TATER

He stands at the corner of Randolph and Clinton, an alien in a sea of career minded suits and business casual.  Like a log jam in a swiftly moving stream, his body creates a V of resistance, parting the human tide as they strive to ignore him and escape to either side unmolested.  He talks, screams, and grunts the chaos of broken thoughts his illness has bequeathed him.

“Hominy grit faggot eating white devils!  You must drop the evil tarnish devil varnish the God child SPEAKS!  PISS!  SHIT, FUCK, DOG-NIGGERS!”

I am leaning against a wall not ten feet from him, watching him, watching them.

It is bitterly cold this morning.  His bare feet stuck half in his worn out wing tip shoes, the backs of which are flattened, as if they have never before cupped a heel.  His pants are various colors of decay, piss and shit stained, dropped below his ass and sagging beyond his knees, all the way to his ankles.  I see the newspaper he has lined them with, to wage a fight against the cold, raggedly peeking out of holes, and under a pant leg.  He wears a three quarter length wool topcoat, the same street embellished colors as his pants.  It flaps open as he madly gesticulates and punctuates his latest proclamation, to expose a soot colored raggedy henley, too short to cover the flopping black penis that intermittently points in accusation at all those pretending his invisibility.  His breath clouds the air as he lets fly another string of stinging, mad, invective.  He scratches his patchy head in the same place every few sentences, a rite of keeping tempo, or perhaps to try and still the voices demanding his ranting elocution.  His eyes as wide as silver dollars, glassy and terror stricken one moment, furious the next, never still.  He seeks out passing eyes to lock into, willing attention from these silent beings that proclaim unto him, that he casts no shadow on this earth;  that he is null and void.

He lets his pants drop the rest of the way down and blasts out a steaming arc of hot piss, shaking his hips so that it sprays the sidewalk around him in a lawn sprinkler pattern.  He has their momentary attention as the suits jump left and right, desperate to avoid this intrusive toxic waste, screaming obscenities at him, as he laughs and pumps his fists to the heavens.  He has broken through the barrier of silence and has rejoined the world for one brief and shining moment.  I see the broken teeth as his wide lips stretch into an all encompassing grin, his eyes momentarily at peace.

One of the suits has flagged a squad, and my attention is shattered by the blast of a honking siren, and the roll up of two fat and bedraggled Chicago cops.  They pause and watch this sidewalk play, not wanting to mingle with the crazy ranting player, yet knowing they can’t let him continue on.  They squawk at him through their car megaphone to pull up his pants and move on.

He shakes his johnson at them and spits on their car.  The show is coming to a close, as I see the police unfasten their seat belts and and pop open their doors. 

The jester shouts a blazing soliloquy of vehement curses, the translation of which is forever hidden but to the demons in his disordered mind.  Success at last, he instantly calms at the officers touch, and is all smiles and “yes sirs!”  He will sleep in warmth tonight, and will eat.  He has been recognized, and touched by another human being.  The alien suits have been defeated in their quiet, unceasing torment of him, and have been forced to admit their crimes.