Me

Since I have been unemployed and hanging out at home I have been talking to some of my neighbors. I met a 300 pound woman who has a crazy teenage daughter who already has two kids who have autism. The woman must be on SSI since she cares for her ill mother. See I live in what they call a mobile home park but it’s really a trailer park with some fancy newer mansion like mobile homes. Back to the woman. Yesterday I ran into her at the local Target. I was walking in and I hear "Hey Neighbor". She said it twice. Then we stood there as she talked about all the creepy low lives that live in the park, Mary a drunk who has a brain tumor who lost her son twenty years ago in a fire and she was burnt over 30 percent of her body. Mary once invited me into her mobile to show me all these things she makes from dead flowers and when she showed me a photo of her dead son she started crying. Then she told me how she wanted to poison her husband. One time she tripped over a speed bump in front of my trailer and busted her head open when she was drunk. I didn't even hear it until I heard sirens and saw the fire dept out front. This woman was telling me about all the guys in the park that Mary fucked. Then she moved onto this guy who she says is a meth freak who rides his bike everywhere. I see him all over Chatsworth pedaling his bike. His bike was stolen the other day so now he walks everywhere. Then there is Cami who also has a kid with Autism. A single mom on methadone with scoliosis who is in consent pain and who I have watched getting more of a hunchback as time goes on. She is an attractive woman and because she didn’t get the surgery she needed its too late now because it has progressed so fast. There is this trailer of low lives where this woman they call grandma who is a drunk takes care of her son’s kids who is in prison. It’s a little girl and there was a little boy but he seems to have disappeared. A couple of times I saw this creepy man with the little girl on his lap in one of those old scary house vans, driving up and down the street. He was letting her drive but she was on his lap which creeped me out. Child services had made many visits to that house but they don’t do anything.
We are still at Target and she is still talking. She tells me about this woman who was fresh out of prison that I saw around here for a while with her son. She was staying at the house of Grandma for a while. Her little son must have been around ten. He loved motorcycles and would tell me how his dad wants to buy one of my bikes. The kid would always wave at me as I passed and many times I saw him walking the street looking very mad and talking to himself. This kid’s mom had this young Mexican lesbian who was in love with her. I saw her once riding a BMX bike while I was getting my mail. She was drunk and stopped to ask me what was up. I just looked up at her and said nothing. She mumbled something and rode off. She broke the other woman’s arm once in a drunken rage. The woman with the kid died a few months ago due to a bleeding ulcer due to drinking too much. She was in her late 30's. The Target woman proceeded to tell me how the boy was placed with a lesbian couple. I told this woman I was gay because I didn’t want her to start bashing gay people. Then she started telling me how she has nothing against gays. And started rattling off all these gay people she knew and kept saying how she knew I was gay. I was getting uncomfortable and said I didn’t have anything against straight people. She didn’t get it. I wanted to get away from her but I was frozen there in Target. I hate Target. The one in the valley anyway. After standing there talking for a half hour her daughter came over and said “are you still talking?” The woman told me I should stop by anytime then we parted ways. I left the store right after that and made my way to the 99 cent store next-door. As I was shopping I saw myself in the mirror and just could have lied down and died. I looked fat, dumpy and my hair was all straight, parted in the middle and flat. I was wearing baggy jeans, a chain wallet and a t-shirt with a skull on it. I smelt bad too because I had slept a sweaty sleep and had the t-shirt I slept in on. There I was in the 99 cent store buying cleaning products. When I pulled into my driveway and saw my busted out windows covered with plywood, a pirate shower curtain and some thin hard plastic I thought I have to get the hell out of here. I wondered how I let myself go and how I ended up a fat lazy piece of trailer trash. Since I have been unemployed I have lived on cheap cookies, popcorn, chips and noodles. Perhaps it’s because I am 47 and have given up. The only family I have are siblings who I hardly hear from. I was very close to my parents. My sibs weren’t as close to them. I was the baby and spoiled. My sibs are always saying what an awful childhood they had yet I thought mine was pretty cool. My dad taught me how to ride motorcycles; we would go camping and even travel back east a few times. We even went to the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York. My teenage years weren’t so great and that’s when most of my loneliness started as well as me realizing that I was different then most people who lived in the awful right wing city of Simi Valley but that is another story. I use to think white trash was interesting and funny but now that I have made it to the bottom of the landfill it’s not funny and its down right sad. I hate it and I need to dig myself out because the trash truck doesn’t pick up large items.