"the simian slouch of your spines"

"'Watch this,' I said, holding forth the bill but really extending my arms to hold the circle, because before the attack comes there is a kind of crowding movement, an encroachment on the natural territorial rights of the body; and taking the crisp bill in my fingers I folded it once lengthwise, and once again, and then tightly twice more to the size of a postage stamp and then I did a hocus-pocus pass of the hands over each other, snapped my fingers, and then the ten-dollar bill was gone.  Oh you miserable fucking louts, that I ever needed to attach my orphan self to your wretched company, you thieves of the five-and-ten, you poking predators of your own little brothers and sisters, you dumbbells, that you could aspire to a genius life of crime, with your dead witless eyes, your slack chins, and the simian slouch of your spines -- fuck you forever, I consign you to tenement rooms and bawling infants, and sluggish wives and a slow death of incredible subjugation, I condemn you to petty crimes and mean rewards and vistas of cell block to the end of your days.  'Look!' I cried, pointing up, and they tracked my hand, expecting to see me pluck the bill out of the air, as I had so often their coins and steelies and rabbits' feet, and in the instant of their credulity, as they stared upward at nothing, I ducked under the circle and ran like hell."

-- E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate