The Monkey and the Sloth: A Fable

                      The worst phone call I ever got?

          Can you pick me up at eight? a.m. Flight 689.

          So I arrived at seven-thirty, but I didn’t see you until ten. Just in case, I thought. You know the airlines nowadays.

          You were a bit nervous about how the family would digest the announcement. A café? you suggested.

          Coffee, you told the waitress.

          Bloody Mary, I muttered, sunglasses still perched on my nose.

          A little early to be drinking, isn’t it? you asked. Were you concerned, or just being decorous?

          Please, I lit a cigarette. It’s eleven in the morning. This is a late start.




                      Commitment. So that’s what this is about. Before now, if anyone had ever asked me if I thought you’d changed, I’d have said no.

          The hair — still blonde. Eyes still blue. Beauty mark right where it should be, in the same place as Marilyn Monroe.

          Will you witness?

          Witness?

          Sort of like a best man. You know, for the ceremony.

          What about your brother?

          You know I always loved you best.

          I inhaled a deep swig of tabasco and tomato and nodded my head. My face winced. So this is what it feels like to be loved best.

          What’s the matter?

          Nothing. I could taste the drink through my nose. Needs more horseradish.




                      I wanted to be Santa Claus.

          What I was was a childless Medea. I had no excuse for my jealousy. Or my rage.

          But jealousy is petty, one of the lesser emotions. So I suppose that’s excusable. And I could keep it a secret.

          Rage, though. Why rage? Is rage just jealousy that has reached boiling point? Pettiness that can no longer keep its lid on but does not want to be revealed as pettiness?

          Not to beg sympathy, but believe me — I had my reasons. The story of Jason and his whore is a lot less interesting.




                      There’s always something left out. For instance, what did I know about you that you hadn’t yet told him? Would I be quizzed when we finally met? How would you introduce me? What did he know about me?

          I want to ask you… But I couldn’t.

          What?

          Never mind.

          You better give me the keys.

          You never mind. Don’t provoke me.

          How come you’re so edgy?

          I’m always a bit slow in the morning. I guess you wouldn’t remember.

          I remember.

          My favorite song? The book I kept on the nightstand that I never had a chance to finish because someone couldn’t control his hands? Quick. What color are my eyes?

          Wrong. They’ve changed. Contact lenses.

          It was a stroke of luck, I suppose, that wandering through the dense dangerous woods one day you happened upon your sleeping virgin. It’s not that I’m not glad for you. It’s just that it’s a kick in the head to have spent my life disclaiming such faery tales and then to have one come true in my own back yard. If I had known it required unconsciousness to make you into a Prince Charming, I would have feigned sleep for a thousand years. But — silly me! — I always preferred to be awake and on the lookout for happiness.

          Insomnia is the result of not being able to settle for the first thing that comes along. Prince Charming, before lying one on that dreaming faker, had already been promised to a distant kingdom’s princess. They left her out because it would have upset the heavens to include her in the tale. It would have turned a starry romance into a black hole with a point of view. What happened was the poor jilted princess folded in upon herself and devoured her own heart like the black hole eats light. The kiss she had to give had been rejected and she was not permitted to roam the forests alone — the forests, filled with mischievous dwarves and scheming trolls just waiting to kidnap and imprison a princess. For it was known, dwarves and trolls did funny things to the virgins they captured. So, until she was married, she’d have to be content with the castle-tower.


          How could anyone put up with what you call your perfectionism, but what I call your complaining? Must you bite your nails down to nothing? Must you stay out so late? Must you smoke in the bedroom? Must you read so much?

          Technically they were questions; but, they were really admonishments. If we hadn’t grown up together in New York City, I’d have sworn you were from one of those square states where even the corn lines up single-file waiting to be married-off. I took long showers just to escape the constant buzz of the criticisms sliding high-pitched down your nasal passages.

          Must you always use up all the hot water?

          I guess I’m just very dirty.




                      You’re not the marrying kind, the settling down type. Oh boy! I thought. How had we gotten on this topic?

          What? I’m settled. Why is it that when it came to you I always sounded defensive?

          You have too much going through your head all the time. That’s why you fidget; you’re never satisfied.

          I’m not fidgeting. I’m stirring. So what if I’d been playing with the celery stalk in my drink for ten minutes. I like things well-mixed. So is that what you are? Satisfied?

          Is that a trick question?

          Touché. Yes, it was.

          You always underestimated my intelligence. You do it with everyone.

          You just got used to me and could keep up. Most people can’t.

          Most people wouldn’t think it worth trying.

          Let’s not fight.

          You always liked a good fight.

          I’m tired.

          That was another one — must you argue all the time about everything?

          Aha! See, that’s one of your strategies. ‘I’m tired’ means ‘I’ve had enough of you.’ It’s a put-down.

          I don’t like to waste time. Or breath.

          That’s not it. You just always think you’re right.

          When you’re on the outside looking in, your one consolation is that you can’t help but be right. You come to realize that life is a complicated interrogation filled with trick questions. A game. An argument. You come to realize it, but you don’t accept it. So, it slows you down. You’ve got the same goal as the rabbits, but the energy of the turtles.




                      So?

          So what?

          Will you do it?

          It makes me uncomfortable. Marriage. Why? It’s an outdated cliché. Does it make you any happier than you already are? Does it change anything?

          You get more cynical every time I see you. Being jaded is easy. That in itself is a cliché, and it wore out long before marriage, believe me! You’re as much of a cliché as I am.

          Aren’t we all? That’s what metaphors and church services are for. There is no silver-lining; there isn’t even a cloud.

          I give up with you.

          Now who’s jaded?

          You’re impossible.

          I’ll do it.




                      We’re our own fables and faery tales.

          To me, you and I are in the same tree, climbing and climbing for no other reason except climbing is what we do. Of course, there’s food in the tree and occasional amusement. On the jungle floor there are predators drooling over the prospect of one of us falling out.

          You climb fast. You swing from branch to branch. You’re reckless, haphazard, devil-may-carefree. You’re a monkey and the entire forest reverberates with your mating-calls and laughter over the heights you’ve reached.

          I’m climbing too, but slower and more calculated. The branch I’m reaching for may break. I have bad luck and I’m much heavier than you. With every inch I climb, I look down and not up — not at the heights I’ve managed to attain, but at how far I have to fall. I’m tired and lazy. I wasn’t made right. I’m a deadly sin.

          But I’m constant, never taking a step faster or slower than the previous one. I have my eye on you because you’re shaking the tree. I’m afraid a piece of fruit will snap off and hit me straight in the head so that I’ll lose my balance while you’re laughing away at me. It would be such a stupid accident to send me crashing to the ground!

          Why did I agree to do it? Wouldn’t you like to know! Unfortunately for a sloth, Why is the first question to go, followed by all the other coconuts meant to knock me on my noggin into unconsciousness.

          All monkeys do is sleep and laugh and eat. There has to be someone else in the tree to watch out for them.




                      You’re so guarded. You never show anything.

          I stuck out my tongue at you (isn’t that what a monkey does?). Rage or love — what’s the use of showing it if you don’t have anything to take it out on?

          I loved you. I showed it.

          You had a funny way of showing it. I think you had the breakup rehearsed like a monologue.

          I’ve always been a one-person show.

          No. You just always wanted top-billing.

          And now you ask me to play second-banana. A silent witness.

          For a change.

          I hate change. I’m happy the way I am.

          Happy. But not satisfied.




                      Don’t worry. I won’t slice up your children. Hell! I’d never even baby-sit. I won’t cast a wicked spell on your sleeping virgin. I won’t reveal how you clip your nails in the living room and don’t sweep it up. I won’t say how you slurp through the straw in the movie theater when there’s no soda left. I won’t say how you never heard of a friendly game of cards.

          Your secrets are safe with me. Some details are better left out anyway. Too much concentration breeds overreaction and compulsion. It’s better to pace yourself and keep to the steady climb. There can at least be contentment — if not happiness or satisfaction — in being the other side of the story. That’s what I am, the other side of the story, the fable still waiting to be told whose lesson is yet to be learned.