Entry 000110; 02.21.02

My mom used to call them Gutta-snipes. It was like a particularly bad way of saying "white trash." I don't know if she put the Boston accent in there to add emphasis, or that was her own childhood tendency, the way I sometimes lapse into saying "Randoph" or "ya." It seems almost like a racial slur that has become taboo in any kind of company. Or a very sneaky, scary animal. In a way they are animals. There is no way of communicating with them. It's like using logic against a bear. They just don't have the cognitive ability.

In the movies, lower-class poor kids would be portrayed as hardworking, tough on the outside but with a heart of gold on the inside. They might not be too bright, but they make up for it with love. Or hardwork or a sense of moral honor or something heart-warming such as that.

It's not like that. I know. I've lived in GutterSnipe, USA. They really aren't bright at all, or honorable on the inside, and they really don't have any redeeming values. They are just...trash. They are the cattle of this earth. We let them live so they can be slaughtered. So they can buy cheap shit we sell to make profits. So they can work at McDonalds. The dirty McDonald's, the kind that isn't made just for kids ages 14-18, working their ways through high school.

It sounds snobbish. And it is. It sounds prejudicial and stereotypic. The thing is, prejudice is something you have about other groups. The "outgroups" they say in psychology books. When you make judgements about people in your in-group...that's just judgement. And when you make it based on accurate fact, accurate experience, that's just survival, and that's just what the human tendency for stereotypes was made for.

It's disheartening. To live in a society where you are so cut off from true trash that you start to forget they ever existed. They are the alligators in the sewers, the mutants and the freaks and the shit you don't have to see. You hear about it, but you don't think about it. You start to forget that they exist, and the heart-of-gold west-side boy on TV is no longer hilariously, pathetically ridiculous. Only then to interact with them once every few years and go..."Shit. How do they get that way?" The idea of someone living life like that seems impossible and distant. Like a war to a Norwell house-wife. Like the movies.

It makes you feel like vomiting to remember. It's like seeing a dead corpse on the sidewalk, chest ripped open and organs splayed out violently. Exploded. Things like this don't happen in real life.

It's amazing how easy it is to ignore them. And to forget they even exist! I wasn't even trying! Sure, I see the turnips on the street, the girls with their moussed up permed hair sprouting like limp foliage from the tops of their heads. Memories tingle like a tiny itch behind eyeballs.

Phantom voices. Phantom prods and pokes and hair tugging. They were always good at the hair. They knew to grab only a little bit and YANK, because that hurt a lot worse. The pain was sharper, concentrated. Yes, those gutter snipes didn't know much, but what they knew they knew perfected to an art. "What tha fuck?" They'd say, grabbing at my hair. Pinching my ears, poking sharp things into my back. Pen marks in my shirts. Hard enough with that ball point pen to leave little red marks. Jeering, adolescent female voices eject "ya fuckin' UGLY. What the FUCK? What's wrong with ya hair ya look like a fuckin rats' nest. Who tha FUCK do ya think you ah? Ah you crying? CRYING? Ya fucking BABY. Why tha fuck is she CRYING?" Some pokes and prods and yanks. Always at the back. They would never insult or inflict pain to your face, which is probably just as well, because pen marks on your face might be worse. They might go for the eyes. Sometimes if they are in a particularly viscious mood, they might hit you on the back of the head. Hard, into the thick plastic of a bus window, perhaps. Hard enough to leave you dizzy for a few hours. It's difficult to bruise the forehead, your head has to hit the glass at almost black out impact.

There is always a ring leader amoung the females. I don't know who decides it. Whoever has the guadiest manicure from the mall. Whoever has the higher limp-foliage hair or the shiniest braces. Probably something like that. Maybe within the level of proll intelligence, there is a hierarchy of a diminutive range only they can decipher.

I rarely had to deal with the male of the species. I moved too soon; the girls turned quicker, like rancid meat in the sun. It caught onto the boys like rabies, slow and raging in the last stages. Most of the males die early, in or straight out of high school. Alcohol poisoning. Drunk driving. Prison fights. Of course, they only die after being old enough to impregnate the female species. That's how the species survives.