Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [102]
A second later, probably sensing the eyes upon him, Louis turned. “Kid, just gimme a second. Okay? You’re giving me the creeps.”
Giving you the creeps? Milo wanted to say. Are you insane? A Boy Scout comes into your house and you can’t find the decency to turn off the porn that you and your wife were watching—in the middle of the day, mind you—for what? Two minutes? Not only that, but you invite me to sit down next to you and watch this stuff like it’s something I do every day. What the hell?
Instead, Milo turned his gaze onto his hands, which he had folded on his lap in an unconscious attempt at innocence.
Thirty seconds later, the moaning reached a high point and began to wind down. Milo noticed movement to his right and turned to see Louis lifting a remote control from the floor. It was attached to the VCR on top of the television by a wire, a setup that Milo had seen once before in his uncle’s home when video cassette recorders first hit the market, but not since.
“The wire, right?” Louis asked. “Ain’t seen one like this before, huh?”
“No, my uncle had one. But I haven’t seen one in a long time.”
Louis had thankfully stopped the movie during what Milo thought had been the credits (he never dared to look). Without the moans and pants filling the room, conversation with the man was supremely easier.
“I could get a new one,” Louis said. “A VCR, I mean. I got the money. Money ain’t the problem. But the wire is so goddamn fun. When my sister brings her two little brats over here, I trip them with it. And I caught Annie once or twice too. When she’s not looking.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t hurt the kids or nothing. They’re still little, so they don’t got far to fall. It’s just that my sister’s got something against me. She don’t approve of my lifestyle. Makes me turn off the porn and hide my videos when the kids come over. She tells me to put on a shirt and lock the bedroom door too, so her kids don’t sneak in and see my stuff when they’re visiting. Like she’s embarrassed of me. But a guy’s got a right to be himself.”
“Yup,” Milo said, listening and praying for Annie’s footsteps.
“You know what I mean, right? It’s like when you’re a kid, everyone says to be yourself. Forget all the other assholes and peer pressure and shit like that. Be yourself, everyone says. So you grow up and decide that you want to work at a video store and watch a little porn at home and suddenly everyone’s got a beef with you. Why do you work at that video store? Why do you got porn all over your house? But I thought I was supposed to be myself. You know? And I like porn. Hell, even Annie’s into it now. Never trust a man who don’t watch porn. That’s what I always say. You didn’t mind me finishing my movie. Right?”
“Not at all,” Milo said, relieved to hear a door somewhere in the house slam shut. The basement door, he hoped. Perhaps Annie was back.
“See. You know. You get it. But even Annie gave me that look. You know, that do you want to turn that off? look. When you knocked, I mean. But I figured, What the hell. He’s a Boy Scout, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like you’re in grade school. And what boy don’t like porn?”
Certainly not me, Milo might have said, hoping to placate the lunatic Louis, but Annie’s voice interjected. “I’m just grabbing the empties on the back porch. Two seconds!”
In truth, the brief glimpses of the television before the screen had gone blue had been Milo’s first encounter with pornography, so noting his appreciation for the genre would have been disingenuous. In the years before the Internet, he had no way of acquiring video pornography, even if he had wanted to. And not understanding everything that he had seen on the television, he felt like he was right back in that van, being questioned about what a rubber was by boys who knew damn well that he did not know.
“You sure you don’t want a couple marshmallows for the road?” Louis asked, stuffing a handful into his mouth.
“No, thank you,” Mio said, using the mention of the road as an opportunity to extract himself from the La-Z-Boy and begin sidling