Rivethead - Ben Hamper [18]
I was full of shit. I would say anything to turn the subject around from the inevitable. The inevitable being this: I knew in the tenth grade that I would be a shoprat. It was more an understanding of certain truisms found in my hometown than any form of game plan I might have been hatching. In Flint, Michigan, you either balled up your fists and got career motivated the moment the piano quit bangin’ the commencement theme or, more likely, you'd still be left leanin’ when the ancestors arrived to pass along your birthright. Here, kid, fetch.
There were times I was actually drawn to the shops. Occasionally, I would get drunk and park next to one of the factories just in time to watch the fools pile out at quitting time. I hated the looks on their faces. Miserable cretins, one and all. I would sit there with a can of beer in my lap and try to focus on one alternative career goal. There weren't any. All I ever came back to was the inevitable admission that I didn't really want to do anything. And around these parts, in the fat choke hold of Papa GM, that was just chickenshit slang for asking “What time does the line start up on Monday?”
I quit my job at the apartment complex. I decided to go into freelance painting, a job where I could at least name my own hours. After eight or nine months of near starvation, I ditched this stupid stratagem. I was no hustler. I needed someone to tell me what to do. Meanwhile, the recession dragged on.
I caught on with a guy who ran a janitorial service. We worked at night cleaning up business colleges, drugstores and attorneys’ offices. I wiped down toilets for the minimum wage. The boss was always hollering at me for missing some wayward pee stain or leaving streaks on some lonesome stretch of linoleum. No wonder I soon gave up this promising career and took to sitting around the apartment drinking beer, playing with my daughter and waiting for my wife to come home from work at her father's bridal store.
The marriage had all but disintegrated by then. Joanie worked and I drank. We rarely even spoke to each other. There wasn't anything to say. She was the breadwinner and I was the louse. The parallel between my behavior and my old man's was something that didn't escape me. Just the thought of it made me want to drive our dilapidated Mustang head-center into the nearest bridge abutment.
Joanie finally kicked me out of our marriage and took custody of our daughter. My life was so screwed-up by then that the idea of working for GM not only lost its repugnance, it took on the frantic allure of a rope tossed to a quicksand victim. I not only surrendered to the inevitable, I began begging for it. General Motors was the only possible panacea to the erosion of my marriage and my own personal bout with suicidal mind fatigue.
It was birthright time, goddamnit. Though the recession was still hovering over the city, I didn't let it detour me. I began getting up at 5:00 A.M. and hustling over to the factories. Right on the entrance gate to the personnel office was a sign that read NO APPLICATIONS. Undaunted, I would stride forward. Don't play games with me, GM. My name is Hamper. Surely you remember that loyal, long-suffering clan. Just show me to my setup and everything will be fine.
The personnel people didn't see it that way. They asked if I had noticed the sign. I said I had. Then they asked if I could read. I said yes. Then they asked me to vacate the plant grounds immediately. It wasn't the type of red carpet treatment I felt entitled to, being the son-of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-shoprat. So much for ancestral privilege.
My father-in-law started passing me these tips on what office to go to and whose name to mention. He must have been gettin’ some bogus info because every time I followed his instructions I received nothing more than blank bewilderment.
I was also following up tips from an