$2 Can Get You Told Off Professionally

I first saw the "Tell me off" man last summer. It was a hot day on Fulton St. in downtown Brooklyn and shoppers were walking with that languid pace that heat waves bring. The man was sitting on a bench with a sign in front of him that read: "Tell me off $2." No one was taking him up on his offer. One reason was that on Fulton St. someone will read you the riot act for nothing; plus no self-righteous Brooklynite is going to waste $2 telling someone off. Another reason was the way the man looked.

The man was middle-aged and his face had some miles on it, but that was the only part of his body that gravity had gotten a hold of. He was shirtless with not an ounce of fat on his torso. His arms were long and strong with tight boxer's muscles, and his back was ripped like a weightlifter's. I stood off to the side and thought that this guy looked a lot like the former middleweight champion Marvin Hagler. He even had Hagler's prefight stare-down. I watched as he sat on that bench for 20 minutes. People saw the sign and then took a look at the man and just kept walking. No one even goofed on the guy. After a while he got up and stretched his short, muscular body, then packed up his sign in a shopping cart and headed off toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

I forgot about the man until last week. On a brisk October night while walking around Times Square, near 44th St., I heard that great old Elvis soundalike Terry Stafford song "Suspicion" playing on a boombox in front of a black man who sat on a stool with a sign, "Tell me off $2." I stopped and stared. It was the same guy, only now he didn't look so tough. He was wrapped in a ski coat and his beard had grown a bit and had some speckles of gray in it. He wore a white doo-rag and his whole look was that of an ebony bin Laden. I stood and watched the man. Again, he had no takers. As he packed up his boombox and sign to move on I stepped up to him and paid my fee. I told him I had no insults for him but that I wanted to hear his story.

He's 52 and named Bill McKinney. He was born and raised in Little Rock, and has spent most of his life wandering America by road and rail. In former times he would have been known as a drifter or a tramp. In today's New York they have stamped Bill McKinney with the more politically correct, yet less romantic, tag of homeless. He's been in the city for the last four years but might get back on the road. It didn't sound like a bad life, which McKinney admitted was true.

I asked him how business has been since Sept. 11. Was he going for a bin Laden look to drum up customers?

"I hope I don't look like bin Laden. Damn, that could get you killed out here, especially with all these cops around. Them terrorists messed my business up. I've been making less money out here but lately it's getting a little better."

So who is his clientele?

"A lot of it is tourists who don't tell me off but give me $2 and then take my picture and talk to me. You know, one wants to pose with me and the other takes the picture and then they switch. Then you get a lot of people with their bubble on?you know, high?and they just want to get their stuff off on me. Sometimes it's just people who want to yell about their own life."

Does he ever get white people who insult him racially?

"Well, it's mostly blacks who tell me off, but I get one white guy. He's a regular and he loves to come up to me. He'll tell me things like, "I hate you people. I hate you all. I hope you go home tonight and get hit by a car. All blacks should die."

McKinney pauses and pats his heart. "See, he laughs but he has real hate in his heart. So maybe it's better he tells me off instead of taking it out on someone else."

Does the insulting ever get dangerous?

"When people got their bubble on it can get dangerous. Plus out here there are a lot of gangs and I've had some run-ins with them. Sometimes they'll just give me $2 and tell me off. Sometimes they don't pay and goof on me, and sometimes they have attacked me. I had one kid pop me on the head with a pipe. I chased his ass."

I told McKinney about seeing him in Brooklyn last summer, and mentioned his lack of business. I suggested that he would've been better off if he'd kept his shirt on.

"Yeah, I guess I am in good shape. I knew I wasn't going to make any money down there. I could tell. That's not my crowd. I was just hungry that day and just wanted a few dollars to get something to eat. I couldn't even get that."

I asked him if his brilliant yet self-esteem-injuring business did any good.

"I had this one guy stop and pay me and then take a deep breath and tell me that he had nothing to insult me about. Then he told me that he had had it with life. He told me that he had a bottle of pills at home and he was going there now to kill himself. He couldn't face life anymore. When I heard that, it wasn't about money. I talked with him for hours. I convinced the guy that nothing, nothing, is worth killing yourself over. It worked. It felt good. I guess I gave him hope."

So what was the worst thing someone ever said to him?

"That's easy. It was bad because it was two women?no, it was even worse because they weren't even women yet. Girls. They looked me up and down and told me the reason I couldn't get a woman to fuck me was because I was so short. That hurt."

I laughed with McKinney, then he told me he had to go. An emergency.

"I really got to pee." McKinney said as he turned the corner.