Monolog Monkey I like to go to the zoo and study how people act like monkeys. At the zoo I have seen the great apes with their slow moving ponderous ways and the chimpanzees almost formal in their insanity, shaking their heads and screaming at each other, pulling back their lips in smiles or threats. They say we are 99% genetically related to chimps but I relate more to the cebus capuchin with its long tale, naked greediness, screaming and jumping. They are friendly beggars who express their pleasure in food with little chirps and whistles. I got to hold a capuchin monkey once. They will look at you and bare their teeth to threaten you and open their mouth with their lips over their teeth to express astonishment, they will curl their tail around you arm and fall asleep in your lap as they make little whistling sounds through their nose. A monkey can be captured by a coconut. People make a hole in the coconut big enough for a monkey to get his hand into. They put a treat in the coconut, the monkey reaches in and grabs it with his fist but the treat is too big to exit the hole with the monkey’s hand around it. People can walk up and capture the monkey because it won’t let got of the treat. It is this greedy monkey factor that gets them caught and it is killing us humans as a race. Gordon Gecko said that greed is good, but he was a greedy thief and a liar. The greedy stock brokers and bankers should be put in jail. I hate to see most animals in cages; I can feel their pain and insanity especially the large cats. But some of the animals born into captivity don’t seem to mind. I take pictures at the zoo with my cell phone but I don’t send them to anyone. I can’t afford the phone bill on the money I make. I’ve had to cut way back on the texting. My name is Chad but what is in a name? I am little more than a slightly intelligent ape. There are so many Chad’s you might as well give me a number. Hello, I’m Chad 83B, totally unlike Chad 83A or Chad 83C. It’s my life, my body, my experience that makes me different from everyone else, not my name. How I perceive things is slightly different from the way you perceive things and that makes all the difference. The fetus of a human goes through the same stages as a chimp but then stops and the chimp continues to develop. They say chimps and humans share 95% of DNA. But as long as we have watched chimps we have not seen them evolve. Not even Darwin could explain how humans evolved from apes. The hand of a man is far more complex than an apes, much to complex to explain by evolution. Perhaps we were developed from apes by aliens to be slaves long ago. Will humans evolve before they destroy the world? I saw some guy freaking out on a TV cop show, he was screaming like a monkey. Little children in the supermarket do the same thing when they can’t get the candy or treat they want. A Mumbai slaughter protester I saw on the TV had a barrel chest which he beat with his fists like a cartoon gorilla. Monkeys and prisoners throw their shit to protest their incarceration. Guns are a high speed deadly way for a slightly more developed monkey to throw shit. I can understand those guys who go to school and shoot everyone up. They are just throwing back shit in a modern method. They are returning the shit that has been tossed at them all their lives. Not that I would do it, I am a non-violent vegan, but I can understand their reasoning. I went to the zoo because I was laid off from work for the day at the Ned’s Tin Toe computer game factory. I did not mind missing a day of work that much because yesterday I had an accident. I was cutting the top off a box and my box knife slipped and nicked my leg. I barely felt a prick and kept working. Later I accidentally touched my pant leg and it felt wet. I looked down and saw it was soaked with red blood. I went into the bathroom and pulled down my pants and found the blood gushing from a small wound, evidently I had hit an artery. After staunching the flow with a bandage that I taped on tightly, I still had a big wet red patch on my pants. I tried to blot the blood off the pants. I did not want to make an accident report and start a file and get a reputation or whatever. They fire people for the most inconsequential stuff where I work so there is no point in pointing out your mistakes or having any company loyalty. I only have loyalty to my paycheck. When I left the bathroom stall I accidentally left my Kevlar glove in there. I went back to the work line and realized that I did not have it. They will fire you if you cut open a box without a glove. I went back to the bathroom but someone was using the stall so I waited. Bill the giant Samoan came in and pissed. I noticed a box label stuck to his back on the shirt. While washing his hands asked suspiciously, “Why you hanging out in the bathroom?” “I left my fucking gloves in the fucking stall,” I answered bitterly. He laughs. “There’s a sticker on your back,” I say. “They been getting me good. Can you get it off?” I gingerly peel it off his tee shirt like a small monkey grooming a larger one. Finally the guy came out of the stall and I got my glove back and worked for another two hours but no one noticed my bloody pants. Shows you how observant people are. I live with a couple of guys. We rent an old farmhouse. I guess it was nice at one time but now it is falling apart. The fields around it were purchased and developed into a housing tract. The lots were set up with power and water, the roads were paved and the sidewalks built and then no one could get a loan to build a house. It is a housing tract without houses. There are a lot of ‘ghost’ housing tracts around this area. One of the guy’s father knows someone who had something to do with developing this lot and they let us rent the old farmhouse instead of tearing it down to make a little money to pay off some of their expenses. We are kind of isolated so we don’t get many complaints about our loud music or parties. I am the pariah of the house because I like to listen to KEXP instead of the R and B station. My station has no commercials and plays new music mostly. People tend to find a steady supply of new music to be disorienting. I kind of like it, you never know what you are going to hear, it keeps things lively. On the other hand, KEXP seems so soft-core these days, it is almost easy listening. Everyone is scared that the economy is collapsing. Thanks to old president Bush we can wave bye bye to the America I used to know. I have little faith of positive change in the future due to the insurmountable debts and enemies’ president stupid racked up. I slave to keep the billionaires in power. Then you see those New York banker people demanding tax dollars so they can get their $500,000 bonus. They should be forced to do real work. You can see Bill Gates’ house from the 520 Bridge or you could before the trees grew up around it. Who knew the world would be controlled from Microsoft headquarters in Redmond Washington? Paul Allan of Microsoft got involved with KEXP and now it can be accessed on a computer anywhere in the world. Big monkeys, big money, big plans that leave us little monkeys to scratch out a living and wonder at their monkeyshines. The morning DJ used to be great when he was a young volunteer disc jockey from a small Washington town east of the Cascade Mountains. Now that they pay him a $100,000 a year and he’s married with a kid, he’s not that good. Or is it that music has changed again? I remember hearing as a child on one of my father’s records The Who sang, ‘put a millionaire above you and you’re under his suspicion.’ You can change millionaire to billionaire now but it is the same idea. I can’t help it if I like the Fleet Foxes the Hold Steady, Vampire Weekend also Peter, Bjorn and John. I have a secret thing for The Duchess and The Duke, but I wouldn’t tell anyone. They have a song called Reservoir Park that plays the chords of my soul. Does it make me a racist to like some white bands? The gangster rappers stare at me coldly like I am a member of the wrong gang. Are they racist because they think all music has to be black? I want to live in Eros, everyone else wants government Thanatos. I want euphoria; everyone else distrusts it and wants dysphoria. We play a lot of computer games around the house. Life is like a computer game. We move from level to level of difficulty. We get gold stars for each year of school or work. We gain or lose spiritual powers depending upon which side we fight for. God is not a game program but the energy that makes it run. I get up before it is light to go to work. I drive twelve miles, most of it on an already crowded freeway and find parking on the dark street. My old pick up with the cracked windshield I bought off my father is offset by the low riding Hondas with their modified racing engines that they street drag in Renton. It is a long walk in the dark with the misty rain falling. Most of the spaces near the factory are dedicated to the full time permanent workers, one of which I will never be. At work we all wait in the lunch room. It is like a big holding tank with tables and chairs. Coffee and tea are free, but then they like their workers to be speedy. The temp agent shows up at 6:30 AM. She stands up on the chair and shouts, “Shut up!” The retards around me shout shut up because it is a chance for them to bellow something intimidating at other people. They understand that kind of thing. “Everything’s fine, there will be no layoffs,” she says. “My boss said that the layoffs have been cancelled.” I felt a little better about working like a maniac with the other Bellevue high school losers, for our ten dollar an hour sweat wages. They call us by line number and we walk into the factory in single file and they count us and we clock in on the one time clock that works. There are no windows in the building so it is like a timeless zone that looks all the same weather it’s sunny or raining, light or dark. I hear one guy say to another, “You should have been here yesterday; they gave us pizza and tee shirts.” Just my luck. They lay me off a day and give away the store while my back is turned. It’s like a personal insult. We square up our line and get things ready and then the supervisor starts the belt and we are working. We start opening boxes and dumping the cardboard. Sheer torture, breaking down boxes hour after hour. The radio station they like is so called Rhythm and Blues. The music all sounds like, I want to screw you in the ass baby. The advertisements are all, I need to go into the military because I can’t pay my credit card debts, and by the way you’d look better with plastic surgery. Within thirty minutes I am burned out on their commercial radio station. Already I am feeling factory stupid. The dull wits of the rap loving ghetto children who are so much like each other make the day seem as if it will last forever, my least favorite kind of work. In the factory the third world types seem to be the majority, Africans, Asians, Moslems and Pacific Islanders. The supervising Vietnamese dragon lady is looking skinny, hard and crazy. I have debts to pay and the work is hard. I feel I am going insane with factory fever, why can’t I just win the lottery? Alas I am not a lucky guy. My eyes linger a little too long on a pretty girl. She is the only thing worth looking at in my line of vision but it pisses her off. She is a tattooed work whorse with a don’t see me as a loose woman just because I dress that way attitude. I look away and take the excess cardboard to the dumping station. There is this one light in the building and every time I walk under it the dammed thing either goes off or on like it is responding to my personal electrical field. First break finally comes around. There is no cafeteria or nearby restaurants. The soft drink machines are broken. I sit down at a table in the lunch room feeling like I am wasting my time. A girl takes the chair opposite me. She is wearing a tee shirt with the words Less Talk over her breasts, and More Monkey over her flat stomach, revealing the shape of her mammaries for which our species has been named. I want to scream, “Let’s do it now!” but instead I dial it way back and say, “Hello, how are you?” She seems somewhat disappointed as she answers, “Fine, thank you.” Feeling like a total dummy I say, “My name is Chad, what is yours?” “Courtney,” she answers formally. We make a little polite small talk. She has large sad eyes that reflect the pain I feel in my soul of being a monkey boy trapped in this particular cage in this peculiar hell. I feel as if I can talk to her about anything and she will listen. After break we go back to the slave line. The short white guy who said he had been in Iraq stops and screams once in a while. He stands under the radio when a particular rap song comes on as if bathing in truth. I find this kind of disturbing but it is seen as normal in this environment. I cut boxes until my hands are sore, till my hands curl round the box knife as if it is an appendage. A man with a knife can do tons of work. Lunchtime comes and I flee the building. I can’t stand it anymore. I walk back to my vehicle to eat my bag lunch. I pull ahead to an empty place and park. The sheer meanness of reality leaves me stunned and feeling alone. Humans live in a poverty of inhumanity. Due to the greedy monkey factor we are an experiment that has gone wrong and we are on the verge of total failure. As a group we are unable to take up the path of truth. I’m not like that. I welcome the truth. When I learn new facts I incorporate them and change my thoughts and opinions. I wish there was an authority that could point out the ultimate truth but as a species we seem lost in the dark unable to accept the light. After lunch I am back on the work line. The temp agent comes around to each line and she announces that there are layoffs and says a list is on the cafeteria table. I feel like I’ve just had whiplash. The work changes. Now we open packed boxes of hand held game players from Japan and insert the game into them and repack them. We do a lot of that sort of thing. People running from one end of the line to the other with empty boxes. I watch an African man who likes to carry a huge stack of empty boxes so they can be refilled. I can almost picture him walking in front of thatched huts with red dust swirling around him. I see people run around stacked and palletted boxes with film wrap as fast as possible to tighten the pallet for shipping, insane stuff. We are all working so fast. I want to scream out, “Slow down, this is crazy! If we all work slower at a human pace what can they do?” But I work as fast as they do and keep my mouth shut. There is so little communication, so little expression, so much in life goes by unexplained and is accepted as normal when in reality it is insane. I have to balance my mind in this atmosphere of oppression. When I try to communicate these thoughts to other people all I get is a you’re crazy look and a shunning. Second break finally arrives and I feel exhausted. When the supervisor had announced the layoffs were posted I thought I would not even have to look at them but I did. The names were in no order but I took a quick look anyway and felt ok, but something told me I had to read each name. I did this and found my name, to my surprise among the Asian and Middle Eastern names. I could not believe it. I checked two other lists and found my name, it was no accident. I have no rights under the abusive temp agency, the decision is final. I have no say, they want no feedback, what I think does not count. It’s do what they say or go away, make any trouble and you are out forever. It seems a shame that a native born American should be displaced by an immigrant with a green card. But then they work hard and do not cause trouble. I had made two mistakes. I once worked a day when I was supposed to be laid off and I once plugged a radio into an unused extension cord and an electrician got mad at me and maybe someone did notice the blood on my pants and reported me. I heard some guys talking about what they would do since they were laid off. “We’re going to Afghanistan,” they said, “and get $100,000 and a chance to kill people. We know a guy who did this.” “Is that the right thing to do?” asked one. “Who cares, they’re terrorists, they deserve what they get.” I find it difficult to work with such ignorant people. If only I were a musician or a singer or had been born into a rich family. But I have none of those breaks. I am just one of millions of slaving automatons trying to survive in a dysfunctional economy and left to the vagaries of poverty. After second break is over I trudge back for my last stint of slave labor. I hear a girl say, “Back to the killing floor.” On the line I mention that I’ve been laid off. I can hear the Asian women laugh in a harsh way. The others looked at me with pitiless eyes as if I am a frog on the dissection table, something to be taken apart and discarded. I pull my resolve together; I have to get tough to survive. I watch the skinny guy in the next line over work extraordinarily fast. They won’t lay him off, I think. I find it difficult to compete in a world of specialized freaks. Why do we do this? For money of course. Money is not real, it’s just an agreement and the Fed prints more to fill their own coffers and pay off their mistakes while depressing the value of everyone else’s money. I can see why counterfeiting is so tempting. I am not tempted to rob anyone, its bad karma. My father told me the Buddha said, be happy and pay the price. It’s a spiritual thing. Render unto Caesar what is Caesars. Pay your taxes so you don’t have to go to jail so you can be free to do your own thing. The game is fixed, the board is tilted. As a player of this game I am doomed. All systems take in more energy than they gave back. What is the point in extending the life of my game piece? A bent over old man with graying hair passes by and I shiver. I do not want to be like that guy, working a job like this when he is old enough to be a grandfather. Finally the work day is over but we are not allowed to leave yet. The count came up a game short and we are searched as we leave. People waiting in line alternately swear and joke. We are like an impressed slave gang trying to make the best of a bad situation. Could it get any worse? I hang up my badge and walk out the door and Courtney is standing there with some guy. Like a dork I say, “Hi!” “Meet my boy friend Jax,” she said. I nod my head politely. I walk back to my vehicle feeling bitter and confused. My thoughts are turbulent. The lying bosses, the lying government, treacherous women, the lying TV with its barrage of advertisements seeming to extol insanity, the subtext being that you are mediocre and cannot do any better so you might as well be insanely happy with your failure. I am tired of in your face advertising and extreme this and that because I find it unrealistic. The future looks bleak, all is phony. History is clouded and diluted by rhetoric to mislead the simple because it is easier than thinking for oneself. The traffic is jammed up so I take a short cut and speed down a steep hill. I pick up a hitchhiker in a remote part of Woodinville because I know he is stuck out there without bus service and I decide to help him out. He said he had just returned from a trip to China and was looking for work. I told him about the temp agencies I knew and what they hired for. He pointed out that I had a flat tire so I guess good deeds do come around. I thought of how I might have had an accident speeding down that hill. I fill the tire with air, take the hitch hiker where he wants to go and get the tire fixed. I find my tire was flat from a nail. I suspect it was put there by someone whose space I took at lunch. I work in a harsh environment but I learned my lesson. The mean people have learned how they can force their will on others without opposition. A car drives by blasting a Beatles tune; Everybody’s got something to hide cept me and my monkey. I have heard Beatle songs all of my life, they are like boomer lullabies. The boomers, like that president crazy guy, are ruining the world as they sleepwalk through life. I feel aimless and unmotivated, everything seems pointless. The crooked politicians have set the tone and everything seems to be evil. I find there are few ways I can express my individuality. I am looking for my essence, my meaning and everyone tells me different contradictory things. It is obvious that everyone is insane. Some of the people I know are evil because it is the easiest thing for them to do. In the end I am left alone to draw my own conclusions and they do not make me happy. All projections point toward the worse. I do not think that happy thoughts will help as they will be cancelled out by negative reality. I want to help everyone but I can not save myself. I finally get home feeling worn out. I want peace and quiet but I know I will find a noisy house. I walk in the door, the gamers are gathered in front of the TV and someone shouts, “How did your day go?” I scream, “Arrgghh!” They looked at me startled at first and then join in screaming like its fun until they get tired of it and go back to their TV game. The game players looked like a devolved species playing computer games like a force of habit. Game ends, begin again. It becomes an end all, a be all. The game ends but you were so caught up in it that there was nothing but the game in your mind. The only thing you can do is play again. The reward is dry and empty. If you got a grape or a cherry for getting it right, like a lab monkey it would at least be something. Computer games are mechanical contrivances, they can engage you while playing, but winning is its own reward and to me it means nothing in the end. I go sit in the kitchen, John is at the sink. He turns around, takes one look at me and asks, “Why so glum Chad?” “Lost my job,” says I. “Don’t worry about not working,” says John. “Nobody wants to go to a job they hate and most people hate their jobs and would rather not work there. They’re all dying for a little slack time in their life. Not working puts you ahead of that game. You’ve got slack and slack is the most important thing there is. You’ve got nothing but time. You’re free to be yourself and do what you want. The very rich and the very poor are similar that way.” I like John with his cynical inverse take on reality but he is an extremist who can easily go over the top. “You don’t seem to have any trouble with work,” I say. “I am finding it difficult to compete with the Ukrainian Slavs. There is a whole bunch of them at the metal shop and they never stop. The word Slav means slave,” says John. Even John is having problems I realize and a great weariness overtakes me. “I gotta go lay down for awhile,” I say. “Yeah, take care of yourself,” John says sincerely. I walk back through the living room, a Bob Dylan disc is playing on the stereo. “I hate hippies and folk music,” Hillbilly says. I continue on to my room and go upstairs and remember my father had tried to explain that less than 10% of the youth at his time had been hippies. The other 90% were the rapacious greedy who had overrun the Haight and stolen everything and ruined it. Grandma had said, “It’s a dog eat dog world and devil take the hindmost.” I go into my room and close the door. My parent’s house in the suburbs is still the same quiet place. They don’t hear the all night talking of the corner people, the gunshots and sirens and crashes and fights I’ve heard. I lay down. My father studied odd religions like Zen. He gave me a book called Naked Awareness. It says there is nothing, I can believe it. Everything men do is starting to make me sick. It is a pointless existence that only breeds pain. I sleep for like five minutes and then I can hear people at the door. The usual Friday party has already started. The music has changed to hip hop rap and I see problems with it, like the stupid gang bangers. The music is too loud; I can’t sleep and feel restless so I go downstairs. There is a keg of beer on the coffee table and the alcoholics are belligerently yelling about something. Some of the people who were invited brought this thug in his early 20’s called Lanky who sings out phrases of gangsta rap real loud and boasts of his prison time and the children he has had with different women. He is alternately charming and threatening. He has his followers, they defer to him as leader because he is big and well versed in evil. Basically he is full of shit and my guess is he probably cried like a little girl when they raped him in prison. I go back to my room; there is a couple screwing in my bed so I leave and go back downstairs. The thought of the lovers upstairs in my bed are stabbing at my lonely heart. I finally can’t stand it anymore and brake down and have some beer. It tasted bitter and made me woozy and tired, hated it. Half a beer and I’m loopy. I guess you would say I am a straight razor but I would say I’m sensitive and it’s hard to be sensitive around insensitive people. It’s something you have to hide or they try to hurt you for their own amusement. I walk down the hall and look into a room; the harsh acrid smell hits me first. They offer me some crack. I smile and wave them away but I am in turmoil. I don’t even want it in my house; it leads to hard core instability. They are totally wired except for Daniel who has done so much that nothing can affect him. Two guys are so loaded that their bodies tremble from being over amped. “I didn’t feel it we better do some more,” one says to the other. I want to break the pipe and tell them no more but who am I, their mother? They would just get another pipe and I would get a bad reputation. It’s considered bad form to interfere in someone’s life or tell them they are doing wrong. Trying to be responsible can just cause problems. Rat them out for their evil deeds and you can end up dead. Studies showed that rats and monkeys will take cocaine and not eat until they die. The crack addict is similar. The rush goes all the way down the body, igniting every cell. There is nothing like crack they say. No, I won’t even try it once; I’ve seen what it can do. I leave and look into another room. The pot smokers in there are giggling about something incomprehensible. I just feel frustrated trying to tune into their train of thought and I go back to the living room. I see the lovers in the living room; they are small, thin, fresh looking. They both have long straight hair. You can tell they’re a matched couple. They could be salt and pepper shakers. I go back up to my room, there is a huge wet spot on the bed, “yeah, thanks,” I say to no one. I mop up the spot and change the sheets. I go back downstairs and try to mingle but I am having one of those existentialist moments. Life is filled with bleak possibilities. I feel I am wasting my time waiting for the end of days. I don’t know what to do, there seems to be nothing I can do. I am held tight in the iron grip of reality and no matter what I do it remains inflexible. I am a little human, I am fucked, and there is no hope. Courtney shows up in the mix and comes up to me. “I heard you were laid off, sorry,” she says. “Oh it’s OK. I am so burned out on that place anyway.” “You doing anything?” she asks. “No, I would leave this party but I live here.” “Show me your room,” she says. “What about Jax?” I ask. “What about him, he’s not here,” she answers coolly. She takes my hand and I lead her to my bedroom. We sit on the bed and talk and kiss and we end up making sweet monkey love. I was so glad I had changed the sheets and dried the mattress somewhat. Afterwards our bodies lie in an embrace in bed. “I want to get away from the madness and my parents,” she says. “I want to get away from the house. Hey, do you want to get an apartment together?” I ask “Ok,” she answers. In the early morning I hear her car start up and drive away.
Copyright © 2009 Michael Potter |