Fiction: "Milton, an American Success Story"

MILTON: AN AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY

 

Part One

Milton believed that his life got truly interesting after he met Furniture Zeke. Milton’s best friend, Harold McElroy, had met Furniture Zeke on Q street, complaining to Zeke that his girlfriend wanted him to get a job. “Just something” she’d said, hopelessly. “I’ll pay for everything, but I got to tell people you do SOMETHING, Roy.”

 

Furniture Zeke  had learned furniture refinishing the hard way. “I was standin’  in front of the Paradise Thee-ayter wearin’ only a pair of pink Spandex, you know? An’ dis man, he said come in the theater wit’ me, you know? We was watchin’ “Thongs & Dongs No. 26” with Riff Rafferty and  da Human Bidet, ya know?”

 

“The one with Detroit Half-Smoke.” Roy had said, as Milton had nodded, rapt with pleasure. “We remember.”

 

“Right. You got it. But da guy wanted to put his mouth on my thing, ya know? An’ I change my mind, right, so I try to leave da thee-ayter, ya know? Da guy follows me, and begs me ta come back, sez he’ll gimme fifty bucks, so I kinda shoved  him, an’ he wound up dead? “

 

Furniture Zeke’s voice was raised now, in memory.

 

“But da manager let me leave out da back because I was only eleven, ya know? Da cops, dey could close him down, right?” Furniture Zeke had laughed, recalling it, as Roy and Milton had listened, raptly. “Ye-ah,  when I’se eleven, I was da tallest kid in second grade, even taller than the teacher…dat movie owner hustled me out fast.”

 

Furniture Zeke had met an old lesbian woman who had taught him how to refinish furniture. It wasn’t too hard, and although she paid him deplorable wages, she told him that  once his apprenticeship was finished, he’d be making a thousand a week, and this was in 1982. “An’ it beat living wit’ my Pops, who made me suck his thing inna shower, ya know?”

 

Because Furniture Zeke had a personality disorder, he discovered that at the end of his apprenticeship with the old lesbian woman, he indeed could command thousands from various furniture warehouses and antique shops but…they did not care to employ him for very long.

 

Milton and Roy couldn’t understand this, they both loved to listen to Zeke, who was a lively raconteur. “I met dis little Oriental Poly-nesian woman, ya know? I was complimenting huh on huh toe-nail polish, ya know?

 

An’ she sez to me “Today is my birthday” So I sez “Does the little birthday girl want a little birthday dinnah? An’ I took her out to dinnah, an den I took huh home and gave her a present that belonged to my sister, a French maid’s uniform, slightly used, an’ I made huh kneel on her knees and bak like a dog. Arf! Arf!”

 

Milton went along with Roy when Furniture Zeke offered Roy an internship that would supposedly get Roy’s girl off his back. Milton liked Furniture Zeke, and also really wanted  Roy’s job prospects to work out. Roy wanted to work doing what Milton did, which was stealing and re-selling BMWs.

 

Milton’s neighbor Binky Ruhe had taught Milton how to take any car, even the ones you can’t hot-wire anymore, but Binky just did it to go joy-riding.

 

Although Binky just took cars to annoy the “bourgeoise”, and just as soon would assault a car with a Louisville Slugger, Milton had quickly discovered that a regular supply of BMWs, presented to a man on 40^th and Wyoming who had recently deleted a vowel from his last name, resulted in somewhat easy living.

 

The man on 40^th and Wyoming also directed Milton to other jobs “On Monday, you can help Sister O’Hara? Tranny savin’ up for the op’ration…dresses like a nun, lifts wallets, Iphones onna Metro? Needs someone to pass th’ bag to afterwards? Argenteri called, needs a kid to help him push time-shares on the moon; Then fourth of next month, I know couple’ guys takin’ down a Radio Shack, you can carry the tools?”

 

It was a rare and odd form of day labor, with no withholding…Milton dealt with it well.

 

But Roy, who had bad hand-eye coordination anyways,  wasn’t much of a thief. He preferred to talk about stealing…to everyone. “I want to be a master thief, like James Bond.”

 

But cars and wallets, were just something you DID, and then forget about it, till you need, you know, do it again. Shit, tell people you’re on an allowance from Grandmother. (though the only thing Granny had ever given HIM was a bad case of eczema when Milton had spent a summer with her at the Craddock-Childress Mobile Townhome Paradise)

 

Milton had been able to subtract himself from his family of origin, back there in Prince George’s County, and come to Our Nation’s Capital. Despite, just fifteen, Milt commanded a nice little room over the Brickskeller tavern, complete with cable and a transvestite maid who cleaned all the suites during the day, all that…on two BMWs a week.

 

But Roy liked talking about it too much. When he discovered Milton was heisting rhinestone pendants and “Tramp by Mayfair” perfume to peddle to the eighth grade girls at the bus stop near Charles E. Margolies Jewish Day Primary, Roy called  Milton “Raffles” and it was just…way too much publicity.

 

Sure, Milton ran his mouth too…about lots of stuff. “Mad Magazine”, Batman, Huey Lewis and the News, “As the World Turns”, and “General Hospital” or  just about the awesome Gold coming out of Humboldt County…

 

But no, he didn’t talk about the BMWs, and actually, now that Milton was out of the old neighborhood, he liked playing pool at George Washington University and telling people he was a musical theater major…

 

And, Roy was STUPID. Milton had demonstrated how to swipe credit card receipts off of tavern floors, and how to properly use them; but Roy, only Roy would buy a tux from Brooks Brothers with felonious numbers, and then go back two weeks later to have the suit altered…what a nasty arrest that had been!

 

So really, regular employment had to be encouraged, and Furniture Zeke’s offer was as good as any.

 

At Pathway Artisan’s, Furniture Zeke’s antique shop, Milton sat around watching as Furniture Zeke taught Roy the biz. “It’s not jus’ painting chairs, you know.” Furniture Zeke said haughtily.

 

 But it really was that, just painting chairs. Little sandpaper, a little glue. Milton watched without interest until Roy went outside for a smoke and didn’t return. Furniture Zeke did not take this well. “Goddamn that bitch! I want to skull-fuck him now!”

 

Furniture Zeke was nearly seven feet tall, and had filed his teeth into sharp points during a Vampyric phase in early youth, and when he began gnashing and pounding walls, it was not a comforting sight.

 

Alarmed, Milton told Furniture Zeke that he’d help finish out the day, since  Zeke had had Roy sanding a “rush” project, a dilapidated 19^th Century Provincial French Dresser. Milton had a lively day with helping to restore this and that, and although Furniture  Zeke was a little sulky, the shop owner had given Milton a couple of twenties, and asked if he’d return tomorrow.

 

Milton wasn’t sure—his feeling was, people who worked with their hands were low class. Most of Milton’s school friends, people who liked the same books and movies he did, were more studious than he was…

 

Milton liked reading so much that he’d do that instead of homework, until of course he’d kind of stopped going to class altogether. Why go to high school when you can shoot pool at George Washington University and say you’re a musical theater major, right?

 

But Milton didn’t want Furniture Zeke to kill Roy for causing “losing face” with the owner, who after all had okayed the apprenticeship…and there were the twenties that had been shoved into Milton’s hot little hands.

 

A week turned into a month, the minimum wage for other poor slobs was 3.35 per hour, and Milton was making seven big ones…and he just got an envelope, no FICA. Thirty-five dollars a day, three or four days a week (he wasn’t going to become a goddamn workaholic) and Milton discovered he only had to steal a Beemer every other week to make ends meet.

 

And of course there was the temporary work “Miltie? Gotta thing for you Monday? Bernard found some checks onna porch at 5^th and W, he’s gonna go to ice cream stores, preten’ he’s a re-tahd, say he got a $50 check for his birthday, cash-sha check, eat a little pistachio, keep the resta the fifty bucks, you can be his care-taker.”

 

Zeke had lost some credibility at the shop after trying to stick his thing in  some girl’s ear when she was bending down to examine a George III  rectangular wine cooler with dome top, and thus was no longer employed at Pathway Artisan’s.

 

 The owner offered Milton a substantial raise to extend his hours to three and a HALF days a week, and when  Milt’s girlfriend, a bio major at the U. heard this, she began telling people that Milton was an antiques dealer.

 

“Yes,” Milton began saying, “Law school was such a pressure for me that I decided  I wanted to create beautiful things.” If you said you were a high school dropout and sanding furniture, people told you to go back to school, but this new line seemed to command kudos.

 

Milt was not yet sixteen and only five foot five, but after he began attending Saint Mary’s, the bio major’s place of worship, he was asked to be on several committees, and he complemented these new responsibilities with the purchase of a smoking jacket.

 

Things were working out well, but  Milton was resenting how much time he had to spend at Pathway Artisans. New friends from St. Mary’s, and the bio major’s Mom’s bridge club were dropping by and buying things, which resulted in heavy commissions for Milton, who was bored shining up Louis IV Quinze chairs…but still, ten in the morning?

 

Milton ran into Furniture Zeke, who was now living with a hooker who had a credit card machine by her water-bed…it spat out “antiques appraised” receipts, and Sherilynn made the store a bit more real by having Zeke fiddle around with Early Modernist Sideboards and that sort of thing, but not too much in the living room.

 

“Its nice.” Zeke boasted. “Lotta time for Jerry Springer and my stories, you know?”

 

Milton was terribly envious. The stories, except for “Guiding Light” which was lame, were Milton’s life! Milt had quit school in third grade so he and Harelip Sis, his maiden aunt, could watch “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital” in the afternoons.

 

 And now, it was critical! Rick Springfield, a musical favorite of Milton’s was also playing a doctor on “General Hospital” and the owner of  Pathway Artisans did not allow a TV in the shop, as it spoiled body English, or ambiance, or whatever.

 

Milton was indeed amazed by the concept of imaginary antique appraisal. Zeke was a genius. He contemplated discussing a similar arrangement with the bio major, but she was off to complete a dynamic imaging internship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, and Milt was sick of her anyways.

 

But Milton enjoyed the good life. Or, something was changing. In his nineteenth year, he felt himself disinclined to heist BMWs any more, or make his occasional ventures to the Neiman-Marcus colognes department.

 

He still shoplifted cigarettes and other sundries, but that was mostly because the lines were too long at the CVS Pharmacy. Living alone in the bio major’s sunny junior bedroom in Bethesda, Maryland, Milton began feeling uncertain cravings.

 

Milton’s maiden aunt, Harelip Sis, had been advised by an Inner-Child Therapist to make lists to analyze her feelings, which were admittedly, often jumbled. As a young-un, Milton would read these lists, somewhat uncomprehendingly.

 

“1.I LIKE SILAS WOOTEN 2. SILAS WONT LEAVE HIS WIFE 3. I LIKE OREO DOUBLE STUFF. 4. I THINK I HAVE HIVES”

It was unclear whether Harelip Sis ever got anything resolved as a result of the lists, but Milton was grasping at straws here.

 

Milton took up one of the bio major’s notepads, a pink thing with a smiley face in the upper left hand corner, and began to write.

 

“1. CASSIDY COMES BACK FROM PARIS, FRANCE SOON. 2. CASSIDY TALKS WHEN I’M TRYING TO WATCH MY STORIES. 3. I LIKE THIS APARTMENT 4.EDMUND WROTE ME UP FOR ONLY COMING TO WORK ONE DAY THIS WEEK. 5. I AM OUT OF VIENNA SAUSAGES, ‘HEAD ANDSHOULDERS’ SHAMPOO AND APPLE BUTTER. 6. CASSIDY’S GUINEA PIG IS DEAD.”

 

The phone rang. It rang several times. Milton looked at the cord in the wall, and then at the phone itself. Which was easier? Finally he answered the phone. It was Edmund. Milton had not completed something with a roll-top desk.

 

Milton thought briefly about consequences. Homelessness! The bio major had had a cousin who’d feuded with her parents and had been briefly homeless, but since the food truck that gave out meals to transients had only meat-related dishes “Shondra couldn’t eat, since she was a vegetarian, so she, like, had to give up homelessness. It was a bummer.”

 

Milton looked longingly at the television set. “Let’s Make a Deal” was going to be on soon. He looked at the phone in his hand which was braying orders and imprecations. After he finally hung up with Edmund, Milton checked his  roll, and he only had about forty-one dollars, and Cassidy’s Visa had stopped producing cash advances on Thursday.

 

Milton thought about apple butter, but there was none, and he felt like crying. He just couldn’t bring himself to go to work. He thought of the bio major’s incipient return, and was filled with hatred. Would she be angry that he’d been wearing her stretch pants?

 

It was probably inevitable that Milton would be snagged by Fairchild Smedley, an obese but attractively linen-suited customer at Pathway Artisan’s.

 

After a brief discussion of Laura’s options on “General Hospital” Fairchild discovered that he found Milton’s mended aviator glasses and the hearing aid he’d been wearing since toddlerhood made the boy “vulnerable”.

 

Somehow, the zits on Milton’s unfortunate high forehead put Fair in nostalgic but heated memory of Walker Lee, a counselor who had deflowered Fair at Vacation Bible School, when Fairchild was still Guano Parsons, of  Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

 

Although Milton’s inclinations ran to the hetero side, he’d been given words of wisdom by Furniture Zeke…”When sodomized, just think of Raisin Bran.” Miraculously, he didn’t have to!

 

The first night they were together, Fairchild produced an odd looking  metal belt called “The Iron Maiden.”  “Lock me in this, it’s a chastity device, Miltie…keep me chaste for a month, and whip me every day, and if I’m a good girl, I’ll get to beat off on your shoes.”

 

Fairchild’s apartment was spacious, he lived on Eighteenth Street, very near Dupont Circle, and had a good, solid television set.

 

Part Two

 

Harland Yothers was in a snit. Again someone in the Fishhook had taken the tape from his camera away, and stomped it. As he left the back room, Harland knew he couldn’t blame them. Homosexuals should certainly be ashamed of what they did.

 

Still, they hadn’t thrown him out. Part of this was because Harland was a slender fellow, with chiseled features…despite being revolted by the lifestyle that God had commanded him to report on, he was vaguely proud of his delicate physique…it helped him work undercover, as it were.

 

Vondra almost outweighed Harland, and there had been a lot of joking about this at their wedding. Von was a great wife. She hated having to wait dinner when Harland was in the basement watching those disgusting VCR tapes, trying to figure out…it was shocking, what the gays did to each other, just depraved.

 

Sure, Harland liked the looks of a fit man, it’s admirable to stay in shape. But does that mean men should paw one another? Oh, if only I could’ve kept that tape, Harland thought bitterly, it was worse than the mail-order stuff or from the sodomite video store.

 

Now Harland walked through the darkened leather bar, looking around disgustedly. If his Midwestern subscribers, the good people who supported “Corinthians 6:9”, Harland’s newsletter could see it all, oh, it was just too much. Still, it was encouraging to see so many fellows in good shape, just like in my weight-lifting magazines, Harland thought.

 

Harland stopped at the bar, and  the boy behind the counter rolled his eyes, and brought Harland an apple juice with ginger ale. Everyone knew Harland, it seemed, and his mission, but blessedly, he wasn’t kept out of these holes. Foolishly, they think me harmless.

 

Next to Harland was a young man who looked kind of depressed. Young, but balding, with thick glasses, and how sad, a hearing aid. The kid wasn’t wearing the normal leather regalia that Harland himself wore to blend in, he was dressed in a tee shirt and what seemed to be a pair of women’s stretch pants. Depraved.

 

The bartender leaned over to talk to the bespectacled boy. “Look here, Milton, just don’t worry about it. Fairchild goes from Master to Master. Maybe you can find someone new here to offer you tribute.”

 

The kid, Milton slurped what looked like a Shirley Temple and coughed slightly. “Kyle, I like it there. I don’t want to live with someone else. He had a Betamax.”

 

Harland snorted. “A Betamax? I have a VHS machine. They’re much better. It’s 1986, son. Move with the times.” Harland thought of the reprehensible tape he’d seen the night before, “Daddy’s Plaything” and how well the picture came in on VHS.

 

“Really? Great.” Milton looked impressed. But he turned back to the bartender. “And Fairchild, he was gone all the time, just at the apartment about five days a month, he left me with, you know…cash and the Betamax.”

 

Harland leaned over. “You felt abandoned by your lover, and now he’s thrown you out?”

 

Milton wiped his forehead, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I have to leave by Friday. It’s been two years. I don’t know what happens now.” Milton began cleaning his right nostril with a straw, a move that clearly nauseated the bartender.

 

“Here, let me get our drinks. I want you to think about the choices you make, Milton.” Harland reached into his pocket. He must’ve left his wallet at home. Drat!

 

“I’ll pay.” Milton was gracious, for a sodomite.

 

Good God, Milton has the same wallet! With “Billy Joel” on it, just like the one I bought from the street vendor on K and Connecticut. He had good taste. Harland had stood a lot of ridicule for buying such a “tacky” wallet.

 

Harland was no change agent, but clearly, the Lord wanted him to step in. He leaned towards Milton, and raised his voice slightly.

 

“Two years you’ve been living with this degenerate, have you, Milton? And you’re starting to realize it’s a-a bad deal.” Get with the slang, to connect. “You’re not feeling the lifestyle any more, you want to walk down a different street, right?”

 

Milton rolled his eyes behind the thick glasses. “I don’t want to walk on any street. I’m afraid  I’m going to be living in the street.”

 

Harland Yothers felt a connection now. The boy was tired of being a male hustler, tired of the street life. He was about to surrender. “How would you like to come home with me, Milton? My wife and I, we’d love to have you change your life with us.” Vondra might complain, the last hustler had run off with her jewel box and her Mary Kay sales supplies, but this boy looked reachable.

 

Milton looked at Harland blearily. “Do you have a good television set?”