The story behind the story “Milqueshake”

Nulli Para Ora contacted me through the Musa Authors Facebook page a few weeks ago with an idea: provide a writer with a choice of three pictures, one of which the author chooses, then writes—whatever—about it. I’m a sucker for a good writing prompt, and the result was the 500-word flash piece “Milqueshake.”

STOP RIGHT HERE! Go to Nulli’s blog and read it. Don’t worry, it’s probably stupid o’clock in the morning here in Uganda, so I’m asleep and won’t mind the wait. Her blog is here: http://nulliparaora.com/?p=975

[Dreams of magical fairy-tale islands]

Okay, what’d you think? Er, maybe you don’t have to answer that.

I chose the picture I did because it looked like a story in media res; in the act of happening. But what exactly was happening? The shadow of two people kissing. The shadow proved the story was occurring outside. From the hairstyles, I guessed the one standing was a woman. Something about their postures made me think they were older. The woman’s hairstyle reinforced this. It looked as though there was something on the table between them, which could easily be a rack of napkins, straws, mustard and ketchup. Okay then, it was an outside restaurant.

Then I was stumped. I joked with Nulli that I would keep the story under 25,000 words, but replied that I would keep it to 500. I tried to picture what was going on when that picture was taken. The first thing I heard was an air conditioning unit, and tried to put myself in the heads of the two people who heard it. It probably annoyed them. Or, for the sake of the story, it annoyed the woman. What would she say about it? The story started to take form there, and somehow had to go from being annoyed to kissing in 500 words.

The woman in the story, named Mittie now but something else at the time, found no end of things to complain about. Her husband, named Caspar now but something else at the time, tries to soothe his ne’er-be-happy wife by explaining everything she complains about. He was a real milquetoast.

Milquetoast? Hmmm, how can I use this? The word “milquetoast,” since it’s an older reference now, comes from Caspar Milquetoast, the ne’er-be-bold main character of H.T. Webster’s one-panel comic strip “The Timid Soul.” Milquetoast came to mean anyone who was bland and easily pushed around. One of my favorite Milquetoast cartoons is here: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/davise/personal/milquetoast.gif. Hence, the main character of my story became Caspar.

I looked to see what Milquetoat’s wife might have been named, until I realized that Caspar’s actions were very similar to the non-fantasy life of Walter Mitty, the protagonist of the James Thurber classic short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Since Walter’s wife was never named in the original story, Caspar’s wife here became Mittie.

Now, back to the issue of the kissing shadow. How did this picture come to be taken if Mittie is a sour old bitty? Enter a twist ending, a la O Henry with the common man misery of Kurt Vonnegut. How can I make the reality other than it appears? Well, the answer is in the story.