Rivethead - Ben Hamper [47]
During my second extended layoff, I spent most of my time drinking. My usual hangout was the Rusty Nail—a large, dimly lit tavern nestled downtown among the vacant storefronts, and plywood palaces that effectively defined the flagging overall condition of Flint in general, and GM in particular. My brother's girlfriend, Jackie, managed the bar and we had full run of the place.
Looking back, I think the Rusty Nail days were some of the best times of my life. I was surrounded by my best friends, most of them shoprats in limbo. I was once again getting paid to do absolutely nothing. I felt detached and secure in this cocoon of nightly buffoonery. There was no reason to feel guilty. I had a job, they just didn't need me at the moment. I'd be back whenever the signal was given. Until then, I had found a handy place of refuge, possibly the last little fortress I'd ever be able to reside in before such puerile forays would be branded as stupefied adolescence or repeating the path of my father.
Jackie allowed me to take over complete control of the Rusty Nail jukebox. A well-stocked jukebox was essential to the atmosphere of any decent bar. I ditched all the top-forty flotsam and hackneyed standards. I loaded up on spazz-out masterpieces by the likes of Arthur Conley, the Troggs, the Mutants, Aretha, Black Flag and the Bobby Fuller Four. For us, the marvelous segue from Dino, Desi & Billy's “I'm a Fool” plowin’ headlong into the spite and rancor of the Sex Pistols’ “Holidays in the Sun” was beer-drenched ecstasy. Even the geezers and bag ladies got up and pranced.
It didn't take long before the twerps at the local college leeched on to our Shindig Mecca. The local art fag community soon followed. The bar was quickly overrun with the kind of clientele we most wanted to avoid. Before long, the Rusty Nail was doomed. Jackie started booking these prissy New Wave bands to come in and play almost nightly. God, it was putrid. These cheezy bastards wore these skinny little ties and spewed out lousy cover versions of the hitmakers of the day. It was more than we could bear. The place was now nothing more than a preppie playpen for the terminally dull.
We surrendered and moved our nightly reveling back to the house I shared with Bob. We danced, we drank, we threw up, we threw down, we broke up every piece of furniture and basically behaved like a bunch of raving lunatics. Women would drop by and scoot right back out the door. We didn't care. All of us were too loaded to get it up anyway. The Flint police got in the habit of dropping by. Occasionally, they'd take a few of us with them. Every cent we had went toward alcohol, cocaine and new records.
Drinking all night was fine, but I needed something to fill up the afternoons. That was one of the problems with unemployment. So often it wove itself into unenjoyment, sentencing you to a vague sprawl where the days all lumped together in one faceless herd. Working was almost preferable. Almost.
It was truly difficult to understand. I had hired in during such a boom era that the overtime alone would have provided enough income to survive on. Yet here I was four short years later assembling nothing but a crop of serious sloth and one mighty pickled liver. I guess it was that old inverse spiral motion where I had peaked in my rookie season and was now hurtling through the galaxy toward that warm plate of mystery stew on some lonesome mission room floor. At times I felt like standing out front of GM Headquarters and hollerin’ through a bullhorn: “Attention! Enough with the fickle bullshit! Are we gonna build trucks or keep playin’ hide-the-birthright? Hello! HELLO!”
Layin’ back is a fine reward when you're employed. However, layin’ back tends to wear thin when it itself becomes your job. Gettin’ loaded, readin’ magazines, staring at the television becomes a rut rather