I am wondering about The Path Man as I go. I never know what will come to mind on a long run, but The Path Man often does. Before Brooklyn became SoHo on the Gowanus, The Path Man took up residence along a dirt trail in Prospect Park. I don’t know his given name. He had a washbasin on a stump, shirt and trousers that slung from a rangy bush, a clutch of whittled spears he’d carved from the branches of fallen oaks. In those days just a handful of people would venture deep into the park, and at night only fools because what lamp standards there were had been smashed by vandals, and under trees and weedy bushes crack users nested, rapists and robbers for a score, or so our apartment super said at the time and he was born near the park so he would know. But I never saw a needle or a syringe, or even as much as a cigarette butt near The Path Man’s home. I’m thinking I was his first runner on his path; every other day for years, a
thousand times. A black man, slow and deliberate, mostly sitting on a rock, his long arms crossed on bended knee. I always felt a little odd – imagine a sweaty runner legging his way through your living room on a summer’s eve – when I’d cross through his parkland home, but I’d come to look forward to seeing him. How he was getting on, was he losing weight, because I never saw any evidence of food, of squirrel bones, say, or even smoking embers from a cooking fire. He was there through the cold and wet and blistering hot. One day, of course, as are all silent partners in solitude, The Path Man was gone. But I can’t stop wondering about him.
*
“Hey, Skinny Man!”
That is what they call me in Marrakech. M and I are ten days in Morocco and it is our final hurrah, Saturday night in the jostling open-air market of the Djemaa El-Fna Square that I get my nickname.
“Hey, Skinny Man?!”
The first clothing vendor stops at that so I’m not exactly sure what is point was, what exactly he had in mind to sell to me. But soon I’m called that again, this time by a seller of fried meats.
“Hey, Skinny Man. Come in! You need to put some meat on your bones.”
Which is what my dad said to me, if not once a thousand times: “You need to put some meat on your bones, son.”
So, “Hey, Skinny Man,” put me off. I suppose if I were a contestant on “The Biggest Loser,” and a tout in Marrakech yelled, “Hey, Skinny Man!”, I would have a proud story to tell the studio audience; cue beaming TV host.
No, to be “skinny” was not the way to earn my dad’s approval. And, yes, I did try more than once to put meat on my bones. (I’ve weighed between 145 pounds and 152 pounds since I reached my full height of five foot eleven in 1974.) I’ve drunk gallons of high-protein shakes, been on mega-loaded carb diets, choked down steaks, but to no avail. Never have I, as my father who is a barrel-chested but average size man would say, “put meat on my bones.”
I chose a profession where “the skinny” was the thing. In daily news, you have to get “the skinny,” the root of the story. And, of course, one of my passions hardly puts meat on my bones. As a marathon runner, 145 pounds at my height is actually on the heavy side. And, in the past year, after now completing two marathons and looking forward to Boston in April, I’m down to the best running weight of my life: about 143 pounds.
Note to fathers: Be careful about how you show your disapproval when your children are young. To Dad’s credit, he hasn’t told me in that brusque, judgmental way of his that I should not be skinny. That, if I only gave it half a chance and listened to him, that I would’ve fattened up, and in so doing, take the final step in becoming a man.
Because, now, except for the occasional setback like Marrakech, where the vendors’ shouts got under my skinny, which of course, they are intending to do to get your attention, by whatever means possible, I’m very much okay with my size. Last April, before the Pittsburgh Marathon, I drove north to see my mother and father. We didn’t have much time together, but on the Saturday I went for a run. It was a long one, twenty miles, and when I came in the front door, my father was there with a cold glass of water and a wide smile. “You were running that whole time?” he asked. “I said, yeah, it was a wonderful.” “I’ll bet it was,” he said, not giving my skinny arms his usual appraisal. “Where did you go? Tell me about it.”
*
In Cuba, in January 1985, I stood with a friend among local schoolchildren. I remember my friend reached out and stroked the hair of a striking-looking girl. There must have been a hundred children in the square that day, and not a single one that I would call fat.
I’ve always been skinny, but I’ve wide shoulders, and in Cuba, in the midst of these young people in their school uniforms, and others, milling the square and the ocean-spray promenade of the Malecon, I felt for the first time in my life not a Skinny Man, but an athlete whose size and muscles could conceivably be an object of admiration.
Everything is relative. Like The Path Man. Who like me, in this world but not in all worlds, is a Skinny Man.
*
I have registered for Boston, and I’m told a space is being held in my name, pending confirmation of my qualifying times in the Steamtown Marathon. I will return to training, of course, and be writing about those sessions in the months ahead. For now, though, I’m giving myself a little rest. If I’m going to beat 3:33 and qualify for New York (3:30!), I’m going to have my work cut out for me.
Next: Running for Your Life: “Imus” in Tangier
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