​Daddy Types May Care Every Time You See Them — and That’s OK

Coming up North Division, I saw him in the distance—long and lean in shorts and a black shirt, topped with that signature crown of glowing white hair. You don’t miss a guy like that. His legs looked skinnier than last summer, which I quietly noted in the back of my mind under “Things That Probably Don’t Matter.”

Just then, I caught sight of someone else—a younger guy I’d seen earlier in a different part of town. That one had the energy of a comet on casual loop. Had he circled the block just to reappear at the exact moment I’d be here? Serendipity or cardio?

Hard to say.

Anyway. As always, I paused outside Whiskey River. There’s no other place like it—not in Peekskill, not anywhere. That place remembers you before you remember yourself. The welcome is always warm, the kind of quiet, steady care that doesn’t ask for anything in return.

I glanced up at the sign. Something about a stolen limbo stick—“How low can you go?” I laughed out loud. Not performative, not ironic. Just… involuntary glee.

He noticed.

Paused his cigarette. Mid-chat with a man whose story would soon unfurl into something heavy—one of those tales that latches onto your coat and travels home with you, uninvited. But right then:

“I am the author,” he said.

“That I know,” I replied, lifting my phone for one last imperfect photo. His arm made the edge. The sign stole the show. But that’s very Charles. Nothing staged, nothing precise. Just life, caught mid-limbo.

And that’s the point, really. You live. You let the chaos roll. You stop collecting other people’s catastrophes like souvenirs. You forget the neuroses they try to lend you. And you just keep walking.

I was happy to see him—more than I expected. That grounded kind of happy you feel when someone’s still there, still them.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” he said.

And I knew what he meant. I hadn’t been by in a while. Not since I probably overshared, tried to fix too much. Not since he’d done the thing some men do—tried to take charge, tried to protect. The paternal reflex, hardwired and well-meaning.

Because some daddy types do care. Even when they’re mostly cigarette and gravel and half a punchline. And that’s OK.