🎧 Mixtapes, Warm Beer, and the Magic of Being Understood: Why You Need to Read Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen
Let’s be honest: most parties are just noise. The kind that makes you wish you’d stayed home with a book, a blanket, and maybe a bowl of cereal. But every once in a while, a party becomes something else—a portal, a pivot, a quiet revolution. That’s exactly what happens in Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen, a quietly dazzling novelette I wrote to turn one awkward night in 1984 Boston into a masterclass in human connection.
This isn’t a story about falling in love. It’s about falling into presence.
Jim Garraty, fresh out of high school and freshly deposited at Harvard, is not looking for romance. He’s looking for escape—from the noise, the pressure, the performance. Enter Kelly Moore: drink in hand, Rachmaninoff on her lips, and a gaze that doesn’t demand but invites. What unfolds between them isn’t fireworks—it’s resonance. Over cassette tapes and ice-cold Heineken, they don’t fall in love. They fall into honesty.
Here’s a glimpse of how it begins:
The apartment was somewhere near Kenmore, just close enough to campus for students to justify the trip, just far enough that I couldn’t slip out unnoticed without a ride. The space was too small for the number of bodies packed into it, the walls vibrating with every bass drop. Twisted Sister blared, fists pumped, and the air smelled like cheap beer and too many clashing perfumes.
It was 1984, unmistakably so—Jordache and Calvin Klein jeans hugged long legs, paired with pastel tees, Harvard sweatshirts, or blouses that shimmered slightly in the dim lighting. Some girls wore their hair big—carefully styled into perfect waves—while others let theirs fall straight and sleek. The guys were a mixed bunch. A few clung to longish late-‘70s cuts, holding onto an era just barely past; others kept their crewcuts sharp, the kind of clean-cut presence that screamed ROTC.
I scanned the crowd, searching for familiarity, for someone I might recognize besides the one guy I knew from English Comp II—but he was tucked away in a dark corner, wrapped up in his girlfriend and completely oblivious to the rest of the room. No anchor. Just noise and bodies and me, wedged against a wall, sipping a beer I didn’t even like.
Then, she slipped into my periphery…
“You’re not having a good time, are you?”
Her voice, touched with amusement but not unkind, carried a soft lilt, warm and measured, like the kind that poured over you slow, with a trace of honeyed charm.
📚 Comings and Goings is the literary equivalent of finding someone who doesn’t ask you to explain your weird music taste or your existential dread. It’s a story for anyone who’s ever felt invisible in a crowded room, and for everyone who’s ever longed to be seen without being interrogated.
Why You Should Read It (Even If You Think You Don’t Like Short Fiction)
- 💬 Dialogue that breathes: Readers rave about the realistic conversations and inner monologues. Jim and Kelly don’t speak in plot points—they speak like people.
- 🎶 Mixtape nostalgia: The 1980s setting isn’t just aesthetic—it’s emotional. Music becomes a third character, stitching together silence and sentiment.
- 🧠 Emotional intelligence: This is a story about empathy, not epiphanies. Kelly doesn’t fix Jim. She sits beside him. And that’s the point.
- 🪞 No masks, no mirrors: As the book’s summary on Amazon put it, this isn’t about first love. It’s about the first time you didn’t have to explain yourself.
If you’ve already read the Reunion Duology, this is your bonus track—the hidden gem that deepens the emotional landscape. If you haven’t, Comings and Goings is a perfect entry point: short, sharp, and soulfully written.
So go ahead. Read it. Let it remind you that sometimes, the most transformative moments aren’t loud—they’re luminous. And sometimes, being seen is the bravest thing we do.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
You must be logged in to post a comment.