B. Wayne Keeton

B. Wayne Keeton was a mystery character his entire life that few people knew about. Very little information exists on his personal life aside that he was born as Robert Wayne Keeton in rural Louisiana. He grew up in extreme poverty and was raised by his mother and grandmother after being abandoned by his father. He received little formal education and once claimed that his older 17-year-old brother killed himself on Christmas day when Keeton was age 13. When Keeton was age 15 or 16, he came out as a homosexual to his family who supposedly reacted by throwing him out of their house and onto the street. Keeton then drifted around the Deep South and made a living as a hustler, pickpocket, thief and con artist. For a time in the late 1970s he lived in Houston, Texas, and was a regular at Mary's--a well-known leather dive hangout for gay men--before migrating west to Los Angeles, where he worked at odd jobs which included a restaurant waiter, cashier, construction worker, LA Metro bus driver, taxi driver, etc. At one point in 1985, Keeton met exploitation film director and playwright Andy Milligan while Keeton was working as a dishwasher in a seedy eatery in the San Fernando Valley. Milligan recruited him as a crew member and actor for his new film company, Troupe West. Keeton moved in with Milligan and the two soon became lovers. Keeton had a bit part as a drug dealer killed in Milligan's film Monstrosity (1987) He would also work on the set manning the slate, the sound recorder, and even buy food for the cast and crew. Keeton was also said to have continued his hustling lifestyle during the time he was with Milligan. He received a disability check from the state for $650 a month for an injury he suffered while working at a construction site in the early 1980s, and would spend it all in three or four days on alcohol, drugs, cigarettes or a combination of all three. He continued to drift in and out of jail on minor offenses from drunk and disorderly, to solicitation, to possession of narcotics. Sometimes Milligan bailed him out of jail and sometimes he didn't, but every time Keeton would come back to him. Keeton was diagnosed with AIDS sometime in 1988, as he was seen taking a bus to and from a Los Angeles hospital during the filming of Milligan's last film, Surgikill (1989). In December of that year he traveled to his hometown in Louisiana for Christmas to meet and say goodbye to what family he had living there. He returned a few days after New Years Day in 1989, claiming that his illness made him a pariah and no one in his family wanted to be near him. Although he was nearly illiterate his whole life, he turned to his Baptist roots and began attending church as well as trying to read the Bible. He was said to have purchased stuffed toy animals during his final months as he traveled to the hospital for treatment. B. Wayne Keeton died on June 20, 1989 at an AIDS treatment hospital in Los Angeles.