SDRAWKCAB CYN

Henne met us for a bon voyage pastry at the hip bakery. They were making cinnamon rolls on a wooden island. I ate a puffy thing full of mustard and cheese, paired with the bright peach iced tea. It was all so incredibly delicious. Ironically, that morning, Henne had administered a shooter lockdown drill at his school. His job is to walk around and check all the locks and blinds. As though bullets don’t blast through both locks and blinds. I do theatre about school shootings, but actually every school does theatre about school shootings. The show is called “Yeah Right.” It's been running about twenty years.

At 3 am I was eating my nightly bag of kettle chips. I don’t usually have a nightly bag of kettle chips, but when there’s a bodega on the exact corner one emerges from the subway, what is one to do, besides buy a nightly bag of kettle chips. A curly little dog snoozes next to me as I crunch. For my final ride on the C I was with RB and her best art friend, a young director. She had gossip about the rich producer who did me so dirty two years ago. The three of us hope to make something this year. Everything takes so long, so even though we have so long, we’re not not behind. But it would be special, I know.

It was those two muffins, our tech guy, and the husband/wife producer/director combo who shut down the dive bar. I was falling asleep into my basket of jalapeño poppers and muttering about how Taylor Swift is gay. Shockingly, LS brought it up, because I programmed “Cruel Summer” on the jukebox. Puhg had left an hour or so earlier. SH—our mini star—and her partner went for pizza, Henne’s roost of pals seemed to enjoy the play. One said she doesn't have to worry about school shootings yet because her son is four, and I said, yeah but actually a kindergartener was just shot last week, and she didn't say anything more after that. (I'm fun.) Our photag was so kind and open-hearted, got all kind of snaps. He told me he usually works for politicians, which means getting them beyond the event, when they’re hobnobbing.

I was the last one at the theatre. Greeting and gabbing until the bitter end. Had to grab my bag from the greenroom when everyone had already mosied to the after party. I realized I hadn’t gotten a single photo by myself with the poster for the love. You think there’s going to be a method to madness as you level up in art, but no! It’s your Off-Broadway debut and your hair isn’t brushed and you hurriedly shove crackers and egg salad into your gob minutes before house opens. You’d wanted to stand on the sidewalk and get some glamor bits, but oh well the Broadway starlet and her husband were nearly first in and you had to buzz around welcoming and you see a girl from your college out of the corner of your eye. A former producer accidentally forgot to buy a ticket and you zip around Box Office checking on which comps you can slough over to him.

A debut is a little like a wedding in that a major funder is seated next to a boy you taught improv to at summer camp, and in front of them is a comedian you respect and behind them is your first magazine editor. The sidewalk was packed and it’s interesting that on both days the people who shoved themselves into your eyeline first were the very oldest white men who you did not know. It’s really embarrassing, for them. I see an iconic writer wait patiently to chat with me, but then he gets annoyed and walks off. The suicide-prevention men are very tall and wear suits. As I ran off the stage after the talkback I tripped incredibly dramatically and one caught me by the chest. There was an AUDIBLE gasp, so I chirped “You saved my life!” Par for the course for the guy, I suppose. As I flitted out, Puhg and SH’s angelic bf dashed to the stage to haul the cot up to the loft.

When RB arrived at call she was not okay. Six months since her brother passed away. Then we couldn’t find the photo of him that we kept on the desk. She said maybe he was saying he didn’t want to be in the show anymore. At the end of the night, the director told me, he was found in the very back row, watching the show. I’d gotten her a CONGRATS card that I never had time to fill out. LS handed me a brooch of balloons, “You are the balloons” the note said. Two balloons, pearls. So they matched the necklace I bought myself on the street in Chelsea. A clam, just like the one I pasted to my dream board last December, to symbolize all the work I’ve put into this play. I’d hoped in 2026 the clam shell would finally open.

In the morning Puhg and I had classic bagels—mine jalapeño cheddar with avocado and egg. We trotted around, ultimately heading to the funky forest island by The Whitney. We sat outside watching the leaves turn, seemingly right in front of our eyes from green to gold. Had acai bowls and talked about a lot of people we know and why they’re the way they are. It was so strange to spend the morning divorced from the project, but I still made the to-do lists: pick up the programs from Fed-Ex, set the water backstage, don't forget lip gloss this time.

In the afternoon I wanted to nap but there just wasn’t time. I rolled a black dress into my backpack but wore my skull crop top to my meeting with the theatre’s creative director. We talked about what is and isn’t possible in commercial art anymore. I’m just grateful for what I got, I told him. Some students have been emailing, asking to do scenes in their acting classes. That’s good, I tell him from under my new half moon sunglasses.

Summertime and the wind is blowing outside
in lower Chelsea and I don't know
what I'm doing in this city.
The sun is always in my eyes.
It crashes through the windows,
and I'm sleeping on the couch.
When I came to visit you
that's when I knew
that I could never have you
I knew that before you did,
still I'm the one who's stupid

And there's this burning
like there's always been.
I've never been so alone,

and I've never been so alive.