Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility (6 page)

Soon after that my father was gone and my mother's tastes went
through a sophisticated phase, during which we lived in Switzerland
and other hoity places. But in the end she bought a trailer because it
turned out her needs were simple after all. I kind of consider that a
blessing, to live long enough to understand that the human condition
doesn't require a lot of luxury. I've traveled all over the planet myself
since then, not to the Taj Mahal exactly, but I've stayed in other places
that rival it in opulence while I was free-rolling through the world.
In the end I bought a tiny house with aluminum awnings hardly bigger than the double-wides my dad used to sell. The backyard is big,
though, and if you ask me it's begging for trailers.

MILLY IS FIVE, AND I FIGURE SHE HAS BEEN FREELOADING long enough.
Time to put her to work. She is a natural, after all. Nobody can resist
her. When she brings her cupcakes to The Local, Keiger, the owner
and bartender, doles out dollars to all his customers and extracts promises that they will each use theirs to purchase one. And the cupcakes
aren't bad, either; they are cream-filled and fudge covered, encased in
pretty pleated foil. MILLY'S HOMEMADE DING DONGS, the sign says.
Yes, there is a sign. I made a sign. Got a problem with that? ALL PROCEEDS GO TO A FUTURE CAPITALIST'S EVIL PLAN TO RULE THE
WORLD, it informs. So far she has made seventy-five bucks.

I was five, too, when I first went into cupcake sales. My sisters and
I would go door to door with trays of the stuff. Once a neighbor wanted
to buy our entire supply, but my little sister swatted her hand away.
"Leave some for us!" Kim chastised her, and the neighbor lady did, but
paid us for them anyway. I think that was when I discovered most adults
won't turn down a kid selling cupcakes, especially if the kids have a good
reason. I also discovered that lifting tidbits overheard from arguments
between my parents worked really well in this regard.

"We're selling cupcakes on account of how my dad lost his job
selling trailers again and we're gonna have to live on the streets," is one
that worked.

"We're selling cupcakes to buy a monkey," is one Kim used to use,
which also worked because she was just three and actually believed we
were going to buy a monkey with our earnings.

The cupcakes were not our only product, and in fact we had a lot
of opportunity to diversify during afternoons when we weren't playing air hockey at the bar where our father spent his days. The other
products we sold were the ones he'd abandoned over the years in his
many halfhearted attempts to garner an income between gigs selling
trailers as we moved from town to town. The products would arrive in
our home in boxes-which was convenient since we would inevitably
be moving again soon, anyway-and that is where they would have
stayed if we hadn't nosed around and found them one day.

What we'd found were boxes of greeting cards, wallets, key chains,
and, oddly, chocolates (which, of course, we ate). We got a lot of rejection as we went door-to-door with the other things, but nothing sold
as well as the key chains, thanks to Mr. Festerbeck, our five-hundredyear-old neighbor who used to own the paint store before he sold it
to be torn down to put up a radiator warehouse. He never did buy
anything from us, but he was always a hoot to harangue nonetheless.
Plus he whistled through his dentures and had so much junk in his
front yard it was like picking your way through a trove of tornado
debris just to make it to his porch. But the most important thing is
that the old man always took it upon himself to give us tips on our
sales techniques.

"Stand by your product," he'd cackle. "You have to make me think
I can't live without it. Like what's this? A key chain? What's so great
about this key chain? Looky here, it clips to your belt and it's retractable!
Well, my goodness," he'd exclaim, feigning wonderment, "think of the
convenience! Think of the ease of use! Think of the bags of groceries that can be saved from being dropped on the front stoop all because
of this magnificent key chain! All the cartons of eggs saved from being
crushed. This right here will save you time and money! In fact," he
gasped, eyes agog, "think of all the pretty ladies who get attacked on
their front steps just because they took too long to find their keys in the
dark of night! That's how you have to sell it; it can save your life."

And off we'd go, laughing, selling our Magnificent Lifesaving
Key Chains door-to-door. We got more takers than we would have
otherwise thanks to our kindly old neighbor, who, it turns out, could
have used a lifesaving device himself. It wasn't long afterward that Mr.
Festerbeck was found dead on his kitchen floor by the local exterminator, which explains why he didn't answer his door the last time
we knocked. The exterminator had been hired by Mr. Festerbeck's
neighbors as a kindly hint to rein in whatever it was that was causing
such a terrible bug infestation emanating from his property, and the
exterminator found the problem, all right. But when I think of Mr.
Festerbeck, I'm careful not to remember that part.

When we ran out of key chains, it was back to the cupcakes
because those were easily replenished. Occasionally my mother would
dispatch my older brother to serve as a bodyguard on our salesman
outings in case we knocked on the door of a child-molesting masturbator or something, which, looking back, was a questionable decision
if you ask me. He himself was only twelve, and half deaf, and would
not have served as a sturdy barrier between us and evil. But still my
mother would holler at him to accompany us. "Your sisters could get
kidnapped. Get your ass out there."

He was always reluctant to come, so to make it worth his while
he'd invent reasons why he was needed. Once, as we approached the
Gothic hilltop home of our strange neighbors, two sisters by the name
of Blister, he told us that this here was where the kidnappers lived, the
one our mother had warned us about. He then launched into a florid
oration about the legend of the kidnapping Blister sisters, two women
with wings like the pterodactyls that ate their own eggs in The Land
That Time Forgot, and in spite of the fact that my brother had said
they'd lock me in the crawl space under the staircase and feed me mice
the rest of my life, I was excited to see the Blister sisters. I did not want
to miss the sight of real live kidnappers, and considered becoming one
myself. The wings, I tell you, were a huge draw.

The women who answered the door, though, did not have wings
that I could see. They were tall and pale with their hair pinned in
large white knots at the base of their necks. One had a bun the size of
a bicycle seat. My brother was loitering at the end of the drive, behind
the gate, out of sight and of absolutely no use should the kidnappers
wield their hunting knives to gut us like little flounders. So my two
sisters and I stood silently before them with our tray of cupcakes,
quivering.

"What have we here?" one Blister sister asked.

"We're selling cupcakes-" my sister Cheryl began.

"Where's your wings?" I blurted. "We wanna see your wings!"

What happened next will remain one of the most vivid memories
of my childhood, because damn if that woman's white bun did not,
right then, come alive and spread goddamn wings as wide as the open sky. My sisters screamed so loud that lobsters in the middle of the
Pacific were probably alerted to our presence, and ran back down the
drive toward my brother, cupcakes in their wake. I remained there,
though, agog. The bun had not been a bun after all, but a sleeping
cockatiel. The lady let me stay for a good while after that, feeding
the bird cupcakes, until finally my mother appeared at her door, dispatched by my terrified siblings to save me from the legendary kidnapping Blister sisters.

I WONDER WHICH IS MORE TELLING OF MY GENIUS, the fact that I knew
exactly where to get the two plastic asses, or the fact that I needed two
plastic asses to begin with. "Girl," Daniel sighed, rubbing his eyes,
"tell me again just what in the hell is it you're going to be for Halloween this year?"

"A double-butted baboon," I answered excitedly. "I already have
the plastic asses."

"Of course you do," he said.

My genius is obviously wasted on Daniel, an artist whose gift is
outside the double-butted variety. If you subtract the time he dressed
up as a country-singing drag queen when he helped throw me my
"Recovering Slut Baby Shower," I haven't seen him dress up in a costume since that Halloween a decade back when he was a priest with
porn hanging out of his pockets. How he can let another perfectly
good opportunity like the entire month of October go by without
even at least gluing a fake bloody hatchet to his head is a mystery to
me. But I don't judge.

"You pussy," I griped. "At least wear one of my headbands with
the blinking bloody-eyeball antennae."

"Hell no, bitch," he griped back. "Don't draw me into your Halloween drama. I could injure myself. You practically get hospitalized
every year yourself."

Please, the Halloween when I got the concussion was not even
because of my own costume. I got hit in the head from the corner of a tabletop that was part of my friend's walking "Decapitated Head
Served on a Platter" masterpiece. Of course, it might have helped if I
could have seen through the black-lace veil of my evil-sorceress outfit,
but details like that are secondary to the overall visual effect. Sure, I
was blinded to the point of walking into oncoming traffic, but the
important part is that my costume kicked ass.

It was my daughter Milly's idea for me to be the double-butted
baboon. I won't tell you how she came up with the concept, except to
say that grade-schoolers, as a matter of convention, are obsessed with
anything ass-related. It's pretty much a time-tested fact. I remember
when my big sister, Cheryl, was about that age. She used to pin me
down on the bottom bunk and fart on my head before bed.

It's a shame they didn't have plastic asses for Halloween back
when we were kids, because we certainly could have used them. Part
of the reason I love to make costumes today is because I had scarce to
work with when I was little. Cheryl and I both were expected, year
after year, to wear the same butterfly costume we were outfitted with
when we were in preschool and part of a parade float that spring.
We lived in Pacific Grove, California, which is famous for being an
annual migration point for massive hordes of monarch butterflies. I
remember it was a big deal every year, to sit out on the porch waiting
for the butterflies to return. We'd strain our eyes and pretty soon there
they'd be, clouds upon clouds of them fluttering home. It really was
pretty magnificent.

But still, for the first seven years of my life my Halloween costume was not even inspired by Halloween but by some bogus local butterfly worship. I swear, if I hadn't been so busy trying to squirrel
away all the Laffy Taffy for myself, I would have crawled into the pillow sack of candy we collected every year to simply curl up in shame.