motionless for hours.
Frederick was good: he’d picked up plenty of coaching on
Forest Lawn
and was quick with the fetching. And there were two or three other apes who were awarded full rations of colored beans. Being older, Stroheim was less moldable. For this reason I think they cut him more slack. Certainly we rarely heard him scream, and when he knuckled back into the shelter he never seemed cowed and was soon displaying away boneheadedly in his own little fiefdom. I didn’t rise to it. I was slipping into the lassitude of the program. We all were.
Life shrank to hunger and the ugly-stick, the pulsing pain of your bruises and masturbation. Dimly you’d see the children who visited your shelter recoil, but you couldn’t stop yourself hunting for a little pang of pleasure in your misery. We were all at it, ten, fifteen, twenty times a day, and each time I vowed it would be my last. But my brain would circle around again, and coming across nothing else to rest on or hope for, I’d find myself back where I started, looking for that tiny throblet of pleasure, the only one going.
And worse, I was beginning to starve. Sure, I was getting my colored beans, but the center served up a menu heavily slanted toward fucking
bananas.
I could manage a nibble, but then my gorge would rise at the memory of the mamba, and I’d never be able to finish the things. Bonzo grew fat on my leavings. And I fell gradually into a disenchantment with the humans. I fretted and doubted, worse than I ever had at Trefflich’s. There were things I wasn’t seeing. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake, and you were just another bunch of mad apes who didn’t really know what you were doing. This treadmill of starving and beating—what was it
for
Was rehab
permanent?
For a month we followed the routine, and my mind began to close down when I wasn’t “on.” Stroheim adopted a compulsive shuttle from his back wall to our partition, which he slammed against scornfully at every third or fourth pass. Tyrone and I were too fazed to notice him, too busy rocking back and forth and dreaming of elsewhere. I was up on the escarpment again, in moonlight, teaching Tony Gentry how to fetch wild custard apples for me, when Stroheim erupted through the forest and into our shelter.
I think he was as surprised as we were to find that the wooden frame of the partition, which he’d been slamming against for five or six days, had finally come loose. His follow-through tangled him up in the ripped hangnail of mesh, giving Tyrone and me a briefsecond to consider our options—but when I glanced at my shelter-mate, he’d already swiveled around and was presenting his rear. Fantastic, I thought, just great: a submission display, and he hasn’t even
done
anything yet. Stroheim was propping himself up and bristling, though whether at me or at the dumb, winded square of wire, I didn’t know. The world, probably—Stroheim just bristled at it in general. And now he began to pant-hoot, spiraling swiftly into a scream as he unhooked himself. There were no exits here, no opportunities for calming down and cooling off, and I was terrified. I could submit, I suppose. But to submit to Stroheim, who had cavorted while the others broke my mother’s body? I was incapable of it.
He came at me as I sprang onto the front mesh, and I was able to climb high enough to evade the impact. The wire twanged and bucked in my grip. I didn’t have a plan, but as Stroheim circled back around and leaped at me, I instinctively let go of the mesh, dropped underneath him into the straw and scuttled around the side of the shattered partition frame into Stroheim’s shelter, pulling the frame after me, where it jammed against the wall. Furious, he slammed into it, but the partition held. He set himself to batter it down, still shrieking, and I sat waiting for him and for the end.
Wherever you were—inside a shelter or out, among humans or chimpanzees—it seemed the jungle came after you.
Frederick was good: he’d picked up plenty of coaching on
Forest Lawn
and was quick with the fetching. And there were two or three other apes who were awarded full rations of colored beans. Being older, Stroheim was less moldable. For this reason I think they cut him more slack. Certainly we rarely heard him scream, and when he knuckled back into the shelter he never seemed cowed and was soon displaying away boneheadedly in his own little fiefdom. I didn’t rise to it. I was slipping into the lassitude of the program. We all were.
Life shrank to hunger and the ugly-stick, the pulsing pain of your bruises and masturbation. Dimly you’d see the children who visited your shelter recoil, but you couldn’t stop yourself hunting for a little pang of pleasure in your misery. We were all at it, ten, fifteen, twenty times a day, and each time I vowed it would be my last. But my brain would circle around again, and coming across nothing else to rest on or hope for, I’d find myself back where I started, looking for that tiny throblet of pleasure, the only one going.
And worse, I was beginning to starve. Sure, I was getting my colored beans, but the center served up a menu heavily slanted toward fucking
bananas.
I could manage a nibble, but then my gorge would rise at the memory of the mamba, and I’d never be able to finish the things. Bonzo grew fat on my leavings. And I fell gradually into a disenchantment with the humans. I fretted and doubted, worse than I ever had at Trefflich’s. There were things I wasn’t seeing. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake, and you were just another bunch of mad apes who didn’t really know what you were doing. This treadmill of starving and beating—what was it
for
Was rehab
permanent?
For a month we followed the routine, and my mind began to close down when I wasn’t “on.” Stroheim adopted a compulsive shuttle from his back wall to our partition, which he slammed against scornfully at every third or fourth pass. Tyrone and I were too fazed to notice him, too busy rocking back and forth and dreaming of elsewhere. I was up on the escarpment again, in moonlight, teaching Tony Gentry how to fetch wild custard apples for me, when Stroheim erupted through the forest and into our shelter.
I think he was as surprised as we were to find that the wooden frame of the partition, which he’d been slamming against for five or six days, had finally come loose. His follow-through tangled him up in the ripped hangnail of mesh, giving Tyrone and me a briefsecond to consider our options—but when I glanced at my shelter-mate, he’d already swiveled around and was presenting his rear. Fantastic, I thought, just great: a submission display, and he hasn’t even
done
anything yet. Stroheim was propping himself up and bristling, though whether at me or at the dumb, winded square of wire, I didn’t know. The world, probably—Stroheim just bristled at it in general. And now he began to pant-hoot, spiraling swiftly into a scream as he unhooked himself. There were no exits here, no opportunities for calming down and cooling off, and I was terrified. I could submit, I suppose. But to submit to Stroheim, who had cavorted while the others broke my mother’s body? I was incapable of it.
He came at me as I sprang onto the front mesh, and I was able to climb high enough to evade the impact. The wire twanged and bucked in my grip. I didn’t have a plan, but as Stroheim circled back around and leaped at me, I instinctively let go of the mesh, dropped underneath him into the straw and scuttled around the side of the shattered partition frame into Stroheim’s shelter, pulling the frame after me, where it jammed against the wall. Furious, he slammed into it, but the partition held. He set himself to batter it down, still shrieking, and I sat waiting for him and for the end.
Wherever you were—inside a shelter or out, among humans or chimpanzees—it seemed the jungle came after you.
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