It was 3am and I hopped on my bike, heading up Halsted to visit my old friend Mickey. He owns the fetish store – The 99th Floor -- at the nucleus of Chicago's Boys Town. Although it was long past closing time, we were getting together for some catching up conversation. Mick wasn’t there when I arrived, so I headed across the street to 7-11 for coffee. With goodies in hand I sat down on the sidewalk and propped my tired ass up against his storefront, to wait and watch, sipping the dark roast from its Styrofoam container.

Directly across the street in front of 7-11 sat an old black panhandler spouting out her garbled plea to passers-by; a memorized routine, wrapped from head to foot in several layers of clothes.  But it obviously wasn’t help she wanted, stoically accepting only coins and cigarettes in lieu of any love which might have been offered her. I thought of my own lonely years of stances in front of conveniences stores from Portland Oregon to New York City, improvising jive talk out of a cloud of amphetamine and alcohol, a conversation about what or with whom no one knows yet.

Just then a young gay boy approached me and dropped a handful of change in my cup. Fortunately I pulled the cup back just in time, startling him with my hard voice: "Careful, son… there's coffee in that cup!" Without looking up he scurried away, apologizing in his falsetto voice, the five shiny quarters dropping to the ground near to my crouching figure: "Oh I'm so sorry, mister… so sorry!"

"It's okay, son," I assured him. "I'll spend your money on something useful -- but I definitely won't hand it to bums." It was doubtful that he understood that I was not a beggar, what with my rough appearance and the fact his own understanding had been clouded by drinking. His apologies were for dropping the small change on the ground, not for nearly tainting my coffee or mistaking me for a “homeless person.”

Perhaps, to him, it was a symbolic spilling of his seed on the ground. But in my estimation, he was tossing his pearls before swine.