I was actually the first person who knew there was a problem. I had driven in with our friend, who I'll call Juan. We'd eaten at a great Chinese buffet -- which had sushi -- that was just up the street from the condo. It was almost the end of July. I wished him well as he went on his way while I hit the local comic book stores.
I was going to go back that night but couldn't get a rental car so I stayed over getting a hotel room.
I called him around midnight, knowing he'd have the ringer off as usual and only pick up if he had his phone on him.
He did and we talked for about thirty minutes before Trash came into the room. I heard the TV change channels and then the volume blast. I think Trash had hearing problems.
So I'm waiting for Juan to say something but Trash is grilling him.
What's your favorite movie?
Who's the best director of all time?
Do you know what the best film of all time is?
Schindler's List.
That's what she said. He said, "Well, it's okay but I'm not sure about best. I'd go with Some Like It Hot or Citizen Kane or Tootsie or -- "
She exploded.
Trash screamed that Schindler's List was the best film ever and that Steven Spielberg was the greatest director.
"Well, he's very successful, but this is just a matter of personal taste and --"
Juan didn't get another word out as the woman began screaming and ranting at him.
After she stormed off, he spoke to me, "You still there?"
Yeah, and you don't need to be.
He said she was probably just too drunk. She'd been drinking the whole evening. One glass after another since he'd arrived at six because she was celebrating.
I thought to myself, "No, because she's a drunk."
One Sunday morning in August, I was on the phone with him.
I don't know if Trash knew that and if that's when she chose to do her performances but she always was creating drama whenever I called.
This Sunday, she popped in to ask what "the best song ever" was?
She sounded dangerously drunk -- and on a Sunday morning.
He took a pass.
"As," she declared. Didn't he love it, didn't everyone love it, it was the best song ever and it was by Stevie Wonder.
Juan paused. I was thinking, "Just say yes, just say yes!"
He's too honest.
"It's a really good song but some would say Stevie's 'Isn't She Lovely,' or 'You Are The Sunshine Of My Life,' or 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' or 'Superstition' are better songs --"
In a howl that Black Canary couldn't match, Trash screamed "As" was the best song and that's why it was Stevie Wonder's biggest hit.
What?
"As" made it to 36 on Billboard's Top 40 and on Billboard's Soul chart.
The songs Juan was naming? Those were number one hits? (Except for "Isn't She Lovely" which Stevie refused to allow to be released as a single.)
The woman was insane and drunk all the time.
I was on the phone with Juan when she declared Carrie Fisher was gay.
I'm gay. I'm aware that people have opinions and fantasies and that's fine.
But she said Carrie was gay and that Carrie had come out as gay.
WTF?
(Carrie Fisher is not gay and has not announced she is.)
Trash then, so drunk it only made sense in her mind, launched into a story about George Clooney, how he can't stay with one woman for very long because he's into beating up women and eventually even the women who love him get tired and end it.
I'm not a fan of Clooney but, again, WTF?
Everyone has their opinions and you may think I'm making too much of this.
But I bring it up because of a screaming fit I overhead when I called him at another time. She barged into whatever room he was in and didn't care that he was on the phone and started screaming that she didn't care who was gay, that she didn't care about those things, that she felt people should mind their own business, that she --
When she was done, I asked him, "What the hell was that about?"
'Nsync's Joey Fatone was on some cooking show (a celebrity competition) and Trash had insisted upon informing Juan that Fatone used to be in the Backstreet Boys and that he had come out as gay just a few years ago.
By then, Juan had learned not to say anything but she started screaming at him about the look on his face. So finally he said, Fatone was in 'Nsync and Lance Bass was the 'Nsync member who was gay. She exploded. He had left the room as she announced she was going to look it up and prove how "stupid" Juan was.
But Juan was right.
So she comes storming up to him insisting it didn't matter to her anyway.
She thought she was so smart but she was stupid.
My favorite story to tell is about Scrabble.
Juan is dyslexic. He's highly intelligent and has his masters but he's dyslexic.
He had already beaten her at Monopoly a week prior. She quit the game when she had no chance of winning.
She nursed that anger for a week and then declared that it was time for Scrabble.
Which she thought she'd win. Easily over Juan. Because he's dyslexic and also because she thought she was brilliant and that he was stupid.
She's such a damn priss.
She puts down an X tile next to a vowel and dramatically declares, "You can challenge that but it's a real word. Most people don't know it but it is a real word and I have ___ points as a result. Again, you can challenge it, I'm sure you've never heard of it --"
She was just so insulting.
And Juan says, "Why would I challenge it? We're both ethical people? Why would either of us lie to win a board game?"
And that pissed her off.
But they continued playing and she had a bit of problem.
See, dyslexic Juan, he was in the lead. By his second play, he was in the lead a little. By his fifth play, he was in the lead a lot.
He could lay down four and five tiles at a time.
All the 'brilliant' Trash could do was lay down one tile each turn.
Finally, she knocked the board (on purpose) scattering the tiles and insisted the game was over.
She couldn't take losing.
Another story I love to tell is about how she pretends she's related to the royal family. Like Prince Harry's on the verge of turning down the throne and Queen Elizabeth's saying, "Who is the uneducated high school drop out who is missing teeth in America and claims she's related to us? Yes, her! Bring her to me! Let's make her Queen of England!"
To 'prove' this claim of a royal relationship, she'll show you her crown. If she's drunk enough, she'll tell you a few minutes later how much she paid for it on Ebay.
She communicates with the birds. She'll tell you that too. Don't ask her to prove it. She'll tell you there are no birds around this area. Well, first of all, there are. Second of all, if there weren't, wouldn't her bird powers be able to summon them?
Queen Trash once screamed at Juan for 10 minutes for a 'crime.' He had set his 16 ounce bottle of Coke down on the carpet -- next to where he was sitting. That, Trash declared, was "trashy."
Only "trashy" people would ever set there drink down on the floor.
I swear she made these rules up.
But it was so hilarious when you stopped to think, for instance, that the rug by the front door smelled like cat pee because her cat James peed on it every day. Or that she never washed a dish she could get her dog to lick instead.
Or there was the time I saw her in public in those ugly yellow shorts and there was a huge s**t stain on the back of them -- on the inside -- that was visible as she walked her dog around snarling at him to do his business.
There was the time she dropped beef on the floor, picked it up and popped it in the skillet apparently believing heat made it A-Okay despite the fact that she never swept, let alone mopped the kitchen floor -- the kitchen floor the cats and the dog crawled across twice daily to get to their bowls and, the cats, to one of their litter boxes.
This is the woman who was an enemy of soap and water and you didn't want to be downwind of her.
This is the woman who, when her cat James peed on the kitchen floor (one of at least five cats), she would grab a room deodorizer and spray that over it instead of cleaning the mess. And he peed daily on the kitchen floor, usually in front of the stove, where she dropped the beef that day.
Yet Juan, sitting on the floor in his bedroom, set his Coke on the floor next to him, and this upset the Social Maven that Trash apparently was?
I remember one time when she was playing another best ever bit of drama, Juan told her, "I don't want to fight with you. That's your opinion. I'm glad you like ____. It's not something I like but I'm happy you do."
Oh, how she exploded.
She insisted she was right, he was wrong and he needed to back it up immediately.
She was a big, fat, bully (with missing front teeth).
And what was the topic?
Best TV show of all time?
The best (quality wise) of all time, she insisted (so classy) was NCIS.
She'd lay in bed all day watching that on USA or Ion or any other channel she could find it on.
NCIS.
The best show.
She really is Trash.
She has no taste.
She can't stand it if someone has a different personal favorite. Most of us with guilty pleasures label them personal favorites, we don't insist they are the all time best. But then, Trash had to lie to herself or she'd never get out of bed, even when she had to go on a booze run.
Here's another favorite story, Trash is thanking Chris for helping her at the booze store. After she walks off, I ask for something and say "Chris" to be nice.
He explains he's not Chris. Chris hasn't worked there in ten years. He saw Trash when she came in three weeks ago and she won't stop calling him Chris even though he's told her it's not his name.
Dona and Jim were hollering for me to come listen on Labor Day to Trash's tantrum. That's when even Juan realized he had to get out.
But I walk over to them and I'm listening in on their phone to her tirade.
You know what it reminded me of?
Liberal Arts.
Have you seen the film?
Josh Radnor wrote, directed and stars in it. He plays a guy who goes back to his college and, among other things, ends up sleeping with a professor who had really meant something to him when he had her as a teacher. After they sleep together, Allison Janney begins screaming at him and insulting him and he's trying to restore sanity and get her to calm down.
That's what it reminded me of.
Only Trash, who I don't believe (royal descendent though she claims to be) made it through high school, isn't as smart or literate as Allison Janney's character.
For the record, there was no sex between Juan and Trash.
There wouldn't be. See, Trash pretends she's straight but she's really a lesbian in love with Laura Linney and that awful Dances With Wolves actress. I think that's why the gay issue sets her off so. She reminds me of this guy I was with briefly in my freshman year of college. He wouldn't admit he was gay. Even with me. And we were doing 'gay stuff' with each other. All the time. He could (and did) blow me but would insist an hour later he wasn't gay -- or even bi.
That's sort of like Trash. And it probably doesn't help that everyone assumes she's a lesbian because of the way she looks -- short-short hair, 300 or so pound slung around in a manly manner as she walks, smoking her cigar, wearing men's clothes because she's too big for most women's clothes to fit, scratching at her crotch as she spits, she's sort of the stereotype of 'butch.'
I said that to Juan and he said, "She's always talking about an ex-boyfriend."
Yes, that no one ever met and that was from decades ago.
In the end, it doesn't matter much -- like Trash herself, it doesn't matter much.
She is a user who bled our friend dry and then had the nerve to scream and yell at him. And his instinct? "What did I do wrong?"
We love Juan. No one should go through what he did. If you're going through it and you're asking, "What did I do wrong?" -- or "How can I fix this?" -- you're asking the wrong question.
The only question you need to be asking is: "How do I get out of this?"
And the answer is: "As quickly as possible."
Juan's happy now. He's not a part of Trash's drama. The only way to stop being part of the drama and to find happiness was to leave. He did the right thing.
If you're involved in a similar situation, get the hell out. Immediately.