Charlie Two-Shoes

There used to be a small open hillside behind a Greek Orthodox Church near the Port Authority Terminal in New York City. It was tucked away between 11th and 12th avenues, a tiny grassy oasis in the jumble of concrete sidewalks and tall buildings, a tiny patch of nature in the middle of Manhattan.

I discovered it one day on my lunch break as I was walking around the area looking for a place to sit quietly and eat my sandwich in peace, a place where I could get away from the crowds of people swirling the streets for an hour or so and reflect on things. It was early in my sobriety and I was working in a typesetting shop as a proofreader, a job I had barely been able to hang onto at the end of my drinking.

Taking time to reflect on things was especially important to me in early sobriety, though I had to be careful not to think too much. The forty-five minutes or so of my lunch break seemed to provide a perfect opportunity for such reflection—long enough for my mind to slow down from all the racing thoughts that surged through me like electrical currents, yet short enough so that when I eventually began to obsess on one or two particularly poignant memories that had risen from the mist of my drinking years, usually ones which inspired great sadness or regret, it would be time to get up and go back to work.

One of the moments I remember most from sitting in that oasis, eating a sandwich and thinking about my life was the moment I became aware that even though I was sober, I was still the same person I had always been, replete with the same attributes and characteristics that had made my life alternately so difficult and yet so wonderful. 

I had been working on the theory that the moment I got sober, I stopped being the person I was and began being the person I was going to be—a sort of Mason-Dixon line of sobriety that I crossed, which on one side harbored the old drunken me and on the other housed the new sober version.

It was a theory that helped me for a while, by establishing a definitive point of demarcation between my drinking and my sobriety, yet sitting in the open space behind the Greek Orthodox Church, eating my sandwich and watching the world pass by, I came to recognize that the line—like the invisible line I had crossed entering into my alcoholism—was somewhat of an illusion. There was no perfect before and after that I could point to which would indicate that the process of sobriety was complete. My life was, in fact, a continuum upon which I could simply articulate different points, unique moments connected to the same ultimate timeline; it was not simply a house of two rooms, one marked alcoholism, the other marked recovery. 

It was a powerful recognition for me, a moment of unification and coherence in my life, realizing I was the same person in my recovery as I was in my active alcoholism, with one critical difference: I was sober. And, with sobriety, came a whole host of emotions I hadn’t felt in a very long time—things like hope, health, happiness and love.

I moved on from that job some time after my first anniversary, leaving behind the grassy oasis, but not the moments of recognition it had offered me. 

More than 30 years later, still sober, still working, I still need to step back, find a quiet place to sit, and watch the world pass by for a moment in order to maintain my emotional equilibrium and allow important insights to creep through the miasma of everyday thought. My daughter calls me a hobo because of my proclivity for finding a nook or cranny wherever I happen to be where I can sit for a while just to watch things go by.

Some people shop or read to pass the time. Me? I burrow into a hole in the wall somewhere and sit. It can basically be anywhere—a park bench, an unoccupied stoop, a doorstep, a small grassy hillside behind a church in the middle of Manhattan.

Basically, I’m still the same person that I always was, and it does me good to remember that. At the same time, I’m immeasurably grateful to have passed through the portal of sobriety, for it has added considerable richness and longevity to my life.

And that brings me to Charlie Two-Shoes, a living example of how my timeline might have progressed had I not found sobriety.

Recently, I was in New Orleans with my wife and daughter, visiting a college my daughter had been accepted at and was trying to make a decision about where she wanted to be attending come next fall. None of us had ever been to New Orleans, so we were doing a little exploring around the city and found ourselves in the French Quarter.

As usual, I soon became tired of sightseeing, shopping, and waiting for my wife and daughter to come out of the million little places they felt it necessary to go into and soon drifted off, with their blessing, to a less populated part of the French Quarter, eventually finding myself on a quiet little street devoid of tourists and wonderfully somnolent in the late morning sun.

I found an unoccupied stoop in the shade of a second story balcony and eased myself down on the top step, feeling more and more relaxed by the moment. Unknown to me at the moment, the stoop was just beside a liquor store, and before too long, an elderly gentleman, most hobo-like in his own appearance—bent over at the waist with a long white beard, white hair flowing from beneath a beat-up baseball cap, a white shirt that was now gray with age tucked into a baggy pair of beltless trousers that seemed to spill down onto a pair of highly weathered sneakers, one red and one blue—approached from an opposite corner, catching my eye.

Once eye-contact had been made, the man came closer, up to the edge of the stoop, where he stood, giving me the once-over. I nodded and smiled. 

“Good morning,” I said.

He smiled back. “I’m waiting for Joe to open up. He doesn’t open till noon.” I consulted my watch. There were a few minutes to go. It was then that I looked over in the direction the man had nodded and realized it was a liquor store he was waiting for.

The man was quite friendly, a reflection of the city’s legendary hospitality, I suppose, and we had a very nice chat. He introduced himself to me as Charlie Two-Shoes, lifting his cuffs to proudly display the differently-colored sneakers he wore, noting with a gesture to his baseball cap, which bore the insignia of the St. Louis Cardinals, that red and blue were the Cardinals colors.

I indicated, to his slight chagrin, that I was in fact a Yankees fan, though he didn’t pay too much heed and rattled off a number of statistics relative to how the Cardinals had the highest rate of appearance in the World Series per decade even though they might not have actually won.

I chose not to contest any of Charlie’s stats, and asked him instead what he was hoping to purchase when Joe opened his store.

“Two beers, a pint of whiskey, and a can of Sprite,” said Charlie, eagerly reciting his standard opening bid on what was bound to be another long day of drinking and dreaming of St. Louis where, as he told me, he had been born.

Almost simultaneously, before I could mention my own drinking and long-term sobriety in AA, I spied my wife and daughter coming down the block and Charlie Two-Shoes heard the opening of the lock on the liquor store door, like a huge clock ticking off the last seconds to High Noon.

Charlie and I looked at each other, reached out and shook hands. I stood up and went to greet my wife and daughter and Charlie turned with great purpose to meet Joe.

By the time I was halfway down the block, Charlie had disappeared.

“So, I see you’ve made some new friends,” my daughter said lovingly, unsurprised at having found me on the fringes of the French Quarter talking to a complete stranger. Looking back fondly at the stoop in the shade, I nodded, smiling, embracing my inner hobo.