Writer Maria de los Angeles read her story Helen and Her Three Husbands at a live event produced by Under the Sun and Lip Service at the Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables. The next Lip Service storytelling event is October 1. Tickets are on sale.

Helen is a 93-year-old Hungarian who lost her family in the holocaust. I’m a 37-year-old Cuban who never met my grandparents.

Exile makes for a strange familiarity.

By 1953 Helen made it to Miami Beach.

Fifty years later, I rented an apartment next to Helen’s, just off of 41st Street.

Jeremy Glazer read his story Club Kid at a live event produced by Under the Sun and Lip Service at the Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables. The sold-out event featured true stories about life in South Florida. Jeremy is a legislative analyst, a former high school teacher and a Miami native.

I live on South Beach. But I’m not gay and I don’t go to clubs.

It’s weird, I know.

I’m used to being mistaken for something I’m not. So it didn’t surprise me when I got a call from Raquel, at a market research group, looking to interview “regular club goers.” I was about to hang up when she said it paid $60.