Chasing Crazy
“Chasing Crazy”: The race begins
The first part of my life was spent with a mentally ill mother.
Every day with her was a race though an amusement park of insanity.
The rides were “police interventions” and a string of unstable boyfriends.
The prizes were public beatings and her telling the waiter at Red Lobster that I had “shit my pants”.
Doctors would later frame it as an acute case of “Borderline-Personality Disorder”.
This was not the best disorder to be paired up with as a child.
Her behaviors tended to not give us enough time to plant roots anywhere.
Plus, my mother’s relationships always ended up with us fleeing the house in the dark of night.
We picked up roots and moved to and from nearly every state on the eastern coast.
We never stayed longer than 6 months in any location.
That is, until we found a trailer park in Miami, Florida.
Ray Lucinda was a gust of wind on our family’s last matchstick of dignity.
We pulled into the trailer park just as the sun was coming up. Beams of light shot against rows of trailers, lining the alleys of faded asphalt. We hit the uneven entrance and jerked sideways into a small parking lot at the front of the park.
We climbed out of the car and stood before what was, in essence, a shack, with cheap beige aluminum sides streaked with dark grime running down the front.
This was a stationary home, a rarity in the park. It hadn’t always been so, as evidenced by the flattened rubber wheels the building sat on.
Across the door, in excellent penmanship, read the word “Manager” in black sharpie.
I looked up to see a beautiful sky. Clear — the morning bringing a sense of hope. To the left stood a large sign on a piece of particle board, held up by a metal rod, half submerged in solid road.
It read ‘Fowlers Trailer Park’ in cursive blue letters.
Small light bulbs framed the welcome message but they appeared to be out of service, as many of the bulbs were shattered or hanging off their green cord.
Someone had spray painted the word ‘Overseas’ in between Fowlers and Trailer Park.
Apparently, some of the older residents weren’t fans of the recent immigrant migration into the trailer community.
My mother walked out of the Manager’s office towards me already in half conversation, as she often did.
“Jason is getting the keys and signing the agreement.”
She started to laugh and then tried to wink at me. (This was a talent she never quite mastered. It looked like she was on the verge of having a stroke.)
“I told him he was your uncle.”
I didn’t know what she meant but my mother did not have reliable credit, so I assumed it had something to do with that.
We walked down the alley as my mom tried to read the street sign. It was an orange traffic cone with a stick jutting out the top.
#52–81
Head tilted, she squinted at me from the under side of her burgundy tinted sunglasses. (The rims had faded to grey years ago).
“Come on!” she hollered.
She pulled my hand tight as we began trotting down the road. “This way!”
We passed by trailers of various colors: plain white, salmon pink, lime green, each one different from the last. Within each yard, the trailers sat on small patches of crab grass, others on loose gravel.
Some of the yards had a screened porch attached to the trailer. These were well manicured, (though tiny) yards — perfectly edged and stark bare, except for the plastic yard decorations such as a plastic flamingo or painted rocks outlining the perimeter.
These yards were kept with pride, their own special lot on the Earth — a place that was just theirs.
The ones without grass were typically RVs or “mobile” trailers — short term residents. These lots sat littered with empty beer cans or makeshift fire pits, remnants from a party the previous night.
The air in our new neighborhood carried with it a unique scent. It was a concoction of Hispanic cooking — rice and refried beans, mixed with pungent fabric softener.
A laundry facility punctuated the park’s center. It pumped out a humid, sweet odor throughout the day.
My mother would never use it as she claimed that the Cuban family next door urinated in the washing machines.
As I turned my head, I noticed a short man waving and whistling at us. His hair was tangled into a thick, dark mat with a halo of stray hairs that seemed to dance with his steps.
This was an unusual looking man, standing about five and a half feet tall but wide as an oak barrel.
He stood before us with no shirt. His upper body had undergone years of manual labor as his muscles sank down on him like a suit of armor.
His stomach had somehow survived years of heavy drinking. It poked out like a basketball, the protruding belly button throbbing every time he breathed.
His jeans were cut just above the knee. Strands of fabric hung from the ends as he had foregone scissors and simply torn them with his bare hands.
There was no button at the waist. Instead, he had rolled the top of the waist over onto itself.
He was a nightmare to look at, and I couldn’t help but think he had recently escaped from somewhere — the way David Bannon looked after he woke up.
As he approached us, he bought with him an odor of stale beer and cigarettes. The stench of his scalp caused a blurring effect, much the way heat would off pavement.
I would later find out that “shampoo was for pussies”. Ray showered with whatever slivered remnant of soap he could find sitting on the grout of his manual crank shower.
He stopped waving to pick up a half empty bottle from the ground. The damp Budweiser label hung off the side from the condensation.
“Hey Mommy, ju want a beer?”
My mother smiled but hesitated, “Um, no thank you. We’re just moving in.”
She positioned herself in a way for her cleavage to show as she motioned towards me.
“This is my son, Gregory.”
I was looking at the asphalt, kicking loose pebbles with my bare feet. She nudged me forward.
Part of me was shy so my voice was timid. The other part was avoiding breathing so I could hide from his stench.
“Hello.”
He looked down at me. The whites of his eyes were blood red and glassy, like foggy puddles. He wasn’t making eye contact but rather focusing past me, as if to keep from falling over.
“Hey Gregorio, ju want a beer?”
My mother jumped in, covering her embarrassment with a fake laugh. “No thank you.” It was obvious she was fumbling for an excuse when she blurted out a phony reason.
“Gregory was just about to unload the car for me.”
We had piled our belongings into a canary yellow station wagon with wood paneling running down the sides.
Black garbage bags, packed with laundry, stuck out at weird angles from each window, as if the car were trying to spit us out.
My mother appeared to be insecure with the sudden silence as she started to look around for an excuse to say something.
“Gregory where is your brother? Go find him.”
She started to push me forward but instead took it upon herself to find him. The trailer park was about to enjoy its first taste of Terry Martin’s pleasant voice.
It was shrill but had a masculine strength to it. Like a mountain lion getting its tail ripped off.
“Jason! Where are you!?”
Ray stumbled back a bit and jerked his head up while I lowered mine and pulled at my mother’s arm.
The mortification one would typically feel was lost on me. I had become numb to it. I still kept my eyes to the ground as I answered. “He’s talking to the landlord. You told him to get the keys.”
Mom was frustrated and tired, although she always sounded this way. “Well, what’s taking him so long?”
She continued. “Okay, well … Greg you go start unloading the car while I talk to…”
She tilted her stance a little and smiled.
“What did you say your name was, sir?”
Ray spoke with a raspy accent.
“I’m Ray, baby. Ray — “
He belched. Then pursed his lips to hold back whatever seemed to be coming up.
“Lucinda. I live in Lot 77.
This is how we would all end up telling each other where we lived. The number of the lot where our trailers were parked.
I was starting to get whiny.
“Mom, I’m tired. Can’t we just go set up the TV? I always get stuck — “
Ray interrupted.
“Hey, Gregorio, ju wanna beer?”
Ray had stumbled towards me, forgetting he had already asked me the question. He was beginning to wobble.
“Come on. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
I would come to hear this often as Ray’s excuse to get me to do anything out of my comfort zone.
“Here, put some Tobasco sauce on that, it’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Go talk to that girl, she likes you. Don’t be nervous, it’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Put this wine in your jacket. What do you mean you’ll get caught? Chit Gregorio, jail’d put hair on your chest.”
As Ray motioned his beer in my direction, a behemoth of a cat leapt down onto his shoulder as if it had fallen from the sky.
“Pinche gato! I hate you Samantha!”
Ray began dabbing the fresh pink claw marks that dug down his chest. They were puffed out, the toxins from the disease-riddled paws already going to work.
“I’m gonna kill that cat one day. That’s Samantha.”
Ray was referring to the orange cat that lived with him.
Samantha belonged to the trailer park but Ray fed her enough stale tortilla chips to keep her coming back.
The trailer park was infested with cats. Countless felines roamed alleys between the trailers, looking for food.
We would come to find that after the sun went down, the air would often be filled with a concert of hisses and screeches as the cats of the park would engage in gruesome fights.
Each territory battle would start off like two witches screaming at each other.
Then a muffled thump.
Then another … until a cacophony of horrific sounds unraveled, like steam whistles being murdered or metal silverware having tantrums atop the trailers.
Samantha was, no doubt, a champion in the arena.
This was not an ordinary cat.
It had no fat to its bones and its muscles protruded at bulky angles.
I had never seen a cat with biceps before.
I was afraid to think of what it ate to reach that size, because it wasn’t getting protein from the tortilla chips.
The color looked as if it had almost rusted under the sun. Patches of dried blood sat in clumps across its neck and hind legs.
Samantha’s face could have been cute, even one to nestle up against, had one of its eyes not been oozing a milky substance and the poor cat’s face not been lined with scars like a prison convict.
That cat was mean, too.
It wasn’t one to pet, as my mother told me after it bit me on the forehead one afternoon.
The mangy feline walked around angry, nearly scoffing when people were near, as if it were just coming off an insult.
Samantha was not a cat you’d have on your lap while you read the paper.
The female name probably added to the cat’s inherent rage.
Sweet Samantha was a male cat.
This was apparent from the abnormally large testicles that bulged out between his legs when he walked.
Ray grabbed a few rocks off the road and tossed them gently at him.
“Get outta here Sammy! I don’t got no food for you!”
The cat looked over its bulky shoulder, a foggy eye scowling in his direction.
“Hate that cat.”
Ray actually loved Samantha.
He told me about when Hurricane Hugo hit.
Ray had decided not to evacuate the park despite numerous warnings and a physical attempt by Miami Dade police officers.
He would only scream back, “I ain’t leavin’!”
Eventually, they stopped trying, and Ray hunkered down with Samantha.
It only took twenty minutes after the initial impact of the storm to rip the porch off Ray’s trailer. After that, Ray decided it was best to leave.
He would often regale us on the heroic endeavor.
Across the street from the trailer park was a ratty strip mall with a large, empty parking lot.
Various stores had come and gone but two had remained over the decades — an old hardware store and a Cuban delicatessen.
Ray knew that was their only refuge at that point.
The stocky, determined man grabbed two 22 ounce beer cans out of the lopsided refrigerator he had in the trailer — duct tape wrapped around the base to keep it closed.
He stuffed them in his pocket and turned a pillow upside down to remove the cover.
“Sammy! Where are you pinche cat…?”
She, or rather he, was sitting on a makeshift bookshelf, staring out the window.
He was unshaken, almost appearing calm while he watched the disaster unfolding behind the pane of cheap glass.
Like a sociopath watching an arson. The cat truly was unsettling.
Ray threw Samantha into the empty stained pillowcase and headed for the door.
“Here we go!”
The cat was out of her mind, hissing and clawing at the fabric.
The bag kicked in all directions as if Ray were swinging an angry bowling ball.
He opened the door to a wall of water and fierce wind. The door slammed shut on them. Ray heaved forward with all his weight and pushed out the door to be hit with stinging rain.
They headed across the street to the hardware store, now boarded up. It would have been an interesting sight.
A solitary man, shirtless, battling the wind as he made his way across an empty park in the middle of a hurricane, holding a violent pillowcase with claws, jerking back and forth.
They made it to the abandoned store and squeezed past the plywood slats nailed against the windows, to hunker down through the storm with a very disturbed feline companion.
Ray told me how the cat was never the same after that night.
He tried to pick her up but Samantha bit into his arm like she was trying to take flesh.
She hissed more than she breathed, almost cursing at him under her breath, waiting for Ray to reach out for her again.
Samantha stayed in the pillowcase that night.
But the two had survived together. And they had more in common than he realized, despite his playful disregard of her.
They were both prisoners of the park, although they didn’t know it.
The dysfunction of the environment was a sort of function that worked for them.
They lived on impulse, moving through life moment by moment — embracing anything put onto their path.
They also had no problem showing us their testicles.
Ray had collapsed onto a plastic lawn chair in front of us, his legs spread wide.
One of Ray’s forearms fell through the lavender backing of the chair as he sat in a toppled mess and looked up at my mother with a warm smile — his eyes somehow more bloodshot.
“Welcome to the park, baby.”
My mother looked confused as she grabbed my hand and walked away.
Then, she stopped, looked back and waved at him.
He pointed his finger at me and winked.
“See you around Gregorio.”
Ray looked peaceful as he closed his eyes and reached over to pet Samantha.
The old cat stood up, stretched and arched its back to meet his friend’s hand.
Then she turned around and bit him.
I heard Ray screaming something in Spanish as we opened the door to our new home:
Lot #73.
NEXT UP…THE COPS GET INVOLVED AT THE BEACH…
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