Posts Tagged ‘relationships’

Has a spider monkey ever had its way with your ear?

Thursday, July 9th, 2015

Has a spider monkey ever had its way with your ear? I don’t recommend it.

There was a time when I was a young, vibrant revolutionary. I thought of myself that way. In the sixties, 80% of the people my age supported the Viet Nam War…as long as they didn’t have to fight in it. They saw their future wrapped securely in the American flag. But I was a believer in Jefferson’s dream: “the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” I wasn’t a tyrant and I wasn’t  sure if I was enough of a patriot to shed blood, but I envisioned myself like Jefferson, writing meaningful and trenchant tracts while fucking my brains out.

All around me was change. The streets seethed with protests and marches mostly peaceful, sometimes not. Civil rights, women’s rights, and nascent gay rights movements were trying to shake the country awake. Clearly, we stopped shaking way too early. Permeating all of it was Vietnam. Universal draft made the war something that was on everyone’s mind whether they red, white and blue approved or not. The hallowed halls of academe reverberated with debates, arguments, fist-fights, rage, and whimpering. And that was just the sociology department.

Twenty percent of nation’s youth were willing to throw their souls into the jaws of civil and not so civil disobedience for ideals. We clung to our student deferments like life preservers in a roiling ocean knowing that we were lucky to be in school and not on the front lines.  Yes, we were cowards and yes, we hid behind those who truly were on the front line. But, in our own lily-livered, yellow-bellied, pusillanimous, chicken-hearted ways, we fought the good fight.

And into this vortex I stepped, bright-eyed, holding the cause dear to my heart.  I was a mix of conservative and socialist. I listened to every side and tried to find a common, Confucian middle-path through the insanity. My heart was equally divided between the left and the right.

I was betrothed, if that’s the right word. Not engaged, certainly not married, but unmistakably attached to my high school sweetheart by a mixture of love, loyalty, and the comfort of the familiar. No longer a Catholic, something of a Taoist without realizing it, I was unwilling to tell my devout mother that the church and I no longer saw eye to eye on any level.  All the religious school torture I had gone through was for naught except that it created in me a true loathing for anything that even had a whiff of cult. I was educated but no more Catholic than it served me and it only served me in my mother’s presence. I wasn’t afraid of my mother, I was afraid of damaging the relationship we had. You see, I had a catholic size guilt built around relationships.

I was nineteen and there were no end of women around the campus. Every form of them. Women whose voices made me melt though the rest of them didn’t. Women whose bodies made me harden even as their voices or opinions ate away, bite by excruciating bite, at my lizard-brain interest. Occasionally, there was a woman who had body, mind, and soul. And I knew, had I not been betrothed, that she was the one … Until the next one. You see, young men want to fuck every thing that moves … and some things that don’t. Men don’t want to know women’s names or get to know their friends, unless the friends are other women. They just want sex. If they, perish the thought, become friends with the women, it just muddies the water and could lead, perish the thought, to love. Then it’s a whole other story.

One of those next ones brings me back to the spider monkey. She and I, the woman not the monkey, had been in a couple of classes together and were working on a project for one of those classes. She rented a house near the campus and I went over with at least a modicum of hope that she and I could collaborate on something more intimate. You see, I had not strayed but, as Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist everything but temptation.”

She was a raven-haired, deep-voiced vixen who generally wore clothes that, in today’s standards weren’t revealing, but in that era revealed just enough to tweak my good, Catholic boy’s holy, little heart with a lustful wrench. I stepped into her house which gave the feeling that Woodstock and the commune were just out the back door.

A wonderland of macramé and tie-dye hung from every conceivable spot framing her like a hippie portrait. She wore something that I immediately assumed was God’s answer to my forbidden prayer—had I believed in God. A translucent muumuu. The words  muumuu and sexy sound like they should never be used in the same sentence. But…oh, my…

The dress’ patterns made her body appear and disappear, making me contort in all sorts of uncomfortable and obvious ways to manipulate her, myself, and the sun into the perfect angle.

We cracked a couple of beers and sat down in her living room. Jimi Hendrix played in the background and she smiled. I took the smile as encouragement but deep down I suspected that she was laughing at the effect she was having on me. I was, after all, listing heavily to my right side to try and get everything lined up. I was on the verge of broaching the subject of the 800 pound gorilla in the room when in bounded Mogo, her pet spider monkey.

I have to preface this by telling you that young children and animals like me. It’s not anything I do on purpose. They just do. And Mogo was no exception. He was on me like police on a hoodie-wearing black kid. Mogo’s proud, human mother, clapped and cooed her approval of Mogo and I getting to know each other. I didn’t mind. Mogo was friendly and cute and stared at me with those knowing, kindred eyes that speak more profoundly of evolution than anything ever written. He took one of my fingers, smelled it, made a face and a sound that made the woman clap and coo more enthusiastically. He touched my face, groomed my hair for a while—yes, I had hair then— before plopping down on my lap giving the impression he had found a new home.

The look on the woman’s face was one of finding the gold at the end of a rainbow. I had passed a  major test. She moved close. Her smell, her voice, that fact that she was much smarter than I, overwhelmed me. I leaned toward her. She toward me. The electricity we generated battled incense for dominance of the air.

I don’t know much about monkeys but I know Mogo was jealous. Of whom, I was not certain. He jumped up between us, grabbed my head with four prehensile paws, wrapped his tail around my throat and screamed while he tried to mate with my right ear. The woman screamed and flapped her hands uselessly and I would have been truly peeved had I not been doing the same thing.  Kind of proves the point that I wasn’t patriot enough to bleed for a cause.

The screaming and flapping spurred Mogo’s desire. Something wet touched my ear. I managed to get a hand between my virgin ear and Mogo’s growing interest. I tried to pry him off. Something about that movement broke the woman’s shock. Scolding and prying loose Mogo’s incredibly strong fingers–taking a little of my flesh with them–she was a flurry of activity. Between the two of us, we were able to dislodge monkey from sexual conquest. Mogo angrily scampered up a floor lamp, screeched and masturbated. Isn’t it amazing how much men are like monkeys?

I checked my ear for damage and she apologized profusely as she dabbed blood off my forehead and neck, both victims of  Mogo’s grasp. I could not wait to get out of there. The ironic thing was that her ministrations put me, her, and the sun in perfect alignment. I made my excuses and left wishing her and Mogo my best.

She and I ran into each other on campus once in a while and she made straightforward advances but Mogo had taught me that being true to my betrothed was the righteous path … Until the next one. To this day, I wonder if Mogo ever found the right ear for him.