BONGO

Bongo




I have told my son I am staying in a “Club House” for a while, and that we will have lots of fun there. No problem. But he told a friend of his today at school and I’m sure it will get around. And we know that one of those kids is going to say, “Oh, your parents are getting a divorce”. And we will do damage control the best we can. This town is filled with divorces and second and third marriages, there’s just too much money here to stay together. Too much time to want more. But I never thought in a million years, even though sometimes I wanted it, that I would be one of them. They always seemed lost to me. Disoriented. Confused that what had happened, happened to them. And now I walk among them, not legally one of them, but I am one of them. We are vampires walking among the married, ashamed, yet not for being who we are, but for being out of place. Like we took a wrong turn and ended up staying in the wrong town for 20 years. All of a sudden, you, and they, realize, your not one of them, you are an outsider, a stranger, not to be trusted.
A pariah. An anomaly. Having just come from the Bronx Zoo recently I can now relate, even more than before, to the Apes behind the glass. Living in a created environment, a false one, indeed, it mocks them, look, here is a tree….enjoy! Some grass….see? You DO belong here! And those people staring at you day after day, just pretend they’re not there. I’m sure they don’t feel sorry for you Bongo, I’m sure they don’t know something you don’t know. Why would you think this is not the way it is supposed to be? Look, here’s some dirt. See? It’s all good, now shut up and act like a fucking cute little monkey. I saw their eyes; they know it’s a joke. My wife let me get a vasectomy THREE months before telling me she didn’t want to fuck me anymore. Don’t worry, she said, everyone says it’s not so bad. And I did it so we could have sex more without worrying about getting pregnant. That was the plan, our plan. So I cut my balls to try and save our sex life, and she said, “Look, here’s a nice house in a nice suburb, see? Now shut up and act like a husband, oh, and by the way, no more monkeying around for you.”

I’m out of the glass Bongo, but I’m lonely, and I wish you were here.