White Trash Weekend

Jesus Christ Almighty.

First of all, before I devolve into my bitter and resentful tirade about the bottom wrungs of society, let me first explain how out of character such condescending talk is for me. I have always had a particular fondness for simple people. Those who, like children, are spared the terrible awareness of how little God actually cares for them. I come from a poor family myself, and have nothing but appreciation for the simplistic root level values, and imaginative nurturing that come with being forced to make ones own toys as a child…and I tend to lean towards the ideology that greatness, in a human being, can only begin at the very bottom. However, some individuals who start at the bottom, both mentally and financially, suffer from some terrible form of arrested development, and never seem to leave there, or care to. I’m not referring to a simple lack of ambition, or even a lack of intellectual power, but something deeper. Some sort of missing spark, or ability to appreciate things, so that the end result is an utter waste of space…slumping around, spitting, muttering, and sucking on the McDonald’s tit.

There’s several kinds of hicks as I see it. I like to call the kind of hicks I was raised around the good hicks. The types who take life’s unforgiving difficulty for granted, and accept personal responsibility for their environments. They put their nose to their work, whatever it may be, and take simple pride in merely being productive and helpful, while appreciating life’s beauties and pleasures when they have the time; be it can of Busch light at a beach bonfire on a Friday night, their wives, or watching the sun rise with a cup of coffee. Polite, unintrusive, courteous, self respecting people…of which I perpetually defend. But then there’s the bad hicks, or rather the hicks you think of when you hear the word ‘hicks.‘ There is no faction of society that I loathe more, mainly because they give the good hicks a bad name. These are the types that ride your ass on the highway in their Ford F-150s. The fatass small-dicked fast-food-consuming angry wrecked-complexion fucks that cheer for Nascar and get extra mean and dumb when they get drunk.

Recently the lower level of my apartment was taken over by such hicks, though the two that actually live there ride the border between good hick and bad hick well enough to merit my approval. Despite laying waste to our back yard and parking area with their sea of white-trash garbage, half-built automobiles, and a nice carpet of cigarette butts, they have always been extremely polite and courteous to me, despite my tendency to acquire resentment through my general indifference. But although I’m fond of the two that actually live beneath me (well, two brothers, a fat woman, and a baby– in a one bedroom, two room apartment) I recently found out that they were immigrants from a little nearby place called Boyne City, or as we Petoskey snobs affectionately refer to it as, Boyne Shitty. Renowned for it’s concentration of bad hicks, when one of them manages to crawl out of the nest, they tend to multiply…and so it went with the downstairs apartment. Slowly, more and more worthless Boyne trash began appearing downstairs…chain smoking and congregating around the automobiles day and night, until there was no longer a time when I could enjoy my beautiful second story balcony without listening to them squawk or rev their engines. Nor can I walk to my vehicle without passing through a horde of them, and unlike the original four that made it out of Boyne on their own, these groupies are of the undeniably bad faction of hicks. Making the situation all the more volatile has been the recent arrival of a fairly large group of young hick-women, with their glossy unhealthy skin and skinny bodies in walmart clothing, promoting the over-compensating idiot man-hicks to behave in ways generally reserved for fifth grade children. FURTHER adding to the concoction is the fact that I began attracting long glances from these silver dollar queens that the man hicks grunt, growl, and scrap over, drawing me unwillingly into the belligerent fray of BARK BARK MINE.

Example; I walked downstairs one evening to get in my car, passed the usual rabble of filthy-clothed fucks, who all fell suddenly silent as I did so…and I offered a passive what’s up? without looking as I got into my car, and one of them decided to yell back the sky, and followed it up with a small bout of chuckling. What do you say to that? I offer him a moment of recognition so as to not make them feel small, and help make my transition out of there a little easier for everyone, and he just uses it as some adolescent platform to elevate himself in front of the cussing sows. I responded with a sort of disappointed okkk as I slid into my car and closed the door.

Another example; I was returning home from a stroll into town when one of the girls that had been eyeballing me for days, and offering my back perpetual hellos as I came and went, finally decided to take our relationship to the next level. As I walked past without looking as I always do, instead of a hello she went straight for a hey what’s your name? which surprised me, and caused me to look at her and answer, reflexively….but in a spell of temporary STUPIDITY, and a desire to avoid coming off like the self absorbed misanthrope that I am, I offered her my short name instead of my long name, a habit that I abandoned for the very reason that unfolded:

"My name’s Gabe."

"What? You’re gay?"

Annnddd, end of conversation. I opened my mouth instinctively to correct her, but as my brain is fortunately faster than my mouth, I realized how pointless any form of discussion with this person was, and simply closed it, turned, and walked up the stairs. One of the men in the background shouted an apology as I went, to which I also didn’t respond. Shortly after that I tried sitting outside to read, but the conversation downstairs, which sounded to me like words words fuckin words fuck blah blah fucking fuck blah shit blah cocksucker blah blah words fuck word fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck fuckty fucking fuck fuck caused me to read an entire page without actually reading it, forcing me back inside to start over.