Beware of God Read Free

Bobo, “at least not in the Judeo-Christian sense of the words. I didn’t myself until just recently. Still, I used you. Selfishly. I objectified you. And for what? To save my own hide? Or perhaps still worse, out of some violent animus, some stubborn genetic trait of survivalism that even nature can’t filter out? Damn all my high philosophies! I deserve to be locked in this cage with you monkeys.”
    Esmeralda pulled a yellow-winged bug from Bobo’s shoulder, examined it closely for a moment and stuck it in her mouth. She stood up, brushed herself off and walked away.
    â€œWait!” called Bobo.
    There was something about this Esmeralda, something in her eyes. Maybe she was different. Bobo wondered if they could someday leave this zoo together, get a place nearby in Rye, maybe Larchmont, something with a fence and a swing set for the kids.
    Bobo scrambled after her but he was too late. Esmeralda swung from tree to tree, straight across to the far end of the Monkey House where Mongo, one of the house’s larger males, was closely examining his scrotum. Esmeralda nudged Mongo, turned her back to him and bent over with all the ceremony of someone who’d just dropped a quarter. Mongo mounted her.
    Bobo instantly loathed her. Then he immediately regretted loathing her.
    Regret?
    That was new.
    Bobo watched with contempt as Mongo humped away at Esmeralda, his ridiculous testicles bouncing this way and that like terrified children on the back of a runaway camel in the African Safari park. “Help!” they seemed to shout. “Get us out of here!”
    Bobo knew how they felt. Look at us, Bobo thought, shaking his head sadly. A bunch of fucking monkeys. Where is our dignity? Where is our pride? Where are our pants?
    Mongo finished with Esmeralda, walked over to where Bobo was sitting and shat.
    A typical leader.
    Bobo could not believe the amount of shit in this tiny chimpanzee world. There was shit on the floor, shit in the cave, shit by the sunflowers. There was shit in the water bowls, and shit on the jungle gym.
    As Mongo lumbered back to his bed on the far side of the cage, Bobo grabbed a handful of Mongo’s shit and threw it at him as best he could. Bobo didn’t have much of a pitching arm, or opposable thumbs, and the turd sailed sloppily past Mongo and landed with a wet thud on the wall just beyond him. It held there for a moment, and Bobo scratched his head.
    â€œHuh,” Bobo thought. “Kinda looks like a chimp.”
    And with that, Bobo scooped up another handful of shit, walked over to the glass and began to paint.
    By the end of his first week of consciousness, Bobo had painted large Expressionistic shit murals on every wall of the Monkey House. He began with simple studies: an apple, a monorail, cotton candy. By the end of the first week, he was creating sweeping tableaus which he saw as scathingly satirical attacks on chimpanzee culture and primate mores. His SelfPortrait was a devastating attack on racism, his Unhuman Stain a poignant plea for self-respect and dignity, his Life in the Monkey House a searing assault on political power and corporate gain.
    Bobo’s paintings not only exhibited true artistic promise, they were—at $35,000 a pop—a much-needed additional revenue stream for the zoo. Management gently steered him toward Werthmeyer oil paints and hand-stretched canvases (they had, after all, spent almost $3 million on those glass walls). They even splurged for a mahogany easel with height adjustment and bonus stowaway paint tray.
    This wasn’t nearly as therapeutic for Bobo as it may have appeared. He was tortured. His mind was expanding at a phenomenal rate. All he could see was the shit around him, and all the paint in the world could never cover it up.
    His paintings grew darker with every passing day. Reds became blues, greens became blacks. While the humans took snapshots, Bobo wrestled with existence and meaning and death.
    And