In the summer of 2001, a production of The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols, was playing in Central Park at the outdoors Delacorte Theatre. It starred Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher Walken. It was an EVENT. There had been an article in The New York Times about how long the lines were, about people were camping out in the park for a couple of nights to get tickets (the shows are free, you just have to be willing to wait in line). Going to see the show required a time commitment. You had to really want to go to that show. By the third or fourth week of the run, the “Line” was a constant in Central Park, snaking through the paths endlessly. It had been there for weeks. Made up of different people, of course, but The Line itself was eternal. You joined it, you left it, you were replaced by others. The Seagull was the hottest free ticket in town.

Here is an essay I wrote about my experience.

The Line

August, 2001

Although I knew I would be sitting on the ground for eighteen hours, I neglected to bring a blanket or a pillow. I did, however, bring a bag of books. Hours later, curled up on the hard dirt, rocks jutting into my back, resting my head on my lumpy book-filled knapsack, staring at everyone else’s elaborate sleeping contraptions set up around me, I contemplated my choices in life.

I remembered The Scarlet Letter and forgot the blanket. That is all that needs to be said about my entire personality.

Meryl Streep. Kevin Kline. Christopher Walken. Chekhov’s The Seagull directed by Mike Nichols. A much-anticipated event. Come August I started hearing the stories: people camping out, sleeping in Central Park, waiting in line for the coveted free tickets handed out at 1 p.m. by The Delacorte Theatre the day of each performance.

I was, to some degree, waiting for the random phone call from the random friend: “Hey, I have an extra ticket!” Three weeks into the run, I realized that the show was closing soon, and I had to take control of my destiny. I decided to go join the line.

Thursday

6:45 p.m. I approached the already-existing line on the green slope of grass outside The Delacorte, in Central Park. My behavior was tentative, shy. I was afraid that there were invisible rules and that I would be accosted immediately for some infraction.

Because I so believe that people are out to get me, I find that people are often actually out to get me. Which is what happened the second I joined the line.

7:00 p.m. “Excuse me – you just CUT.”

My attacker had three Saran-Wrapped cushions tied to a little cart, a cooler slung over one shoulder, and some bedrolls strapped to her back. She looked like a Sherpa.

“That was MY SPOT. You can’t just come along and TAKE SOMEONE’S SPOT.”

I had no way of knowing if this woman was normal and polite in her real life. To me, she was a lunatic. Not to mention the fact that she was wearing a miner’s helmet and I had no idea why. Hours later, in the dead of night, when I saw her reading by the beam of light shooting out of her forehead, I understood (and envied) her madness.

But at the time of the attack she was just a Sherpa in a miner’s helmet yelling at me.

I still don’t understand how I cut in line since no one was behind me. But apparently there were invisible rules (there always are), and I broke all of them at once.

I felt like screaming, “I DIDN’T MEAN TO CUT!”

One sweet gentle guy with little round glasses came up and said, “We really would appreciate it if you would move back and give her back her spot.”

His gentleness was more terrifying than the Sherpa’s rage. I got very scared at his use of “we”. It was an intimidation tactic, which worked like a charm. I stepped back, baffled, embarrassed, and for the next ten minutes entertained extremely satisfying revenge fantasies. Saying with haughty scorn, “Listen, Sherpa-Bitch, cut me some slack…”

I had no way of knowing at the time that three hours later I too would become a fire-breathing Balrog if someone tried to cut in front of me. And I would not have cared one bit if they “didn’t mean to”, either. A lot of people don’t MEAN to do evil in this world and they go ahead and do it anyway. Does that mean they should go unpunished?

I learned an important lesson in that first moment.

The worst crime in the world is cutting in line. People in all cultures, in all eras, balk at those who try to “cut”. And rightly so. Just play fair, that’s all. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else. Don’t disrespect those who put in their time by thinking you can skip the hard part. The French Revolution could be explained thus: people simply had had it with those who felt it was their right to cut to the front of the line.

7:30 p.m. I sat in the dirt.

There was a dude to my right who had come all the way up from Baltimore just to get himself in the line. He was a playwright, choked up with possibility and enthusiasm. He hadn’t brought a blanket or sleeping bag either, so he and I eventually were complete dirtballs.

To my left were Max and Elena. He was from Long Island and she was from Russia. It was perfect that I waited in line for The Seagull with an actual Russian. I became very involved with Max and Elena’s relationship through proximity and osmosis.

They got into an argument at one point during the evening. She said to him, “Max, I thought that we were in this together. I thought that we were a team. Why do you abuse me because you lost your glasses? Why is that?”

His comment was, “This is the Cold War all over again.”

He had a long conversation on his cell phone with his mother who was going in for some sort of scary surgery the following morning. I did not know Max, but I could hear the anxiety hovering in his voice.

Right before he hung up he said, trying to get her attention, “Ma?…Ma?…Ma—”

I felt his objective in his voice. I knew what he was trying to do.

There was a pause (clearly his mother settled down enough to listen to him), and he said, “I love you, Ma. Okay? I love you.” He hung up and lay back down on his mat, not saying a word, just “replete with very thee”. Or “replete with very ‘Ma'”. Elena rolled over and took him into her arms. They lay there silently, in the line, holding each other. I heard Max murmur into Elena’s neck. “She’s really nervous.”

I thought of my own mother with longing and fear.

7.40 p.m. I called my parents from my cell phone, and left a message telling them I loved them.

8:00 p.m. We could sense when the show inside began because of the way the molecules shifted in the atmosphere, creating more space. You could smell the excitement, like ozone in the air.

8:30 p.m. His name was Gabriel, which was quite a propos, since he saw himself as a messenger. However, he didn’t quite bring us tidings of great joy.

He moved down the line, in a vaguely militaristic way, shouting at different sections of the ever-lengthening line.

“Hi, everybody! My name is Gabriel and I’ve waited in line now 13 times—” (a little rustle of alarm went up and down the line. We said to one another, “13 times? What?”) “So let me tell you how this works! We all wait in line here until 1:30 a.m., which is when they close the park. At that time, the cops come along and kick us out. There’s one cop named Officer Foccaccia…” (something like that) “He gets what we’re trying to do here and tries to help us maintain the integrity of the line as we march out to Central Park West—”

I got a chill at the words “maintain the integrity of the line”. Suddenly Gabriel was no longer the Angel of the Lord to me. He was more like Robespierre.

“But it’s up to us to keep the order of the line. So we’re gonna send a list down. Just sign it and pass it on. The Delacorte will not honor this list – it’s mainly for us to police ourselves. We stay out on Central Park West until 5:30 a.m. when they open up the park again. And then we come back here. There’s a girl who works for the Delacorte whose job it is to watch over the line. Her name is Kathleen. If anyone tries to jump the line – and they will – tell Kathleen. They start to give out tickets at 1 p.m. No more than two tickets per person. Do you guys have any questions?”

Up went Elena’s hand.

Gabriel turned to her. “Yes?”

Elena asked, her voice filled with incomprehension and scorn, “Why would you wait in line 13 times?”

I do not believe that this was the sort of question Gabriel had in mind.

He said briefly, “My uncle’s a congressman” and then moved down the line to repeat his speech to the next group of people, leaving us with more questions than answers. We discussed the meaning of “My uncle’s a congressman” endlessly. Was the congressman so selfish that he kept saying to Gabriel, “I’ve got two tycoons who invested in my campaign, they want to see The Seagull, please wait in line”, knowing that this meant 18 hours out of Gabriel’s life? Was that any way for an uncle to treat his nephew? And what was the matter with Gabriel that he kept saying yes?

8:40 p.m. A lifelong bond formed between two guys and two girls over to my left, strangers before getting in line. One of the girls looked so much like Chandra Levy that I considered calling the FBI. Or at least approaching her and saying, “A lot of people are very worried about you right now.”

The four of them huddled around a lantern while the guys taught the girls a card game. The girls were very slow at picking up the rules. An hour into the game I could still hear what sounded like extremely elementary questions coming from Chandra and her friend.

“So … do two 5’s beat three 3’s?”

I hate card games and can never retain the rules because I nearly collapse from the psychological boredom but even I could tell that that was a pretty simplistic question coming so late in the game. But the guys just kept teaching the girls the same rules, over and over, by the glow of the lantern, their low laughter floating through the night air.

8:45 p.m. One guy (who had forgotten, as I did, to bring along a miner’s helmet) moved his lawn chair out of the line to sit under a streetlight with John Irving’s latest. Max and Elena and I murmured to one another, anxiously admiring his boldness. “Is that allowed?” Elena asked. I huddled over The Scarlet Letter, squinting at the pages, tilting the book towards the light, ruining my eyes in the space of one evening.

8:55 p.m. Max started to get restless and irritable. The reality of his situation was hitting him hard.

“What are we DOING?” he demanded of Elena.

Elena said calmly, “We are waiting in line for a great theatrical event, Max.”

“Yeah, but … Chekhov? Maybe for Ibsen I’d wait in line all night, but Chekhov? All these people are just here to see the celebrities. And that’s it.”

“Max, you have absolutely no feeling for the theatre. We are not here to see the celebrities. We are waiting in line to see actors interpret a classic.”

I thought, “Yes. Russians understand art.”

9:10 p.m. I polished off The Scarlet Letter, closed the book, the wind moving the trees above, and put my head down on my knees. I had tears in my eyes. I wondered what became of Pearl, what her life was like.

9:30 p.m. Parts of the show reached our ears, carried on the wind. Echoes, reverberations of the play occurring 200 feet away. At one point, we could clearly hear Meryl Streep’s agonized shriek. An electric current passed down the line, and we all fell silent, listening intently. I heard Chandra Levy murmur seriously, “That was her.”

“Her“.

I lay down in the dirt, my head on my bumpy knapsack. The dark trees covered the night sky above me. So often in life I anticipate or worry about what is coming next. But right then, in Central Park, the moment was enough. More than enough.

9:35 p.m. People crawled into sleeping bags, settling in for the night, as though this were a normal time for night-owl New Yorkers to go to bed. It was dark and we could not leave the line. What else was there to do? Elena and Max curled up underneath a blanket. I heard her whisper at one point, “Bite my elbow.” I did not peek to see if Max complied with her request.

9:50 p.m. My teeth felt fuzzy. I was hungry.

I wanted to leave the line and find a deli over on Lexington. Gabriel had told us that if we left the line for over half an hour our spot might not be there when we return. He had intoned ominously, “The Line does not look kindly upon you if you leave for three hours and return looking rested and freshly showered and still expect to have your place…” Gotcha, Robespierre.

It took me 15 minutes to get up the nerve to leave.

I told Baltimore Dude my plans, just in case. I trusted he would stick up for me and my spot in line (#56) should questions or accusations arise.

10:05 p.m. I hurried through empty shadowy Central Park as though I had nothing to be apprehensive about. I was not just a foolish girl walking through Central Park at night; I knew I was part of something much much bigger.

10:08 p.m. I raced to a deli, feverishly grabbing snacks, my eyes on the clock, ants in my pants. “It’s been almost ten minutes! Hurry!!” Nature abhors a vacuum and I coveted my place. Others, further back in the Line, were not guaranteed a ticket. It was a crapshoot for them. But I loved my #56 placement. For me, seeing the show the following evening was a done deal.

As I returned, coming over the grassy knoll, I could feel the Line check their watches, monitoring the length of my absence.

11:00 p.m. The audience emerged from the show, strolling by our refugee camp. They were all dressed up, suits, high heels, clean hair, but the night before they were lying in the dirt, too. There was a sort of force field between the two groups. They smiled over encouragingly. But warily, too. They did not approach us. It was like we were under quarantine.

One of the card-playing guys called out to them, “How was the show?”

Answers came back.

“Oh, wonderful!”

“Terrific!”

“Wait until you see her!”

But one guy said flatly, “If you’re not too busy to take the day off and wait in line, then the show’s okay.”

This last comment angered the Line. We only wanted raves. Be positive and enthusiastic or keep your mouth shut, please.

I heard people on our side repeating it to each other, contemptuously. “‘If you’re not too busy‘?? What the hell kind of answer is that??”

Envy radiated from both sides of the force field. The envy from our side came from the obvious fact that we still had 14 hours of waiting ahead of us. It was an eternity. The envy from their side was subtler. We in the Line still had so much ahead of us, so much to look forward to. Their experience was over, on its way to being just a memory.

11:20 p.m. A good friend called my cell phone before going to sleep in her warm bed, to see how I was holding up. Baltimore Dude was snoring lustily beside me, and I held the phone out towards him so that she could hear. I described to her the scene before my eyes. The dark serpent of people weaving through the trees, little rounded tents, bobbing lights, low distant conversation. “I feel like I’m in The Hobbit, you know?”

11:30 p.m. I curled up in the dirt, the wind on my face, and fell asleep.

Friday

1:30 a.m. Movement. Confusion. I opened my eyes and saw people on their feet all around me. Squinting into the flashing lights of Officer Foccaccia’s vehicles, completely disoriented but following orders, I got to my feet, lugging my bag of books up onto my shoulder.

The great Migration from Central Park out to the street was soon underway.

Maintaining the Line during our march was paramount. The pace was ruthless. If your shoe became untied, if you dropped something, if you tripped and broke your leg, the Line would flow mercilessly on, never looking back. The Sherpa dropped her shrink-wrapped cushion contraption and we all marched past her unfeelingly.

Well.

This is not strictly true.

I had some feelings.

I had feelings of triumph and glee. I felt like calling out, “Better you than me, sister!”

Within six hours of being in line I did not recognize myself. All compassion for my fellow human creatures dissolved in favor of keeping the Line in order.

Emerging onto Central Park West had its own particular brand of chaos. People were hanging around out there, waiting to join the Line and we in the already-established Line were blatantly not happy to see them. They could easily take advantage of our sleepy pandemonium and start cutting left and right.

We barked at these newcomers. “Stay back! Stay back!” “The end of the line is THAT way.” “I SAID STAY BACK.” We were bleary-eyed and punchy, racing to re-establish the Line, tearing about, staking territorial claims. I saw people toss sleeping bags down ahead of them and take flying leaps into place. I scored two feet on a park bench. Chandra Levy and her friend feverishly erected a tent on the sidewalk. The two guys they had befriended joined them inside. As though they had known each other all their lives. I wondered about the sexual politics of the situation. Baltimore Dude, a successful man with a good job, curled up on the cobblestones surrounded by cigarette butts. Elena put her yoga mat down on the sidewalk and lay on her back. Max took up the rest of the bench with me.

During the flurry of activity, Max glanced up and down the line, taking it all in, transfixed, and then shook himself, saying, “I forgot for a second what we all were doing here.”

1:55 a.m. Unbelievably, I was still #56 after all that mayhem. Someone actually went up to the front once everyone had settled down, and counted back, obsessively.

2 a.m. Max glanced down at Elena, stretched out in solitary state on the sidewalk, her hair fanning out, arms folded over her chest like a mummy. He contemplated her for a while and then said, “Right now you look just like you looked the day I fell in love with you.” A mummy on a yoga mat lying on the sidewalk? But the love in his voice was clear.

After 2 Busses lumbered by with eerie lit-up interiors, like an Edward Hopper on wheels, all the people inside staring out at the scene in disbelief.

A cab drove by and I heard a guy scream from the back seat, triumphantly, “I SAW IT!!” I don’t think he meant the production, I think he meant the phenomenon of the Line. The Line had been written up in the New York Times, and he had “seen it”. Like aurora borealis. Or Snuffleupagus. But of course I cannot be sure of what he actually meant because I never got to ask him about it.

Sometime after 2 a.m. It did not take the Line long to discern that this was the evening for Upper West Siders to toss their furniture (including pillows and mattresses) out onto the sidewalk. A frantic scavenger hunt began, people dashing up and down 81st and 82nd, lugging the discarded mattresses back to the Line. Mattresses, which had just that day been up in some penthouse, were now comforting the Seagull squatters a block away.

Max dragged back a single mattress for him and Elena to share, which was a relief for me. It had seemed odd to me to see Max way up on the bench with Elena way down on the pavement. There was something very wrong about all that empty space between them.

2:30 a.m. or so The newcomers looked crestfallen when they emerged from the subway station outside the Museum of Natural History and saw the sprawling tent-city which stretched into the distance. They thought they were so on top of things, so radical, setting out to get in line at 2 a.m., but they were unaware that there were throngs of people in NYC crazy enough to grab a spot in line at 7 p.m. One cute little couple slowly walked by us, holding bedrolls, making their way around Chandra Levy’s tent, glancing down at Elena and Max on their mattress. They did not say a word as they passed us, but as they moved on I heard the guy murmur to the girl, “We’re never gonna get tickets. These people are hardcore.”

3 a.m. or so The mugginess of the day disappeared, and a chilly wind blew over us. My goal was to find a position on the bench where none of my skin touched the air. This became an interesting project for me and took up quite a bit of time. I felt like I was participating in a Kama Sutra for Single People training video. Eventually I slept. Sort of.

Sometime after that I opened my eyes for no apparent reason. The Line slept. Everything was quiet and dark and chilly. The windows of the penthouse apartments lining Central Park West stared down on us darkly. I wondered what we looked like from up there. Occasional empty cabs floated up the avenue aimlessly.

I looked down at Max and Elena, curled up on their bare mattress, spooning, their legs intertwined, arms wrapped around each other. In full view. Beautiful. Simple. A love poem on the pavement.

Sleepily, I thought of Michael. He would have been a perfect partner for an adventure such as this. I lay there, shivering, twisted up like a pretzel, images of him drifting by. It seemed wrong that I had lost track of him so completely. I had no idea where he was, if he was alive or dead, happy or not. I hate how some people are lost, and disappear forever.

5:30 a.m. The Return of Officer Foccaccia.

The world was grey. The grey dawn light seeped into the buildings, the trees, the grass, and our sleepy skin. We got ourselves together and began the surreal procession back through the misty deserted park. We walked calmly and silently in single file, sleeping bags draped over shoulders, mattresses hoisted over heads like canoes. This march had none of the cutthroat anxiety of the first one. How easily one grows accustomed to insanity. How quickly the absurd becomes mundane.

Camps were re-erected in all of two seconds. People fell back asleep instantly.

7:15 a.m. Morning in Central Park. Normal New Yorkers slowed down as they passed by us, dogs on the leash, staring at us blatantly, wondering what the hell we were doing. The Line was still asleep, for the most part, sprawled across the slope, so we must have looked like Jonestown.

We, by that point, had been in line for so long that our normal everyday lives had completely disappeared. We had taken time off work, gotten babysitters, cancelled plans. It was incredible to us that there were people on the planet who were NOT in line and who had no desire to get in line.

Who are these freaks? we thought, as we lay on our stolen mattresses and curled up in the dirt, brushing our teeth in public. What is the MATTER with them?

8:30 a.m. One of the members of the line began to stretch. Endlessly. This was not your basic morning knee-bend. She stretched as though she were about to randomly run a marathon and be back in time so she wouldn’t lose her place. She flipped herself over a park bench and did crunches. She used trees in innovative ways. She did dance-y runs up and down the path in front of us, her long grey hair billowing. Perhaps she had taken a break from her Navy SEAL training to join the Line. I tried to read Catch 22 but she kept pulling focus. I heard Chandra Levy say to her friend, “I wish she’d stop. She’s stressing me out.”

9:10 a.m. Kathleen from the Delacorte stalked up and down the line, screaming at us, letting us know what was going to happen and when. Gabriel had done the same thing the night before and the Line, as a whole, had bristled with resentment. Who does he think he is? Who elected him Lord of the Line? Who gives a damn that his uncle is a congressman? But our night out in the open had beaten us down. We accepted autocracy meekly and gladly now. People waiting in line, confused, bored, ambitious, cling to the one who promises to organize them. The Line yearned for a strong hand after a time of chaos and hardship. Many incomprehensible regimes from history began to make sense.

10:30 a.m. “Would you like to sign our petition?”

“Want to join this mailing list?”

“Here’s a petition – you want to sign?”

Representatives of every boneheaded cause in New York moved up and down the line. Or at least the causes seemed boneheaded to me on three hours sleep. By the time the 5th or 6th person came down the line asking us to support turning all of the East Village into some Utopian society of grass huts, we categorically refused to sign. Please stop taking advantage of us because you know we cannot get away from you.

10:40 a.m. A festival of bonding occurred around me. The card players finalized plans to get together again in their normal lives, outside the Line. Strangers found obscure things in common. Two men, one from Norway and one from Mexico, struck up a chess game. A deep emotional bond clearly had formed between them. I gave my email address to at least five people. I overheard one man say to a woman he had just met in the Line, “Well, send me your resume. I can pass it on to HR.”

11:10 a.m. My cell phone rang. Tearing myself away from Catch 22, I answered.

“Hello?”

I heard my friend Rich say, “How do you like your coffee?”

11:45 a.m. Rich appeared, carrying a picnic basket which contained two steaming thermoses of hot coffee, and two bagels with cream cheese. He sauntered up, grinning, and tossed a New York Times into my lap. We chowed on bagels and I talked his head off. I beamed upon him, thinking, like the song says, that I “must have done something good” to have such a friend as Rich in my life.

12:10 p.m. As Rich was about to leave, a petitioner approached, her smile tentative from rejection. “Hi … excuse me … we’re trying to get cars banned from Central Park. Would you like to sign our petition?”

Elena said, kindly but firmly, “I don’t think that will ever happen.”

The woman’s smile turned into a commedia dell arte mask of rage. “I was there when they took down the Berlin Wall and people thought that would never happen either.”

Rich said, “But Central Park was built for cars to be able to go through it.”

A guy sitting to our right chimed in, “I think we have more to fear from the roller bladers in Central Park. One of them plowed into me once.”

A tense silence fell, and No-Car woman snapped, “Okay, fine. So I guess you guys don’t want to sign” and stalked off.

Rich and I marveled at the ludicrous equation of no cars in Central Park to the Berlin damn Wall coming down. What are you SAYING, woman?

“Only a truly privileged person would make a comparison like that,” I said with gusto, gulping down the last of my coffee, filthy, happy, righteous.

12:30 p.m. Kathleen ordered us around like Lucy Van Pelt. “Okay, everybody! Stand up! Make a single line! Tickets are handed out starting at 1 p.m.” We obeyed, packing up our sprawling selves, sucking our meanderings into a single-line formation. We felt threatened by the people wandering around on our outskirts like hyenas, who were eyeing us greedily, waiting for us to look the other way so that they could leap into the line. We huddled together, closing up the vulnerable spaces between us.

12:40 p.m. Baltimore Dude and I had a conversation with only three elements to it:

1. One of us would state the title of one of Meryl Streep’s films.

2. Both of us would make some sort of brief subjective exclamation.

3. The other would vehemently list another one of her films.

And so on. It went on forever.

“Silkwood! Amazing!”

“Oh! Totally! And Sophie’s Choice! Come ON!”

“Yes! And how about French Lieutenant’s Woman? Gorgeous!”

“Oh my God. And Postcards From the Fucking Edge. Hilarious!”

“Brilliant! And don’t forget Kramer vs. Kramer—”

“My GOD…”

What can I say. We had had three hours of sleep in the dirt. We did the best we could.

12:50 p.m. Baltimore Dude told me that he had just had spinal surgery and was missing his morphine. He blatantly confessed, “Morphine is great for the pain, but it makes it really hard to go to the bathroom.” There was a pause. He went on, clarifying the finer points for me: “Number One and Number Two.”

I did not find it at all odd that a stranger would confess this to me, or that an adult would say the words “Number Two” right to my face. Instead, I was completely sympathetic and horrified for him. “Wow. No Number Two, either? That sounds terrible!”

“Oh, it is! It is!”

12:52 p.m. The inevitable occurred. Someone “cut”. It was far back in the line and word of it flashed up to us in front at the speed of light.

“Someone cut—”

“What? What?”

“Where?”

“Wait – what? Someone cut?”

“Who cut? Who cut?”

We craned our necks to see “the cutter”, all of us straining out of the line diagonally, surging with blood lust. Someone, a grown man, called out at the top of his lungs, in a raging frenzy, “KATHLEEN! SOMEONE CUT!” We applauded him. Tattle-tales get things done.

Kathleen catapulted into action, and charged down the path toward the “cutter”. We cheered ferociously, as though we were at the Coliseum.

“You GO, Kathleen!”

“You get him, Kathleen!”

She was a tiny girl for a gladiator, wearing plastic barrettes and high-top sneakers, but she was our defender because we could not defend ourselves. We loved her.

The entire line had turned away from the Delacorte to watch Kathleen’s blazing trail. Suddenly Max exclaimed, in a tone of horrified realization, “It’s a diversionary tactic! Now the front of the line is undefended!” Alarmed, we whirled around to face the Delacorte again. Max kept talking, pumping up our paranoia: “It’s a classic flank maneuver! This is how Napoleon won the battle at Lodi!”

1:15 p.m. The next thing I knew my dirty little fingers clutched two free purple tickets.

1:20 p.m. Baltimore Dude and I had a happy beaming moment of parting, saying, “I’ll look for you tonight.” I floated down the path, triumphant, in my filthy baggy overalls, my hair sleep-spiked around my face. All around me I saw people saying goodbye to the new friends they had made in line.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

We looked forward to seeing one another again.

7:00 p.m. I ran into Elena outside the Delacorte in the midst of the teeming horde, while waiting for my sister Siobhan. Elena and I greeted one another with the affection of old friends. Her green eye shadow swooped upwards, like Cleopatra. Over to our right I could see The Line burgeoning on, folks getting ready to spend their second night out in Central Park.

7:50 p.m. Once we were inside the theatre, Siobhan eventually stopped asking, “How do you know that person?” I recognized almost everyone there from the Line. I heard a woman say a few rows back, “It’s so funny seeing everyone look so nice now. The last time I saw these people, they were all so grubby.”

I saw the Sherpa. I almost didn’t recognize her without all the gear strapped to her back. Now that she was out of the line she seemed like a perfectly nice normal woman. Her mission was accomplished and she was in HER seat. At long last. Having a seat of one’s own was what each of us wanted, after all.

The Seagull A couple of times during the show, when we all would laugh or clap, my consciousness would slip itself up over the wall and peer down on the Tolkien landscape below. I could see the twisting line, the gnomes crumpled in the dirt, pricking up their ears, keeping hope alive in their Hobbit hearts. I remembered when we had heard Meryl Streep’s voice flying out over us, and how exciting it had been. Hearing her voice helped us to endure, to hang on, because at the end of the 18 hours, at the end of the line, there would be her.

We had waited long hours, we had peed in the bushes, we had no sleep. All for them. In return, they bombarded us with their gifts. We were a raucous vocal entranced audience, letting them know at every second how we felt about them. It was a two-way current of love and appreciation, the likes of which I have rarely experienced in the theatre.

At some point during the ovations, I burst spontaneously into sobs. I cannot explain why I was crying except to say that suddenly I was overwhelmed with the “too much-ness” of everything.

11:00 p.m. Siobhan and I staggered down the path, not speaking. I glanced over and saw the lanterns, the tents, the dark forms on the ground. The Line went on, but it was a different Line now. Not my Line. I felt a little bit lonely for my Line. I wondered how Max liked the show. If he became reconciled to Chekhov, and forgave the seagull for not being a wild duck.

11:03 p.m. A couple charged up to us, holding hands, smiling excitedly. I noticed the sleeping bags under their arms. The guy demanded, “Is it worth it?”

For a brief moment I hesitated, for the production was not without its flaws.

But as I took in their happy open faces, their excitement at their own upcoming adventure, I remembered how angered we all were the night before at the lukewarm comment thrown at us like a grenade from someone who had just seen the show. Do not rain on someone else’s theoretical parade. That makes you a bore. So I replied, smiling, “Oh, yeah. It is totally worth it.” I spoke the truth.

In my own comfortable bed that night, my final thought was not of Meryl Streep or Kevin Kline or Anton Chekhov. My final thought before drifting off was of Max’s mother. I wondered how her surgery went and I hoped everything would be all right.