by Cat Oars
The Starving Artist
and the Chimp
A Cat Oars Publication
Copyright 2011 Cat Oars
Thank you for your support.
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Talker’s Question
Notes
Part I
I FOUND A STRANGE TEXT in a notebook on Saturday. Someone left it behind at the park near my office. Does anyone know who wrote it or what it means? I have copied the contents below:
I was at my computer, reading the entries on the Craigslist Literary & Writing forum and one in particular caught my attention. It was from a writer in another city. He posted with the handle of Talker and had an idea, but wasn’t sure he had found the best way to execute it. Maybe it was a she. But the subject seems a very “guy” thing to write about. So let’s say the writer is a male.
For the purposes of his story, his starving artist had to come into possession of a chimp. The writer’s first thought was that the way to do this would be to have the starving artist work at the zoo. But then he wondered if there were a better way to get the starving artist and the chimp together, so he was asking for the participants in the forum to share their ideas.
I had to get back to work, so I signed off. But the writer’s question stuck in my mind. And I thought I came up with a good idea. But by the time I returned to the forum, someone named Ghost of Majestic had posted an idea that was similar – but not identical – to mine. He suggested making the starving artist an animal activist who liberates the chimp from a lab.
I had also thought the chimp would be liberated from a lab, but I thought the starving artist would’ve come upon the lab by chance – passing by, delivering a package, something like that – not through activism. Ghost of Majestic’s idea was a good one, though, and as it was pretty close to mine, I didn’t add my contribution and went back to work.
But the story intrigued me and I starting thinking more about Ghost of Majestic’s idea. The idea was pretty good, but I thought there was a problem with it: Freeing lab chimps implies working in a community, and I didn’t think our starving artist (it was, at that point, “our” starving artist, Talker’s, Ghost of Majestic’s and mine) would be a member of any kind of group. He’d be more of a loner. Then I got to thinking that maybe I should combine the original poster’s concept, Ghost of Majestic’s idea and mine. And so I decided I would write the starving-artist-and-chimp story this way:
Our protagonist lives in an industrial part of town. He has a loft. Maybe he is a painter. Or a sculptor. Yeah, that’s it, a sculptor. He needs a big block of wood. Or a big slab of marble. How does he get one? Through a friend. A stripper. She lives in the loft next door. Or above his. Or under his. I’ll work that out once I start typing. One of the guys at the bar where she dances is an Indonesian businessman. He imports wood. And tobacco products. She has been to his office, picking up a case of the free flavored cigarettes he promised her during a lap dance. She saw the blocks of wood.
Maybe the story begins with a sex scene. The starving artist is in bed with the stripper. He tells her he needs material to sculpt. She tells him about the blocks of wood.
The starving artist breaks into the Indonesian businessman’s warehouse after dark that night, once she’s given him the all-clear by phoning to say she’s stripping for the Indonesian businessman. Once inside, the starving artist finds cages covered with tarps. He hears shuffling. He uncovers one of the cages and it’s a screaming chimp! The Indonesian businessman, the starving artist learns from documents near the cages – also imports chimps from Africa that he sells to big pharma companies for experiments.
Suddenly the animal activists enter. Mistaking him for the chimp importer, they jump on him, tie him to a chair, gag him and lecture him as they liberate the animals. They leave. Except one of the chimps doesn’t run out with the others. One of the chimps stays behind and sits down on the floor and is now looking at our starving artist. And this chimp, this chimp can talk.
“You. Need. Me.” he says. This is true of the original poster, of Ghost of Majestic and me, and our protagonist. We all need the chimp.
And now it’s my chimp and it will serve my purposes. The chimp has a limited vocabulary. He will not speak often as the narrative develops and progresses. (The basic arc of which will be our protagonist’s flight from the Indonesian businessman, who is pursuing him because one of the blocks of wood the starving artist steals had $1 million worth of heroin hidden inside, and the chimp was the businessman’s personal talking chimp, and you’d want your personal talking chimp back, too.) But when the chimp does speak, he will say the perfect words for the occasion in poetic chimpspeak. He will have a vocabulary of 75 words. I will list them before I begin writing the story. However, as the author, I reserve the right to modify the list, so that when the chimp speaks, it will be perfect. That will be the story I will write.
No, that’s not true. I will not write that story. I don’t write stories of that type. I write personal stories of intimate discoveries and transformations, stories about the mystery of love and the acquiring of knowledge and wisdom. However, if I did write stories of that type, talking chimp stories, that would be a fun story to write. Maybe I will transform myself into that type of writer just so I can write that story. But I know myself and I know that I won’t. This was as close as I’m every going to get to that sort of transformation. Really, it was just a fun story to think about.
* * *
That was the end of the writing in the notebook I found. Can anyone tell me who wrote this? Maybe that person wants it back. More important, though, there’s something I want to tell the author.
After I read it, I took the bus back home. It was a long bus ride, and I thought about the talking chimp. What would it be like to be a talking chimp? I imagined the story from the chimp’s point of view. Maybe the chimp should be the narrator? I was dozing off on the bus and I had a dream.
I was in my house and the phone rang. When I answered, a voice said: “Go. To. The. Window.” I said: “Which window?” The voice said: “The. Kitchen. Window.” So I looked out my kitchen window, and there was a chimp with a telephone looking at me. It was terrifying. Why was it terrifying? Because at that moment, my point of view changed. I found myself looking at my house from the point of view of the chimp and I saw myself looking out of the kitchen window! I was the chimp! Then I woke up. I was still on the bus.
Suddenly, a terrible realization hit me: I wasn’t dreaming that I was a chimp; the chimp was dreaming he was me. My life was a chimp’s dream. The chimp dreamed I found the notebook and rode the bus home and sat down at my computer to type this. And the chimp will dream I am going back to work on Monday and whatever happens after that will just be more of the chimp’s dream. And when he wakes up, that will be the end.
But that can’t be true. I’m a real person. I’m not just a chimp’s dream. Although – how would we really know? How could we prove it?
Part II
MONDAY CAME AROUND and I went to work. It was the last day of my job as the editor of the opinion pages of the local Herald. I planned on spending the day cleaning out my desk. But only a few minutes after I got there, the receptionist paged me to the front.
A disheveled man was standing at the counter. He told me his name was Bill, and he handed me a poem. He said it was important that I publish it in the next day’s paper. I said I would consider it. He said he was sure I would do more than just consider it. I didn’t pay too much attention to him. After all, the newsroom was pretty active. An election was taking place on Tuesday, and the
city was still abuzz over the escape of all the animals in the zoo. Gazelles were wandering around town and snakes were slithering down the streets.
And also, I remembered the notebook I found. There was a reference to the Literary & Writing forum on Craigslist. So I thought I’d post my request to find the author of the notebook there. While I was seeing if I could find any clues, another post there intrigued me. It was written by ImAnAsshole.
I’ve reproduced it here:
The high had lasted days. Bill crept from under stoops, to attics, to back yards. He wrote poetry in the bushes. He stole pen and paper, kept a P.O. Box, and lived for art. Sometimes he’d meet a woman and go home with her – after all, a starving artist looks the same as a dieting rich kid gone slumming. But the writer’s block started again.
He hadn’t eaten yet that day. He was cheerfully rummaging through the dumpster next to the bagel shop, but there wasn’t anything to be had. All he could think was “Henry Miller.” He wandered the streets that night, thinking “Henry Miller… Henry Miller. Why am I thinking of Henry Miller?” He hopped on a crowded bus, hoping to make it to St. Anthony’s for a free meal, even though they already stopped serving. “Henry Miller was hungry in Paris, and I am hungry here.” Seeing no line out front, Bill felt like he wasn't going to eat again, ever. A few doors down, a puff of smoke rose from above two men… a couple of Vietnam vets. They eyeballed Bill.
The taller asked: “You jonesin’?”
“I’m hungry…”
“Here’s a couple of bucks,” the other guy said. “Go get us three burgers.”
“Hey man,” the taller guy said, “Why don’t you leave your bag with us?”
He leaned in closer.
“We got some weed man, want some?” Bill hoped smoke would ease the ill effects of his hunger.
The taller vet pulled out a sticky, grimy pipe and crushed some buds into it. Then he handed Bill the lighter. Bill inhaled… When he returned with a bag of burgers, the men were gone. So was his bag. They took his words! The high wore off.
Days later, Bill was hiding in the back yard of his aunt’s house. He had stolen new notebooks, and new pens, and composed new texts, but he was suddenly aware of the bleakness of his situation.
“I’ve become a street person. A derelict,” he said to himself.
Bill took a walk down the beach. He still couldn’t believe he’d given his savings away. He knew his family thought he’d been murdered – that was the point of disappearing the way he had… well, part of it anyway.
Seagulls flew overhead, and the autumn tide bore erratic swells.
“I am a seagull too. I live upon scraps. Should I write this down?”
Bill was too hungry to tell whether he was on to something good. Not this moment.
“Shit! It’s all shit!” Bill screamed. The afternoon sunbathers started to gather up their belongings so they could flee the scene.
He started to weep loudly. While he cried, a voice whispered in his head: “Is this art? Are you an oil painting? Is this performance art?”
After an hour, Bill dried up.
“I need a muse.”
He started walking towards his aunt’s house. As he strolled past the zoo, he decided it would be a good place to collect his thoughts.
And execute another plan.
He returned later that evening, and when he did, he wore a trench coat that hid a pair of wire cutters he’d stolen from a hardware store on the way. He hopped over the zoo wall. Pacing about, he was alone with the animals and the starlight.
“Isn’t this what poetry should be?”
A chimp was watching him. Curious, Bill walked to the animal and put his face to the wire fence. Half-expecting a bite, he was surprised to be kissed. “I will free you,” Bill said. So he pulled out the wire cutters. And then he liberated the rest of the chimps.
And he didn’t stop there.
He freed most of the primates, the penguins, a crippled hawk, and the prairie dogs. He fled with the chimp while it was still night. The moon heard the laughter of the animals. Bill returned to his aunt’s back yard, crept under a bush a fell asleep.
The chimp woke Bill with licking.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her. The sun was already overhead. His aunt was likely at work. He opened her unlocked back door and walked up the steps. As he’d suspected, nobody was home. The chimp helped herself to the persimmon in the fruit bowl in the middle of the kitchen table, next to the pile of newspapers and mail. Bill took out some paper and began to write.
The chimp was full, and so was Bill’s page. It was a masterpiece about the night he freed the animals. Their fate was the artist’s fate ¬– slaves to humanity. It was his apologia, so he signed the poem under his name, and decided he’d make photocopies and bring it to every newspaper in town. Then he fled his aunt's house without eating and returned to the stoop underneath his old Victorian flat. He wired up the place with light bulbs, as the character did in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” It was warm and bright. The chimp would come and go as she pleased, and he would write. Dozens of flawless pages of verse spilled from his pen. He didn’t leave his under-stoop for a week. He channeled the voices of humanity’s slaves and wrote an indictment of modern life. He spoke for robot and chimp, artists and women… outcasts, and the insane. When it was finished, he fell asleep. He dreamed he was in his childhood bedroom. There was a poster of the X-Men, and there were his stuffed animals all in a pile. The monkey! What was its name? He could remember, but now he felt the chimp in his arms. He was hungry and cold, but she kept him warm. She stayed with him until her warmth was no longer enough.
* * *
So ended IAA’s post.
Then I read Bill’s poem, and I understood:
A Chimp’s Kiss
I, Bill C. Schneiderman, do hereby declare
That from this year forth, this date shall bear
The name Animal Liberation Day
All across the mighty nation of U.S.A.
And that is in honor of what I created
By seeing that the beasts were liberated:
In the name of all robots and slaves
I freed the giraffes from their pen, the chimps from their cage
Flamingos, go! Polar bears, dare!
Each zoo animal, no matter where
Shall know the meaning of what it is to be free
They shall roam the streets, climb the trees!
And so from the depth of our inhibited beingness
We shall recognize all of our animal needingness
To burst forth from our cages, real and unreal
To breathe, to see, to touch, to feel
The lesson we take from the zoo liberation
Is that, like the beasts, we crave validation.
And what did I learn as I followed my bliss?
There is nothing so sweet as a kindly chimp’s kiss.
So each year we will gather and set the beasts free
And teach the children to cheer us with glee
So that when they grow up, these values they’ll know:
When our essence is love, brightly we glow.
I thought that I knew what was better for Bill C. Schneiderman than he did, so I took the poem with me when I left the Herald after my last day there. Due to my desire to protect him from the authorities, his work went unpublished – like that of so many of our boldest poets. As I walked home in the twilight, I thought I sensed some motion in an alley on my left. There were two reptilian eyes staring at me from under a pile of rags, cardboard and other detritus of urban life. Or maybe it was just my imagination. I kept walking.
Part III
THE NEXT DAY, I started my new job as an editor at a publishing company. After the manager of my department showed me around and introduced me to everybody, an intern passed along a pile of manuscripts for my consideration. Some of them had been submitted by agents, but some of them had come unsolicited – the slu
sh pile, it’s called. I was intrigued by one of these because it didn’t appear to follow the standard format. And it was not pristine, either. There were some food stains on it. And some fingerprints. And some of the pages were crumpled. And the paragraphs weren’t all indented correctly. I wondered why it was there. I read the first few paragraphs. It was an angry declaration by a hungry captive. It didn’t have a title page.
I decided it was a mistake, just some crazy rantings that wound up on my desk by accident. So I stopped reading.
I logged onto Craigslist again and checked into what was going on at the Literary & Writing forum for any further clues as to the identity of the author of the notebook. Among the discussions of best sellers, classics and questions about grammar and publishing, I noticed Sheisty, too, was writing about a chimp. Something is going on here, I thought.
This is what Sheisty wrote:
Lenny only rented the fucking place ’cause it was cheap. And if he had to take care of the owner’s pet chimp all summer, well why the hell not? A hundred bucks a month for a beach house where he could write all day and finally enjoy life, after a winter trying to survive the bastard streets of New York City.
Yeah, he could get real used to this. Only from day one, man. that motherfucking chimp. Always making noise in the upstairs room – flinging shit at him when he came in to feed it. embarrassing him when he took it out on the beach. (He thought the fucking monster would help him pick up chicks. Ha! Just the opposite, as luck would have it.) The final straw came one day when he was in the middle of one of his most inspired passages, and the chimp started jumping around so vigorously upstairs that a vase fell off the shelf, onto his typewriter, and dislodged the space key. The goddamn space key, of all keys! He stormed up the stairs and kicked open the door. The chimp was waiting for him. He took a fighting stance, and so did the chimp. They circled and then the chimp threw a few right jabs, a mean left, another right! Lights out for Lenny.