a night out, alone

2004.  My sister Jean and her kids Jack and Sally come to visit us (they live in a small Massachusetts town).  Jack, who was 7 at the time, had never been to New York.  We take the subway to Times Square.  Upon exiting, Jack looks around at the flashing neon signs, the theaters everywhere, the hordes of people, the noise, and the energy.  He takes it all in and says, “This is what I think of when I think of New York.”

But of course what Jack sees is only a sliver of this great city.


Tonight I go out by myself.  It’s something I really don’t mind doing.  My friend Zelia and I split a membership to a downtown theater called Rattlestick.  She doesn’t want to see tonight’s play called 3-C, so I go alone. 

Although the theater is a dumpy one, it’s one of my favorites.  Rattlestick is known for staging off-the wall contemporary plays, and is willing to take risks. Most memorable is a play I saw at Rattlestick in 2007 called That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play where someone actually pees onstage.  Tonight’s play is much less raunchy.  It’s a darker version of the 70’s sitcom Three’s Company.  Like many of Rattlestick’s productions, some parts work and others don’t.

Although I have been seeing plays at this little theater for many years, I can never find it.  It is tucked into a little side street in the West Village, and there is no marquis announcing the theater’s name.  Every time I go it’s like going for the first time.

I arrive minutes before curtain and there is a short line to the single bathroom.  To get to it, you have to cross the stage.  I get in line and the usher comes up to me and says, “I’m really sorry, but we need to start the play.  We can’t allow anymore people to use the restroom.” She justifies her directive by adding,  “The play is only 90 minutes.”  Do I really have to tell her that I just drank a bottle of water and I’d rather not be uncomfortable for the next hour and a half?   She reads my mind and lets me go, though I can see her thinking, “But please be fast.”

I quickly go to the bathroom, rush to my seat, sit down, and the lights immediately dim.  I imagine the usher nodding to the stage manager, “Okay, she’s done; we can start now.”


I doubt this is the New York Jack imagines.  But it is the one I love.