Rivethead - Ben Hamper [58]
Flint, glorious Flint. I think I understood their grief and what it was that attracted them so to this ridiculous mayhem. They certainly weren't here as spectators of sport, for this “Toughman Contest” could hardly qualify as anything more than organized barbarism. I believed they were all here to commit some kind of weird personal exorcism. The toughmen were just convenient foils for the true meat-grinders of the world: the landlords, the foremen, the cops, the judges, the nagging spouse, the fools in charge. Violence as one glorious teething ring for the benumbed and trampled masses.
Flint, with all of its automotive start-ups and shutdowns. All the uncertainty and paranoia and idle tension. It wasn't so strange. It was a real wonder we weren't all being fitted for loincloths and nose bones. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our lonely ratpack wants to KICK YOUR SAGGIN’, COFFEE-BREWIN’ ASS!
We sat through several more bouts. I began to warm to the commotion and repeated calls for blood. Mike rejoined us. For the past hour he had been snapping photos at ringside. “It smells like piss and vomit down there,” he offered. Molly put her hands back over her eyes.
Curiously, my editor thought that it would be a great idea if I accompanied him back down and interviewed some of the crowd near the action. Naturally, I refused.
“Ben, a good reporter sticks his nose right into the story.”
“In piss and vomit?” I moaned.
“Just come down and talk to some of these people,” he pleaded. “A journalist has to move around.”
“Listen. I'm not a journalist, I'm not a reporter—I'M A SHOPRAT! Just like 90 percent of these losers. When will you get this through your head?”
The answer, of course, was never. Moore continued to spur me on toward the next deadline. He began to swap and sell my pieces to other underground rags. I knew nothing of this network of left-leanin’ publications other than the fact that they paid rather poorly—if at all. Moore assured me that this was fine. The important thing was that I was gaining recognition. I assured him that beer money was a higher priority.
Not everyone was taking a shine to my writing hobby. I became aware of this one morning as I scanned through the Flint Journal. Under a headline that read “Fluent Settlement Sought” was the announcement that the Flint Voice, Michael Moore and Ben Hamper were being sued for libel in Genesee Circuit Court by an establishment called the Good Times Lounge.
The article I had written regarding the Good Times Lounge was almost a year old. In it, I had noted that the Good Times Lounge was without a doubt the rowdiest launch pad in town. A real thug palace full of biker scum and dopeheads and heavy metal retards who, for the sheer heck of it, would pounce on the clientele and proceed to change a chump's face from gorgeous to goulash. “What this place lacks in ambience it makes up in ambulance,” I observed at the time. For such findings, I was being shook down for ten thousand dollars. Ditto Michael Moore and the Voice.
On the day of our hearing, I waited for Moore in the court lobby. Fifteen minutes late, he came bustlin’ through the big glass doors wearin’ these horribly faded jeans and a worn-out flannel shirt that appeared to have been heisted from the bedroom clutter of Eb, the kindly farmhand on Green Acres. So much for dazzling the court with dapper threads.
I shook my head and groaned. “Who's the judge in this case, Junior Samples?”
“Oh, sorry, I couldn't find anything clean,” Moore understated.
The courtroom seemed to be a busy place this day. A parade of legal dogs flowed back and forth through the hallway as we sat waiting and wondering when it would be our turn to fidget before the robe. Moore seemed to enjoy the atmosphere, engaging in small talk with a few of the assembled litigants. I slouched next to him fumbling