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Still Playing Somewhere
Years after the Aquarius Cinema closes, James returns to the abandoned East Village theater that once felt more like home than any place he had known. Inside, among discarded film reels, old posters, and forgotten scripts, he finds a story from his past—one he has spent years trying to understand.
At twenty-nine, James left a suffocating career in publishing and took a job at the Aquarius, joining a restless group of artists, outsiders, and would-be filmmakers. There he met Michael, a magnetic and elusive college student eight years younger. What began as an intense friendship became something harder to define: intimate but deniable, sustaining and destructive, shaped as much by what they withheld as by what they shared.
As James revisits their year together, memories of New York collide with the violence and repression of his adolescence. His attachment to Michael becomes inseparable from older wounds, unrealized possibilities, and the belief that another person might somehow rescue him from his own past.
Still Playing Somewhere is a novel about queer longing, obsession, memory, and the private meanings we assign to relationships that other people remember differently. It is also a portrait of a vanished New York—of friendships formed after midnight, lives lived inside movie theaters, and the places that continue to exist long after we have lost them.
At twenty-nine, James left a suffocating career in publishing and took a job at the Aquarius, joining a restless group of artists, outsiders, and would-be filmmakers. There he met Michael, a magnetic and elusive college student eight years younger. What began as an intense friendship became something harder to define: intimate but deniable, sustaining and destructive, shaped as much by what they withheld as by what they shared.
As James revisits their year together, memories of New York collide with the violence and repression of his adolescence. His attachment to Michael becomes inseparable from older wounds, unrealized possibilities, and the belief that another person might somehow rescue him from his own past.
Still Playing Somewhere is a novel about queer longing, obsession, memory, and the private meanings we assign to relationships that other people remember differently. It is also a portrait of a vanished New York—of friendships formed after midnight, lives lived inside movie theaters, and the places that continue to exist long after we have lost them.
284 pages, Paperback
Published September 8, 2026
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October 18, 2026
This book took me longer to finish than usual because life got busy and I had to sit it down. Once I picked back up I couldn’t put it down. A novel that leaves one to think about what bullying does to our youth. James, the protagonist takes you from today, back to his high school days then to his job at the Aquarius Cinema from a time-gone-by NYC. Friendships developed in high school, relentless bullying, all taking place at a “Christian” academy. Where were the protective teachers? Where was the understanding nuns for kids being teased, assaulted, etc? The principal? Fast Forward. James is working at the Aquarius Cinema. While there , he meets a cast of characters. One of these characters is Michael. A relationship develops but the relationship is more mental for James than physical. James is gay. Michael is not…or is he? Friendships develop and life plays out. A debut novel that is packed with many issues that leave you asking yourself “what would you do”? Read this novel. You won’t be disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review