Neverending nights

This edition of The Nightlife Review is called Invisible Nightlife Review. It was created in collaboration with The New School.

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, this collection gathers rhythmic, philosophical, and imagined essays that drift through the hidden, surreal, and often overlooked dimensions of nightlife. The entries fall into four moods: Neverending Nights, White Nights, Blood Nights, and Buried Nights.

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The Smoking Lounge by Celia Rose

ONE

My mother forks into her lobster as she watches me mow my filet mignon into slices, “They undercooked it. I can have them take it back,” she insists, her first bite sits plump and upright on her fork, butter and juices running down and through the prongs. The yellow inching toward her palm.

I suck in a deep breath and land my bite between my teeth, staring back and nodding as the first taste passes my tongue. “It’s medium. Like I asked.”

She lets out one impassioned scoff, “If you say so.” She bites down and continues her eye contact. “Yesterday, your dad’s steak was tough. I couldn’t even listen to him eat it.”

Alienation by Dakota Levitt

Test subject #1, patient zero, the guinea pig. They advertised it as ‘beta-tester,’ which has a nicer ring to it than the only idiot lonely enough to let us blast him off into the unknown. At this point in my too long, too unfulfilling life I had two options: succumb to its demise or forge a new path, the path they gave me. While both intriguing, kinda, (not really), I chose the latter.

I stuffed the little belongings I had left into my shallow pockets and prepared for my midnight departure. They said no human would be able to survive this. 60 seconds to 120 seconds max was the estimated time I would endure, but I am not human, nor am I one to abide by the chains of confinement others have placed on me. Onwards and upwards, I ascended 666,666,666 miles, straight up past the clouds, through the stars, breaking the sound barrier and gasping for air as I rose above the Kármán line.

DIY Econ by Eva Szilardi-Tierney

The punk with the mullet clutches me in their hand, sweating against me. Their sweat mixes with the condensation from the tall can of Modelo they’re swigging from and they ball their fist between sips, wiggling their damp fingers into me to dry them off. Beside them, their tall, combat boot-clad girlfriend mimes a two-step.

The three of us stand in a funny kind of line in the hallway of a brownstone’s basement apartment. We’re waiting for the (affectionately named) door bitch to check everyone's suggested donations for this DIY show. They’re friendly, greeting everyone with a warmth that suggests this venue is actually their home, and one they like hosting in. I peek around from inside mullet’s hand to take in the fancifully named Magic Mountain.

As far as I can tell, it’s just the lower level of a deteriorating pre-war Brooklyn apartment, decorated with desktop printouts of defunct Six Flags attractions. Not that this matters to me, or to anyone else in line. This show is so small practically everyone on line was personally invited.

Get Home Safe by Mandy Kim

The silence of night was eerie, almost deafening. It always unnerved me—the stillness of night. Hearing the unfiltered sounds of my surroundings made me feel disoriented, like I was hallucinating. Maybe it was paranoia or anxiety, but my wired headphones helped. Even with the world drowned out, I knew better than to let my guard down completely.

The High Priestess of Paradise by Gabriel Chavez

Of the events that led to her confinement she can only speculate: Had the three-legged stools the nightclub stored beneath the DJ booth been any color but the black that matched the darkness perhaps she’d be free—chastised for trespassing, yes, and steered out to the street—but free.

Had she only left a trace of her presence above, a bottle or a handbag set like bait beside the decks, perhaps a barback would have seen her trembling shadow and removed her from this self-made isolation. Had she been clumsier, drunker, slower to catch the fire extinguisher she knocked over, the echo of metal on plywood would have revealed her to security, whose impatient glance around the curtained dance floor could not discern her.

What froze her to the spot, she wondered, what instinct kept her still and quiet against the promise of detection? She felt no thrill in her trespass, no fear even but rather the tranquility of having discovered an unmarked cave by a familiar sea. The star-shaped earring her boyfriend wanted back lured her under, its broken clasp a fated beckoning to the sticky cables and hardened limes beneath the DJ booth at Amulet.

Traveling Spark by Pete Reilly

Things have social lives. They pass from hand to hand, vanish into pockets, and reappear in places they were never intended to be. The red Bic lighter was one such thing—plastic and butane molded in a French factory, shipped across the Atlantic as part of a shipment, not as an individual but as a unit of commerce. It arrived in New York City, displayed behind scratched bodega glass on 119th Street, a disposable object meant to be used and lost. Its purpose was simple: to spark a brief flame, then disappear.

Through the city, dusk settled, and lights bled into the sky. Inside the bodega, the red lighter rested beside gum, condoms, and mini whiskey bottles—objects of impulse. Outside, beneath a flickering streetlamp, a woman lingered, a cigarette balanced between her fingers.

“Anyone have a light?” she asked.

A man at the counter turned. He didn’t smoke, but saw a chance to connect. He placed a few bills on the counter. The clerk handed him the Bic, shifting it from the world of commerce to something more intimate.

Four Kinds of Night by Mikayla Emerson

You don’t necessarily believe everything your memory says when it describes five years passing like nothing. Each night piles on top of another like smoke down a sewer drain, not wanting to seep away. Rising back to the boots and bile, curling around an ankle, a wrist. Though, certainly, they must hold a truth if they end with you here.

Neverending Nights
Before

Because you were once five years old. Because you once also believed in disappearing acts. And miracles. And the Fool’s Journey. Because you fell for it. Because a blinking light at the center of town is goodbye. And a gas station means you have a long way to go. Because home is the first Hell. A dirt road. A big car going nowhere. Because it’s your right to be left. Because every scenario ends with you on a sidewalk. And every night begins with why.

Blood Nights
East Village

Because you kissed the girl who left blood confetti in the snow. Because you can’t hate her for it. Because mouth to mouth feels like resuscitation. IV drip bag and marred cuticles. Because the iron-tang tastes like the other side of a trapdoor. The street numbers turn to letters turn to wasted postage. Think of the red on your bottom lip as a souvenir, an I wish you were here.

The Big Light by Lillian Heckler

This morning, Mark Lord awoke as a fly. The morning before, he also awoke as a fly. In fact, there had never been a morning when he hadn’t awoken as a fly, and there would never be a morning when he wouldn’t awake as a fly, except for the morning after the day that he would eventually die, because then he wouldn’t be much of anything except for dead.

Mark enjoys being a fly. Buzzing. Darting. Licking windows. Sleeping in rotten wood. The human who owns the house that he lives in leaves enough food scraps in the kitchen to feed Mark for several lifetimes, which isn’t saying much for a fly because he probably won’t make it until next autumn.

Before this house, Mark lived in a different house in another place. He didn’t like that house as much. There was less to do and fewer flies to do it with. He’d cross paths with the same three insects every few hours, and they weren’t what Mark would consider talkative. The human living there seemed not to, well, live there, which meant there weren’t as many flesh particles or condensation droplets on the windows and the walls and the tiles in the bathroom. This made the surfaces less ripe for licking, which was quite unsatisfying for Mark. He would lie in a dark, damp corner of decaying baseboard in the attic, restless, and think about dying. By palm, by book, by swatter, by tissue, by car.

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