Trailer Trash

I feel like I've led a pretty decent life. I mean, I was raised Southern Baptist, and by the standards of the SBs, I'm a prime candidate for hellfire and brimstone, but I've been a good son and a good father, almost everyone I've ever worked with likes me, I make sensible contributions to reputable charities, I'm unfailingly polite, and I do my best to make sure that the bottom also cums. (Those last two might be the same thing, but whatever.) My point is that if there is a heaven (and I know it's highly unlikely, but indulge me, ok?), I deserve a place there, and if I get to choose my own spot, I think it'll be a nice trailer, with comfortable lawn furniture and veritable hordes of pink flamingos. If I'm especially lucky, many (many) years later, the kids will get their own trailers nearby.

On the one hand, I find terms like "white trash" and "trailer trash" abhorrent. On the other hand, if you go back a generation or two, I have impeccable white trash credentials. As a compromise, I occasionally (very occasionally ["Very occasionally" means rarely; if you don't understand why this is so, email me, and I'll explain it to you. If you don't agree, then I'm afraid that I shall have to challenge you to dictionaries at ten paces. Name your seconds.]) will call myself white trash, but the only other people about whom I'll use the term are those of my forebears who provide me with the aforementioned white trash cred.

[Sorry: not a lot of sex in today's post, but I will be having plenty this weekend, and if you're good, I'll post some pictures.]

Trailer parks, deservedly, have a bad reputation (don't click on this link unless you want to be sad), but they've always struck me as highly romantic and the perfect compromise between rootedness and nomadism. I've always wanted to live in one: maybe not forever, but for at least a few years, sort of like I've always wanted to spend a year or two living in NYC. I'm not sure which of those two notions is the more farfetched, and I suspect that I'd have to wait for the great hereafter for either. Still, maybe we can have heaven on Earth, and I contend that a trailer park can be a haven of unrivaled fabulousness. Let me explain.

Here's a gay man: let's call him Gary. He's coming out of an AA meeting. Hi, Gary! What does Gary need to be happy? Ready access to shopping, legal and illegal substances, and loud music. A gym. An endless supply of other gay men for sex and companionship. Eight hundred carbohydrate-free calories a day and affordable housing for himself and his cats. Now I know you believe that the only place Gary can find all that is in the big city. But there are two problems with that belief: a) affordable housing is tough to find in the big city, and b) any place that has a decent supply of Shaggable Gay Men will automatically attract all of the other things that the SGMs need. You can try to solve the affordable housing problem through various cohabitation arrangements (roommates, partners, thruples), but you and I both know that most SGMs are, at best, ambivalent about cohabitation. Sure, it's nice to have someone close by, especially when you lie down or wake up, but the SGM can be a fairly prickly beast, and he needs a fair amount of time to himself, or at least alone with his pets.

So you need affordable, single-unit housing, and you need a critical mass of SGMs? You need a trailer park! Think about it: what's more affordable than a used FEMA trailer? For something less than six months' worth of rent on a Manhattan shoebox, you can own your own place. Get together with five or six of your closest friends, and you can get a bulk deal. Better yet, find some enterprising young Capitalist to fund the whole venture, and for $250 a month per person, you can get several thousand people moved to a high plateau in New Mexico (plenty of affordable space, not too hot, easy tanning, a reasonably blue state, and an admirable lack of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters).

Think about how perfect it is. Because they're all old FEMA trailers, they're all the same size, so no one can bitch about how somebody else has a bigger trailer. They're not huge, sure, but they're way bigger than your Manhattan apartment. (Besides, no one's going to use the kitchens for anything other than cold beverage storage, so there'll be plenty of extra space.) And while they're all the same size and all start out looking the same, everyone gets to decorate his own trailer, so everyone gets his own brand of fabuliciousness.

If there's somebody you like a whole lot, he can put his trailer near to yours. You can be in his bed while your sheets are in the dryer, and vice versa. But when you need your alone time (or when you want some variety from Mr. Four Trailers Down), you can just send your soulmate off to a Pilates class. It's the ideal arrangement for everyone from semi-monogamous partners to full tilt single sluts.

I envision vast tracts of trailer communities surrounding common areas with bars, gyms, H&Ms, rehab facilities, veterinarians, and maybe even the occasional grocery store or restaurant. Maybe you'll be over in the densely packed Twink Village, where no trailer is more than fifty yards from a weight room, while I'll be over in Semi-Bearish Acres with my garden and gas grill. There's a place for everyone.

All we need to make this happen, friends, is a change in perspective. Give up your addiction to big city living with its traffic, poor air quality, crime, and pigeon shit, and join me in the search for cheap housing in a land flowing with gin and biceps! You have nothing to lose but your debt!

Can I get an "Amen!"? And a martini?