Read Trials of the Monkey Online
Authors: Matthew Chapman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail
Trials of the Monkey (29 page)
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 There must be something other than Christianity, with its cryptic myths, outdated morality, and distant miracles—something other than modern religions like Scientology, the nitwit invention of a third-rate sci-fi writer with its silly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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 developed 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.’
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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, England, 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.
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.
I worked for my father, welding refrigeration coils. I wrote poetry, though not much of it. I thought of becoming a hobo or joining the Merchant Marine. Most days I drank or smoked pot. Sometimes when I was high, I would imagine myself a writer. Perhaps because of my childhood eczema, I always found it hard to sleep. Now it became almost impossible.
When I was committed to Marie’s care, I was suicidal. By the time I left I was a writer. Like bookends propping up the shabby literature of my education stand two magnificent women. Mrs. Marshall taught me the pleasure of creation, and taught it so well that the sadistic prep-school conformists who tried to beat it out of me, pissing on the flames and stomping on it with their stinking brogues, could not quite succeed, leaving alive an ember for Marie to blow back to life.
Marie lived in a tall, narrow house in Little St. Mary’s Lane, an old street leading down to the River Cam. When I first went to see her, I was too young to drive a car. With the wages from my father, I bought a motorcyle, an AJS 350, and drove into town on that. The room where she saw patients was at the very top of the house, three flights up. At first, I lay on the couch to talk, but as lying on my back was at that time synonymous with masturbation, I would get an erection, which distracted me, and perhaps even her, from the analysis. I moved to a chair, turned at an angle away from her.
I looked out of the window at the roof of St. Mary’s Church, the church where my mother came to worship when she was in college, where I was baptised, and where later Sarah and I were brought for our few years of churchgoing. A row of rounded crosses, like clover leaves, ran along the ridge. Sometimes I would imagine myself firing a rifle at them one by one.
I got in the habit of remembering dreams, sometimes three or four a night. These I would bring to Marie like gifts the following evening. I went five times a week for about two years and slowly began to see that I was not a random scrap of disordered matter, but an odd mixture of my mother and my father. In spite of my lack of mathematical ability, I shared with him a rationalist’s view of the world. As time passed and I was able to forget school, I became curious again, as he always was, and soon after that, began to feel a capacity for hard work. Meanwhile, the strange beauty of my dreams convinced me that if I could find a way to reach inside my head while I was awake, I’d find a rich, poetic imagination such as I believed my mother had. I was, like her, melancholic and romantic. Perhaps, I began to hope, I might be able to combine all these inherited characteristics and create something from them called Matthew.
Marie encouraged me to start writing short stories. They were rarely more than two or three pages long and tended to be observations of intense moments. One described the moment when a young man decides to ride his motorcycle down a long hill and across a busy road without stopping. Another was about an older
man and his life of sad but delicious solitude. The only thing on earth he loves is a rare flower he has grown, which is now dying.
man and his life of sad but delicious solitude. The only thing on earth he loves is a rare flower he has grown, which is now dying.
Marie knew a woman in Cambridge who was a published short-story writer and sent me to see her. I can’t remember her name, but she took me seriously and said I had talent. This was a woman who produced work. What she said had value.
I began to read enthusiastically. I read all the novels of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Zola, and Raymond Chandler, along with plays, newspapers, history books, magazines, and poetry, any scrap of paper with words on it found anywhere at any time.
When I turned seventeen Peter, Francis’s father, gave me a car, an old Morris Minor. Soon afterwards, I decided to leave home and go work in London. I had friends who were getting a flat. I left Marie and didn’t see her again until shortly before her death twenty years later. We went out and drank too much and she was sad and scurrilous.
On the day I left home, it was still summer. I could hear thunder shifting in the sky above. I hugged and kissed my mother goodbye—I always loved her, no matter what she did, and always felt we understood each other—and started to drive. When I got to the motorway about twenty miles away, the storm broke and rain began to batter the car. I turned on the windscreen wipers but they did not work. I thought about turning back. Instead, I pushed my seat forward, and reaching through the side window, wiped the rain from the windscreen with my hand. I kept on doing this until, an hour later, I arrived in the city.
In London, I went to another psychiatrist for a few months. There was something Germanic about her—she was, in fact, German—and though she was well-meaning, it was a rough transition from my beautiful black mama. The only appointment she could give me was at eight in the morning. As I was soon working in a nightclub, shining a spotlight on two cabaret shows a night, the first of which ended at midnight, the second at two, and simultaneously holding down a full-time job researching documentaries, I would simply fall onto the couch and go to sleep.
The documentary company, taking advantage of my lack of education, didn’t pay me. I researched a couple of documentaries for them, both about diseases. Now they asked me to research one on the effects of disaster.
I had gone almost nine months on three to four hours’ sleep a night, often less. On Sunday mornings, when I could have gone to bed by three A.M. and not woken up until deep into the afternoon, I waited up for my working friend and then drank heavily with her, so that what benefits might have accrued from a long night of sleep were dissipated by chronic hangovers. I was comprehensively exhausted.
‘What kind of disaster?’ I asked, an ominous feeling rising inside.
‘All disaster. How does it affect a village when the mine collapses and kills all the men? What happens to a man after he’s had his legs amputated? Marital disaster, death of children, fatal diseases, bankruptcies, murder, suicide, aeroplane crashes. Communities and individuals. Psychologically and socially, how do we survive disaster?’
How am I going to survive this disaster? was the question in my mind. Long-term sleep deprivation makes you paranoid. Why had they chosen me to destroy with this gruesome work? I was getting stabbed and assaulted in my personal life. Now this? I was horrified. Days, weeks, months of grief and mutilation stretched ahead.
I began work. I saw some terrible sights and learned two interesting things. Several of the men I interviewed became compulsively sexual after their disasters. It was as if, having felt the wings of death brush against them, they now had to compensate by plunging in among the arms and legs of life. The second thing I learned was that if a community has a disaster which receives little media attention, it unites and remains united for years, whereas a community which suffers both disaster and heavy press attention fractures into a hierarchy of grief and contention.
It was all so painful and I was so exhausted that within a couple of weeks I began to develop a nervous tic. To be more precise,
I began to develop a nervous
sneer
. I’d be interviewing some poor sap whose wife had left him two days after he got hit by a lorry and was paralysed for life, and I’d feel my upper lip curl up on one side.
I began to develop a nervous
sneer
. I’d be interviewing some poor sap whose wife had left him two days after he got hit by a lorry and was paralysed for life, and I’d feel my upper lip curl up on one side.
‘So,’ I’d sneer at him, ‘did your wife come to the hospital to visit you, or did she just straightaway take the kids and move up to Manchester with your best friend?’
As he replied, I would wipe at the lip with my fingers and it would straighten out. Moments later, however, up it would curl again, a ghastly involuntary tilde of contempt.
There were complaints and I was fired.
I retreated to the mill house, slept for a few weeks, and then got up and wrote a play. When I was fully recovered, I returned to London determined to be a playwright. I went to visit a friend of my parents, an unusual man, brilliant but unrealised, who was staging plays in a church hall in Holborn. He encouraged me and eventually staged a reading of my first play.
He also let slip the secret of my mother’s affair and the real paternity of my brother Francis. When I next returned to the mill house for the weekend, I looked at my parents differently. My father seemed almost heroic for having stayed all these years to provide stability for his four children. I never consciously blamed my mother for what she had done and never told her I knew her secret. Her suffering became more comprehensible in one way at least, because I now shared an element of it. It is said that keeping secrets drives men mad, and in later years when I interviewed old CIA men for a script I was writing, it was remarkable how many of them were semi-deranged alcoholics. It was hard to know this crucial fact about my brother and keep it to myself. How it must have been for my mother I can only imagine.
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