Me Cheeta by Cheeta Read Free Book Online

much bigger than my head, a delicious assortment of edible monkeys, some equally delicious-looking bushpigs, a fat and hairy chimp with a black face and a gentle expression, a number of pythons taking the weight off, six or seven other chimps and a charcoal-gray snake that I instinctively feared. Stroheim and Spence were both displaying and hooting like idiots—I didn’t respond; like, get with the program, we’re here to relax. “Here you go, boys,” our kind rescuer would say, poking bits of fruit through the slats of our shelters. “Here you go, you poor little fucked-up lonely little hairy fucking bastards.”
    To be honest, what changed everything for me on
Forest Lawn
was a fruit—a fruit that will forever therefore be associated for me with humans—the banana. My first banana! I remember thinking, Why don’t
we
eat these? Why didn’t we have
these
in the forest? I had a similar feeling years later, sipping my first properly mixed martini in Chasen’s—a pulse of surprise that it was legal. Same as my first snort of cocaine off Constance Bennett’s breasts. The flesh: firm with a kind of memory of a snap to it, but melting as you held it in your mouth. This is the banana, not Connie’s breasts. The skin: a sensationally chewy contrast, with the added bonus of a chompable fibrous stalk to round it all off. I’m still talking aboutthe banana here. The flavor: like a
cleverer
flavor than any other fruit. The size: the perfect shape for a single lateral mouthful.
    My second banana was, I’m ashamed to say, supposed to be Tyrone’s, but he, like many of the other chimps, had become so lethargic on the
Forest Lawn
discipline of constant sleep and catered meals that he hardly even stirred when the rescuer brought the fruit around.
    We developed a routine, this rescuer and I, whereby I’d cling to the slats of our shelter as he approached and make grabs at his bucket. “You’re a little fucking Dillinger, aintcha, you little smartass sonofabitch?” he’d croon, as I rummaged through the bucket in search of the bananas. Sometimes he would hold up other fruits for me—a custard apple, a fig, half an orange—and wait for my reaction before he handed over the only thing I wasn’t silent with disapproval at. On other occasions he’d hold out his two hands, a fruit distending each fist differently, and allow me to peel open one set of fingers—the
banana
, thanks very much. Then
four
figs on the floor outside the
left
of the shelter versus
one
banana on the floor outside the—banana, thanks. (All this, by the way, accompanied by a background track of impatient screaming from Stroheim, who had, I noticed, progressed in the meantime to the dizzy heights of the dominant male in an environment of one.) Finally, a whole bunch of bananas was wafted at me, withdrawn and set down out of reach near the charcoal-gray snake. Tricky, but whatever was necessary, I’d do it. At long last I was managing to put on some weight, even though the increasing difficulty of obtaining my bananas was starting to give me a headache.
    The human showed me a small, intricately glittering object and opened the front of the shelter, all the while making reassuring noises: “All right, you goddamn little fucking Edison, you little Greenwich fucking Village fucking pointy-head, work this oneout.” He slowly placed the intricate object on the floor to the other side of the custard apples, within reach. I understood that if I were to choose the custard apples, I would be denied the glittering thing. I got that. What the glittering thing had to do with bananas was anyone’s guess.
    Again he fixed his eyes on me, picked up the glittering thing and opened the shelter’s front. Then he slowly replaced the glittering thing and waited, all the time staring at me and muttering kindly, “You’re not so fucking smart after fucking all, are ya, H. L. fucking Mencken?” I didn’t have the faintest whiff of an idea what was going on—I’m a