Dear diary,
This morning, after my visit to the brothel, I went to the rainforest and saw a monkey hastening to his place of employment. I noted how this monkey walked: he used his hands the way that a horse would use its forehooves, placing them knuckle-down on the ground, one after the next, followed by his hind feet. This is something everyone has seen, but I assume that many people don’t give it much thought. For some reason, it struck me on this occasion that the way this monkey was walking — that is, with all four limbs, using both hands as well as feet — is far superior to the way that I myself walk; and this seems to be the clue to most of life’s problems.
You see, whenever I’m in public, I have a great fear of tripping and falling and thus making a fool of myself; and now I realize that this terror that accompanies me everywhere is due to the fact that I try to get around by balancing on two feet instead of availing myself of my knuckles. It would be so much better, if, when showing up for my next job interview, I could enter the office sturdily on all fours, just like that monkey whom I observed — then I would exude the confidence that employers are looking for, as I would not be worried about stumbling and falling face-down on the carpet: Embarrassing accidents like this are nearly impossible when one is crawling.
Yes, bipedal ambulation is a high-wire act: a typically arrogant human overreach. We homo sapiens were obviously meant to go about on all fours, just like our brethren. Think how many elderly people break their hips from tumbling over, like the Tower of Babel, due to lack of humility. — Pride goeth before the fall.
If I were reclining on a table with my head shaved, waiting to have a tumor removed from my brain, I would feel FAR more confidence if the surgeon were to enter the operating arena knuckles-first, with a galloping gait.
And, as perfect as it is, the brothel that is my daily haven would be greatly improved, if all of its staff were to shinny around chimpanzee-style. For the harlots, this would eliminate the awful necessity of balancing on stilettos — for, as one uses a combination of hands and toes to shuffle between the lobby and the bed, the area of the high heel is wholly freed up and now points out toward the back, horizontally. Moreover, on the client’s side, one now gets a better look at what one is paying for.
So I have decided to become a trailblazer for this new movement. Someone must serve as the guiding light to the rest of mankind; and since all my fellow bipeds have apparently either never considered this idea or were just too shy to act upon it, I myself will proudly don the pioneer’s mantle:
The first being I encounter is a flamingo. I crawl forth and hard-sell my gospel. She cries: “I’m still trying to break the habit of standing on just one single foot, and now you want me to take this giant leap of faith and begin using not only my other webbed foot but also my wings in lieu of forelegs? This sounds too difficult.”
“Nothing is impossible with God,” I say. But this flamingo ignores me, because some creatures are too set in their habits and don’t truly desire to be saved — they may SAY that they yearn for their redeemer to send a creeping man to perfect them, but when the time comes to ACT upon their hope, they freeze up and solidify into a lawn ornament.
So the next place I brought my message was to the church. I entered on all fours and shouted: “The time is NOW to graduate from your childish locomotions and embody the sure foundation on which evolution can build!”
The church-folk look around to see who is yelling at them, but I’m down low so the pews obscure me. “Wherever that voice is coming from, it sounds like it possesses authority,” sez a very smart man. — “I like what I hear about this evolution business,” say several voices in the back. — Then suddenly an old lady screams and points at me and exclaims: “Look there, it’s a man clambering about upon the earth after the fashion of a crab!”
I look up and quote Mark 8:24 to this woman: “I know not what ye see, but I myself see ye humans as trees, walking. That’s what ye remind me of: you’re too upright. But I am come to lower ye considerably, and to make ye into burning bushes: squat in comparison, and with your volume more evenly distributed. Now follow me, and come slither on the ground.”
And the entire congregation gets down on all fours and praises the LORD with their whole entire body, no longer only with their lips but also with their tongues that are forked.
“Good choice!” I shout. “Ye are my first round of converts.”
Then I scramble out of the room and go climb up a tree and address the family that’s living there: “Your father here is a good man. He taught me the way, earlier this morning after I left the bordello and ran into him. I just wanted to give him a cut of the proceeds, for I have returned after making my first quarter’s earnings — I visited a church, turned on the spigots of wisdom, and flooded the sanctuary: in short, everyone got baptized into this strange new religion that you, Dear Sir, invented.” I hand over a wad of crumpled banknotes to the monkey, who accepts them with gratitude. “This is ten percent of what I was able to get from passing around my Lincoln-style top-hat. Next time I’ll maybe wear a sombrero, so that it can hold more fat stacks of cash (because it has a wider brim); but I hope that this first of many returns suffices for now.”
“No, this far exceeds my expectations,” sez the head-of-household, or nest-hold rather; “Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to come of my earlier routine. To tell the truth, I’ve been doing that number for eons, yet nobody’s ever bothered to decipher its deeper meaning until now. — I almost feel that I myself should be paying YOU.” (The monkey’s wife now nudges him and scowls.)
“Ah, don’t sell yourself short,” I say, while climbing back down the tree; “you’re a genius, and you deserve to be fairly compensated for your work. I wouldn’t dream of, for instance, stiffing a construction crew that built a series of high-rise buildings for my hotel franchise, unless I were a multi-billionaire; so I’m happy to play nice until I reach the Big Time. Just don’t spend all that dough in one place — remember, chimpo, what I make the Apostle Paul say to the Gospelist John in my plagiarism of Shakespeare, A Terrible Misunderstanding: money’s the root!”
At this point, I have clomb down the tree trunk and am standing on the carpet of the jungle, looking up at my monkey-friend’s nest: He tips his pork pie hat, raises his hand, and yells in answer, “Indeed, it’s the root of ALL!”
So that was fun. Now, when walking back out of the jungle, I encounter the snail that features so prominently in that single scene of my other novel Bryan the Tyger and I accidentally step on him. Lifting my now-gooey loafer, it’s plain that he/she is obviously dead. “Let this serve as a reminder to me: NEVER revert back to walking on two feet!” I shake my fists at the sky; then crouch back down on all fours and use those same fists to propel me. “For if I hadn’t absentmindedly indulged in my old habit of bipedal ambulation after descending from the trunk of my new monkey-friend’s abode, I would most likely have SEEN this snail and not trampled him to death. For, if I had been knuckle-walking, my face would have been much closer to the forest floor; thus I would have noted the creature’s presence, instead of literally overlooking God’s creation. So the moral of this tragic event is: Practice what you preach.”
§
Now I can tell by looking at the sun’s position in the sky that the time is 4:58, and I must get to work by 5:00 or I’ll be late.
I am a professional basketball player, even tho I creep upon the ground on all fours. (People joke that “creeping men can’t jump high enough to score in basketball”, and they say “men who crawl on their knuckles aren’t tall enough to play B-ball with the pros”; but I Bryan Ray am potentially taller than anyone who’s not a rainforest-creeper, and I can jump higher than every non-crawling person in the world — I have proved this repeatedly.) So I dash out onto the court and say: “Hi team! Hi coach!” — I reach up and, in a macho way, pat the coach on his buns from my crabwalking position. “Sorry I’m late.”
The coach looks down on me: “You’re not late, Bryan; it’s five o’clock on the dot. But why the heck are you down on all fours like a cow who eats grass?”
“I’m not crawling,” I explain. “I’m creeping about between heaven and earth the way we’re supposed to: you see, a revelation came to me this morning; I found religion: it’s a brand new way to walk. Behold how expressly admirable I appear in form and movement. I was already godlike in apprehension; but, now, in action, how like an angel I have become! Don’t you agree?” (Here I shuffle around a little, on my knuckles and feet.) “Tell me I’m not the paragon of animals!”
Coach Jefferies is unimpressed: “You’re not the paragon of animals,” he sez. Then he holds his clipboard close to his eyes so that he can read off commands from it, and he yells at us to get into our positions on the court and prepare for the game.
Now the game begins. I myself snatch the ball and dribble it while crabwalking underneath all the other player’s legs. I even go under the legs of my own mates and trip them, because I’m NOT a team player: I’m a very selfish showoff; that’s why I command the highest pay. So I slam-dunk the ball and score a solid two points for the United States. Then I make the ‘T’ sign with my hands, which requires me to awkwardly balance on my back feet for a moment, so as to call a time-out. The ref blows the whistle and informs everyone else to take five minutes to visit their respective dressing rooms and sneak a few alcoholic beverages; then he comes over to me and sez:
“What’s up. Why’d you call a time-out?”
“If it’s OK with you,” I reply, “I’d rather address the whole crowd, both teams, and all the officials, instead of just talking betwixt the two of us here privately, Mister Referee. So, could I borrow your clip-on lapel microphone?”
The ref then blows his whistle again, to get everyone’s attention, and he unclips his mic while speaking into it as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen, player number six-six-six would like to offer you a verbal temptation…”
The crowd now begins chanting my catchy nickname repeatedly: “Satanic Ball-hog Number One Hero! Satanic Ball-hog Number One Hero!” until I make the “calm down” sign with my free hand and say:
“Sorry to interrupt a good game like this, but I just thought of an idea that I want to run past the officials who make the rules as we go. This innovation that I just dreamt up is so good that it simply can’t wait — it demands to be implemented immediately. Here’s what I’m thinking:
“Since I myself am the star of the NBA, I don’t see why every basket that I make must result in points being given to my whole team. I suggest that all the points that I score be given strictly to me, myself, alone.
“So the way that I envision this change being implemented is that we would add my name, Bryan Ray, onto the scoreboard right next to the two teams that are currently playing — so you would have the name ‘Team USA’ printed on top, and then the name for the team of whatever other shit-hole country we’re battling printed directly underneath — and a score of ZERO would remain next to both of those team names; but then above ‘Team USA’ you should print my own name, ‘Bryan Ray’, and to the right of it you could add my nickname ‘Satanic Ball-Hog’, since people like to chant that catchphrase repeatedly. Then, all the points that I score — whether from three-point swishes shot from halfcourt, or awesome slam-dunks that end up shattering the glass of the backboard — I say, all these points should be imputed unto me, so the number next to my real name and nickname could be anything from 69, which brings to mind everyone’s favorite sensual position; or 666, which matches the number on the back of my jersey; or even 9,999, which is the highest score possible. I would accept any of these ways of showing me honor.”
Then I wrap the cord of the mic around the neck of the ref so that he fears that I might be attempting to choke him. But I stop short of committing another public murder — I return down on all fours and wait for the verdict to come in, regarding my suggested mid-game change-of-rules.
“It looks like the people have spoken,” sez the referee, disentangling himself from his microphone’s wire, while the crowd goes wild.
We all now look up into the bleachers, where the officials who do the scorekeeping have joined the fans and are holding up large white cards that have letters printed on them which spell out a mass-message declaring “HAIL MEPHISTOPHELES WE AGREE TO YOUR TERMS” and the final three cards have pictures of devil-hearts on them.
“Ah, I’m a little disappointed,” I say; “I was hoping they’d spell out ‘Lucifer Trismegistus’ like my dream said, instead of ‘Mephistopheles’, which is my outdated nickname — but they probably didn’t have enough letters. Anyway,” I playfully slap the ref on his haunch, “that’s good that they approved my proposal; it saves you a whole lot of cleanup.”
So the game resumes and I crabwalk all over the competition. I perform many top-rate dunks and various trick-shots.
At one point, a crazed fan climbs out of the stands and invades the game, stark naked; but I proceed to score a three-point shot from the far side of the court while simultaneously consenting to her advances. These end up being my favorite photos that appear (with black bars censoring the best parts, of course) in the newspaper the next day. And that’s how I won the game for myself.
The only other thing worth mentioning about this memorable occasion is that, when I was crawling out of the showers and leaving the locker room, I gazed back one last time, thinking that I’d wave goodbye to my teammates (who I really and truly do love, despite my ball-hogging habits); but the only figures standing there were the so-called owners: the financiers of Team USA — thus, for a moment, I balanced on my hind feet precariously while presenting both figs in a final salute.
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