Did any of you do urban exploring as a teenager? Cuz lemme tell you, I did NOT. It wasn't really on my radar to sack ruins for sport, in fact. I was more the D&D playing, Mom-literally-told-me-once-to-stop-reading-and-get-on-facebook-or-something typa dude.
My husband though? He and his friends got up to some delightfully stupid stuff, and those stories were the inspiration for this cast's affinity for urban exploration.
My understanding is that this is a much harder hobby to pursue than it once was because of increased security and our whole lives being recorded, and this book taking place in the 2000s gave me room to play around with recalling a life before cameras and phones caught you doing every little thing.
The main urban exploring content my serial pub contains (since I also have wilderness exploring in search of cryptids) is a chapter about going to this abandoned asylum. While I gave my asylum the fake name St. Dymphna's, it's based loosely on a real asylum in NJ called Hagedorn.
That lone wheelchair even makes an appearance, cuz something about an abandoned accessibility object gives me the heebie jeebies. Probably because I'm a cane-user? But I digress.
This is one of those things I really wish I'd been more fond of as a teen. Which is crazy even as I think it now, because people can get injured or arrested in the process but... I've just spent so much of my life afraid to live. And I think a lot of queer people can relate to that. This is a dangerous world we live in, and being queer makes it moreso. So thrusting oneself into danger they have control of? I see the appeal. And teenage me definitely would've seen it too. These abandoned places — so many haunted by the atrocities committed there — are brought back to life by our audacity.
Just to be clear, I'm not encouraging anyone to break laws, because blah responsibility blah liability blah — but also, live your life how you see fit. Live fucking dangerously if that's what gets your blood pumping. Queer kids never know how long we got. Nobody does. So do what makes you feel alive.
Even if what reminds you that you're living is hanging around the dead.
And if you're too nervous to do this for real like me? Then read about some 2000s teens doing it in:
Devil On My Shoulder
—queer tales from the garden state—
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