I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection (In Performance)

Maybe you can tell from the title of this blog post that I am tweaking my own tendency toward alternate or sub-titles to my works. Or perhaps I am just doing it once more.

Some time over the summer, when I was on my own for several weeks, I got this idea in my head, probably while running. I have lots of ideas when running, sometimes they become realized.

I have always wanted to do a house performance, or at least as far back as 2010. I read about them, then I sought them out. We produced the Love In Pieces project in 2014, and more recently I have enjoyed – and later, participated in – works produced by Micro Theater CLE.

What does it mean to invite strangers into your home for a live performance? Not that anyone this weekend was a stranger, exactly. And even those who were, well. We are now a bit more familiar, I think.

Anyway. As I was having this time on my own, and as I was looking for an opportunity to perform I Hate This once more, it all came together and I made myself that commitment. The commemorate our first pregnancy, and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, we were going to do this.

I asked Josh to update his multimedia program, found both stage and house managers to run the show and serve the guests, and asked the Preeclampsia Foundation if I could promote this as a fund raiser, a suggestion I am grateful to have been well received.

The thing about the script is that it is now truly a memory play. When I was first taking this piece around, I was commenting on things that had only recently happened – including 9/11. And a couple things which were true in 2001 no longer are.

While working over the script, I tried to eliminate the delivery I remembered, to focus on how I feel about these things today. I also have the advantage of not having to project my voice. Not at all. A normal speaking voice. Telling an old story.

It took some work to clear out the living room and even then, ten seats was quite a squeeze. Sunday, Josh and I ran the cues and made adjustments to time and sound. Monday we brought in Geneva, the SM, to learn the cues and run the whole show, cue to cue.

I was relaxed, I had fun, even. Though, there was one moment, it is an extended, direct address with a single audience member. As I concluded, he gasped. I asked if that was all right. He said it was fine, just a lot.

Tuesday night was dress rehearsal, before paid audiences received the entire treatment (open bar, handmade snacks, etc.) I had invited company members from The Right Room, and some of the actor-teachers. It went well, there were a few surprises, pleasant and not, like when the cat turned on the Roomba. I did feel myself falling back into old forms of delivery, and I wasn’t happy about that. And it is something to be so close, and to look them all in the eye.

Wednesday night, opening night, was a bit of a party, we had a certain fellow solo performance expert sitting in the front row and she was laughing at all the darkest stuff and that was really something special. Her laughter made others feel free to laugh and it made all the difference.

Know what else made the difference? Our house manager-cum-bartender Char was in the (literal) house starting that night and their charm and skill kept things bubbly before curtain. Also, Toni had made cheese stuffed dates and fruit and cheese skewers (thank you Marchant Manor, support your local business) as well as puff pastry with tomatoes from City Fresh.

Thursday was the experienced crowd, and by that I guess I mean they were older. Also, many of them had seen the show before, like, most of them. They had come to see this show again, one of them for the third time, having seen it first in 2011 and again in 2016. What’s that like? Geneva has shared performance photos with me and they are striking. I used to look that way, now I look this way.

I look like my father. I look so much like my father now.

After the show, I head upstairs to change out of the costume while audience members are invited to stay and continue the conversation. After the dress rehearsal Toni joined me and it became a kind of Q&A, which was only appropriate as there were many younger folks there who don’t actually know me personally that well and didn’t know her at all. But I’ve been trying to avoid the after event becoming an extension of the show, I just want to see the people.

Thursday night, we were all telling our September 11th stories.

One of the unique elements of this production is my proximity to the audience, which allows me to speak in my natural voice. No projection, I can even mutter on occasion. One audience member this night said they were particularly focused on my breathing, which was a wonderful thing to learn.

Friday the crowd was older, the laughs were fewer … this is to be expected. You do not know who in the audience may have experienced some kind of child loss, but the older the audience the higher the probability, of course. I keep this in mind. It’s the Bette and Boo effect (see link) or as the good doctor put it, some people “don’t think stillbirth is funny.”

The show continues to change. When I mention how we handed out “handmade red paper and pens” at the boy’s memorial, I hand out actual paper we had commissioned from Dissected Relics and also Sharpies. Members of the first audience gave me a note; they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with the paper.

I ad libbed to the Wednesday night audience that they too could write “secret messages to our boy” and they did! On Friday, after the show, I was asked about the birdbath we burned the messages in back in 2001 and it’s still there in the garage, and the team thought it might be nice to have a place to set the messages at the end of the show.

For the final two performances, the set included a small birdbath.

Saturday night was a mix of ages and experiences, or at least you might think so. Again, everyone has a different connection to child loss, as parents, and also as siblings. For me, the event was highly charged as my former spouse Diana was in the (literal) house, and though we have made our way back to being friends we haven’t been in each others’ presence for over thirty years.

It was a happy reunion, though I think that she was much more interested in seeing my wife. They have a great deal of catching up to do. That evening went the longest, a half dozen of us sat in a circle and chatted for almost two hours.

I was asked how I would feel if this was the show I would be remembered for, and I came to terms with that a long time ago. It’s why I keep coming back. And it’s a story I love to tell. Tonight, we're going to tell it one more time.

You can donate to the Preeclampsia Foundation today, please follow this link to contribute directly to them in support of I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection.

Poochu's Productions presents "I Hate This (A True Story)"

Karthik TMK

One month ago, Poochu’s Productions produced my play, I Hate This (A True Story), at the Alliance Française de Madras in Chennai, India. Directed by Denver Anthony Nicholas and performed by Karthik TMK (and also by Abinaya R, more on her in a moment) this was not the first time these two men have presented this play about my experiences with stillbirth.

Four years ago, Denver, Karthik and I had a few email conversations about their producing the play in Spring 2021. They asked for a number of perfectly reasonable changes. The production would be performed in English (once referred to as India’s "subsidiary official language") and take place in America, but there were certain passages which would not be understood, culturally. Also, some of the names were unusual – a woman named Toni, for example – and could those be changed.

Most significantly, in my opinion, they asked if the several characters who I would traditionally have performed myself be performed instead by another performer, a woman. When we adapted the play into an audio drama in 2005 – was that really twenty years ago? I digress – I felt it would be easier to understand if every character had their own voice. But I always thought of it as strictly a solo performance.

Abinaya R

But that’s me. Theater is nothing if not an expansive art form. I was intrigued. And why not? They know best how to present this play to their audience, and I don’t. For this most recent production they cast Abinaya R, with whom they had most recently worked with in a production of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley.

Part of the design concept for this production of I Hate This was to emphasize the idea that while Karthik is telling the story now, today, Abinaya represents the past. He wears colors, she is monochromatic, dressed in black, her face and hands made white and gray. He looks at her, she never sees him. I was struck by this upon her first reveal, as the mother on the phone. She appears in a pool of light, far upstage. She looks so small compared to him in that scene, almost as though she is in a thought bubble.

When Denver and Karthik first produced this work, I was asked if they could change the title. This title, I HATE THIS, is the original sin of this particular work, as far back as 2002 it was suggested to me that the phrase might present a barrier to attendance. I took the risk. They were right, but I do not regret my decision. The show needs a content advisory and I believe the title serves that purpose.

Karthik TMK

As they strove to return to live performance following the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Denver felt that the original title would alienate audiences, and we agreed upon the much more digestible title What Happened. In the play that is asked as a question, as presented here it is simply a statement. This is what happened. For this new production, they decided it was now acceptable to use the original title, with the subtitle "a true story."

I have my own reasons for having written this piece, and why I keep returning to it. I am grateful to Playhouse Square and University Hospitals for producing the film (starring James Alexander Rankin) which continues to be used as an educational tool and an instrument of comfort for the bereaved. However, those few times (so far) that companies or individuals have inquired about producing the piece independently, I am always deeply curious as to their interest, or intentions.

Abinaya R

For Karthik, it is the opportunity to play something dramatic. Most solo performances for men are comic (I have heard this before, even from high school students seeking something different to perform for competitions) and he was looking for something which would allow him to be vulnerable on stage, and tell a story that would move people.

Denver told me about the first performances of What Happened/I Hate This, four years ago, when a young woman who saw the show was inconsolable and sobbing following the performance. A few years later, Denver’s company was holding one of their monthly Enter Stage events, a kind of open mic for artists to perform their own monologues. A young woman told a powerful and personal story of having suffered a miscarriage. When she was asked about this after her presentation, she said that it was her who had been so emotionally overwhelmed by my play, because of her own loss – and that the experience had inspired her to tell her story on stage, something she may not have done otherwise.

Director Denver Anthony Nicholas (center)
with Karthik and Abinaya

I have written several plays which have been published, rights for production handled by others without my participation. There’s a production of Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street next weekend in Louisiana. It's going to be dinner theater and if the photos are any indication, I would love to get there for the food alone. I Hate This is not currently published, so there have been far fewer independent productions.

But when they come, when artists have found the script and reach to inquire about production, it means that our story, mine and my wife’s story of how we incorporated loss into our lives, that it is being told to an entirely new audience. And the fact that that story might have an impact on someone who lives and loves and grieves on the other side of the earth, that is truly remarkable.

Sources: 

Notification No. 2/8/60-O.L, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, April 27, 1960

"What’s in a monologue? Enter stage & find out" by Rupam Jain, Indian Express Indulge, August 18, 2023

Ten Recommended Posts from 2022

Post-Operative

I can’t even determine what were my most visited posts of the past year, the amount of visits have inflated beyond anything I have previously experienced, which means that either a) my blog has suddenly gotten very popular or b) they’re all bots.

Even the most basic post about my ongoing experiences in grad school receive over two hundred notices a week and I am here to tell you, they really don’t.

However, I have posted some essays this year which I feel might warrant a second (or first) look, and here is a list of those.

1. Secret New Year’s Getaway (Parts One & Two)

A set of aging Gen Xers risk the Omicron variant for a romantic weekend in NYC during which everything went perfectly well except for the original reason for which they had planned the trip.

Bryce Evan Lewis, Adrionna Powell Lawrence,
Jaime Bouvier
"The Witches"
(Cleveland Public Theatre, 2022)

2. On Self-Control

While writing a new script, I delve into the darker elements of my childhood and how I evolved into the witty but restrained raconteur I am today.

3. On Social Anxiety

Picture says a thousand words, this one just says “loser” over and over again.

4. Phil Collins

He’s the only one who really knew me at all.

5. On Solo Performance

Notes on this particular form of performance and the best cheeseburger I ever ate.

6. The History of Western Civilization (play)

No, seriously. It’s all the guns. This year marked the thirtieth anniversary of Guerrilla Theater Company, and one of our members wrote a really great piece about the American gun epidemic.

7. On Abortion

In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, a recollection of one heady summer of street protest.

8. On Sight (Pre-Operative, Post-Operative, Recovery) 

The vision in one eye was compromised by a detached retina. The operation and recovery took place while my family was out of town.

Guerrilla Theater Company, 1992

9. I Hate This (playlist)

Much of the fall centered around the premiere of the film adaptation of this solo performance on stillbirth. I provided this deep dive into the musical inspiration for the original stage production, which was also included in the film.

10. Leaving Twitter

Pretty self-explanatory. It is a decision which daily proves to have been the right one.

I Hate This (First Reading, 2002)

Twenty years ago today, August 26, 2002, we held the first public reading of I Hate This (a play without the baby).

To recap, my wife and I suffered a stillbirth in early 2001. And I wrote about it. And wrote about it. My journal was a form of solace and understanding. We mourned, we talked, we traveled. We wanted things to stand still for a while but they kept moving forward.

My wife had a show in the New York Fringe that August and I saw a lot of shows, many of them solo performances. As I drove a van of sleeping teenagers and young adults back to Cleveland I had a lot of time to think and I realized then that I was going to write a show about this experience.

It had only been five months. I told myself to wait, not to think about it again at least until the new year. The wife had invited me to join her writers’ group which met at that coffee shop in University Circle. In 2002 I began to share pages for what would become my first solo performance.

Early that summer I met for lunch with Joyce Casey, Artistic Director of Dobama Theatre. As I had worked there for three years she was my former employer and mentor, and also a good friend. I had shared the script with her and she asked how she could help with the piece and I said I wanted to hold a reading, an invitation-only event and could I use the space. She agreed.

This was something I had never done before. I hadn’t actually written many plays. I’d never had a public-private showcase of a work I had just written. Maybe a few folks invited over to my house to read and comment. I planned to invite a wide variety of people, friends and close artistic colleagues, but also directors of other theater companies and most importantly to extend an invitation to those we had met on our journey, others who had lost children and were familiar with this grief.

I made postcards to send through the mail or to hand out. I must have sent emails, too.

Tom Cullinan was director, he would go on to direct the original staging of the play. We worked in various rooms in my house to create a shape for this performance. It was script-in-hand but there was also blocking. In the end what we created was the basis for the stage play I would eventually perform, on and off, for the next five years.

There were no slides, I read the title for each scene. There was no music or sound effects, those would come later. There were a couple music stands so I could place the script for longer passages. It was a staged reading. I wore the sweater.

The version dated June, 2002 is remarkably similar to the final version. I have edited and edited as the years have gone by, but its shape was established from the beginning. There are uninteresting details which were cut, and inaccuracies.

“I sang to it on Friday and I swear it was listening to me.”

That line may be poetic, or possibly emotion-evoking. It is not accurate. I changed that passage before the first reading. There were many, many f-bombs, and other obscenities which were unnecessary.

There is a scene where my brother and I are in the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan, observing the Annunciation Triptych. I compare myself to Joseph, the blithely ignorant father: “He has no idea what’s about to happen to him.” In the original draft I go on to describe other famous men who have lost children:

“God lost His son. Did you know the guy that writes Doonesbury, his wife had a stillbirth. And John Lennon and Yoko Ono had a number of miscarriages. And Luis Guzman. He’s that guy, you know, in 'Traffic' … yeah, you know, that guy, him, too. Read it somewhere. Really fucked him up for a while. Isn’t he great?”

That passage was struck from the August, 2002 version, the one I used for the reading. I had wanted to share what a widely-felt experience child loss is, and examples of famous men who have was one way to do that, I guess. But the scene is long and bends from topic to topic and we needed to draw a narrower focus.

Trying to describe our visit to Great Britain to see my other brother that summer, I originally read this:

“I don’t know what we wanted our trip to London to be, but it wasn’t what we wanted. I love that city, it bleeds history, and you’re surrounded by people from all over the world, rushing through its narrow streets, the places just pulses with music and art and exciting smells and noise. But it was still scary to even step outside and you know, there are newborn babies everywhere, even in England.”

Press to play.

But that wasn’t right. That’s some sexy but entirely vague explanation of how I feel when I am in any large city, and when things are entirely normal. It didn’t describe that place at that time, the way we were experiencing it. It was revised for the premiere.

The turnout was very good, all things considered. Sixty people? Maybe seventy? Following the reading I changed and sat in the back while Tom led a post-show discussion about the script.

I mean, here’s the thing. Everyone in the room knew me, most likely knew both me and my wife. They knew we’d lost a pregnancy. I knew no one was going to be very critical of the work. But I didn’t know what I’d written. Was it a play? Was this a story anyone wanted to hear? Would they say, I am glad you got that off your chest?

Well, no. No one said that, at least not yet. And there were generous questions about form and clarity. Someone suggested I cast other actors to play the characters I impersonate which was interesting and while that was not something I wanted to do you it has been done that way.

One theater colleague, a playwright (I did not yet call myself a playwright) marveled at the fact that I would even attempt something like this. She said there was this conventional wisdom that it takes ten years before someone can successfully write about tragedy, and yet I just went ahead and did it.

And Randy Rollison, Artistic Director of Cleveland Public Theatre asked if I had any plans for it. I said I had not. He asked if I would like to participate in a new works program he was planning, called Big Box. I said I would.

My wife and I were already four months pregnant with our next, and living child. They would be a month old when this new play would would premiere at CPT in February 2003. And that is how two decades can pass without your really noticing.

On Solo Performance

Clyde Jevne in "One-Man Hamlet"
(Theatre Inconnu, 2011)

The best production of Hamlet I have ever seen was a solo performance created by Dr. Clayton Jevne, Founding Artistic Director of Theatre Inconnu (Victoria, British Columbia). Titled One-Man Hamlet, it was one of the several productions I attended at the Minnesota Fringe in 2003.

“... Nick, Denny and I went to see One-Man Hamlet at Bryant-Lake. That kicked ass, the man is a freak, and not only that, but a Canadian freak and we sat in the dark eating cheeseburgers and drinking pints of Summit and watching this guy charge around the stage with music stands with balloons on them representing all the different characters, it was a whoot.” - I Hate This Blog, 8/9/2003

The cheeseburger was only part of what made it special. The Bryant-Lake Bowl in Minneapolis is a bar and grill, bowling alley and cabaret theater all under one roof. We’d placed orders before the show and fifteen minutes in, a server brought my dish and it was passed down to me by friendly audience members.

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)"
(Red Eye Theatre, 2003)

I wasn’t the only one served. This is totally a thing that they do at Bryant-Lake.

“... Denny and I are going to see Heretic [a solo performance by Niki McCretton] this evening at 6. Toni got to see [Staggering Toward America, a solo performance by Rik Reppe] this afternoon ... and I did my last performance.” - I Hate This Blog, 08/10/2003

That would be my last performance for I Hate This. My trip to Minnesota nineteen years ago was the first time I brought my solo performance on stillbirth to an audience of almost complete strangers.

“Forty people in the house, a strong Sunday afternoon showing … Clayton the One-Man Hamlet man was in the house, and his lovely wife. Our midwife's daughter made the show! And there were rumors ... maybe Matthew Everett made it (and his mom) [more on that here]. I am grateful for the attention.” - I Hate This Blog, 08/10/2003

The solo performance is a particular kind of drama, but it can be so many different things. Ten years or so ago there were several traveling shows in which one guy would tell all of The Lord of the Rings or the entire Harry Potter saga in a single evening, which is a kind of parody. It’s for the fans, but it’s also meant to be hilarious.

Jevne’s One-Man Hamlet is much more than that. It is very funny, to be sure. But he’s playing something like an addled street performer with the least expensive props possible and what is remarkable is how he just keeps going, playing all the characters, telling the entire story. 

My favorite part is how he takes all of those moments that a character describes something that happened in the recent past (Ophelia telling her father what Hamlet did in her closet, Hamlet telling Horatio about the pirates) by opening a foot locker pulling out puppets and miniatures.

Sometimes a solo performance is in the service of a familiar tale, like Jevne’s, or when we saw local artist Terry Canendonk perform I Dreamed of Rats, his adaptation of the Inspector General. Or it is autobiographical, like Reppe’s Staggering Toward America, in which he told the true story of his journey across the nation after 9/11. He becomes the people he met along the way, but it’s no different than a good friend telling a great yarn over a fire. There’s a personal connection necessary in these kinds of performances, and Reppe’s personality was big and he embraced the crowd with it.

Nina Domingue
"The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures
of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate"
(Cleveland Public Theare, 2002)

While we’re on the subject of solo shows I saw almost in Minnesota almost two decades ago, Heretic was yet another kind of one person performance, a play with one character, and little or no text. Utilizing video, a big open stage and a large aquarium, McCretton is a woman who has been exiled to the surface of the moon for the crime of having religious belief, and may not return until she has filled the fish tank with her tears.

It’s a flex, standing on stage, by yourself, for an hour or so. You are the only person holding the attention of an entire audience.

My good friend Nina Domingue has written and performed several solo shows, most recently The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate, which opened to a full house at Cleveland Public Theatre last weekend. Watching Nina play is a masterclass in catching and keeping an audience, not only skilled in portraying all manner of characters, but also staying in tune with and reacting to the assembled.

I have written and performed two solo shows. This spring I have been writing an essay, meant to be read aloud, about my mother’s death, called Falling. I have no idea what I might do with it, though I am glad to have written it.

Cleveland Public Theatre presents "The Amazing and Absolutely True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate" performed by Nina Domingue and directed by Nathan Henry through May 14, 2022.

The New York City Marathon (2006)

The first New York City Marathon was held in September 1970. As last year’s marathon was cancelled due to COVID, they missed out on the opportunity to celebrate the event’s quinquagenarian anniversary. That is happening today. The 50th running of the NYC Marathon.

Fifteen years ago I ran my first marathon, and it was this one. There was something magical about training for New York first. Who knew if I would ever run a second?

Since 2006 I have kept a running blog, recording every run I take, long or short. I have also included some operations and other sidelining events. But I still run. In fact, it was this blog which provided much of the material used in my solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years).

Here is the contemporary account of my experience running the New York City Marathon. 

The Night Before

That night I had dinner with two old college friends, Andrew and Missy. Andrew bought me a pasta dinner at this great Italian place across the street from where he works. Andrew designs props for the American Airlines Theater, after dinner he gave us a brief tour of the set of Heartbreak House.

I stopped off at a market for extra food; a banana, pretzels, the odd energy bar, and a way too big bottle of water. Back to Coop's place, I laid out my gear, packed my bag and got in bed around 9.30.

Race Day: Sunday, November 5, 2006

I didn't sleep much at all, I woke up every twenty minutes. At 3.50, ten minutes before my alarm goes off, I got out of bed, cleaned up and suited up. I hate to consume anything when I first wake up, but I forced myself to drink a pint of water and eat a banana. I kissed my wife good-bye, said I'll see her on First Avenue, and headed for the subway.

I chewed a bagel on the way to the subway station. As I waited for the 6, other guys showed up in running gear and their "official" bags. We were each given a clear plastic bag, the only bag, we were told, we could take to the starting area. No bags inside of bags either, it's obviously a security thing. We're all like, hey, and hi, and have a great run. But not very loudly.

By 5 am there was a line of us walking up 42nd street towards the library, and there were at least twenty busses waiting for us. After all that fretting about my bus pass, they never even checked. They just wanted to see that we have numbers, there's no way they could have seen the small lettering on them that said if we had a pass or if this was the right pick up area. Whatever.

I had a great conversation with a guy from Toronto (sorry, I forgot your name) who ran the Cleveland Marathon last May. He kept saying really sweet things about our city and I kept biting my tongue from running the place down because we all do that.

Zelda & Toni

Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island

I was there before dawn, maybe the second bus there. Looked like a refugee camp. There were even experienced runners who had brought sleeping bags so they could just crash until start time. The only thing I missed was a scarf, otherwise I was relatively warm. I spent four hours pacing, having two small cups of coffee, eating another bagel, and another banana, trying to read the Sunday Times with gloves on, going to the restroom as strenuously as possible. When I tried sitting to read my body temperature dropped rapidly and so I got up again and just kept moving.

I even got in line for a massage. I didn't really need one, but it was something to do. She worked my back, I got tense in my shoulders a lot and my lower back hurt from all the pacing. By now the sun was up and I sat and worked on my red shirt. I wrote PENGO in block letters on the front. On the back I wrote:

CALVIN B.
ZELDA D.
ORSON A.
TONI K....

with a heart and a star. They got me to this place, I wanted to take them with me.

The people from different countries amazed me. Close to the start I met a young man named Matt from London. This was his first marathon, too - and he came from London. For his first marathon. So did I. Cool.

In my corral (the 20000 - 20999 corral) I found the 4:00 pace guy. I was going to follow the 4:15 pace team, but I'd already met this Londoner so I stayed there. Regardless, maybe I could pull off something like four hours, and maybe this was a big mistake, but whatever, I'd just let some people pass me first.

We began to move, and I took off the black sweats I'd gotten at Unique Thrift. I would be wearing my Asics all-weather black cap, glasses with a strap (not sunglasses), Lands Ends black long-sleeve tee, red Under Armour shirt, black Under Armour shorts, black running shocks and my Asics gels. I had gloves I planned on ditching. One last pee and we headed for the start. I was also wearing my iPod, had two GUs pinned to my shorts, and a tube of Carmex tucked into my waistband.

All my gear choices turned out to be perfect.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

I reached the start line roughly six minutes after the gun went off. My headphones were off, I was saving that for later. Just the thrill of, well, finally being there. I was nervous for a fraction of a second back on the bus, then, after hours of waiting, I was just happy to be moving. The sky was cloudless, the weather was mild, it was going to be a beautiful day for running.

Already there were men relieving themselves, over the edge of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I just didn't think that's right. Over the next four plus hours, I would see guys just letting it go over bridges, through chain link fences, anywhere really. I also saw amused photographers taking pictures of small groups of guys, pissing into parking lots.

Good-bye Staten Island.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn was amazing. And very, very long. After a two-mile bridge, we would be in the Borough of Kings until the race was half-over. Shortly after we arrived, we were greeted by large, large crowds of cheering locals. When I saw a guy holding a sign reading FINISHING IS YOUR ONLY FUCKING OPTION I knew it was going to be a good day.

There were Irish runners wearing big green hats, a guy dressed as a rhino. a surprising number of Norwegians, Dutch runners with matching orange jerseys sporting questionable cartoons of Africans, a guy dressed like the Statue of Liberty, and, so they told me, Bobby Flay.

For most of Brooklyn I enjoyed the ambient sound, the bands playing every couple of miles. I drank at maybe every other station, sometimes water, sometimes Gatorade. I forced myself to drink even when I didn't want to, though I found as I was drinking that I really did.

Whenever I took long runs during my training, I would feel terribly drained after a while. I attributed this to a lack of something in my system. At five miles, I took my first GU, right before a water station to wash it down.

10K split: 0:57:33

By seven miles, I began to wonder if we were in Queens yet, and had to remind myself that that wouldn't come until mile 13. I tried keeping the bouncing balloons held by the 4:00 pace captain in sight, but needed to take a leak (at an actual port-o-john) and spent a few miles trying to catch up. I was going much faster than I should have. By the time we reached Queens, I lost them for the rest of the run.

I began getting that drained feeling before the Half-Marathon, and worried I hadn't packed enough to eat. They warn you not to pick up anything not at an official table, which is a shame, because there were kids with small water bottles, old ladies with orange slices, guys with bananas. I took a Twizzler at one point, because I thought that was good luck, until I remembered I never chew Twizzlers thoroughly enough. I had my second GU, this one with caffeine in it. I knew there would be a PowerBar Gel station at mile 18, and hoped I would last until then.

I had read on some message board that you shouldn't put your name on your shirt, that it gets annoying after a while. Everyone else said to do it. Well, I didn't write my name, I wrote my nickname. And I gotta tell you, I never got sick of perfect strangers yelling "Pengo!" at me. That was a big boost, and whenever I needed it, I moved from the center of the street to one of the curbs.

Queensboro Bridge

A steep incline, luckily I read in one of the magazines that there is a stunning view of Manhattan if you look to your left. I did, and it was. It was breathtaking. It was one of several moments during the run I almost, but didn't, burst into tears. God, I love that city.

Choice track: Such Great Heights - The Postal Service

Earlier in the run I was concerned I was dressed just a little too heavily. Maybe I didn't need this thermal undershirt, at least not in the bright sunlight and 50º weather of Brooklyn. But the two miles on the lower level of the Queensboro Bridge made me grateful I had it on, that was brisk.

Choice track: Winners - 7 Seconds of Love

As we headed down the bridge descending into Manhattan, I said the only thing out loud I had said to that point. I said, "That's a lot of people."

Half-marathon split: 2:00:17 

First Avenue

Outstanding. First Avenue, deep with people, for miles. Bright and sunny again, headed uptown. My family was supposed to be waiting for me at 81st Street, but I started looking for them much earlier, on the west side of the street, looking for the SpongeBob Squarepants sign I had gotten for them from the expo. I missed the "official" banana station looking for my wife, but - I kid you not - I almost slipped on a banana peel.

Choice track: Future Sightings - I Am the World Trade Center

They were right where they said they'd be, Coop was holding the sign, which read "Go Go Pengo!" or I never would have seen them. I leaned over to kiss my wife and the children, and headed off again. And then I got really, really tired. It was only mile 17.

I had used the iPod intermittently, but relied on it more heavily to keep my spirits up. I snagged a PowerBar Gel, and then a second one for later.

Choice track: A Little Less Conversation - Elvis Presley vs. Junkie XL

I had no idea whether it was a boon or a curse to be familiar with the geography and relative distances of Manhattan in that situation. I knew I was racing into the hundreds, and that after a brief swing through the Bronx, it would still be a long way back to Central Park.

The Bronx 

On the Willis Avenue Bridge we were greeted by a Scots drum and pipes band. Not as many people were there to see us at the Bronx, maybe they felt slighted being such a short part of the route. I was feeling distress in my abdomen, couldn't tell if it was just all of the synthetic protein and carbs or all the fluid I had been taking in, or just gas. I stopped at another port-o-john, which was a big risk. I tried keeping my legs moving as I pee'ed (that was a very good idea) and then got back on the road.

I applied lip balm every few miles, I never lost the lip balm. I still had the gloves I'd tucked in my waistband.

And then we were back in Manhattan.

Fifth Avenue

I mostly listened to the iPod through Harlem and on toward the Park. The family was going to cross over and meet me there - at first my wife had said she would see me on the avenue, and then she changed that so I wasn't sure where I would see her. So I began looking well up the street. It was a good thing, too, another distraction.

Remember; I had never even run 20 miles before. The one time I tried it I fell slightly short, going from Cleveland Heights to Lakewood. Once I hit twenty, in the Bronx, I thought, well, from here on out I have no idea what I am capable of. I tried to drive any notion of what it was going to feel like stopping, of finishing, of having the medal, of seeing my kids again, out of my head.

Choice track: Put Your Records On - Corinne Bailey Rae

We crossed into Central Park. After another half mile or so, I found my family again. I wasn't stopping this time, I was just happy to see them. The last two miles were ridiculous. I can't say they were impossible, I didn't slow down any more than I already had (LOTS of people passed me on Fifth Avenue) I just kept going, not too slowly, either, it just didn't seem like it was ever going to end.

Final track: It's My Life (Vocal Mix) - Liquid People vs. Talk Talk

My iPod was on shuffle, and this track was next. I listened to it a lot during my training, one of those songs from my teenage years that was played so much it lost meaning at the time, but creepingly gained meaning in the time since. And the artist who was Talk Talk now goes under the name Liquid People and "remixed" this track, which means he mostly put a thudding beat under it that makes it incredible to work out to. It was exactly what I needed aat point in time, reminding me of all the work I'd put into this. I just shut everyone out except for the deafening cheering that came through.

Out the south end of the park, and then back in, I headed to the finish line. There was no feeling of overwhelming exhilaration, Just relief.

Finish time: 4:15:28
Overall place: 16,838 (out of 38,368)
Average pace: 9:45

Originally appeared in Daddy Runs Fast.

UPDATE: The string in the waistband to the shorts I wore during the 2006 NYC Marathon snapped while running in Central Park last month.

One Man Show

It's like he knows me.

(Many thanks to Tom Weaver for passing this along.)