Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [103]
“Your loss,” Louis said between cheek-filled bites.
A moment later Annie returned, dragging two plastic garbage bags full of empty bottles and cans. Less than a minute later, he was out the door and back on the street.
Memories of those ten minutes spent in the living room of Louis and Annie ran through Milo’s mind as he drove over to 9 Summer Street, the home of Kelly Bryson. He had never told the story to anyone, choosing to bury it like so many other things that he had kept to himself, even as far back as childhood. The words. The drink boxes. The balsa wood. The confusion between a rubber and a dildo. He had nearly told the story to Arthur Friedman when the old man began watching pornography, but even Arthur had the good sense to keep his new hobby between Milo and himself.
Porn fiend Louis had lacked all discretion.
Yet Louis had said something that day that had resonated long after Milo had left the glow of the garter belt lamp and the aroma of Chinese food. As crazy as Milo thought Louis had been, he also thought that the man had been right about a lot of things. It was true that Milo’s teachers, beginning as early as kindergarten, had assured their students that it was okay to be different. They had encouraged Milo and his classmates to take the road less traveled, find their true colors, and be themselves. They had read books to their students in which characters such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Dumbo had found acceptance by embracing their obvious differences, and deservedly so.
Throughout much of his childhood, all manner of adults had warned Milo about the dangers of peer pressure and trying to fit in no matter the cost. They had encouraged him to find his own way in life, develop a personal sense of style, and to be true to his heart. Qualities such as individuality and uniqueness were prized by his elders and fostered within him and his peers. Milo had even taken a peer leadership class as a junior in high school, where he learned about how to mediate disputes among his classmates and promote tolerance and acceptance in the school community. Milo had come to the assistance of younger students who were being bullied, had encouraged middle-schoolers to Just Say No, and had helped a freshman boy who was almost certainly gay find a modicum of acceptance by his peers. He did all this with great enthusiasm and pleasure, even with a locker full of juice boxes waiting to be popped open and words like catatonic and delectable (one that had proven to be especially difficult to rid himself of) pounding away in his head and secret after secret piling up around him.
All of this encouragement to be yourself and find your own way was meaningless to those beyond the curve of normality. For the compulsive karaoke singers with the need to bowl strikes and pop open jelly jars and the unapologetic porn fiends with a fondness for miniature marshmallows, there was no red-nosed reindeer acceptance, no aerodynamic elephant ears, and no duckling-to-swan future for them. As much as Louis the Porn Fiend had unabashedly embraced his individuality, and as much as his wife may have even accepted it as well (though Milo still doubted it all these years later), Milo knew that society would never accept these people for who they were, despite the constant, insistent messages indicating otherwise.
Though Milo doubted that he would find a ninety-pound porn fiend behind Kelly Plante’s door, he wasn’t sure what he would find, and this made him nervous beyond measure. The last time he had knocked on a stranger’s door, he had found Louis and Annie, shameless and surreal but otherwise harmless. But that was not all. He had also found someone so strikingly different than himself; forthright, unashamed, and quite possibly courageous, and yet someone with seemingly so much in common with him as well. Louis the Porn Fiend was a man full of oddities and peculiarities, only he was willing to share them with the world. For Milo, it had been like looking in a mirror and seeing what he could have been (and could still