Rivethead - Ben Hamper [46]
The inevitable finally took place. One Monday afternoon after Ronny and I had filled up our conveyor line, I went over to chat with Bob-A-Lou at his welder's job. He just sorta nodded at me and flipped down his welder's visor. After he'd shot his welds, he took off his visor and sat down next to me. He was completely silent. Something had to be wrong.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“You know Karen, the gal I'm always talkin’ to down in the cafeteria?”
“Sure, the pretty one,” I replied. “Something wrong with her?”
Bob-A-Lou shook his head. “No, she's feeling fine. In fact, she's feeling so fine that she was able to go bowling last Saturday night out at North Lanes after she told me she'd be out of town over the weekend for her aunt's funeral.”
Bob-A-Lou went on to relate this long story about how he and his cousin had decided to go bowl a few frames the previous Saturday evening. While heading up to buy another Pepsi, pure Bob-A-Lou, he was shocked to spot the cashier queen a few lanes over smoochin’ and gropin’ all over this Surfer Joe look-alike. She even waved at Bob-A-Lou. His heart had been ripped apart ever since.
Then Bob-A-Lou paused. I was sure I could see it building up in his face. A cuss word! It was as if after years and years of polite constipation he was gonna finally let it loose. A limo-length volley of vulgarity along the lines of “goddamn whore-face shitball!” or “useless lyin’ skag bait cunt.” He was way overdue. There would be no better occasion. Let it rip!
“The dumb trollop,” Bob-A-Lou hissed. Huh?
I stood there wanting to say it for him: BITCH! I wanted to say a lot of things. I wanted to tell him that there was much more to getting yourself laid than being an honest Joe. That crap rarely counted for anything when it came pork time. I wanted to tell him about all the bar scum right across the street who were having their peckers nibbled nightly and that the only jump they had on him was that they were complete selfish assholes who didn't give a shit about anything other than biceps and booze and tattoos and emptyin’ their testes into the first shallow flooze who stumbled into their double vision.
There was hope, I wanted to tell him. There was always hope, but he was just gonna have to quit actin’ like such a swell fuckin’ pilgrim. He needed to ditch the crew cut. Act like a jerk. Develop a substance abuse problem. The girlies would come fallin’ out of the trees.
Cynical or not, it was true. The shoprats I knew who did the most business with the ladies were utter cretins. Drunks, druggies, bullies and ten-time losers. Bob-A-Lou had more class than any roomful of them put together. But class rarely won the ass. The majority of these women wanted reclamation projects. Lost souls that they could clamp on to like precious martyrs. A guy void of defects mustered no challenge. Send in the cruds.
After the debacle with the cashier queen, Bob-A-Lou vowed to take his pursuit overseas. I thought he was shittin’ me. He wasn't. He developed this hot pen pal relationship with some woman over in the Philippines. He flew over to marry her over our Christmas break. When he returned, he proudly displayed his wedding band to the entire Jungle. I felt happy for Bob-A-Lou. He was his old self again. Maybe now he could move out of his mother's house.
Meanwhile, my own personal marriage to the General Motors Corporation wasn't faring as well. Just like some wishy-washy broad who couldn't make up her mind, I was about to be sent packing on another indefinite layoff. Hello Reaganomics, goodbye occupation.
It was rather upsetting. Not so much the layoff part—I'd danced that dance and found it very compatible with my underachiever lifestyle. What rankled me about being laid off again was the knowledge that another pussy job was about to go slidin’ through my fingers. My gravy setup with Ronny would be irretrievable just