A Day at the Zoo
Years ago...oh maybe 40 or 45 of them I used to occasionally kill-off a Saturday or Sunday by hanging out at the old non-upgraded Central Park Zoo.
More specifically by the outdoor chimpanzee cage,
I would start my day by going to a 9th Avenue Bodega in the old Hells Kitchen section to purchase a 6 pack or so of Country Club brand Malt Liquor (short boys) and stuff them in my pockets,
the 9th and 10th Ave Bodegas didn't care if your were in diapers they would sell booze to anyone capable of sliding money across the counter
I would then truck on up to Central Park and find a bench that offered a good (safe) view of the chimps' theater and would watch and wait.
Families...usually of tourists would wander in with spouses, girlfriends and kids to be amused by the monkeys. It all seemed innocent enough, wholesome amusement for humans.
Well wholesome began and ended with the chimps taking notice of a fresh bunch of on-lookers.
Their cage had a clear plexiglass shield going around it, the shield had yellowed to near translucence with age and probably the corrosive effects of decades of piss, jizz and feces it had been subjected to....mostly coming from the inside I would like to think. The cage also was surrounded by a rail to keep the humans from getting up on the bars
You see these were not Margaret Mead's primates, nor Diane Fossey's extended family in the mist. This was a crew of primates that only Caligula might have been able to romanticize. Living in captivity in NYC had left them with skill-sets that were more worthy of Plato's Retreat than family amusement.
These were not cute harmless Capuchin Monkeys with an organ grinder's tin cup scampering about in little costumes, these were Travis the Chimp's uglier cousins and ancestors
I recall more than a few Dads hoisting their excited children up onto their shoulders to get a better view of the chimps above the clouded plexiglass....a moment of anticipation and excitement that I quietly shared with the primates......
faster than you could say "Oh No" one of these furry little charmers would lightning quick, shit in its hand and hurl it with deadly accuracy at its exposed target. Then the rest of the chimps would shriek and chatter gleefully at the sight of a direct hit....
I'll swear they taught us the "high five"....anyway these make the beast with two backsers did not miss at any yardage that shit ballistics would sustain. I was surprised that Billy Martin and Steinbrenner weren't down there trying to figure out how to recruit them for the Yankees line-up...I could picture George telling Billy to shave them in the locker room and put them in Pinstripes and to pay them in bananas....
Well I guess if someone locked you up and sent a steady stream of on-lookers past your miserable existence...well you might dream up some less-than-delightful ways of articulating your displeasure with your circumstances. The chimps would also put on outstanding carnal performances, sometimes as couples sometimes as solo acts....there were some world-class wankers there....their facial expressions as they neared climax were all too human....their "ooooh" faces with those large mouths and lips were hysterical......the looks of horror on the human faces in response were worthy of a photography exhibit
unfortunately as our cousins they understood "shock and disgust" facial expressions in human primates and determined over the years what would provoke those expressions on human faces and what wouldn't...so you would get some wildly exaggerated performances on their part in an effort to engender disgust
Well one fine Spring day I happened to witness a stellar moment in human-primate interaction....a moment that provoked this tale and one I will always treasure in my catalog of human behavior studies.
In strolls a gang of outer-borough greasers...judging by the accents I believe Brooklyn.....being the early 70's there was still a large contingent of 50's-60's era holdovers....not everyone shucked their chino's for bell bottoms and grew their hair to their shoulders,
some stayed true to the old look,,,,,, that look being greased back hair with forehead curl, black pegged skinny denims and black tee-shirt with obligatory cigarette pack rolled up into the sleeve and what were referred to as "PFC boots"...... street slang for pointy-toed black, heeled boots....aka in the city as Puerto Rican Fence-climbers...as they were a natural for scaling anchor fencing.
Why they were attributed to Puerto Ricans I can't say..... as I recall very few hispanics/latinos of the era that wore them
Anyway the head greaser had his girlfriend in tow...the outer-borough fashion sense had left the full beehive hairdo behind by then....it had been moderated to a smaller tease-up in the back...think "Flo" of the Progressive Insurance TV ads...so enter stage-left...... the carousing noisy crew comes into the plaza in front of the chimps' theater of the bizarre.
The chimps go on alert...they study the crew and quickly determine who the leader is and they go to work....they target his woman for their greatest array of insults...it usually isn't hard to determine a pack leader in any situation unless there is a concerted effort to mask that individual's status by all parties...in this case...the tribe openly deferred to the leader so the chimps got a fast handle on their target
They did not focus their efforts directly on the leader...they used the bank-shot challenge approach of openly coming-on to his girlfriend....breeding rights are big in tribal settings so the approaching of the girlfriend was a direct challenge to the head greaser.
Now Chimps are not subtle creatures...on a good day they closely mimick a drunk Irishman with a herd of sheep at his disposal
Several of the boys in the cage begin displaying their packages and hooting and crooning at the girlfriend...whipping themselves into arousal....girlfriend blanches at the sight and the head greaser immediately recognizes the insult for what it was...a challenge to his proprietary dominance over the female...he steps in front of the girlfriend and begins cursing at the chimps and making disparaging borough gestures at them....
they respond with equal or greater fervor.....shrieks of challenge and gesticulations of outrage...and I find myself watching this escalation of hostilities to the point where both gangs are hurling their own particular species' brand of insults at each other...while the mechanics of the noises and gestures were different the intent of the communications rang as clear as bell. The chimp gang was now in full excitement...the noise went well above the usual sound level...
Then the moment came....the head chimp came forward from the others taunting the head greaser.......the head greaser slid a knife from his pocket at the same time he started climbing over the brass safety rail to climb the fence above the plexiglass and get at the chimps....(and yes it was in fact a cheap "Rebel Without A Cause" stiletto switchblade... these were the days before carrying a 9mm was commonplace) my jaw is now hanging open in full grateful amazement... I quietly offered my thanks to whatever Gods may be.... that saw fit that I witness this magical event
Evidently the noise level of the chimps summoned a Zoo keeper to see what was going on....she came upon the greaser trying to scale the fence and screamed at him to get down...head greaser hopped down at her words....the chimps grew silent...he slid the palmed knife discretely into a pocket...the Zoo keeper explained that the chimps would tear his limbs right off his torso if given half a chance....
head greaser looked the Zoo keeper square in the eye..... and God as my witness with all enraged indignation he said; "the make the beast with two backsin monkey started it"
Country Club brand malt liquor shot out of my nose, burning my sinuses....but it did not matter...I was more worried about being able to catch my breath again I was laughing so hard
I guess in the final analysis chimps and humans are just cruel parodies of each other
