Trials of the Monkey

by Matthew Chapman

  We drive slowly by her trailer. There’s only a dim light inside.

  ‘I don’t think she’s in,’ I say.

  ‘She’s in,’ says Rocky, grinning. ‘Watch.’

  We reach the end of the trailer park, turn down the far side and out of sight, and do a U-turn. By the time we come back around the corner, Sue’s on the steps of her trailer, watching.

  I was imagining a crone—that’s the type I see pissing on cars, an old misanthropic eccentric—but no, this woman is young, not even thirty, long-limbed and country pretty. And furthermore, she’s smart and capable (or maybe I should say she seems capable of being smart and capable), reactions brisk, actions efficient, an air of outspoken confidence, almost arrogance.

  When Rocky braces her with the warrant and she realises her mistake, she impatiently exclaims ‘Gee-hah!’ as if not just this, but her entire life is something she has accidentally fallen into, something beneath her from which, much to her irritation, she cannot extract herself. Had she been given different opportunities, one senses she could easily have become an efficient executive in some commercial enterprise.

  ‘Wait there,’ she tells Rocky imperiously and goes back inside. A moment later she returns with a child (a clean, neat child) on one hip and a bunch of papers in her free hand which, according to her, prove someone stole her chequebook and forged her signature.

  ‘Well, I still gotta take you in, Sue,’ Rocky tells her, ‘but you’ll get a bail bond, it’s no big deal.’

  Her boyfriend arrives on foot, a reasonable, likeable guy who pushes his lips down over his bad teeth when he smiles, but for some reason he can’t drive and the truck is running hot and what about the kid?

  Patiently, taking each problem one at a time, Rocky suggests ways to get the business dealt with. The boyfriend can put some water in the truck, Sue can drive it down to the station, the boyfriend comes along with the kid, it won’t take long to process, if the truck needs more water, there’s a hose outside the jail, and they can all be back in an hour or two.

  Sue organises a few things for the child to play with while Mommy does her jail thing and puts them in a bag. The child is strapped safely in the back and Sue jumps into the truck and makes a capable turn toward the exit, her boyfriend at her side.

  No brake lights.

  Rocky shakes his head. Sue, he tells me, used to be a good girl, excellent student, cheerleader (I think), and then got into drugs and one thing led to another: this, the trailer park, the child, the departed husband, debts, the overheating truck without brake lights, warrants, court dates, fines, each alone tolerable, but combined a great pressing weight which only the most energetic or larcenous could throw off.

  Drugs are always blamed. To me, however, they seem merely a symptom of an aspiration, a desire for profound connection and transcendent meaning in a world which fails to provide either. ‘The War on Drugs’ is a misnomer, as if drugs had character, a will of their own; as if drugs could fight back. If it’s a war at all, it’s not a war on drugs, but on people, or on reality, a war of denial, a show put up to distract us from some awful truth. (God is dead?)

  Back at the jail, Sue efficiently fills in a bureaucratic form with a swift, clean hand. There must be some way, I think, apart from the transitory high of drugs, to provide this woman with a philosophy or practise which inspires her, some engine for this drifting life which does not require the abandonment of reason. There must be something other than Christianity, with its cryptic myths, outdated morality, and distant miracles—something other than modern religions like Scientology, the nitwit invention of a third-rate sci-fi writer with its silly intergalactic myths and crude lie-detector tests—there must be something other than this to imbue her life with, for want of a better word, ‘spiritual significance.’

  Nor is this snobbery, that she is poorer and less educated and therefore more in need of solace. No, it’s clearer, that’s all, with someone like Sue or Dave because they are denied even the Western illusion of meaning, monetary success, transformation through acquisition, an expensive car, new tits or a nose job, an apartment on the Upper East Side … I may be more deluded by apparent success, I may be rowing harder and moving faster, I may have cast myself adrift from God a little more consciously, but in the large scheme of things, the difference between us is infinitesimal.

  Christianity, so long as it is shackled to the Bible, is completely inadequate for the needs of complex modern life. Its symbolism, though often beautiful as art, has become spiritually worn out and provides neither authentic inspiration, nor comfort, nor the provocation of intelligent conscience. And when it makes a statement that might cause discomfort, such as ‘It is as hard for a rich man to get into heaven as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle,’ it is conveniently overlooked or tortuously reinterpreted.

  On winter nights in New York, I pass by the churches along Park Avenue and Fifth and marvel at the sight of homeless people freezing to death on the steps. The doors of these, the richest churches in America, are locked. The heat is on inside, so in the morning wives of investment bankers and stockbrokers can come and pray in comfort without the stench of poverty reaching their depilated nostrils. God is dead and it’s the church who killed Him.

  The church and the aeroplane. When you fly to the jungle and encounter two tribes, each with different beliefs, do you say to yourself: ‘I wonder who’s got it right here, the cannibals who believe they’re ingesting the spirit of their enemies when they eat them, or the guys who fuck mud because they believe it fertilises the earth?’ No, interesting, quaint even, but each belief is clearly as absurd as the other.

  How much longer can our fearfulness and bigotry protect us from seeing how comprehensively preposterous all religious beliefs are? As Kurt Wise, creationist professor at Bryan College, said in a different context, ‘Let’s not be chauvinistic.’

  There is the argument that there must be some kind of spiritual being because all cultures, independent of each other, have some form of God. Every culture also has some kind of tool for eating. What does that prove? Only that everyone shares the same desire for clean rice.

  All early religions started with numerous gods, clearly defined and frequently visible. The God of War, of Love, of Alcohol, of Harvest; gods in the form of dogs or horses, mountains or trees. With Judaism and Christianity it came down to an indivisible (and almost invariably invisible) God with a few sidekicks. The Muslims, coming after both Judaism and Christianity, are even more emphatic on the point. ‘There is but one God and Allah is his name …’

  It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see where we’re heading. After one comes zero. At which point, religion will be relinquished to history, ‘the fairy tales of conscience.’

  The whole thing is plainly laughable, and yet it’s not. To argue about whether God exists or in what form seems as sophomoric and redundant as to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but once you get past that, once you recognise God as an invention and start thinking about what caused His or Her invention, then suddenly the subject becomes serious again, and poignant.

  I remember hearing C. Everett Koop, a paediatrician and ex-Surgeon General, say ‘There are no atheists at the bedside of a dying child,’ which, unintentionally, is both the best argument for God and the best against.

  If my daughter was dying and asked me, ‘Is this the end?’ would I lie to her? A million times yes. Anything—the more fantastic the better—a wiser, kinder father on the other side, an extraordinary new world, continuation, reunion, reincarnation, anything rather than have her face the horror of oblivion. And if I’d do that, rationalist that I am, parents who lived X thousand years ago would certainly do the same. This is how and why God was invented. We know from the earliest writings of the Sumerians—who established a civilisation 4,000 years before the birth of Christ—that mortality has always been terrifying.

  Once the various myths of an afterlife were invented they had to be perpetuated and de
veloped for the surviving brothers and sisters, and gradually the stories would pass down, developing and changing. God has a beard or a turban, He (or She or They) live in heaven, in the bodies of animals, in the mountains. He wants you to cut your hair this way, wear a hat on Saturday, eat fish on Friday, whatever. As any good liar will tell you, the way to make a lie believable is to elaborate the details, as the more you have, the more credible the anecdote becomes. ‘How could he have invented that? It must be true.’

  Then came another thought: if the carrot of eternal life keeps everyone happy and docile when dangled at one end, what might we achieve if we jammed a carrot of terror up the other end?

  ‘If you kids misbehave, God’ll toss you in the other place.’

  ‘Other place? What other place?’

  ‘Well, it’s a … it’s a … lake of fah!’

  Full circle in a historical minute: a party game, a whisper passed from ear to ear, distorted by the political and social ambitions of the speaker and then further distorted by the spiritual needs of the listener. Unlike the party game, however, fantastic claims require fanatical defence. As faith lies outside the realm of rational debate, the infidel must eventually be evangelised on the rack.

  History has taught us this repeatedly. Perhaps it’s time to accept and recognise this need for gods and consciously invent new gods before the old ones drag us down. A new religion unique in its recognition of its own inventedness and as fluid and honest as science. Perhaps it’s time for a female God. You see the urge for this with the New Agers, a sudden reverence for Mother Earth, brought on, no doubt, by the realisation that, through male-dominated technology, we could now destroy her.

  Yes, enough of that masculine shit, what we need is a Goddess!

  Sue would be inspired, Dave appropriately chastised.

  All this, I’m thinking—not for the first time, it’s true, but with new sympathy and an increased sense of urgency—as I watch Sue wearily finish her form. A fat bail bondsman lumbers in malevolently and Rocky taps me on the shoulder, bringing me back from my pantheon into the reality of Dayton after dark. We exit past the boyfriend with the child (Rocky hasn’t added to Sue’s problems with a charge on the brake lights, just a warning to get them fixed), and off we go, to Wendy’s, finally, two Chicken Burgers and a pair of Cokes which we take back to the empty sheriff’s office.

  Sneed, a Republican, is fighting for his life against Paul Smith, a Democrat who was sheriff a few years back. Smith, according to almost everyone, was tough and played dirty. He and his deputies owned various bars around the county. There was trouble. Now, according to his own campaign statements, he’s ‘reformed.’ Smith has various ads running in the Mountain Morning News. One of them is titled, ‘Out of the Mouth of Babes,’ and purports to be letters written by teenagers and children in support of Smith. All are anonymous. One accuses a Sneed deputy of repeatedly asking the writer, a teenage girl, for a date in return for not charging her with something. Another says, ‘I’ve seen my brother beat with sticks for no reason at all when he was fourteen years old … If that’s a good job I’d like to know what a bad one would be … Leon has older people fooled. He’s not what he seems on the outside. It matters inside. For the sake of our children [shouldn’t that be ‘us children?’] and the protection of Rhea County, vote Paul Smith.’

  The last letter is the peach. ‘We are afraid to come forward because we know how he works. Please give your vote to Paul Smith. We know he has done a lot of things in his life time but people can change and we know that Mr. Smith has but Mr. Sneed stays the same. But we believe the Devil has him right in under his wing.’

  I like Leon, Republican or not, and I’m amazed by the vicious tone of these attacks. Rocky shrugs. Southern politics is rough, that’s how it is.

  Once we’ve finished eating, we go in search of inebriated shit-heads. Out on the highway to Chattanooga, just beyond the county line, is a bar called the Pleasure Zone. It’s a low building with a backyard strung with coloured lights where people dance. We lurk our side of the county line, drunk-hunters in our blind, waiting for the first unsteady flight of blind-drunk prey. The irony of this does not escape me, particularly as Rocky now confides that in his entire life he’s only ever drunk two beers and never smoked a single cigarette.

  We wait a while but the highway is shithead-free and as I’m due out spelunking with the Christians tomorrow morning, I tell Rocky I have to get some sleep. He drives me back to the station. I thank him and wish him well. As I drive to the motel, I notice I’m thinking like a victim again. Instead of seeking villains out the front, I’m watching out for cops in the rear.

  Back in my room, I take a sip of moonshine to slow me down for sleep. Lying in bed, running the night through my head—glimpses of lives only previously imagined—I wonder what the admirable Rocky is doing. It’s two in the morning. He has another five hours of prowling the county in practice of his dark, lonely trade. What do you think about while Mermaid sleeps beside her lucky husband and Sue, dreaming her marijuana dreams, moves closer to her boyfriend as the trailer chills? What do you think about when in all the darkness a single yellow window glows?

  Not work for the unstable or depraved, I think, and fall asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Barefoot in the Glass

  Two days after my encounter with the one-legged woman in Italy, I flew back to England. In the next ten years I had over thirty jobs, most of them menial, some of them bizarre.

  Among other things, I was a bricklayer, a packer at a picture-framing company, and an unpacker in the china department at Harrods. I was a spotlight boy in a nightclub, an assistant film editor, and even, for a while, a rent-by-the-hour cleaning maid. At eighteen I was an unpaid researcher for a documentary company which specialised in making films on tragedy and deformity, and at twenty-two a poorly paid sex writer for magazines. At various times I was a salesman of posters, secondhand cars, candles, bags and belts from Morocco, and finally owned a company which sold leather goods on behalf of stoned artisans in basements. When it went bust, I drew the curtains, unhooked the phone until all my creditors got bored, and wrote an unpublishable novel. I was a sheet-metal worker, hired hand in a freezing factory, welder, van driver and semi-pimp. For a while my closest friend was a con man. Toward the end of this period, a thief and I almost bought a minicab company together.

  I lived with two nightclub hostesses, the first of whom, an older woman—she was twenty-eight—finally taught me to make love adequately. Both gave me money to one extent or another. I lived with the first for a year when I was eighteen. The second lasted longer because she got out of the game, the game being her selling sex for money while I waited home for the poignant sound of her douching on her way to bed. I was stabbed in the leg with a fork by a six-foot-tall, half-African, half-Irish nightclub singer with whom I had a brief affair, and the next night had a hole jabbed in my side by hostess number one wielding a broomstick with a nail driven through it. When she took to punching me in the face while I slept (again because of the singer), I decided to leave and move in with hostess number two. Number one then came around and attacked my new flat with a barrage of milk bottles at dawn. When I went out to remonstrate, she dragged me out onto the street to fight barefoot in the glass.

  But before all this began—before all this fucking, forking, nailing, punching, and milk-bottling—in the gap between coming home from Italy and leaving home for London—I was sent to a Freudian analyst, a black woman from Mississippi named Marie Singer.

  Marie’s mother was a ruffler, a woman who put ruffles on curtains and sheets. Her father was a cotton picker and civil rights activist. The family was poor, but Marie and her brothers and sisters were always smartly turned out, the hems of their dresses, their sleeves and collars, sometimes even the cuffs of their pants, elaborately ruffled.

  By force of will, Marie dragged herself out of a rural life into a Southern university, and then, I don’t quite know how, on to Cambridge, En
gland, accompanied by an alcoholic poet, Burns Singer, who died, leaving her, a beached exotic, in grey East Anglia. Marie was in her fifties by the time I met her, and looked like everyone’s ideal black mama. She was brilliant, honest, inspiring, and kind. She was more than a shrink to me, she was my saviour and muse and I loved her.

  There was a day before I went to see her which I forgot. That is to say, I was about sixteen years old and found myself somewhere, deep in thought and it was evening; but I could not, no matter how hard I tried, remember the rest of the day, the events that brought me to where I was. This was shocking—an alcoholic blackout without the alcohol. I went to bed and stayed there for a week with the heat turned up, hoping it would make me sleep.

  Life was not easy at home and perhaps I’d simply decided to withdraw. My mother now drank almost every day. Capable of charm and warmth, she still performed the role of mother with every appearance of love—until she drank and then her eyes would close and gloom would alternate with scathing cruelty, most often directed at my father. Most of the time, we walked around her—and around her problem—as if nothing was amiss. Some days were worse than others. Some days were good. Sometimes the whole family would sit down to dinner and talk and laugh and be happy. When we went to our small cottage in Norfolk, my mother was at her best. But even on these windswept days, the bottle lay at the end like a dreaded exclamation mark.

  My brother Francis, who was around ten or eleven at this time, was at the local grammar school. He was an amiable child of many hobbies, a sweet and funny boy growing up with a rueful smile in the unhealthy shadow of his mother’s alcoholism. Ludovic, my youngest brother, aged six or so, already displayed the thuggish tendencies which would characterise his teenage years. I adored them both. My sister, however, was another matter. Eighteen months older than me, she was now on the verge of college. Soon she was taking driving lessons. Trapped by my instability and lack of education, I wept when I saw her drive down the lane after passing her driving test, independent at last, free to leave.