Playing Fair and Being Kind

This has been a trippy morning and I have worked up an appetite. Mental gymnastics are difficult for me. I can’t stay connected to one subject very long but I have developed a strategy for thinking through complex topics. I just give up trying and go about my day picking away at small tasks and keeping myself fed and watered. During this process my mind revisits the topic hundreds of times and I gain perspective and sometimes come up with answers that are generally satisfactory. Today is one of those days. Today I am working on the concept of aging and time passing as two separate motions much like heat and cold are two separate physical entities. Heat moves toward cold. Cold does not move. It disappears as heat displaces it. Cold is the absence of heat. That should explain everything right?

I’m trying to apply this thought to whether we change with age or if our age is simply linked with the moment in time of that age. I am working on this and I need your help in tolerating my jibber-jabber. Not now though. Another time, no pun intended.

I came across this train of thought at the same time I was thinking about an old friend from Boston. Here is his story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. Peace out.

JOE C.

Joe C. sat in his chair with a mix of frustration and disgust on his mug. He was a big guy and he hid the chair well. His one hand was on the table next to the coffee cup in front of him. His other was in his pocket fingering the coins there. We were downstairs in a tiny bakery on Charles Street. Joe lived nearby in an alley apartment behind West Cedar Street, in the basement of one of the old structures that filled the flat part of Beacon Hill. We both lived in that neighborhood except I lived about five stories higher and a few blocks further west. Locals jokingly called this area “the seedy north slope” of the Hill. It was the old West End that had been razed by the city planners during the sixties. A bad move because the old community was displaced to build what became known as Government Center; a series of structures that looked like crap with no character and only added to the bleakness of Cambridge Street around Mass General Hospital.

As we sat quietly waiting for this conversation to begin Joe C. continued to stare at the table and his coffee cup and I could see he was forming some sort of speech. I had all the time in the world so I waited. Joe C. looked up at me and shifted a little in his chair. I waited. We looked at each other; I held his gaze. He looked miserable to tell you the truth and he seemed to be struggling to express what it was the was bugging him. Daughter, said Joe C. As he said this the look of frustration and disgust slightly intensified and he accentuated the word with a slight tip back of his head. Clearly, Joe C. was frustrated and disgusted with an issue involving his daughter. I stared back at him. I tried to picture his daughter; he’d never described her nor had he ever talked much about her or his estranged wife. Joe C. was a man of very few words.

He heaved a sigh from his clenched jaw and went back to staring at his coffee cup. I continued to imagine what his daughter might look like. Joe C., as I said, was a big guy. I imagined his daughter to be a small woman with a lot of heart and courage and stamina. Of course I was just projecting what I hoped she was like. I had no idea. We sat for another minute or so and he uttered one more word with a shrug of resignation. Wife, said Joe C. I sat and waited but I was getting a bit impatient now. We’d been sitting here for about ten minutes and Joe C. had given me two words to work with.

I was Joe C.’s AA sponsor and he’d been good about coming to meetings and he appeared to be sober each time I saw him. I felt alright around Joe C. He was about my age, maybe a little older. He told me he’d worked in some capacity with the foreign service, which to this day I have no clue to what that is. He told me he spoke Russian. None of these things seemed to be part of Joe C.’s life presently. He didn’t work as far as I could tell but he would disappear during the day and only show up in my life when he wanted to meet for coffee around town. We usually met along Charles Street or over on Newbury Street or Boylston Street. Our meetings always began like this. A terse greeting with an handshake and an awkward gathering of coffee cups and table selection. Once we were seated the ritual of sighing and head shaking began. I knew he was tormented by his life and I suspected all he needed in the beginning of sobriety was someone to lend and ear. I was up for it.

Joe C. and I belonged to the same home group of AA over in Cambridge, across the Charles River. On Monday evenings the Mt. Auburn group met at the hospital of the same name. It was a popular group and there were a lot of younger people from all over Boston, many were students. Boston, as you know, is populated by colleges and universities. Plus, the eighties brought about a surge of younger people who identified as alcoholics. It was fashionable to be in a self-help phase of life I guess. Whatever, the Mt. Auburn meeting was large and dynamic due to the great number of college-age alcoholics. Joe C. and I were forty-ish and we enjoyed the company of the younger drunks.

Joe C. took to the meeting like the proverbial duck. He showed up every Monday and even volunteered to help with the task of making coffee. Making coffee entailed getting to the meeting place early and arranging the three coffee urns on longer tables along one wall of the huge cafeteria and wiping down the table surfaces and keeping urns filled. It was busy work and the person in charge needed to be friendly and patient with spills and messes. Joe C. came alive at the task. People loved his chatty banter and energy. I was pleased to see him become active and open up to others.

At one meeting I was in the meeting hall listening to another recovering person sharing their story at the podium. Another older AA member came to me and whispered that I needed to go out into the cafeteria and observe Joe C. He said that he was more animated than usual and that I should check it out.

I eased my way out of the meeting hall and took a stroll through the cafeteria to see what was up. Joe C. was energetically moving about the coffee urns wiping down table tops and straightening up the sugar bowls and creamers and chatting away with the coffee drinkers. He was a little more energetic than usual. I made my way over to him and asked him if he had a minute to talk. We moved to another part of the cafeteria and took seats at a table.

Joe, I said, how are you doing?

He had a beautiful smile on his face and told me that he was great.

Joe, I said, have you been drinking?

No, he said, with a look of concern. Not at all, he added.

Joe, I said, when did you have your last drink?

About an hour ago, Joe C. said with a look of innocence.

Joe, I said, that is drinking.

No, he said, when I drink I have more than a couple. I’m not even drunk, George.

Joe, I said, AA is a program of not drinking.

You could have knocked him over with a feather, like they say.

I didn’t know that, he said.

Our discussion continued like that for a few minutes while a few people took over the coffee making duties. I took him into the meeting room to get him away from the action. The presence of another alcoholic under the influence is a trigger to the rest so I needed to remove him from the cafeteria to where he would have less contact with the newcomers. It was also important to have him sit and listen to somebody’s drunkalog too.

He was better after that but we saw less and less of each other as his sobriety improved and I became involved with a college student I’d met at the meeting. Joe C. and I split company all together when I and the college student moved to Mexico and then to New Haven shortly after. I’ll remember Joe C. for all of his quirks and for his beautiful interpretation of sobriety in his early days. I heard he was living in a different place in the Back Bay area over by Symphony Hall. He had a cat and was showing up to meetings regularly.

G. M. Goodwin

1 January 2016