I peer over an empty row of café chairs. A projector screen stares back at me, dripping a spooky font in retro, neon pink into the room. It reads, “Cursed Movie Nights.”

It is seven o’clock on a Sunday. My fingers have slid into auto-pilot, gently shoving white cheddar popcorn piece-by-piece with a steady beat into my orally-fixated little mouth.

I came alone. The room is sparse but energized.
The local arthouse scene always gives me joy.
I love my town. Even though I still feel a stranger in it.

The model from a life drawing session I attended last year as part of the San Marcos Studio Tour (April, 2024) is sitting next to me, chattering away in my direction. At one point, my studio walls back home were taped up with drawings of her.
She has great hands and distinct features.

I know she means well, and I love to know my neighbors, but I also came alone, and
I liked that choice.

I like sitting in the second (or third) row of theater situations best.
Which is where I sit now.
I like to be close to the show but
have the front row still in front of me. That way
I can be in the mix of the moment while still enjoying
the view of a stage or screen
within the frame of its context–a theater.

My eyes comfortingly trace the square shapes of the seats
that prick the edge of the scene before me.

Framing is everything.

I love a layered cake, a mid depth of field to put the close and
the far in perspective.

The seat to my left holds up my teacup and kisses the black wall beside it.
I like to be off-center but
not cornered.

I chose this seat when the row was empty. When I walked in, the model, samantha.redacted, lept into a greeting. She was back from a several-month tour across Europe. She’d seen my name on the bill as the intermission performer and
was so excited to see me.

The sentiment was sweet, the kindness appreciated, but
I noticed myself tense at the premise
already laid before me.

She called me Julia Fae, meaning
she only knew me a certain way.

It always unnerves me to be familiarized to acquaintances via instagram.
Sam and I had met IRL and that was great. Then, we chatted briefly online
when I asked if she could cover a modeling session for me (I draw, and I pose). That was the end of our back-and-forths. Many moons ago. I guess we’ve stayed in vague, screen-scrolling, non-interactive touch on the insta since… but, for her to be so warm….And so looking forward to seeing me…And so looking forward to seeing me perform tonight…

I think she really did mean all these lovely kindnesses, but…well,

I wish
those kindnesses
didn’t register as
red flags
for me, but
they do.

The more a community seems to expect from me
from purely online recognition
the more I’d like to disappear.

After I came in and Sam greeted me so enthusiastically, another attendee of the show called over to introduce themselves. Jack. Their seat hugged the back corner of the room, far from where we were. I shook the hand of the person working the merch. Elmo.

Cool name.

And clearly an enthusiastic supporter of this monthly double feature.

Right on.

They were all in the back area, then.
I settled my stuff into the empty second row.
Now, Jack and Sam have moved to sit on my right, blocking me
from a quick escape and a
quiet pre-show hang.

My mind prodded at the question I’d been asking myself for a year: do I want to perform anymore? Do I like this? Is this worth it? Is it inspiring and fun? Or an obligation I feel the call to fulfill?

Is it worth dressing up for, putting on makeup for, being recognized at, throwing off my day and night’s routine?

I am so lucky to so often be handed awesome opportunities.

And tonight’s is so…perfect for me.

An interpretive dance at a film nerd spectacle with a vampire theme?
Very much in my wheelhouse.

My mind wrapped around a recognizable attempt to end these thought parades–maybe this will be the last time I say yes. Maybe this will be my last random performance. What am I doing here? Just be in the moment, Julia. Enjoy it.

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A fog began to fill the room. Enoch, the host, took the stage. He was a delight.
Sam kept chattering to me. Even though the subject was about a grief she was going through, and my heart felt the weight of her need, I eventually had to stop placating the conversation, quieting her and pointing to the host, my eyes begging her to please respect his time and gift to us.

I think I’ll always regret not jumping in sooner out of politeness. I missed a good portion of his opening bit due to her deciding it was that very moment that she should tell me her Grandma died eight months ago, and her family kept it from her until now, and she was struggling intensely with it all.

“Double grief,” she said.

Aye…

I find that politeness typically begets regret.

Blast.

Enoch mentioned that before the show, we’d get a shpeal from the sponsors.
I took that statement at face value.

Then, a series of wonderfully stupid commercials from the 90s rolled through. A delightful cut, diced and spliced to feel like I was flipping channels. A mattress ad with a giant fur mascot clumsily moving around a mattress shop. A poor shot of a lawyer in an ill-fitting suit speaking to us from the breast of a brick wall. When it landed on the final intro to our double feature ahead with a slow burn of a hilarious sequence of events at a block party–potentially candid or made to seem so–I could feel glee warm all of my insides.

I love the DIY art scene here.
It reminds me of the 80s and 90s, which is where Enoch is from.
Can a time be a place?
It reminds me of the after-school film club
I was in during the early otts and of the cool,
weird makers of videos on tape and
garage bands. The kids who ruled the coffee shop shows
I’d mosh in. The older cats from just before
my time. Or, I guess, here they are. Still doing it.

The movie rolled. “Blackenstein.” It was so dumb. I laughed out loud.

My ass hurt from sitting in those shitty chairs for so long, but
it really was worth it.
What a dumb movie. How great.

It ended. Enoch did a goofy, fun intermediary bit, using some Frankenstein props, closing out the movie and calling me up to the stage to entertain before “Scream Blacula Scream” screened.

I slid off my sweats and flannel, hiding my slinky red outfit under my big, black fur coat. I grabbed a chair from the empty first row and made my way to the stage. Fog filled the room. Centering the chair, I curled up on it like a sleeping bat, silhouetted by the dim lights. When the song hit, my hand slowly unfurled towards the black night.

Fugue in G Minor pulled out the vampire within.

It was fun.

The feedback was juicy in its honest appreciation of my piece.

The sensation of mmm, I love this stuff came back
like it usually does. Like a wind chime kicking up song
only when the breeze of showtime passes through.

It’s strange how still and
meaningless it all feels when
that wind isn’t blowing through.

I wonder if I’ll ever let it go, the anxiety
I carry these days, the anxiety that
provokes all the questions around
Do I want to be doing this?

Maybe I don’t. I still have no idea. At the same time, I am
dreaming up a million ideas to give this or that production.

I think letting go should feel cleaner.
More obvious.

And I think continuing to offer others this
skillset, passion, whatever-it-is
should feel
more inspired.
More committed.

I suppose I’ll continue to walk this line
as I continue to toggle
with this same
annoying, distracting, looming
question.

I am constantly trying to figure out how to do what I do as who I am now.

I know that has changed dramatically over these past few years.
Who I am. How I do what I do. What drives the want to do any of it.

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end.

I am decently far away from the beginning of my story as a performer.
It appears as though I am not at the end. In the middle, it seems. Through and
through. Yet to be
through.

A hui ho,

Julia