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Monkeys

Doug Downie

    We got the monkeys because somehow we thought they could save our love. The exalted love we’d shared for close to a decade was showing signs of disrepair. There were rude grumblings and sudden irritations and inexplicable moments of sadness. There were more nights and mornings when we didn’t have sex, even on weekends. There was more and more of you go this way and I go that way. When we saw the monkeys in a pet shop window we got the idea - without saying it - that they might be just the spark to reignite the flame.
    “Look at that will ya, monkeys. They’re kinda cute.”
    “Look at their little people faces.” she said, squeezing my arm.
    “I don’t like pets but monkeys would be interesting.”
    “You’ve told me how you feel about pets many times. You’re not getting soft are you?”
    “No. I still don’t like pets, but how many people do you know that have monkeys?”
    “None at the moment.”
    “And you’re not bloody likely to anytime soon either.”
    “They’d be very interesting to have around the house. I think I’d like that.”
    I looked off in the direction of the pub down the street, where we’d been going for a sundowner. I felt the restless need to move on along.
    “They’d still be pets.”
    “What’s so bad about pets?”
    “People have to have these loyal little lapdogs, as if they weren’t good enough within themselves. Or maybe they’re cute little surrogates for the affections they can’t get from other people.” I mused on that. “Alright, I almost get that...but it’s a bit pathetic.”
    I started to move off down the street.
    “Not so fast Dugan. Let’s go in and take a look.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.” She never had been that big about simply letting me have my way.
    We went on in.
    It stunk in the pet store. They do their best to freshen it up but face it, all those animals are shitting and pissing in their little cages with astounding regularity.
    “Can I help you?” asked a wispy little guy, no more than twenty-three, with Elvis Costello glasses and a purple shirt.
    “We’re interested in the monkeys.” she said.
    “Well, she is...”
    Actually I had to confess that they were kind of cool. Watching them preen each other, picking at precise spots along each other’s backs, or along an outstretched leg, their nimble fingers working like little jackhammers, was fascinating. And their resemblance to humans was unmistakable. Having these little fuckers around the house would be nothing like having a goddamned mangy slobbering dog. Cats were cool, but they were always off on the prowl and were far too selfish for me to really get with them. Monkeys were a new twist on the pet thing.
    We moved over as a ménage a trois to get closer to the monkeys, leaning our faces down toward the furry couple. One of them lifted an arm and opened its hand toward us. The long fingers pointed to our eyes.
    “That’s the female. Her name is Mabel. She’s very friendly.” said Elvis.
    “Isn’t she cute!”
    “I’m not sure about cute, but she is interesting.”
    “I want them!”
    “What’s his name?” I asked.
    “His name is Willie.” Elvis answered. He looked at me and winked. “He’s a real charmer.”
    “We’ll take them!” she announced.
    I wasn’t so sure, but something fascinated me and we walked out carrying the monkeys in a big 4 foot cage. They had to ride up front with me, chittering and chattering all the way. When I carried them into the house they quieted down, as they peered all around their new surroundings, in what appeared to be curiosity.

    It didn’t take too long before Willie and Mabel were an integral part of the household. We spoke to them as if they were human, and they seemed to understand us. People generally speak to their pets as if they were human - an absurd affectation - but because of the closer evolutionary relationship of Willie and Mabel to the human, I at least, felt a little less silly about our behavior in this case. We’d hover around their cage and talk to them, trying to make a connection, sticking our fingers through the bars and watching with wonder as Willie or Mable would wrap their fingers around one of ours, caressing us.
    We felt badly about keeping them in the cage and decided we needed to train them to be able to roam freely around the house. Despite what Elvis had said, Willie was not quite as loving as Mabel seemed to be so we chose her to be the first to be set free. It’s not that Willie wasn’t friendly; it was just that he would sit back more, less inclined to accept our offers of gentle comradeship. I could understand that – I too was suspicious of the human’s offerings.
    We were cautious in letting Mabel out of the cage, slowly opening the door and coaxing her to our hands. Willie moved over to the end of the perch and hunkered down as Mabel edged gently toward the open door. With a sudden slinky dart she left the cage, climbing up the sides with her fingers deftly using the bars until she sat on top, above Willie, who stared at her, with a surprising malevolence. Then Mabel was off, leaping over the desk, the couch, the lampshade, onto the curtains. She disappeared up the stairs into the rooms above the converted basement where we kept them. We quickly followed, trying to locate her before she dashed out an open window. Her whereabouts was uncertain; the house seemed like a whirlwind of bangs and bumps and her chittering and chattering ricocheted around the corners of the bedroom, the bathroom, and down the hallway but we couldn’t see her. Every so often she would appear in a flash across our vision as she flew from one room to another.
    We decided to wait her out, let her get tired of all her explorations.
    When she finally did I went over to the curtain that she was hanging from and offered my shoulder to her. She took it, easily stepping over from her hold on the curtain and quite rapidly making herself comfortable on my shoulder; as if it was something she’d done all her life.
    It was soon to be her regular perch, and she’d pick at my hair and tickle my ears while I read a book or the newspaper. No longer was she fazed or freaked in any way by the strange environment of our human habitation.
    We put Mabel back in the cage with Willie in the nights, still unsure if we could let her roam the house without doing any damage. In the early days we could hear them cooing to each other down there, apparently happy to be reunited.
    “We need to get Willie out of the cage too.” she said one evening.
    I knew it was true. Willie was getting a bit gross. Nine times out of ten when I went down to check out how he was doing he’d be jacking off, working his naked prong like a jackhammer. Once I chanced upon him shitting. As he finished he reached down and grabbed a handful and threw it at me. It split on the bars and mostly fell to the floor of the cage; one solitary and tiny turd finding its way to my foot.
    “You’re right. Do you think he’s ready for it?”
    “I’m not sure, but we’ve got to give him a chance. The male is always behind the female in maturity.”
    She was right of course, but it pissed me off. I was never comfortable with being told I was a deficient being. More and more men had come to accept themselves as such and it burned my ass.
    “Maybe Willie is just holding back out of respect for Mabel.”
    “Yeah, right...” A monkey possessing a concept such as respect was a step too far, apparently...
    “Seriously, men may take longer to reach their maturity but when they do they go far higher than women.”
    “You’re full of shit.”
    “Like hell I am! You just wait! Willie will be reading Shakespeare before long!”
    “Are we talking about men or monkeys?”
    “Oh hell! I’m gonna go get a beer - then we let Willie out.”
    I stormed down the stairs and grabbed a beer from the fridge, sucked about half of it down in a single gulp, shouted out to her that I was letting Willie out, then leaped down the stairs to the basement. She was quick to follow.
    “C’mon Willie my man, we’re going for a walk!”
    I opened the door of the cage and bowed to show the monkey my respect.
    Willie didn’t budge.
    We waited, occasionally offering him encouragement.
    “C’mon Willie! C’mon out! Let’s play! Mabel’s upstairs! She’s having a good time. You can too!”
    This went on for some time, all the while Willie just staring back at us in what seemed like a more and more malevolent manner. Finally he reached down and grabbed his pecker and started jacking off. He did it with gusto, staring out of the cage at us. Even I thought it was gross, for some reason.
    “What’s the matter with him?”
    “Well, he’s a bit cranky I think.” I said.
    “What was your first clue? Goddamned males are gross.”
    I closed the door to the cage and went upstairs to get another beer. She kept going up to the bedroom. I grabbed my book off the dining room table and plopped into the armchair. Mabel came over and leaped onto my shoulder.
    “How you doing girl?” I cooed at her. “I can see you like me better than that other one up there.”

    As the days and nights passed we tried again and again to get Willie to come out and be free; but he would have none of it. Neither of us could believe that he preferred the cage but we couldn’t quite figure out what it was he was so uncooperative about. Mabel would come and go like a good child, happy to be free, happy to be back home with Willie.
    Or so we thought.
    As I said, we’d been having problems of our own. Somehow the spark had gone out of our love and with increasing regularity we sat around in the middle of long silences and missed opportunities for fun. The space between us seemed like the dead air you sometimes witness while listening to radio stations that are not completely professional. The little eruptions of irritability had become more frequent, and every so often outright fights occurred, laced with forlorn bitterness. It had taken us a long time before we’d begun to raise our voices at each other, but it had finally happened.
    We were like everybody else. Doomed.
    I remember one night in particular. Mabel was sitting on my shoulder preening the hair behind my ear. It tickled and I laughed and told her to stop.
    “You have more fun with that monkey than you have with me.”
    “Not true.” I replied. “She’s more fun than a whole barrel full of monkeys, it’s true,” I paused for effect, “but she’s got nothing on you my love.”
    “You’re an asshole.”
    “That may be, but you love me anyway, don’t you?”
    “I’m not so sure anymore Jack.”
    That hurt. I don’t know why it hurt. I had no illusions about love or relationships between men and women. I knew they didn’t last. It was the way of things, the natural order of things. To deny it was like denying climate change, or the soul deadening effects of capitalism, or the constipation of religion, or the reality of solitude, or the inevitability of death. Why should I be hurt?
    But I was, goddamnit. I knew I was a fool right then and there.
    “What did I ever do to you to make you feel this way?” I asked.
    “It’s not what you did as much as what you didn’t do Jack.”
    “Come here, please.”
    I was lucky. She came over and sat in my lap. Three minutes later we were up in the bed fucking our brains out. Life was good again.
    In the middle of the night I woke to the sounds of awful screeching and hissing. Goose bumps ran down my arms. I froze in order to listen completely so I could determine where it was all coming from. Perhaps we were being attacked by terrorists. It was coming from the basement, from the cage where we kept Willie and Mabel. It sounded very much like they were having a fight – a violent fight. I considered it to be a temporary anomaly, something that couldn’t actually be true, and went back to sleep.
    Sometime before dawn I had a dream.
    I was on a boat. I was somewhere inside the boat. I could feel the rocking of the waves, the swell of the ocean. There was a light up in the corner of the ceiling, and nothing but shadows everywhere else. Suddenly a face loomed out of the dark and a gaping mouth opened in front of my face, then swept away as if pulled by strings. I couldn’t hear a thing. I listened intently but I couldn’t hear a sound. In a flash the room switched and I was surrounded by people, some of whom I seemed to know, some of whom I knew I had never seen. An ex-lover reached from the mass of people and grabbed my arm. She pulled me down to a mattress on the floor and into her. We fucked. While we were fucking I felt a feather across my ass and looked back to see an old boss leering at me with deep disdain. A fat man off in the shadows was laughing and a scream pierced the night.
    I woke up.
    There was a great commotion coming from the basement. It was Willie and Mabel and there was little doubt that they were fighting. There were frightening scoffs and barks from his alto and spooky screeches from her high soprano that brought hot itches to my flesh and cold sweats to my mind.
    “What the hell is going on?” she asked, spooked.
    “Hell. Damned if I know.”
    I got out of bed and rushed down the stairs. I turned on the light and saw the two monkeys slyly separate from each other, moving to opposite sides of the perch.
    “Hey! What’s going on with you two? Everything OK?”
    As if they could answer me...
    They stared at me with what I couldn’t help but think was resentment. Willie’s eyes burned the brightest.
    “What was it?’ she asked when I got back to bed.
    “They were having a fight.”
    “A fight? They’ve never fought before.”
    “They have now.”
    The fights happened with increasing regularity. Almost nightly we would be woken by the sound of high-pitched screeches and barks coming from the basement. We could hear the bars of the cage rattling as it rocked back and forth. It was loud enough to seem like it was in the room with us. It was like witnessing the death throes of a dysfunctional relationship of beings never meant to be together, coming though the walls of a cheap motel.
    “What are we going to do about those two?” I asked.
    “We should separate them.”
    “What do you mean? Get another cage?”
    “Let’s take Willie back to the pet shop. I never felt right about him. He’s got a mean streak going through him.”
    I always had hopes for Willie. I thought the gentle would emerge from him – I didn’t want him to fall into the stereotypical anti-social beast that he showed signs of becoming. I’d had that label pinned on myself, with no justification, by people who had no capacity for true discernment. In a weird way we were brothers.
    Later that night we were awoken by the loudest and most violent cataclysm yet. The barks and bickering got louder and more vehement, finally rising to a crescendo before all went silent.
    “That’s it. Tomorrow we take Willie back to the pet store.”
    “Shit, I guess so.” I said. “What the hell was going on down there?”
    “We’ll find out tomorrow. I’ve got to get to sleep.”
    She turned on her side and was soon off to the land of Morpheus. I pulled her ass to me so I could feel my cock between her cheeks but she did the little squiggle that said ‘not now’, so I fell on my back and immediately wondered what had happened. How had things gotten to this point? How do things get from a high point of peace and bliss and then descend to a depth of provocation and bitterness; all in the space of what is a blink of the eye in the general scheme of things? How could it possibly be? In the pet store Willie and Mabel had been like jungle lovers, all preening and cuddling, cooing and chattering as if in angelic song. What had happened? I looked at my woman lying next to me, deep in sleep, and I knew that we were no longer in the palm of heaven either. What was going to happen to us? Was it inevitable?
    The next day we woke up and went down to the basement before even having coffee. One monkey was down. Willie chitted at us as we walked into the room, lifting his arm toward us as we approached the cage.
    Mabel was on the floor amongst the sawdust and shit and piss, her neck broken, it was clear. She was not at an angle that a living being could accommodate. She was already in rigor mortis. Willie had snapped her in two as if she was a balsa wood doll. Now he was at peace, ready to love us the way he had always been meant to. He looked at us and blinked his eyes in monkey coquetry.
    “Ooooh! He’s disgusting! He goes back today! I can’t stand the sight of him for one more minute!”
    It was hard to argue the point. We’d had such fun with Mabel. She’d brought a unique experience to both of us. It was hard to believe she was gone. We were both crushed. Something special had been lost.
    Later that day, after work, we covered the cage and took Willie back to the pet store. Elvis was quite surprised to hear what had happened, but understood our desire to be separated from him.
    A few months after returning Willie I decided to call the pet store to see what had become of him. Elvis answered.
    “Oh yeah! A couple out near Drytown bought him. They love him! ‘Our Willie’ they call him. They say he’s the most gentle, loving pet they’ve ever had! He’s even learned to speak!”
    “He’s learned to speak?”
    “They say he can say Dadda and Momma.”
    “No shit?” I was dumbfounded.
    I hung up.
    Well, it appeared that Willie was happy, and was unburdened by guilt. I had to hand that to him. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done wrong, or why I felt guilty, but if I ever saw her again, I was going to have to remember to recall this story.
    After all, at least somebody had a happy ending.

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