Checking Back In
Or, #31. "If you’re at a resort, have the bellboy page you.”
As I thought about #31. “If you’re at a resort, have the bellboy page you,” a specific hotel popped into my head. It doesn't have a bellboy, and calling it a resort requires a healthy dose of irony. But it is a place I have a connection to, an establishment tied to love, and an institution that recently paged me. So we’re going to go with it.
Three-ish years ago, I stumbled on an article from The New York Times. The headline read: “For Sale: The ‘Sexiest’ Hourly Rate Hotel in Manhattan.” The hero image featured a bed with one set of giant, cherry-red, LED-lit lips serving as a headboard. The copy was enough to grab my attention, but the photo was what kept me reading. What kind of place had lips as part of the key decor?
The answer is, of course, somewhat obvious: a quickie motel.
Located at 51 Tenth Avenue, The Liberty Inn occupied a three-story building in the Meatpacking District. The structure had been in operation as a hotel since 1908, although in the early days it was known as “The Strand,” primarily used for sailors (and, in 1912, journalists from The New York Times covering the arrival of Titanic survivors at Pier 54). In the early 1970s, it became known as the “Hide-a-way,” and then in 1977, it was renamed the “Liberty Inn,” a moniker that would stick around for some 50 years. That same decade, the first floor was leased to entrepreneurs who opened “The Anvil,” a gay nightclub that featured clientele such as Warhol and Capote.
In 1985, The Anvil shut down, and the first floor was converted into hotel suites.
At some point, the guests went from sailors, truckers, meatpackers, and salesmen to folks with a significantly different modus operandi. By the 1990s, the Liberty Inn was frequented by everyone from college students to retirees, couples, and businessmen taking an off-the-books lunch. No matter who they were, most came to the Liberty with a specific activity in mind.
It was, as this piece in the New York Review of Architecture aptly put it, a “cheater’s paradise.”
And then, in July 2023, the Liberty Inn was sold for a whopping $22.5 million. Which brings us to the present day and, unless they plan on making a radical business pivot, it’s doubtful the new owners — Hyundai Motor America — will be using the building for its previous purpose.
It was also in July 2023, around the same time the Liberty was sold, that I was sitting in a circle on a plastic chair in an art gallery in Bushwick discussing a new play with a group of actors and a director. The play in question was my own, titled At The Liberty Inn.
October 2022: I had just wrapped the World Premiere production of before the flood, a play that had taken over my heart and head for the better part of a year. I was working as a “Wordsmith” at a fintech startup, making more money than I knew my little writer brain could earn. I’d moved to a Greenpoint apartment with new roommates and endless possibilities. And I was dating someone nice, who I maybe hated, but who wanted to sweep me off my feet in all the right ways, so I went with it. I also happened to read the NYT article about the Liberty.
Things were good. And, eager to start my follow-up to before the flood, I noodled on the idea of a play set inside a quickie motel. before the flood had a large cast, and the script called for a literal Noah’s Ark-style flood on stage. It was a challenging production to stage and produce (though my brilliant director and producer, Nina Goodheart, managed to create a spectacular show regardless). Putting on that play was the greatest career achievement I’d ever had, and it was what gave me the (perhaps unearned) confidence to pursue being a playwright.
For my next trick, I wanted to do something simpler. So I thought a two-person play set in a motel room — the Liberty Inn — might be a manageable follow-up.
But before I could get past a one-sentence idea in a notes app, life fell apart. I’ve written about this moment before; when everything changed, when shit hit the fan, when the good got bad. In a matter of months, I was dumped by the boy, eliminated from the tech job, and spiraling. At one point, things got so rough that I tried to adopt a cat, and was subsequently forced to give it away a week later.
I was lost.
Yet through all the chaos, through all the uncertainty, through all the pain, there was one thing that stuck around: writing.
I’ve always thought the most beautiful thing about being a writer is that no one can take it away from you. Regardless of how one defines success, the actual act of creating — of sitting down and putting pen to paper (let’s be realistic, fingers to keys) — is entirely in control of the creator. Writing can’t ghost you; it can’t let you down; it can’t terminate your employment or hurt your feelings or break your heart. Even in the darkest moments, writing will always be there to light the way.
In those difficult months following the end of 2022, writing was all I had.
When I wrote the first draft of At The Liberty Inn, I was angry and looking for villains to blame. I found one in the character of Raf, a lazily-drawn caricature of the boy who I was certain had ripped out my heart. Working on the play became my therapy (which was good, because with no insurance at the time, I couldn’t afford an actual provider). The piece came to fruition as a story about a couple in a toxic situationship who break up at a quickie motel. As the couple — Raf and Katie (a lazily-drawn caricature of myself) — avoid the end, they jump into different role-play scenarios of who they could be in this room, only to discover they don’t work no matter who, what, or when they are.
I was sure that completing this would be my escape route. I talked myself into believing that if I could get the play right, everything would fall back into place.
Now, imagine my surprise when the piece was read in plastic chairs in a circle in an art gallery in Bushwick, and it didn’t solve all of my problems. In fact, it only made them worse. The play wasn’t ready… it wasn’t close. It was, like me, a mess. That’s disappointing in and of itself, but worse, I felt betrayed by the very thing I thought could never hurt me: writing. I had let myself down.
After the 2023 reading, I not only shelved At The Liberty Inn, but also my larger playwriting dreams. It was too hard and I was scared to keep trying. So I pivoted to other mediums: this Substack, copywriting, freelance articles, all of which I love doing. I put my life back together and myself in the process.
At some point in the two years between the Bushwick reading and now, I grew up. I learned more about dating, love, and actual heartbreak. I found my voice. I honed my skills. I finally understood what Nora Ephron meant when she said, “Everything is copy,” and delighted in the power of putting the phrase to use.
When I wasn’t looking, in a way I didn’t expect, I changed. And I didn’t realize just how much until I was forced to confront the girl I’d been two years prior.
I had all but erased Liberty Inn from my mind until February 2025, when Cameron King, the fantastic director who’d hosted the Bushwick reading in 2023, asked if I’d revive the piece for a new play festival in June. It would be presented as a staged reading: not a full performance, but with an audience, a stage, and tickets. A bit stunned, I said yes and fished out the old draft, knowing I’d have to do rewrites and eager to procrastinate them as long as possible.
I pretended it wasn’t real until I saw the announcement in BroadwayWorld in late May. Whoops! In hindsight, I’d been avoiding it. The play was written during a painful time, filled with painful memories, and I was scared of what might happen if we reconnected.
It felt like an ex, and I had to check back in.
Rereading the piece was jarring, to put it mildly. It was like revisiting a version of me I no longer knew and certainly no longer was. This would become a theme of the revised play — the sensation of looking at your body of work and feeling like a stranger. The 2023 draft was written by someone who lacked confidence and had a limited perspective on love and relationships. I didn’t realize how naive I was until I read it and found myself wondering… What was I thinking then? I still had so much left to learn.
In the rewrite, I was able to appreciate the chaotic journey of the last few years and everything it had taught me: about love, professionalism, writing, adulthood, basic grammar (SAT tutoring paid off in more ways than expected). Finally, I understood what it had all been for. I was glad I had stepped away, and I was happy to return.
The week before the 2025 Liberty Inn reading, I took a walk down memory lane: picking up binders for scripts at the Broadway Green Alliance (BGA has a binder recycling program that all theatre makers should take advantage of); pouring over lines of dialogue and scribbling notes like a madwoman in an eclectic downtown rehearsal space; being genuinely floored by the price of printing at a FedEx at 7:00 AM; doing rewrite after rewrite after rewrite. All of it was familiar, reminiscent of the before the flood days… but I was different.
And then it was showtime. And then I was petrified.
Heading to the theater kind of felt like going on a first date, something I’m all too familiar with. The stakes are low because you haven’t put too much into it yet. But there’s still an investment. There’s significant risk and potential reward.
In the case of the reading, people paid for tickets. Our actors — the incredibly talented Jesse Aaronson and Annamarie Kasper — gave up their time. Cameron worked her butt off. And I spent countless late nights and weekends with this text, massaging it into something honest and fresh.
In the frenetic days leading up to the “show,” I actually left parties early because I was “excited to go home to my play.” And god, that felt fucking great. Writing was for me again. Warm, safe, joyful, and loyal. I knew that, no matter what happened with the reading, revisiting Liberty Inn reminded me why I love what I have the honor of doing. There’s a magic to creating something from nothing, to letting your brain run free and seeing what comes out. It’s a thrill to map real life over fictional characters and ask big questions.
In At The Liberty Inn, the thesis asks if it’s possible to love something or someone even when you know it’s not right for you. It investigates why we stay and when we run. The power that the past can hold over us, and the intricacies of intimacy.
It’s a play about play, but it’s also just a play about people.
What gripped me about the Liberty Inn, the place, when I first read about it in the New York Times, was the idea that these kitschy little motel rooms, with no bellboys in sight, could hold more history and heart than we might ever know.
I was struck by the idea that just as a hotel can be sold and still retain its meaning, while people move on, grow up, and change, we never forget the moments and memories that have shaped us. I often wonder if exes see certain city spots the same way we do; if they remember the bench where you had your first kiss, the stoop where you had your first fight, or the subway station where you saw each other last. I have to imagine they do, if it matters at all.
It’s certainly the case for me.
So to all the boys who broke my heart, I say: thanks for the material!
The reading went well. Really well. Truthfully, I had no idea if people would like the play. I wasn’t sure if it was any good; I wasn’t sure if I was any good. After the lights went down, I hid at the back of the house and watched through slats in the risers, chest racing and palms sweating, heart leaping at every laugh, gasp, and guffaw.
Afterwards, I went around the corner to a bar in Midtown with the team and friends who had come to the show. As the dust settled and the nerves wore off, I reveled in the result. It turned out people liked it. It moved them. It made them think. It made them question. And there’s still work to do, but that feeling… that felt great.
And so, playwriting and I are going to give it another shot. Who would’ve thunk, huh? #31. “If you’re at a resort, have the bellboy page you,” made me get back together with my ex. Hope we don’t break up again.
