Close To The Reedy Tarn

After a certain type of monkey I danced and mimicked my way back into the past – back, back, I say – on to the first few rungs of the evolutionary ladder. I was a genus extinct, for sure, and the drawings made me look hairier than I actually was. But my Darwinian gumbo was all a complete. At last, me in the chain, looking forward to a future of long, long years and appropriate monkey man respect. Have at you there!

My distant monkey cousins of mans and womans looked down from the loftiest of heights and, with palpable disdain, whispered between themselves all kinds of disparaging comments about what I was and what I stood for. But you, I cried, you up there, listen hard to me and what I say. They were not listening though. You, I said again, are not so brave and upright and not so far along the road that you can afford your hatred and mockery – you are but a slight blip, a hiccup in the line. But oh, those smoothies just looked down at me and laughed.

The grand narrative of mans and womans began, I must say, some good years after I’d taken my first exit from the world. They looked back at me and guessed me of a smaller brain and thing. They told themselves, in order to keep the narrative appropriately grand, that they were the culmination, the end result, of all the efforts combined. Including mine and all those hairier and less hairier fellow travellers who I met and discarded along the way.

Those banana munching chumps that pass for me these days. Honestly. No wonder they keep them in zoos, put them on the telly and fuck them up with science. I would too. They are a disgrace, an aberration from the path I was born to follow but didn’t quite tread. Those swinging, grinning bastards picking the fleas like the dumb animal bastards they truly are. They need shaking from their trees. As for lemurs - don’t even talk to me about lemurs. Lower primate monkey-mimicking motherfuckers.

How she would love to mount me, said the museum madam, as she tossed her raven hair back – back, back, I say – over her shoulder, removed those heavy glasses, kicked off her shoes and flashed a smile so erotic my primal instincts verily got the better of me. I would have howled were I of the wolfish species variety. I grunted instead - that animalistic grunting and sweating that gets them all on their knees. But not this girl, this ice iron maiden of sarcophagus and splash. She pulled me firm and stood me down. Until I had no choice but to howl like the moon.

Mickey the Monkey. I mean, Gus. As in, you can’t make a monkey out of Gus. There I was, at the ice rink, without my ice skates! What a fool! But lest ye not as I swiped – from one of my smaller chimpy pals – a couple of bananas whose skins I somehow affixed to the soles of my hairy feet. And did they, those banana skins, get me dancing round that rink? You can bet your life they did.

And here I am now, decked out like King Louie, that gaggle of idiots showering me with bananas. Bananas, I ask you. I tell them to get me something else, to crack open coconuts or fix me a sandwich, but all I get is bananas. It’s a life you wouldn’t want, that’s for sure. But still, at least I get to come up from the rear. That is, at least my place here, holding tight to the bottom of your ladder, is pretty secure.