6th November 2005
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The Chump


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Short fiction Author: Firecat

Created: 01 November 2004

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When I was born I had short black hair. On my head. On my body. When my au pair took me out in the pram people said "What a lovely chimpanzee" - to which she angrilly retorted "It's not a chimp, it's a baby!"

I remember one day when I was about three I was playing with some of my mother's human things, and I excitedly showed her what I had done. She was shocked and told me never to play with those things again; "They are for humans and you are an ape!"

My mother used to go to Coffee Mornings. In the early days no-one exactly called me pretty, but they would say "Isn't it handsome", or "Isn't it bonny". My coat was lustrous and they stroked me like a dog. As I got older they got visibly more embarrassed and shifty, and nervous if I came over with the biscuits. Once I was seven the Coffee Mornings stopped. It was about this time that my mother stopped taking me swimming, although she had always insisted I change in a cubicle.

My mother always encouraged me to do apey things, like climbing trees. She seemed to be confusing chimps with gibbons.

When I was eight she sent me away to be with chimpanzees. I was to stay there till I reached adulthood. I would have cried into my pillow, but I didn't have one. There I learned that to act like a human caused howls of derision and beatings from jealous apes that thought I was trying to curry favour (flavour?) with the keepers - who would then come in and break us up with whips. To survive I had to ape the apes in every detail, to be noticed to be different was to be attacked.

My best subjects were English, French and Physics. This combination baffled the keepers. I wanted to do languages but I was railroaded into Ape Studies.

I have always tried to do the right thing. I met a lovely chimp and we settled down and had children. When I later told my mother I did not know if I could go on living such a lie and I wanted people and apes to know the truth, she said "You've made your bed, now you must lie in it! Your children must come first! If God had intended you to be human, He would have made you human" (He did!). "To live as a human would be to go against God." This to someone who went to church more often than she did. That really hurt.

I am an adult now. I no longer have to act as a chimp. Yet I still look like one. I have played the part for so long that it is much less scarey to act like one than to be recognised as a human who looks like a chimp.

I can pass as human. A few years ago I had an all-over wax and went to the Royal Opera House in a strappy blue dress and sandals. The Kirov were playing Swan Lake and it was delightful. Everyone treated me as a regular human, and despite my fear of recognition for what I was, I really do not think anyone suspected I might not be human - which of course I am! I will cherish the memory of that evening always because, as my mother said, my children must always come first. They are at a sensitive age and they must never know.
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REVIEW:Chimp-chump like me Nov 24, 2004
REVIEW:Short Fiction: A3211453 - The Chump Nov 1, 2004