Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/541

And that is why certain beggars act like kings, and thrown out of a bar they always turn around and curse, they bring down the curse of regal society, they say, “You fucking two-bit snot, I can buy and sell your place ten times over, I wouldn’t wipe my ass with your head, I wouldn’t condescend to eat here again.” It takes a beggar to understand a king. And there are the beggars who make their appeal by their long faces—they are always saying, “Look at me, I have nothing. I drank and sinned and look at the low state it brought me to.” Pious people tip these beggars.

But there is the hipster beggar so prevalent in New York who comes up and says, “Hey, Mac, gimme a dime.” “What do you want a dime for?” “Well, if I had a dime, I could buy a cup of coffee, and while I’m there some society bitch might drip in, and I could give her a fast fuck, so hot she’d carry me in her pocket around the world and beg me to pinch her tits until I got tired with that and came back to this. So gimme because I want to take a trip around the world.” And the hipster beggar, the decadent beggar hits trade the conventional beggar never could. The other day I gave one a buck—he was a tall Irishman, and he said, “God Bless you.” Then, “Are you Jewish?” “Yes,” I said. “God bless you again,” he said.