Entrapped

I was glad to have my beat up old black first generation truck. If you asked me, it was a classic, and tugging around my tiny little nineteen foot travel trailer, saving my ass from the lack of available spaces to rent despite the rust eating away at it, cutting a hole into my gas tank from the metal straps. Sure, I felt bitter about having to watch my home like a hawk twenty-four-seven, vigilant of the bicycle section-eight assholes who'd stride by me in the parking lots and taking a peek into the bed of my truck and scope my door out to see if it was open when they thought I either wasn't there or wasn't looking. I was only glad they couldn't unhitch my trailer and make off with it while I tried to find myself some semblance of work that allowed me to keep my trailer and truck in the employee parking lot where I knew I'd have a home to return to.

I know- I know. Everyone urges me to go to the shelter, but you haven't a clue what those assholes tell you on a day to day basis. I'm fine with the ninety days of help before they cut me off for ninety days if they don't succeed in housing me, but I don't get how I'm supposed to sustain an apartment in the slummiest city in the county with a deposit they won't pay and no way to keep me there over ninety days when every other job keeps sending me home earlier, leaving me two-hundred shy of the very money I'd need to pay the monthly seven-hundred rent for my plaster shitbox they promise is better than my trailer.

I'm not dumb. Really. And when they told me they'd help me get into the apartment on the premise of me using the sales from my travel trailer to get into an apartment I knew I couldn't maintain a rent payment on, I walked. I was seething pissed. I could have done that shit myself if I really wanted to and I wouldn't have had to prostrate myself before some non-profit where the director was always looking at me like I was some fuckable piece of meat every turn. Especially since she only ever came back when it was from one of her extravagant 'caseworker training sessions' four hours North of the shelter for a few days, paid for by my taxes and the shelter, but I can't get a deposit from them or three months of help to get me on my feet. Fuck me, right? Well, could be, but I'm not that desperate. To me, they were access to free washer and dryer, a meal if my propane ran out and I couldn't stuff any food in my propane fueled fridge from the food bank, and maybe a little friendly - it was palatable enough - company without getting judgmental looks.

Oh, it all sucked, but I was glad to be single... And not a woman. Not that I have anything against them, but I just can't get behind the amount of sexual harassments the girls at the shelter get over a man like myself. I know I'm young, not much close to thirty, but I'm far more capable of keeping myself from being a victim than a woman. I'm not saying I'm sexual harassment free - I mean... I shudder just every time that fucking bitch of a director looks my way because I'm sure she's the most flee-ridden thing in this whole place no matter how much makeup she puts on and her breasts plump out of her bra, but I ain't stupid. I know a crazy bitch when I see one and they usually look like unicorns.

Still, living from parking lot to parking lot is nice. It's like we form our own little caravan, and most days its relaxing talking to the old cats on social security who tell me I'm a young buck and to stay away from the cheap hookers no matter how hot... But they secretly whisper to me that they toss bills at them anyway, like their guilty vice is only okay in secret even though they denounce it publicly when they talk to everyone else in the lot full of caravans.

I feel like I'm getting used to it. This roaming 'neighborhood' of sorts. Of familiar faces, of the days I spent hitching my trailer and towing it from South on up to the Northern end of the state, about an hour and a half from the shelter to my temporary working position until the end of the working day where I drag it back down South out of sight of the city-folk and out under some shady pine, maybe poking out between them sometimes when I get kicked out of a Walmart parking lot when the owner comes charging out. Sure, it sucks getting treated like a drug addict when I can't even drink most days because I drive too much and I don't want to wreck my only ride and home, but the theft part stings. I've never stolen a damn thing, but they're all the same and I'm being judged by this SNAP-recipient asshole working for the big blue and yellow dicks that like to hand their new-hires a form to fill out and a day between work to head up to the local Social Services office for benefits. Fuckheads.

We're in the same boat, only I'm not some desperate cock-sucking Walmart prick. Nah, I'd never stoop that low. I'd rather be jobless, watching my money dry up in gasoline then ever don one of their fucking vests. I'd rather risk some shady shop paying me under the table, working me long hours, and risk breaking my fingers and back over being one of them. We're a different class of poor and we're not one in the same. So I'll sit here on the steps of my tiny little ADU, staring up at the stars on a cool Northern night and smile at the race of white over the sky, knowing it's not a plane, and that the haze of white over the forest is the city out in the distance, calling me back to come do its bidding for a paycheck for some gas and food.

I'd rather be homeless... At least... Landless, than housed in some concrete hell. If I wanted to be in a concrete shitbox, I'd at least make sure my stay was on loan with a rack up of charges when I left after it was all said and done. You know? Jail. At least here I can be at peace, pick my group of trailer park travelers and meet a few new people along the way. It's different out here... Like I'm not entirely in societies rut, you know? I don't remember society having a quiet pocket until I stepped into this place, the one I'm here in now.