truth without numbers

"Wrapping my misgivings in a character allows me more grace to shoot from the hip, so to speak". He said this as he pulled a cheap cigar from his inside pocket. I say cheap because the paper wrapping had an advert on it, 'Seymours Car Diner': 241 Montgomery Road' .

Carl had a terrible ad on television, the kind filled with obvious family members and the obligatory hot niece and stupid uncle. Classy, you know. Made you want to take your grandmother in the hopes she would either choke on the salad or set off a diabetic attack due to the lemon pie she'd 'earned' due to her walking a quarter mile that week. Just give me my fucking inheritance.

1976 was an awful year and Milford Tajeadn, an Armenian no one had heard about, had written his peace of mind on the subject with the clarity of a sage, or if in Cleveland, a dope addict and I ain't talking green smoke either but rather black opium.

'Gracious be the poppy growers', the Asians must be praying every chopstick rice-ridden meal they ate by the docks.

But I digress. I do that.

I was tasked by the daily financially deprecated newspaper that is The Herald, to write a piece on Milton, the whole ‘What makes him tick?’ none sense. Bullshits a better word, but I’m trying to clean up my vocabulary.

We decided to meet in the Park by Simpsons department store where we currently sat and where, dear Mr.Tajeadn, a seventy-four year old with a prick meets sardonic wit was explaining to me how his characters transcend the Pinnochio syndrome, that of bringing them to life so fully and seemingly, so effortlessly.

My editor, a rotund piece of garbage named Olafmann said Milton’s gift was part Jew, his mothers side, and all connection. Olafmann was as classy as Carls commercial but without the underaged hot niece.

“I don’t write with any hard ideas in mind, the contrived nature of this craft should be left to the romance novelists shilling to add another bathroom to their cottages. My domicile has one shitter and two rooms, if I need another shitter I’ll kick the wife out and convert the living room.” He wasn’t kidding either.

His wife, Margerette, was a tall Dutch he had met while serving in the Armenian military as a stout 18 year old. She was a prostitute who hovered the local bar, yeah I said prostitute, and he had a spare four dollar in his pocket. He joked that, “Had the military hired Jews to run the numbers rather than crouts, I would have only had enough for blowjob from the fat girls. No Margerette.”

So Milton buys himself a drink, double cause he’s rich and tells the barkeep he wants the works from the nicest blonde they got. Barkeep calls Margerette over and voila! best arranged marriage story ever except it gets better.

M&M go upstairs, I call them that, do what they do, pay the four dollars and Tajaedn heads back to the barracks for his next run at trying to survive frontline only to return two months later to a, yup, you guessed it, knocked up prostitute. So Milton, the non-practicing good Jew he is, marries Margerette so as not to offend his mothers dignity or face at the synagogue. I’ve heard of Christian guilt, but Judaism guilt? Never before.

What you ask, was a Dutch doing in Armenia and better still, how do we know it was Milton’s kid stoking the the Dutche’s oven? I haven’t a fucking clue.. shit sorry, I haven’t a clue. Milton never spoke of it save to say his wife miscarried a month after the civil ceremony.

So why did he stay married to a prostitute. He allured to that answer as well in simple Milton fashion, “Free pussy from a vending machine?!” He looked at me perplexed. Classy.

Milton had, by all accounts, a typical war riddled upbringing. Once you've sat through several of these tear inducing, hearth wrenching to sometimes heart warming stories, you've heard most all of them. The enemies are always interchangeable, be it Nazis to Gooks or Russians to Columbians. Go ahead try it, grab any story set during any given war and replace all instances of race and military with that of your choice.. bam! different story, same shit.

The aggressors are all the same, the heroes as well. Hell, if you exchange the two you’re just reading their History books. You think the Reds would write a book calling out their failures?

“So why write a story about 1976?” I ask him looking down at a blank sheet of paper. I ain’t got no notes, I don’t believe in them.

“It’s a nice round number.”
“It’s a nice round number?”
“Yeah, I figured I should consider the marketing aspect. If I ain’t writing garbage like those fucking pseudo-smut novelists, I gotta find a way to catch the eye of the common reader. 1976. big white letters. Catches the eye doesn’t it?.” He says this as he holds a copy of the book up against the sky, either inspecting it or reveling in his genius I cannot tell.

“So you decided on the common theme of your book based on a marketing ploy?”
“Ploy sounds I should be rubbing my hands together with glee. I wrote a story concerning a theme that no matter what year you placed it in, whether it be today, September 4th 1976 or December 19th 1945, would resonate with thinkers. I can preach to the converted and I can try and reach another demographic as I do so. Maybe line the pocket book too.”

He was right. Hell it was my god damn philosophy.. dammit, sorry. We shared a philosophy.

This made me like Milton.

Maybe it was the idea that something interesting and good could come of a fluke occurrence like my being assigned Milton Tajaedn as a story, that indeed it had nothing to do with the stars, with fate. That life was random and this was one of those events that gave an opportunity at friendship or a door to learn by, but I felt good that day. I felt warm that there wasn’t a deep seeded plan, that I wouldn’t miss the party just because I couldn’t follow orders without asking. That I wouldn’t suffer in some archaic hell due to ignorance, willful or other.

I was smiling and so was Milton.