The Pervert's Drink

Milk is for deviants, from.A Clockwork Orange to Babygirl.

- By Allison P. Davis

One snowy night last January, a giggling, handsy couple wandered into a Williamsburg steakhouse near closing time and plopped down at the bar. They ordered two steaks (expected) and almost every side to share (decadent). The woman asked for a glass of red wine (sophisticated) and a glass of water (responsible). The man asked for the same red and then a personal twist: a glass of milk. “Whole milk, if ya have it,” he said in a loud southern accent with a confidence that stunned the waitress. ¶ Their meal came— including the milk—and Milk Man went to town, taking big swigs between chomps of steak with such gusto that my blood ran cold. The hairy, masculine hand. The glass of frothy milk. The pure delight. The cow two ways. I felt disturbed to the very core of my soul, the same feeling I get on a 75-degree day in November. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t ignore it. My restraint ran out before his beverage did, and I interrupted his conversation. “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but what’s with the milk?”

“Oh, I know—it’s weird, right?” he responded, self-aware but not ashamed. Then he leaned over and drawled, “I can’t explain it. I just love a big glass of cold milk with a rare steak. Mmmmm-mm!” Milk Man’s date didn’t seem to feel weird about it; she gave a Yes, my man is a freak smile as he finished his Big Ol’ Glass of Cold Milk.

There’s just something about milk in the hands of an adult that is truly unnerving. Milk symbolizes innocence and purity, and the adult who continues to indulge in it—nay, cling to it—long after their loss of innocence provokes light repulsion, confusion, and morbid fascination in the observer. As a Vice headline once put it, “Adults Who Still Drink Milk: Are You Okay?”

Filmmakers had trained me to assume that as a milk-drinking adult man, he was either a nihilistic youth hell-bent on random violence (A Clockwork Orange