Mouth to Mouth Capitulation

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

My favorite homeless guy, a poor weather worn soul named Johnnie, has been hawking the morning Tribune at the corner of Hollywood and Broadway ever since I moved to Chicago in the mid-1990s. Idling at the stoplight, awaiting my green arrow signal into the rush hour flow of Lake Shore Drive, I’ll usually just hand him a dollar through the window and let him keep my inky copy of pulp to sell to someone else although I suspect he probably just buys whiskey with the windfall. I wonder how much booze a handful of change and a few crumpled bills can buy a guy so down on his luck these days? Whatever the answer, Johnnie doesn’t care to hide the sad fact that he’s a practicing alcoholic–not from me, at least. Not from anybody, really, with a sense of smell, or sight, or society.

“Got anything extra today, boss?” he’ll sometimes ask in one way or another. This makes me uncomfortable for a couple reasons, not the least of which being how lousy a boss I really was when I actually held such a title. That, of course, and the fact that the mere greenback I just handed him isn’t what it used to be. “Trying to get a bottle of Four Roses for later.” He lives for ‘the later,’ this guy. (As if Johnnie is somehow certain that both ‘the here and now’ the rest of us choose to pursue is any less elusive or any more fulfilling.)

“The Dow closed down over 500 points yesterday…” or “That billionaire’s airplane was found in California…” or “Obama kicked McCain’s ass again last night in the debates…” he’ll feel inclined to report to me, repeating the headlines since, like I said, I rarely take my full dollar’s worth of newsprint in exchange. He wants to give me a little something extra for my buck although he’s quick to add, “The Euro is kicking the Dollar’s ass all over the global markets.” Hint, hint. He stands there outside my car window either shivering or sweating depending on the season, also waiting for the light to change from his little nickel and dime spot on the concrete median strip. “The Yen, too,” my personal anchor-less man, trying to squeeze a little extra juice from the boss in the BMW. “The economy sucks,” he surmises.

Several years ago he asked me if I could help him get an apartment on a week-to-week basis without a lease. I determined this to be an almost impossible feat and ended up dropping him off at an AA meeting at Illinois Masonic Hospital instead. “I can usually get a cafeteria meal out of somebody there and then crash in the emergency room lobby for the night if I play it right” he told me as he exited my vehicle. “The third shift nurses all like me.” Wink, wink. “Maybe get a little mouth to mouth if I’m lucky.” The picture still freezes in my mind whenever I recall that evening. Good thing, probably for everyone involved, that Johnnie is not a lucky man…

“Hey boss,” he asks me the other morning, each of us on our respective sides of the window glass waiting for the green arrow to change for the millionth time in as many years, it seems. “What’s this word?”

He points to a sidebar headline in the new Trib layout that simply reads: CAPITULATION?

“Isn’t that sexual or something?”

“I don’t think so,” I answer. “I’m pretty sure it means bottoming out.” He looks back at me like he understands exactly what that means. “You know. The stock market,” I add.

“The Dow?” he asks.

“Yeah, the Dow and all the others. NASDAQ, Nikkei…” I hesitate before stopping completely, already over my own head on the subject. A true boss would know more, for sure.

“How do you say it?” he asks.

“Cap-it-choo-lay-shun,” I pronounce. “It means things are about to look up.”

He takes my dollar through the window and smiles. “Bullshit,” he says.

“That too,” I add.

“Hawks won again last night. Bulls too,” he says as the arrow blinks green and I begin to meld my own ingredients into the morning mix of real estate commerce. What Johnnie has to report is not enough good news for me to shell out any more than a buck on this day. I mean hell, it’s not like the Cubs made the Series or the CAPITULATION? headline didn’t also have that ambiguous question mark at the end of the word. No true reason to CELEBRATE?. Right?

“Don’t drink,” I say pulling away and into the fold.

“I will,” says he standing still