Rivethead - Ben Hamper [119]
I called the producer. “Forget about the segment at Mark's tonight. Some asshole went through there this morning and sliced up a couple barmaids.”
“Christ, that's awful,” he responded. “Are they gonna live?”
“It's too early to say. It just went down a few hours ago.”
“Shit, I'm sorry, Ben. We'll try to film the segment next month when we come back to town with Betty Rollin. Let me know how this thing turns out in the meantime.”
“I'll do that,” I replied, still in a daze.
The unspeakable turned out to be true. A worker from our very own plant had committed the attack. Apparently, the guy was doped out of his tree and just went berserk. Not only did he carve up two of our fair maidens, he also busted into a local pharmacy that very same night and stole an extensive amount of drugs. A couple of days later, two kids playin’ in the woods behind the nearby UAW softball complex found his body next to a stream, ODed and blue as a jar of Vicks. Lying next to him was a pillowcase full of pills and streaked with blood.
Bad vuggum had its hooks in me also. Another panic attack struck as I was entering the shop one afternoon. I immediately spun around and got hold of Dr. Kilaru. He put me off work for a few weeks and prescribed another drug called Tofranil, an antidepressant. I took the drug for a few days before tossing ‘em down the toilet. The damn shit made my heart beat like a jackhammer.
Dr. Kilaru was becoming more and more insistent that I enroll as an outpatient at the mental health center. I steadfastly refused. He kept at it, mentioning how I could assist myself in recovery through daily regimens of personal therapy, group interaction, seminars, medication, physical therapy and field trips. This meant mixing it up with human beings. That was asking a lot.
The field trip idea especially bothered me. I could just envision myself staring out the back of some old red school bus, crowbarred elbow-to-elbow with a slobberin’ gang of manics, loons and schizoids. I could see the smug faces of my high school peers as they drove to their useless jobs, see them bursting into hysterics as I gazed back at them through the morning drizzle and bus fumes. “Hey! It's Benny Hamper! The boy we voted most likely to suffocate on his own vomit. Wave at the poor bastard!” Oh, that I could exchange this strange malady for something more simple—like the heartbreak of psoriasis or venereal warts.
Things weren't going a whole lot smoother for my editor, Mike Moore. After only three issues at the helm, he was fired from his job at Mother Jones. The publisher listed several reasons for the sudden axe, the most grievious being Moore's refusal to run an article critical of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The publisher also accused Moore of never being around the office or, for that matter, the state of California. Mike was rather adept at concocting any excuse to fly back to Flint. But doing battle with that procession of poseurs, who could blame him?
With Moore's firing came my conclusion as a columnist for Mother Jones. I would miss the extra income but, otherwise, it was fine with me. I was practically bein’ driven out of my skull by the magazine's crew of fact checkers and researchers. These morons would call me over and over asking the most goddamn inane questions. For instance, one morning they rolled me outta bed to ask me if I could give them the phone number of at least one other co-worker who could positively verify the fact that the North Unit parking lot was indeed called “the North Unit parking lot.”
Moore called me to talk about his dismissal. He told me the publisher was upset with his insistence on letting me have my own column. He also added that the publisher thought my last column—a comical overview of the repulsive Faces of Death documentary trilogy—was the most tasteless and offensive piece of bathroom humor he'd ever read.