Crazy_Trailer_Man
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I once lived in a 15' travel trailer. This trailer belonged to a Crazy Man.
Craigslist did it. I had stayed on a friend's couch for two days before I had enough: I refuse to impinge on the hospitality of my beautiful friends, and they have to smack the dish soap out of my hand before I try to work off my karmic debt. So I threw up an ad on Craigslist, announcing to the world, 'I will rent you porch. Or closet. Or dumbwaiter.'
The Crazy Man replied first.
I received the place free in exchange for construction work on his house, an ideal layover as I found an apartment. Which sounds like a normal exchange, the epitome of the barter system.
This house possessed a 30' pile of dirt in front of the front door, overgrown with eight years of weeds: the dirt belonged to what was once the foundation, from when this man moved in the whole house en masse. My first job was to weedwhack that jungle, and it took me a week. I found a fire hydrant.
He had transformed the staircase into a rock climbing wall. He was a swinger without a door on his bedroom, and he was getting a custom chamberpot made in England for his chimney, of a fairy masturbating. And every tree on his property had been shaved, sliced, and left standing for the distant day when he'd pay for a man to come out from a nearby island, to turn them into totem poles.
He (and I, inevitably, with him) had envisioned a grand project: he aimed to turn the whole side of his house into the largest mudflap in the history of the world. Where shingles once stood, oncoming traffic would instead gaze upon a 30' by 20' copper and stainless steel oval, with the silhouette of a naked woman. Although 'gaze' may not be the right word. Perhaps 'painfully blinded by the sun's burning, reflected rays,' instead.
Once, after a morning of work - learning over, 20' in the air on scaffolding that would give the SEIU an aneurism - I retreated inside for a shower. Freshly scrubbed and half-naked, I stepped into the kitchen to find a confused-looking fellow standing outside. On the back porch, mind you: the front door was totally inaccessible, although I hear the cops had practiced their mountaineering skills once or twice to prove otherwise.
'Do you know who that trailer belongs to?'
'Well, it's not mine. But I live there.'
'You live there?'
'Yeah.'
'Oh.'
'...'
'Because it's going to get towed.'
My trailer - my home sweet home - obtained its power by way of an extension cord that wound its way up and through the weeds, around the rebar of an abandoned garage expansion, and up to the very house itself. And this tow truck driver - a former firefighter from New York - had made the obvious assumption, after a year's experience of towing trailers:
Obviously, I was a meth addict tapping into the grid. Of an abandoned house, no less. I mean, look at the place. Nobody would actually holy crap there's people living here.
But don't you see? Crazy Man cares not for parking ordinances! He'll park his ramshackle trailer wherever he damn well pleases. Three-day parking limit? Poppycock! Because Crazy Man was no ordinary man. This was a man with ambition! With dreams! With class.
He also wanted a yellow brick road.
My girlfriend heard it all. The bathroom was placed immediately above his 'office' (or in plebian terms, the basement), and every phone conversation he had sounded like it was happening over your very shoulder. He was not a quiet man.
He started out with that strained congeniality that was his trademark: 'Hello, my name is Crazy Man, and I would like some yellow bricks, for the yellow brick road that will be my driveway.'
'...What do you mean you don't have yellow bricks?'
'...I don't understand. On your website, here, your logo has the color of yellow bricks. Like from Oz. Why wouldn't you folks have that color, if it's in your damn logo?'
'...No, no. Listen, I don't see why this is so goddamn difficult. Just mix some yellow into whatever the fuck you're making now. Is that so hard?'
'...It's on your fucking website, goddamn it! Do I have to come down there and show you motherfuckers how to make your own GODDAMN BRICK? BECAUSE I FUCKING WILL.'
'...Hello?'
I was gone within the week. I checked in every two months from then on. The wall was bare, like I left it. The roommates had all completely changed. Except, of course, for Crazy Man.
I once lived in a 15' travel trailer. This trailer belonged to a Crazy Man.
Craigslist did it. I had stayed on a friend's couch for two days before I had enough: I refuse to impinge on the hospitality of my beautiful friends, and they have to smack the dish soap out of my hand before I try to work off my karmic debt. So I threw up an ad on Craigslist, announcing to the world, 'I will rent you porch. Or closet. Or dumbwaiter.'
The Crazy Man replied first.
I received the place free in exchange for construction work on his house, an ideal layover as I found an apartment. Which sounds like a normal exchange, the epitome of the barter system.
This house possessed a 30' pile of dirt in front of the front door, overgrown with eight years of weeds: the dirt belonged to what was once the foundation, from when this man moved in the whole house en masse. My first job was to weedwhack that jungle, and it took me a week. I found a fire hydrant.
He had transformed the staircase into a rock climbing wall. He was a swinger without a door on his bedroom, and he was getting a custom chamberpot made in England for his chimney, of a fairy masturbating. And every tree on his property had been shaved, sliced, and left standing for the distant day when he'd pay for a man to come out from a nearby island, to turn them into totem poles.
He (and I, inevitably, with him) had envisioned a grand project: he aimed to turn the whole side of his house into the largest mudflap in the history of the world. Where shingles once stood, oncoming traffic would instead gaze upon a 30' by 20' copper and stainless steel oval, with the silhouette of a naked woman. Although 'gaze' may not be the right word. Perhaps 'painfully blinded by the sun's burning, reflected rays,' instead.
Once, after a morning of work - learning over, 20' in the air on scaffolding that would give the SEIU an aneurism - I retreated inside for a shower. Freshly scrubbed and half-naked, I stepped into the kitchen to find a confused-looking fellow standing outside. On the back porch, mind you: the front door was totally inaccessible, although I hear the cops had practiced their mountaineering skills once or twice to prove otherwise.
'Do you know who that trailer belongs to?'
'Well, it's not mine. But I live there.'
'You live there?'
'Yeah.'
'Oh.'
'...'
'Because it's going to get towed.'
My trailer - my home sweet home - obtained its power by way of an extension cord that wound its way up and through the weeds, around the rebar of an abandoned garage expansion, and up to the very house itself. And this tow truck driver - a former firefighter from New York - had made the obvious assumption, after a year's experience of towing trailers:
Obviously, I was a meth addict tapping into the grid. Of an abandoned house, no less. I mean, look at the place. Nobody would actually holy crap there's people living here.
But don't you see? Crazy Man cares not for parking ordinances! He'll park his ramshackle trailer wherever he damn well pleases. Three-day parking limit? Poppycock! Because Crazy Man was no ordinary man. This was a man with ambition! With dreams! With class.
He also wanted a yellow brick road.
My girlfriend heard it all. The bathroom was placed immediately above his 'office' (or in plebian terms, the basement), and every phone conversation he had sounded like it was happening over your very shoulder. He was not a quiet man.
He started out with that strained congeniality that was his trademark: 'Hello, my name is Crazy Man, and I would like some yellow bricks, for the yellow brick road that will be my driveway.'
'...What do you mean you don't have yellow bricks?'
'...I don't understand. On your website, here, your logo has the color of yellow bricks. Like from Oz. Why wouldn't you folks have that color, if it's in your damn logo?'
'...No, no. Listen, I don't see why this is so goddamn difficult. Just mix some yellow into whatever the fuck you're making now. Is that so hard?'
'...It's on your fucking website, goddamn it! Do I have to come down there and show you motherfuckers how to make your own GODDAMN BRICK? BECAUSE I FUCKING WILL.'
'...Hello?'
I was gone within the week. I checked in every two months from then on. The wall was bare, like I left it. The roommates had all completely changed. Except, of course, for Crazy Man.