In front of him has a sign on greasy cardboard: "TELL ME OFF-- $2.00." I went by him—after all, he was asleep—and bought some roasted peanuts at the corner and munched on them, looking at all the people hurrying by. When I glanced back down the block I him talking to someone—he was awake. I headed back over and introduced myself. His name, he said, was Billy, and he was originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. His sentences flowed with a certain rhythm—though I found, when I transcribed the interview, that the beginnings of his sentences were full of words and sounds that jumbled and bumbled and occluded each other, like runners tripping over each other at the start of an overcrowded race. It seemed, each time, that he reached into a hat of words and pulled out a random selection- only determining after he was well into the sentence what he was actually trying to say. What I give you here, then, is something of a translation: