Downtown, where locals go to clubs, bars and romantic dinners, William Moses Smith Jr., takes walks for fresh air.
When asked, he recites his name in the voice of a preacher, smiling and showing off a narrow gap where a tooth once was.
With brown hair sprinkled with gray and warm, blue-gray eyes, Smith paces daily downtown.
Tucked into the collar of his lemon yellow polo shirt lined with white stripes sits a small silver cross and a collection of past personalities.
He's been a Navy Corpsman, a surgical technologist, a childhood baseball player, an alcoholic and a cocaine addict.
Now, he is homeless.
Smith stays in St. Francis House on Main Street and South Fourth Avenue. He has been sober for about three months and attributes his new lifestyle to a rededication to Christianity.
Growing up in a six-bedroom, four-bathroom Gainesville home, Smith was the youngest of four siblings and describes himself as a shy boy.
"As a kid, I can remember having the girls chase me on the playground," he said. "Isn't that funny? I wasn't interested at all."
At 17, he had his first beer.
After high school, he went through a one-year program at UF and Shands to become a surgical technologist, or a substitute nurse.
Then he joined the Navy, where his alcoholism began. With beer constantly flowing in his system, he said it became easy to become involved with women.
Smith was engaged four times, married three times and fathered a daughter with a casual friend.
In the '90s, he smoked crack cocaine for the first time. He tried it three times and didn't think much of it. Less than a decade later, it became his biggest vice. As his wives, girlfriends, jobs and religious attachments came and went, the cocaine and alcohol lingered.
"Working with the submarines, it was very strict," he said. "I only did [cocaine] on weekends or once in a while, but I would do it for days in a row."
He dabbled in marijuana, getting tastes of "Gainesville Green" from local dealers, but it never had the attraction of cocaine, he said.
"I have to be honest," he said, glancing at his digital watch as if looking back in time. "Cocaine for me is directly related with a sexual thing, especially crack. It gives you that excitement. Euphoric."
His passion for sexual stimulation led to his now 15-year-old daughter, Kaitlin.
After a night of beers and Jaegermeister shots, he went to bed with a friend, Karen Nelson, who was his supervisor at work. A month later, she told him she was expecting.
"She was very nonchalant about the whole thing," Smith recalled with a deep-throated laugh. "I said 'How are you? Is there something wrong with you?' and she said, 'Oh, I'm pregnant,' and walked away. I was in shock for two months."
After three years of trying to make the relationship work, Smith and Nelson broke it off, and she moved to Texas, taking his daughter with her.
Smith said that the loss combined with the recent death of his mother compelled him to escalate his cocaine addiction.
"I went out binge drinking one night, and I don't recall going, picking up a guy and buying drugs, and next thing I know, I was sobering up in a house somewhere."
Smith turned to a new woman to keep from being lonely and married her shortly after they began dating.
At the time, Smith was a clinical instructor at Tampa General Hospital and said he felt guilty for "getting crocked" while he was employed. On the fringes of a divorce from his third wife, Smith turned to his crack pipe, which caused him to lose both his wife and his job.
He did a short stint living in a dealer's cabin, where he was given drugs every day in exchange for watching the home. The downside, he said, was that he was only fed on the whim of the dealer, Abe.
Abe later threatened his life because Smith owed him money for drugs, and after a short discussion, Smith forfeited his truck to the dealer to pay his dues.
"He could have been bluffing to a certain degree, but how did I know that?" Smith said.
Carless and drug-hungry, Smith was single and banned from his family's home because of his addictions.
"I was homeless," Smith said, for the first time.
After selling two cars to buy drugs and almost losing his life, Smith had nothing to his name. He had drug dealer friends trade him cocaine for everything he owned, including food stamps.
"You smoke, and your problems fade away," he said. "Once, I smoked for 10 days every day. I didn't eat for a week. I picked at a burrito."
He said it was prayer that broke his cycle of drug abuse. With a glaze shining over his reddening eyes, Smith spoke of his devotion to God.
Today, he spends his days reading scripture, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and doing chores at St. Francis House.
He stays in a bedroom with four male roommates, a floral comforter covering his bed and a Bible laying face up on the pillow. At his bedside, next to a partially empty bottle of Fanta Orange, are piles of neatly folded clothes.
"People always say, 'Bill, you have so many clothes,' but I know I plan to move out of here soon, so I brought everything with me," he said.
Wrinkles crease his forehead as Smith thinks seriously about his future.
"There's a fine line between recovery and relapse," he said. "Either you're working on your program, or you're working on relapsing."
Smith has no plans to relapse.
"I'm not seeing my daughter, my relationships are strained with my family, I'm just tired of feeling useless and worthless and not having self-esteem," he said. "I think this is my time."
