “the lesbian from next door” and “her lover”.

Another queer relationship that comes to mind is that of Maureen and Joanne from Rent. Their relationship is a bit more central to the plot, I’d argue, than that of Dr. Cordelia and Charlotte, but it still falls flat in comparison to their straight or gay counterparts. And, more importantly, it’s filled with a large amount of stereotypes, many of which center around Maureen and her sexuality.

The pair of them have a single duet in the entirety of the musical, painting both women in an extremely characterized light; Joanne is the stereotypical masc lesbian who takes on the role of the man, and Maureen is the sensual bisexual who takes on the role of the woman. Their relationship is characterized as if they were straight instead of trying to explore the queerness that exists.

And unlike Mimi and Roger—who not only have multiple duets together, but also whose relationship is explored and showcased to be much more nuanced—Maureen and Joanne’s song paints their relationship as something doomed to fail, toxic mostly due to Maureen’s promiscuity.

The stereotype is something that’s common not just in theater, but also in much of our media when it comes to bisexual characters; they are prone to cheating simply because they like both men and women. Not only is it harmful, but it’s also just lazy writing.

It’s one of my biggest gripes with Rent, even though (much like Falsettos) I love the musical with my whole heart.

It was somewhat disheartening as a young, queer girl, just starting to get into theater, for the first representation she saw to be either viewed as not deserving of a name or doomed to fail.

And this doesn’t even cover how Broadway engages with non-binary people.

One of my friends reminded me about the casting in Jagged Little Pill, wherein they cast a cis woman as a nonbinary character. Granted, I am of the mindset that actors can play whatever character fits (after all, non-binary people can look and present in millions of different ways), but when there are already so few roles for non-binary individuals, it feels odd to cast in a way that excludes them entirely from the one character identity that would match their own. Especially when cis characters make up the overwhelming majority of those in mainstream theater.

Despite having a very real presence in the world, nonbinary people—just like queer women—do not exist in high quantities in the theater world. They are an anomaly to be used when a production wants to boast about their diversity, not a true piece of the world we live in to be reflected on the stage (much like people of color, although this is a much larger topic for a much longer essay).

Cis people (most often men) are still the default and, in the queerness of theater, gay men are the golden group. It’s almost as if the world of theater is saying queerness is only palatable if it exists in the form of cis (white) men.

My thoughts briefly drift to the Heated Rivalry musical parody. While technically an off-broadway production, the message still stands:

It is more important to remake material with cis gay men than it is to create something new with truly queer characters.

The fact of the matter is that, while the world of theater is progressive in many ways, it struggles when it comes to queerness. It is far more comfortable with male queerness than it is with real queerness.

But, I think, there is change occurring, albeit very slowly. There are more actors who are outspoken about queerness truly belonging in theater, about casting decisions that harm this fact (I specifically think of the most recent Hadestown casting and those actors who spoke about it, however briefly), and about the need to make sure that the theater is something accessible and open.

And, now more than ever, there are those who are willing to be on the stage and refuse to be quiet about their own identities, about their right to exist there, and about the communities that lift them up. It’s why I’m still here.

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So it isn’t really a shock to anyone that knows me that the musical has done the same.

The story and the songs are so phenomenally written, and the cast and crew are truly some of the best I’ve seen on stage; you can tell when performers love what they do, love the story they’re telling, and want the audience to feel that too.

(A brief pause here to comment on the fact that Shoshana Bean’s performance as Lucy Emerson is one that rips my heart out of my chest and then cradles it with love every show. A phenomenal actress and a phenomenal advocate, especially for the queer community. I could talk about acting choices of the entire cast, but that’s content for another article.)

I wrote a brief article here about seeing the musical based off the movie, and while I’m still a firm believer that community is the strongest point of any broadway show (and that The Lost Boys proves this; Vampire shows on broadway rarely ever make it this long, nor do they gain this amount of traction)—the more important part of this is the fact that vampires are reappearing not just in theater.

Generally speaking, vampires appear in our media at times of unease, of unrest, of not knowing when—or if—the world will even itself out. We take comfort in seeing humanity, in all its best and worst forms, displayed in a creature that we consider to be monstrous. It’s a testament that not all is as it seems.

But vampires aren’t new.

The first appearance of the current vampiric archetype was in the early nineteenth century; it came in the form of a short story titled “The Vampyre” by an author only literary buffs have committed to memory. Much later, this vampiric tale would morph into, the much more popular, Dracula by Bram Stoker (a book I was obsessed with in high school as I thought it made me seem more “well-read”, cooler to my peers who absolutely cared what I was reading).

At the time of these stories, vampires were meant to be horrific creatures of the night, beings who were not bound by the limits of human social rules and morality—they were free to do as they pleased with whoever they pleased, and this was something horrifying to readers of a puritanical era.

They were written to be monsters of ourselves, beings that represent all of our darkest fears and our most intimate longings. They were not popular figureheads of epic romances, nor were they exceptionally beautiful because they were a manifestation of our darkest parts.

Over time, this changed; vampires became glittering figures, the creatures slowly became attributed to the whims of teenage girls (the disdain towards the interests of teenage girls is a whole other essay), and, and interesting note, cultural conservatism declined alongside the popularity of vampires.

These beasts were no longer the harbingers of some kind of sinister sexuality, some deeply repressed human trait. Instead, they simply became sexy—fantastical beings that we could imagine as stronger versions of ourselves.

But, despite the change in the appearance of the beast, the bones still remain the same; Vampires—even in their modern form that renders them closer to sirens than traditional vampires—act as a direct counter culture to conservatism and fascism. They are part of the occult—of things that are deemed unnatural, un-Christian, by the far political right—and the fact that anyone could spend time worshipping them with the same reverence as a deity is blasphemy to many.

Their existence in popular culture as these alluring beasts is, to some extent, proof that conservatism has not fully overtaken popular culture, even if it feels like it at times.

What’s interesting about this whole cycle is the fact that nearly every—if not every—culture to date has had, at one point or another, some sort of vampiric creature in their lore: the Empusa from Ancient Greece, Vetalas from India, or the Strigoi from Romania. Every culture has its form of a luring beast that steals the life, the blood, or the soul from the humans it comes across.

What does it say about humanity that one of the things we have in common across cultures is our belief in a human-like beast whose only purpose is to steal our very life blood?

I think, in part, it has something to do with our desire to break from restrictive social norms, to become the outsider who has no need to abide by rigid social or moral expectations. It would certainly explain the resurgence in vampiric stories around times of heightened cultural conservatism (of course, causation and correlation are very different, but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless).

We are inherently fascinated—and, on occasion, horrified—by the supernatural, by the unexplainable; vampires are no different.

We revive the archetype whenever traditionalism starts to rear its ugly head: i.e. Dracula in the late 19th century during a rise in industrialization and neo-colonialism, the original Nosferatu during Prohibition and the Lochner Era of law, the Nosferatu remake during the current rise of global fascism, and (yes) even Twilight during the 2008 Recession.

And now, we see The Lost Boys musical reaching new heights on Broadway—a stage that has, historically, not boded well for any type of vampiric media—and the vampiric band becoming, on the surface, something of a “sex symbol”.

But in reality, the group of vampires represents an innate need for belonging, a place to feel connected and safe for those who live on the outskirts of society. They are queer, they are people of color, they are a symbol for marginalized groups to know that they are not alone, no matter how much it feels like it at times.

Vampires, it seems, are our way to push back against progressively increasing conservative ideas, our way to examine ourselves and our society. So it comes as no surprise that vampires are once again showing their fangs in the current moment of socio-political unrest.

We are seduced by the monster and its perfectly shaped fangs because vampires are a reflection of humanity; they, like us, are lovable only if we decide to embrace all of their parts, all versions of them.

And I think that this is what The Lost Boys musical does so well. It creates a lens for us to view ourselves through the otherworldly, the supernatural, the undead—to become connected through the fictional.

Because at the core of the story is still the hope of belonging, of having someone see all the worst parts of yourself and them loving you anyway.

Previous Article Here

_{Check out the cast recording while you’re here :)}

It’s truly been a safe haven for me; I’ve met some of my best friends through it—both new and old—who, at some point, became something closer to family. I am home here.

And over these past few months, that love has grown. I’ve been at the Jacobs Theatre so often that my roommate now knows that I’m at a show if I’m not home after 7pm.

(I swear the guys at the deli—where I order a coffee and people watch many nights post-show—know me well enough at this point that I could invite them to my wedding.)

I’d listened to The Outsiders OBC recording when it first came out and (off the record) seen a few bootlegs of the original cast, but it was something that I’d watched through once or twice (like most musicals I see) and called it a day.

Important context: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton was one of my favorite books growing up (I wrote another article on it here), so I tend to default to the novel when it comes to character and plot beats, and my own emotional attachment.

The original story was the one that I loved and cradled against my chest—it was one of the first times that I felt really seen—and that hasn’t changed much as I’ve aged. It’s still the same story that I love and remember from my childhood, even if my copy is so beat up that the spine is flaking in the creases.

And although my connection to it is slightly different now—life and experience altering the way I view the story, the characters I connect to, and making new meaning out of something I once knew backwards and forwards—it’s still there. I think it might always be.

It’s why I still cry when I read the book, why I can still feel like I’m twelve and sitting in my bedroom, reading when I’m supposed to be sleeping, even when I’m double the age.

We never really lose the connection we had to things—stories especially—in our younger years or worst times. That connection just shifts and settles differently under our skin, fitting itself into the person we are now.

So, knowing that the written story was more important to me, and knowing my previous connection with the musical, I didn’t expect seeing it again to change either of those things.

But then, I saw the current cast for the first time a few months ago and found myself come back again (and again and again… ad nauseam, some of my friends would say).

For whatever reason, this cast is the one that made something click for me, and, for the first time in a long time (not counting my love of The Lost Boys), I found myself enraptured by a story that I had known for so long in an entirely new way.

There’s something so incredibly unique in the energy of this musical, this cast, that I could ignore the discrepancies between the book and musical. In fact, I could willingly ignore them.

It’s not something I tend to be able to do.

And it’s not only the chemistry between the members of the cast that keeps me coming back, but also the absolute love and joy they have being on stage that bleeds into the audience.

Their understanding of the characters, their decision to make such specific choices each night, and their ability to keep someone who’s seen the show so many times experiencing something new every time makes it so that I find myself returning again and again just to feel that energy once more.

It reminds me why theater has stayed such a constant presence in my life.

I’m a firm believer that the most powerful part of the arts is being able to reach across that room and connect—not only with the performers—but also with the person sitting next to you, a few rows in front of you, and all the way across the building. It’s a rare type of community and connection that seems to be dwindling. It’s a type of connection that I want to be able to build with my words.

So, yes, I will be at The Outsiders musical again and again, soaking in every nuanced choice—every small piece of love that comes when people take something, make it their own, and hope that someone out there will reach out to hold it close to their chest to, one day, continue the cycle.

Previous Article Here

So below are my top songs of the past month, along with a small blurb of my thoughts on them.

^{(pretty good sign when the first one in this series is two weeks late, isn’t it?)}

1. “Little Splinters” | Ok Cowgirl
   ok cowgirl is one of my comfort bands. i play their music whenever i need a quick pick me up, something to wallow in, or to have something blasting in my ears that somehow calms my nerves. this song is one of my favorites, hence why it’s first.
   

2. “Teeth” | Mallrat
   i fully found mallrat on accident, but the base line and melody in this song grabbed my brain and would not let go. this is a go-to on my morning commute.
   

3. “White Wedding - Pt. 1” | Billy Idol
   no one knows how much i love billy idol. 80s punk-hairmetal-vampirerock music is my absolute favorite, and, if i could, i would inject this song into my veins. it’s loud, it’s filled with smoke, and it’s quintessential 80s.
   

4. “Prepared to Lose” | Ok Cowgirl
   new song! i love leah’s voice so so much in this song, and the upcoming album is presaved. i’ve listened to this song on both my happiest and saddest days. it’s part of me.
   

5. “Angel” | NewDad
   another song i found on accident. this one is just… odd. there’s a weird dark, almost gothic, ethereal sound to it that i really enjoy. it reminds me a little of the cranes from the 80s.
   

6. “Blue Monday ‘88” | New Order
   with how much i love 80s goth and new wave, is anyone surprised that there’s not one, but two new order songs in this roundup? the ‘88 version of blue monday is objectively better than the original (although i do like the 90s cover by the band orgy). argue with the wall.
   

7. “Johnny” | CARR
   i found carr’s music when she opened for the cab. i love girl rock. i love angry girl rock. i love fun girl rock. i love girl rock. what else is there to say?
   

8. “Bloodsport ‘15” | Raleigh Ritchie
   raleigh ritchie is one of those artists that i either listen to intensely or not at all. i love his lyrics, his voice, and the way his music is mixed. my listening amount only changes as drastically as it does because it’s outside of my normal genre (and i also think his music is very seasonal—i don’t listen to it all the much in the spring and winter).
   

9. “Synthetica” | Metric
   this is very 2010-2015 tumblr sleaze. there’s nothing else to say.
   

10. “White Horses” | Wolf Alice
    i love when artists do something weird and funky with sound, especially when that something weird and funky scratches an itch in my brain. wolf alive has such a specific sound, and i really enjoy it.

11. “Gloucester” | Resident Lightweight

    this song, this album, brought me immense comfort during my worst days. i’m also a sucker for a concept album that plays with sound in interesting ways (see above). i have cried many a-times to this song while looking at the river. it’s cathartic.
    

12. “People Are Strange” | The Doors
    halloween is approaching, and i am nothing if not a “halloween-is-year-round” type of gal. i listened to the doors all the time in high school, so they hold a specific place in my heart.
    

13. “Regret” | New Order
    did i mention that i love 80s goth and new wave? no? weird. this song gives me such an odd sense of nostalgia in a good way, almost like the last summer of high school before all your childhood friends go off to new lives in different places. you’re growing up, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
    

14. “Miss” | Florence Road
    something about this song makes me sit in place and really listen. as much as i love a song made with funky sound decisions, i also love something simple. there’s something about the singer’s voice that makes me feel like i’ve just been run through by a thunderstorm on a hot night.
    

15. “Days Move Slow” | Bully
    this is a song that’s been at the end of every single summer playlist i’ve had since it came out in 2023. it’s such a perfect 90s/early 2000s movie ending song, and i adore it.
    

Listen to good music, make good connections, live a little longer.

I don’t remember much of that year (flashes of, frankly, deeply concerning poetry comes to mind as the only concrete memories), but I do remember those three words.

The school copy was hardcover, that I remember too, heavy in my hands and pages tanned from years of use. It smelled like dust, and aged paper, and the hundreds of hands that had touched the pages before me.

I remember that it felt nothing like the copy I read now with its mass-market soft cover, and its blocky, minimalist design (the downfall of creative marketing under capitalism). The character is gone—the cover cheap and ready to fall apart at the slightest bend, as if it can no longer hold the weight of its own words—and the pages crisp, and blank, and untouched by another soul.

I feel an urge to write all over the book—rough it up and make it hold the weight of a person’s thoughts—to show that someone had interacted with the pages, that it didn’t exist in isolation.

It’s not full of the complex or convoluted writing that we often associate with classics—nothing like Dickens or Dostoyevsky—and, for a moment, I can’t quite remember what I found so awe-inducing about this book (it is, after all, a middle grade novel, and I have not been a middle grade reader for more than a decade).

But then I realize that it’s filled to the brim with emotion: the ache of being human.

I’ve been searching for writing like that since.

There’s been a few books here and there, well written and carefully crafted to create the painful experience of being human, but nothing that can measure up to the emotion of reading that book. Or, at least, the remembered emotions of reading that book (memory is a funny thing, and sometimes I wonder if my fondness of certain things is simply due to the heightened emotions of my teens mixed with the hazy screen of memory).

Re-reading a book from my younger years makes me think about what’s in a word, a phrase, a jumble of syllables mixed together until they form a coherent thought—about what we find solace in, what we cling to at the most difficult times in our lives.

Are our words just extensions of our souls? A piece of them that we offer up freely in hopes that someone else will hear it, grasp it gently, and whisper “I understand” to our fluttering syllables?

I think they could be.

Or, I think they should be.

But too often, words are a shield—a wall behind which to hide ourselves, detach our innermost desires from being seen by anyone.

It’s a lonely way to live.

I try (or at least say I try) to make my words reflect my soul which wraps around them—they’re the water of the Hudson, reflecting the setting sun in ripples of oranges and yellows in an attempt to spread the rays as far as possible.

Sometimes, there’s no one on the pier to see the reflection of light. The sun sets, the water turns dark, and no one knew what the sunset looked like at that particular moment in that particular spot.

But occasionally, there’s someone there, looking at the sunset on the river as a symbol that they’re not alone—that even the setting sun rises again in the morning.

That makes all the difference.

I think at this point, I’ve devoured nearly every piece of vampire media that exists (and yes, that includes academic articles), so I have a very carefully concocted list of favorites that I’ll shorten for brevity’s sake:

• “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu

  • (please read only the edition edited by Carmen Maria Machado)

• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Movie Adaptation 1992)

• Interview with the Vampire (TV Adaptation 2022)

  • (obviously)

• Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

• The Lost Boys (1987)

  • (I will forever die on the hill that vampires were meant to have too much hairspray and leather tight enough to cut off circulation)

I consider myself a vampiric-connoisseur, a bone-fide day-walker. So, when I saw a few months ago that the final bullet on that list had been adapted for Broadway, I was overjoyed.

I saw it for the first time on my birthday (thank you to my broadway-averse roommate for the tickets and the company) and, when I realized that there was no cast album yet and painfully little about it on the internet, I bought another ticket.

_{(Consider this brief pause my shining endorsement to see The Lost Boys on Broadway if you can)}

I cried on my way home from the second show—guitar still strumming in my veins, drums still ricocheting off my bones, and the knowledge that art and community exist wherever you decide to look for them settling in my chest.

The only issue with living in the city with everything, everywhere, all the time is that everything is everywhere, all the time.

Most days I love the freedom that comes with it—something is always happening and there will always be something happening, so there’s no real reason to worry about wasting time. Tomorrow, the same woman will be playing her saw (yes, saw) at Columbus Circle, and I will get to see her again regardless if I go out today.

But my brain is still very good at being in survival mode despite my years telling it that it’s okay, and I have learned that being hard on myself is how to survive.

So the day after that second show, I take myself to get coffee, finish my final essay of the quarter for my grad program, and cry in the park to the music of honking cars and echoing, grate-covered shouts of subway construction workers.

Sitting there—laptop firmly tucked away in my bag and iced coffee mostly water—I feel a sense of listlessness I haven’t felt since deciding on colleges for undergrad; it doesn’t matter what age I am, things will be no more clear than they were years ago.

It’s a statement that can be positive or negative, depending on how you take it, but my brain doesn’t quite know how to cope with that fact—the ambiguity of that fact.

Luckily, as people in this city have a tendency to mind their business, the office workers on their lunch breaks ignore the woman crying with shitty iced coffee, dressed like she’s going to a funeral when it’s above 90 degrees outside.

I don’t have a reason for crying, not really (other than the heat and my lack of central air). But I think I started thinking about the show I saw the night before, about that feeling of wasting time that I’ve somehow found in a city that you cannot waste time in, and about if that means I’ve somehow broken something no one has been able to until now.

I’ve worried a lot about breaking things that were supposed to be impossible to break. Maybe that’s why I like vampires so much: their immortality, their sturdiness, their ability to survive the worst times and make it to the next century stronger than before.

Meanwhile, my two degrees have nothing to show for them except coffee job after coffee job, an absurd amount of debt, and the ever-present knot in my stomach that comes from living in a world that does not want you to survive it.

The theme from The Lost Boys movie comes up on my shuffle: a fitting title for my current state.

But I think about the fact that I shared a smile with the deli guy who sees me after all my runs, and that my roommate and I say “love you” and “be safe” to each other when we leave for the day, and that I left a broadway show filled with strangers experiencing something made with love to the city celebrating the knicks winning a third game in the finals.

It makes the feeling a little more manageable.

Crying over a bunch of campy, 80s vampires made me realize that I’d live forever if it meant I could experience a city of strangers breathing in and out together— everywhere, all the time.

Maybe that’s the whole point.

Or, perhaps, I was the princess and the knight. The princess who would haul her sword up and drive it through the dragon’s scales, all while wearing her favorite dress.

It gave me peace—thinking that I could be whatever I wanted, even if that thing didn’t exist yet.

I think about the dragon and the princess again today.

It’s the first nice day in months (above freezing), and I’m walking after my run when a man slinks into my periphery.

My brain recognizes that he could just be another person ambling onwards along the lake, so I slow slightly to see if he passes. He doesn’t.

It was longer than normal, the run, (because there was someone in front of me and I refused to quit before they did), and I’m sweating, and tired, and not anywhere near in the mood for dealing with random men. But he comes up to me anyways, makes himself a presence I can’t ignore.

He only says a quick hello, how’re you doing, but I know by now what men mean when they approach you randomly and say this, when they slink into your periphery like they’re doing something unseemly and wrong and ask how you are.

I offer a blunt not interested. Emphasis on the period.

He mutters something I can’t quite make out, and I repeat my previous response. I’ve made it abundantly clear to anyone with common sense that I am not interested. But he continues.

What about a side hug before I leave?

My brain is trying to wrap around the sheer audacity to ask this question to someone you’ve never met before—to a woman who will automatically be on guard, especially when you approach her like you’re trying to hide something.

I give him a side eye, a blunt no, and walk away.

I turn off the lake path, see that he’s stopped a bit aways to shove something in his backpack, and think that’s that: an interaction I didn’t want that’s over now.

But I’ve barely made it 20 feet since I took my eyes off of him, and suddenly, he’s in my periphery again—behind me and only noticeable because I’ve turned my head to look at the traffic next to me.

He’s close enough to grab me.

I think about the fact that he most definitely had to run to get that close that fast, that he was most likely stuffing his sweatshirt in his bag to make himself less recognizable out of my peripheral, that he was most likely walking behind me for a while before coming up to me.

I turn my head fully over my shoulder to make direct eye contact with him as I press call on my phone. My friend’s contact photo takes up the screen (big googly eye stickers held up in front of her face).

He immediately makes a U-turn, heading back towards the lake.

I look back every minute or so for most of my way home just to make sure that he hasn’t come back.

My friend talks about the lizards she saw at the zoo that day, about the woman she almost got into a fist fight with on her way home the day before, about how men are freaks as soon as the sun comes out. All the while, I must look insane to the people walking past: twisting my head back and forth, vibrating like some kind of malfunctioning children’s toy, and face still red from my run.

The shaking isn’t really from the shock, I don’t think—the realization that, at best, he’d have grabbed my ass, or, at worst, bashed me over the head with something in his hand—but rather the anger.

The anger from the fact that I can’t even go to a public place—one that’s so crowded I run into someone every 30 seconds—without being stalked by some man who thinks he’s entitled to his pound of flesh.

From the fact that I exist in public the same way animals exist at the zoo: to be leered at by men I do not know and will never want to know.

From the fact that, in this moment, I am not the princess-knight; there is no sword slashed through the beast, metaphorically or otherwise, and no favorite dress blowing in the wind.

There is no fantastical tale to be told, no heroic story to be written down; I am simply a woman living in a world where men want her as treasure or for dead. Most want both.

When I get to the crosswalk leading towards my place, a woman makes her way over from the street to my right. She stops behind me, waiting for the light to change and yelling on the phone that she’s gonna kill that man.

Her voice carries over the car engines, through the phone to my friend who starts laughing hysterically and agreeing with her.

I don’t know who that man is, nor will I ever know.

Despite that, the shaking subsides—the anger doesn’t subside, but maybe it never will—and I stop looking over my shoulder knowing there’s a woman who would kill a man behind me.

Maybe there’s no dragons, or monsters, or knights in this world. But there are women, and there will always be women.

It makes me feel a little less alone.

I learned when I was young that talking too much was a bad thing. It meant that others wouldn’t play with me, that the teacher would speak more coldly to me than my peers, that adults would not like me as I grew up (I was frequently told to be a lawyer even though I had absolutely no inclination towards the legal field – I know now that this was meant to be an insult). Talking too much was a negative trait, and one that I should get rid of as soon as possible: no one likes a girl who talks and talks and talks.

I spent years trying to talk less, to take up less space, to be less.

It became a habit, at some point, to bite my tongue when I began to speak about something, especially something that I was passionate about; I wouldn’t speak in classes, I hated talking to teachers, and I especially couldn’t speak how I wanted to around my peers. I would spend hours replaying every word I said, thinking about the volume of my sentences for so long that I wouldn’t sleep. There was a gnawing sense that everything I said was too much, too loud, too opinionated: simply wrong.

I’ve grown since then, I like to think, to the point where I laugh loudly, talk a lot, and live life how I want. But there are times when the little voice from my childhood comes back, whispering to be more quiet, to stop talking so much lest I want people to leave. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore.

I think of tonight when I go out with my friends. Around them, I am comfortable, and so around them, I talk constantly; there is rarely ever that small, nagging voice. I feel at ease. Although few, they are one of the things that I’m most grateful for.

But rarely is not always. The voice is back with a vengeance on one of the first cool days of autumn, and I cannot force my words over my tongue. They stick to the inside of my cheeks like the cigarette smoke I inhale outside of the bar.

My walk to the train with one of them is done in near silence as well: an oddity in our dynamic. I mutter out replies and the occasional comment, but I cannot bring myself to talk like I normally do. It weighs on me long after they exit the train, and I continue onwards in a near empty car.

I don’t quite cry once I’m alone (I would never let myself – I have an image to maintain), but I’m damned near close; the burning sensation in my nose is one of the first indicators that I am close to wiping all my eyeliner away.

Some days I think I am unloveable. I see people getting into relationships – they love one another as friends, as lovers, as something in between – and yet I cannot seem to grasp the concept as hard as I try. There is always, I feel, some kind of wall between myself and the other person.

Realistically, I know this isn’t the case. I have my friends and our relationships; they are the kinds where, sometimes, we know one another better than we know ourselves. My friendships are few, but long-lasting because of this. But I still worry on some days, like today, that maybe there’s something in me that just isn’t quite fit for love; there is an aching wrongness within my parts that will never be righted.

We build communities – families, relationships, and everything under the sun – with language, with speech and communication. And so, when it was instilled early on that my speech was wrong, it became hard to relate to other people, to give love out freely; it’s hard to build relationships when the one thing that’s needed is the one thing you fear.

Maybe that’s part of why I keep things so close to my chest.

When I love, I love fully and deeply and, often, through my speech – I would do anything and everything for my loved ones, even if I don’t say the words I love you often – and so, it hurts all the more when my words are perceived as too much, too loud.

Maybe this is something that I’ll never quite get over.

But, maybe, I just need to work on laughing a little louder, loving a little harder, and talking a lot more.

I’ve had a few run-ins with the feeling in my life – being the odd kid out at recess, having a poorly executed emo phase in middle school – but never as severe as the meetings with loneliness in the past few years, in the years where I’ve learned its name and face. I’m not quite sure if having an identifiable culprit has helped or hurt my efforts to rid myself of the emotion.

I like to think that I am a person who has learned to live by themselves, who has learned to circumvent the need for interactions, the need for relationships, that has been necessary for people to survive since the dawn of time. But, as much as I would like it to be, this isn’t true. If anything, I have become relationship-adverse, touch-reluctant, afraid that every type of love I give out will be paired with that ever-present feeling (a shitty BOGO offer in my mental convenience store).

Seeing the ease that others give and receive love with doesn’t help, and I am reminded of many of my elementary school experiences: a group of my peers, laughing quietly about something – making eye contact with one another, pointed glancing at me, when they thought I couldn’t see – and refusing to clue me in. I stopped speaking in my classes shortly after. I know now that the laughter was about me.

Relationships, whatever kind they may be, feel like another group project where my peers are laughing about something and refusing to let me in on the joke.

I live in a city with millions of people, and yet, I feel just as lonely as I always have. It’s a deep-seated thing, the loneliness – something that has burrowed its way into my bones and their marrow over decades, and will not allow itself to be removed by a simple please on a rainy night – that I’ve only talked to a few people about.

Most of them don’t quite understand; they think that loneliness isn’t possible when you aren’t alone, that being lonely and being alone are synonymous.

I know, from personal experience, that this isn’t the case.

There’s a part of me that feels perpetually out of place, even when I know that I shouldn’t. The issue is that I have moments where I feel at ease, at home, with other people; the loneliness doesn’t always stand in the doorway, but I know it’s there, lingering in the next room, all the same.

Part of me thinks that I should just fuck off to the middle of nowhere for a week or two, reset my nervous system with bird calls and mossy ground, and then return to the noise of the city that I have come to know well; I know that the excursion would cure my ailment for less than a month, and then it would return with a vengeance (the collector of my long overdue socio-emotional taxes).

I don’t quite know the answer to my problem, just that maybe if I keep running at 100 miles per hour, I’ll outrun the loneliness.

Or maybe, for once, I’ll stop running, turn around, and introduce myself.

Iced Americano (Single Basket) - TO GO

| Room

Friendly Neighborhood Discount - 10%

If not for the fact that my order cost a lower amount than it usually did, I don’t think I would’ve noticed the finely printed words on the screen. I don’t say anything, tip per usual, and go settle in at the bar to write for a little bit before my tutoring sessions.

This week has been insanely shitty (even by my standards which, I have been told, are on the floor), and I hate the fact that this small little act has me tearing up. Luckily, this cafe is dimly lit and almost always empty at this time, so the only person who sees this briefest slip of emotion is the very barista who tapped that button.

I don’t know if this makes it better or worse.

A little voice in my head whispers that it wasn’t intentional — the briefest slip of the finger on a POS system whose touch interface is dated and inaccurate — and that this specific barista doesn’t actually recognize me, even though they’d mentioned seeing me before.

I think about this throughout my tutoring sessions, on the forty minute train ride home, and as I make dinner with my cat laying between my feet.

There is a large part of me that does not know what to do when people offer me kindness, friends or strangers, and I find myself agonizing over what exactly it was that I did to earn it (growing up in New York can’t even be blamed for this train of thought as most New Yorkers are kind people — not nice, but kind). I wonder if the barista expects me to pay them back somehow. Realistically, I know this very likely isn’t the case.

At some point in my life, I think I internalized that goodwill is transactional, that people do not go out of their way to be kind; I could not receive generosity in the world without offering something first. Maybe this was due to the way I grew up, the brusqueness of the people around me. However, I think that it had more to do with the subconscious messaging the world gave me – in our society, everything has a value, even if it isn’t necessarily monetary (such is the woe of living in a capitalistic system).

Until now, I hadn’t really thought much about this fact. I had gone about, living my life, as if everything was normal. And, at the time, this train of thought was normal; it’s hard, after all, to think differently when you’ve been spoon-fed propaganda all your life.

But I’m coming to realize that most things in life shouldn’t be transactional. The briefest smile I get from someone after running into them on my way up to the train, the mindless compliment someone gives me on the street, these things aren’t items to be bought and sold; they are pieces of humanity that we share.

People are naturally communal. It’s why we flock to cities with millions of people, why even the most isolated of us prefer to live somewhere that has at least one other person; we are inherently invested in the community around us, we thrive when others around us are thriving.

Even with this mindset, there are still days (like today) where the world seems to be falling apart, falling into chaos, falling somewhere that we won’t be able to climb out of.

And then, the barista at my local coffee shop gives me a discount.

It reminds me that maybe, just maybe, all hope is not lost. After all, coffee shops were built to nourish communities, weren’t they?