A/N: I know that these are rather outdated views of the homeless, but I still wrote it and had fun with it. Sometimes, when you're looking at the homeless as you walk along with the city heat and energy in you, you wonder just what these seemingly useless people are talking about when they gather together on the park benches of the Boston Common and make them all smell like piss. Not that I don't like homeless people, I just don't like people who squander their lives, no matter how they do it. Anyway, enjoy and R/R!

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The crowd of homeless men congregated by a small row of park benches that had been set up a long time ago, intended for people other than these winos. It was around eight in the morning, and it was already rather hot despite a lack of the sun's full intensity, though it definitely promised to be intense later in the day. People who had jobs and enough money to survive "comfortably" bustled all about in the energetic, wide-eyed elderly city, and the homeless men, numbering eight, sat together on the worn, weather-beaten park benches, watching the drama of rush-hour unfold before them.

"You can see the sun coming over that building over there," one of them said, indicating a tall, brown skyscraper to the east, and the conversation began here with all eight of them, dirty and careless in appearance as they were, piping in with a comment when they had the urge.

"The sun's been up for two goddamn hours already. Waddya mean it's comin' up now?"

"I mean it's just gettin high enough for it to come over that building, you know?"

"No I don't fuckin know."

"What's the name of that building anyway?"

"State Street Bank. Can'tcha see the name on it? "

"No shit, huh?"

"I read in a paper that the Cardinal was stepping down or something, cause he grabbed some kid's dick."

"No, it wasn't the Cardinal that grabbed that kid's dick. It was someone else."

"Anyway, he stepped down."

One of them chuckled. "You musta read an old paper or something. That's last week's news."

The man shrugged nonchalantly. "You read one paper you read them all."

One of them pointed. "Look at this fuckin kid. Watch this."

"Don't fuck with him."

"No, watch me for a friggin minute," came the surly reply from one of the eight bums. A young man, perhaps college age, though it was the summer and he had no backpack, was approaching where the bums had gathered. The one who had spoken last got up from the urine-smelling park bench and grinned somewhat lewdly at the young man as he walked forward. The young man noticed, though he pretended not to. The pained expression on his face, however, gave no aid to his pretext. The homeless man was upon him, and close, so that the smell of unkemptness and vodka was near to the young man's nostrils. "Hey pal. You got any change so I can eat or something?"

"No." The kid's reply was an offensive attempt at courteousness.

"Hey, why not buddy?" He sniffed the collar of his battered, dirt- splotched T-shirt. "What, do I smell like piss?"

He had asked the question in as honest a tone as he could pull off, but it still elicited raucous laughter from his companions. The young man walked briskly on, and soon he was past. The homeless dreg that had teased him laughed enough that he began to hack up his lungs, and the sound coming from his throat sickened the "normal" people - the ones who actually contributed to society - who were walking clear of him on the warm sidewalk.

"You're gonna get us kicked off here if you keep fuckin with people."

"Fuck the cops. We got a right to sit on a bench. We pay our taxes."

"No we don't."

The first laughed, but not enough that he began to cough up thick, pasty phlegm again. "Yeah, that's right. We don't."

And in the meantime, as the eight of them stayed on the benches until the full sunlight washed over them and forced them to migrate, a million other people were out there in the old city - the city of knowledge, the Athens of America - and they were laughing, crying, making money, killing, fucking, praying and lamenting for their future that was so uncertain, and it all happened in one magnificent harmony, a symphony and a testament to the triumph of mankind left to its own devices.