On the 31th of July Millie Marie closed the shop that bore her name, giving, as was her long tradition, the employs and followers of Millie Marie's Housewives & Others the whole of August off with pay.
Millie herself, making sure no one knew where she was going, headed to the airport for her annual pilgrimage to the Greek Isle of Samos.
It was there in 1890 that Millie Marie, then known as Sir Miles Jove St. Maris, a member of what passed in that time as the profession of archaeologist, but who really just spent his time looting the world of the treasures other people and sending it to a new home in London.
His undoing came when he tried to have a more than three thousand year old shrine stone to Hera dug up to be sent to molder away in the depths of the British Museum of Antiquities. To his surprise Hera herself appeared and turned the stodgy forty six year old Brit into a young Greek woman who, if any of the members of his expedition had bothered to really learn, as they had at University, to not just read ancient Greek but speak it as Sir Miles now did, would not have believed her wild claims anyway.
After a thorough search for the missing Sir Miles proved fruitless eventually his crew left calling it a mystery and leaving the shrine stone and the transformed ex-Englishman behind.
By that time St. Maris had become better acquainted with Hera and was told by Her that she would stay just as she was until she had apologized to the Goddess by obtaining 1,111 new followers for her. To help Sir Maris along she granted her immortality and powers far beyond, and considerably weirder, than those of ordinary mortals.
The problem however was that while Hera had given the new woman an immense task, she had not told her how to complete it, “Sir” Miles was left to figure that out on her own.
Knowing that she had to complete the task set before her in ways that where complimentary to the power base of Hera, that is, the matriarchy, fidelity, marriage and domestic harmony, Miles, who now called herself Mary, spent the next 50 years, after that is once again learning English, as an impossibly competent nanny, nurse maid and housekeeper who, using a command of the wind granted her by Hera, flew via umbrella from household to manor house seeing to it that wifeless widowers and misogynists were soon involved in full tilt domesticity, while successful, this lead to not a single new follower of Hera.
Lashed severely for her failings, as only a Goddess can lash someone, the ex-Sir Maris was “encouraged” to try something new.
Mary came up with a radical idea that she had gotten from a new popular media that she had run into due to some of the children she cared for.
Deciding it couldn't do any worse than what she had been doing and so worth a try, Hera turned Mary back into a man, but no ordinary man.
Known now as John Cole, he became the world's first real-life superhero. A superhero who by shouting the name of Hera would change into an oddly costumed woman known as Housewife Man, the hero with the power of 1,000 housewives! Of course for this change to take place it had to be done, while John Cole, in the view of as many people as possible, Hera not really grasping the idea of the super heroic secret identity.
While his / her exploits got a lot of press, and even a run in one of the early comic books, this, after 13 hard bizarre year’s evil fighting, lead to at best only a dozen new followers. Though Hera did give Housewife Man credit for all the philandering and abusive husbands she pounded, wayward hubbies being a pet peeve of the Goddess.
By 1953, the time the John Cole / Housewife Man persona was dropped, and soon forgotten by the public who regarded he / her / they are just a publicity stunt by those nasty Funny Book people, and probably a commie plot of some kind, Sir Miles Jove St. Maris was starting to have a tenuous at best hold on the British gentleman he had been, but with Queen Victoria dead, the era he was comfortable with quickly fading, and only 34 “wins” being counted by Hera, Sir Miles was becoming sure he would never see his ancestral lands and do so as a proper English gentleman again.
It was that year that Hera proved that she meant business about Miles needing to get about finding her worshipers or there would be consequences changing him from John Cole into an impoverished 88 year old Greek woman known as Minthe Melanthakis of the island of Corfu and staying there to get along as best she could until she had reached her even more rheumatic 100th birthday.
The day after that “birthday” Hera, pleased that Minthe had been able via the “talks with a wise woman” route with a number of young girls and random tourists, been able to add 14 more worshipers, turned Minthe into a young woman again so that she went out with renewed vigor to really see about reviving something like Hera worship in the modern world, because “damn it a promise is a promise, and a man must buckle down and do what he is pledged to do, even if he must do it as a woman!” that and Hera's declaration that if the ex-Englishman didn't get really motivated and start trying harder she would discard Miles, let her experience that rejection as a blind 120 year old. Miles
It was from that day that the former British anthropologist abandoned all thoughts of his old life as Sir Miles Jove St. Maris and started thinking of herself as Millie Marie Minthe, and as Millie Marie went about her job in earnest.
Fortunately for Millie, who after Hera's latest transformation of her, seemed to be in her early 20s, the 60s were just the right time to start such an endeavor, from the Hippy movement, to the later Feminist and then the Neo-Pagans in the 70s, from 1965 to 1988 she was able to add 160 new recruits, three times more than she had been able to add in the 95 years before that.
Pleased with her progress Hera then gave Millie some time off, five years to be exact, to do as she pleased. The problem was that after almost 100 years as a woman, and sometimes man for a while, concerned only with growing worship for Hera, Millie didn't know what to do with herself.
Thinking she would find out what had happened with her old pursuit of archeology she enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania and spent three years as just another college girl, which, as with the adventure amongst the hippies, feminists and Neo-Pagans, lead to more changes than she had yet to experience.
The whole time however Millie knew that her time off was ticking away and Hera would soon be back in her life, and only with only 208 recruits found in 98 years it meant she would likely be back even more impatient than before, then Millie had an idea.
Surprising everyone by dropping out at the end of her junior year, the people who knew the impressively sharp and studious young woman would have been even more surprised if they had found out she had left to go to a beauty school.
And then another and more impressive one after that, and another. So that by the end of the remaining two years Millie knew everything there was to modern styling and beauty techniques, then Hera return and Millie told the Goddess her idea.
And so in 1993, on the first of August, Millie Marie's Housewives & Others was opened, this was the first of only three Augusts that the ultra-modern beauty salon would to stay open for business during that month, following that, after three years of normal beauty treatments, and special treatments that only Millie could provide, she began her tradition of closing down the salon and flying to the still untouched old shrine stone on the Isle of Samos where she told Hera about her progress, and while certainly Hera could have just gotten the information by going to Millie herself, as she had for so long, after the third year of averaging over 200 converts a year Hera decided that something more orthodox was called for, and so Millie went to her and with offerings.
The great success in the creation of Hera approved and worshiping women, even if the women in question came didn't exactly know that's what they were doing, came about when after her first five months in business Millie encountered Joey Van Boer, a pushy alpha male who came into the freshly open establishment demanding a haircut, when told that Millie Marie's was a beauty salon he made a dismissive noise and started “so, hair's hair right? Just clip it short and it's all the same, I like ladies to cut my hair, and there ain't nothing but dude barbers in this town, so I'm going to set down and you'll make with the clip, clip clip, and I'll give you a ten, cause that's all I ever pay, and then everybody will be happy. And if I don't get what I want, and get it from the prettiest girl here, you'll do, I'll report you to the better business bureau or spank you are something.” he had said smirking at the last remark and pointing at Millie Marie to the other beauticians surprise Millie, though they could tell she was angry, agreed and telling the others to get back to work led the man into one of the styling cubicles where she could work without being seen, “alright, you know how things work then,” said Van Boer setting down in the chair, “now I just want a trim nothing fancy or girly smelling or wha...” Joey never finished his sentence because as he was making it Millie had stepped behind him and unleashed the full force of the power that Hera had given her to push women toward her approval by the Goddess.
Only where Millie had been giving women the equivalent of a mystical 8 volt zap, what Millie turned loose on Mr. Van Boer had to have been more like 10,000 units of orphic whim wham. Millie had no idea what this would do. What it did, in a brilliant silver and rose flash, was turn Mrs. Joey Van Boer into a woman, “so that's what it looks like when she does that?” thought Millie looking at her first transformation. And quite an alteration it was too.
Van Boer was not just a female version of himself, she was so, Millie judge, an improbable cross and exaggeration of two women from another era seeming to be both June Cleaver, and Mamie Van Doren fussed into one. Having Van Doren's figure, platinum hair and overdone makeup, her huge breasts reinforced with bullet bras that had not been seen since the 50s, at the same time her stylish powder blue 50s dress, heels and hose ensemble was like the ones worn by the mother of “The Bev” right down to the string of pearls. The body wearing it however had never been seen in the old sit-com. And yet there was still somehow something about the women, who seemed to be asleep, that still looked something like Joey Van Boer.
Then the woman's eyes opened. “Oh my this is just terrible!” said the woman in a voice that sounded like Van Boer's, only now as a melodious woman's contralto “oh great, how am I going to handle this?” thought Millie “I've fallen completely asleep how rude of me!” said the new Van Boer getting out chair and examining herself in the mirror, “you shouldn't have let me waste your time that way, I'm sure you have other costumers you have could have been taking care of.” continued the vastly changed former man patting her hair and looking at it from views offered by the angled mirrors in the cubicle. “just perfect!” said the woman apparently indifferent that she had once been a man, “do you mind if I pay with a check?” asked the woman going for a purse that both had not existed a few moment before, and yet matched her shoes. “sure, that's alright” said Millie wondering if she would now remember that her name was Joey and she had been a rather rude man less than five minutes ago.
Bending over a counter in the cubicle to write the check Millie had a visit from her old base self of Sir Miles as she admired the derriere Joey now possessed, “hmm, impressive child bearing hips too,” thought Millie. “I made it out for fifty dollars,” said the woman “that's the right amount isn't it?” “sure, that sounds good,” said Millie who was busy taking in the check “Josie Van Boerin” it read, apparently having not only transformed the person, but changed his ancestral origins from “farmer” to “farmer's wife.” “well I've got to go!” said the woman, “I just remembered that my apartment is an absolute mess! And I have to get right back and clean it up!” with that the woman effervesced out of the salon, seemingly quite comfortable as her new self and having no trouble navigating on the four inch powder blue heels she now did it on.
Later that week when Millie took the check to the bank it cleared with no problem, showing that it seemed she had not only altered the former Mr. Van Boer's reality, she had altered the rest of the world enough for the new Ms. Van Boerin to fit in it.
After that Millie broadened the scope of recruits admitted by seeing to it that she went out of her way to make MMH&O a place that men would feel comfortable coming in by seeing to it that they could not only get haircuts performed by attractive women, but also offering classes in things of use to bachelors, such as how to cook, clean house and empress the ladies with their domestic skills, and when Millie was finished with them the skills of those ladies were impressive indeed.
She soon had it honed to a skill for attracting a particular type of male, such as a type of unpleasant frat-boys she had had a lot of trouble with while at University.
These she saw to it that only she took care of, and she took care of them by unleashing the power that Hera had given her and changing the men into not just women like her, but extreme, parodies almost, of the idea of the modern housewife. And by modern, to Millie who still had a bit of the Victorian in her, which could be any era from 1890 to 2011, but mainly hovering around 1955.
These new women soon became Millie's most dedicated followers, and then members of her staff, so that within five years a dozen and three new MMH&O's were opened around the world, all with at least one staff members empowered by Hera, from the original in Pennsylvania they grew to include ones in other parts of America, then Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, France, Abu Dhabi, and of course Greece.
These salons were not all about transforming women into followers of Hera, or certain types of men into burlesque housewives, but all of them, via Millie's special converts, did some of that often enough.
And so Millie landed on the Isle of Samos and told Hera how things had gone in the last year.
“1,111 thousand this year,” said Millie touching the statue of Hera that over the years had become “theirs,” invoking the number that Hera had given her to convert 121 years ago to set herself free from the Goddesses command, “and isn't that something?” she continued, “the same number as it took me from 1890 to 1998 to complete, and we did it in a year, perhaps we should pull back a little before people start to get suspicious?”
“Yes, just a little,” said Hera in a voice that only Millie, who on reaching that number in `98 and being offered by the Goddess to be turned back into Miles Jove St. Maris and released from her service had said she wanted to stay Millie and keep the salons going and growing, could hear.
“But don't worry about that, it's amazing how much you humans can ignore something if you don't want to see it, but do be a little more discerning in whom you give the special conversions to. That biker gang that you change in Orange county are not really turning into the most honorable of my new housewives, and that entourage of, well we didn't have people like that in my day, the ones you changed and set in that little town in your adopted country, that American town of Fairview, they are simply desperate, I'd like to see less of both types, from now on let’s say quality not quantity is the motto of the epoch.”
Agreeing Millie poured out her libation of wine, a Barbaresco Gaja 2001 it having been a very good year financially for Millie as well her more esoteric successes, to Hera and then left to spend the rest of her time simply enjoying herself. September would be the start of another busy year for her and Millie Marie's Housewives & Others.
