MERVYN： I wish I had a monkey sometimes, don’t you? I do. Not so much of a chimp as more of a kind of a gibbon. Or what kind of a monkey? What would you do, let him climb up stuff? Yep. Buy him a buncha bananas maybe? Do they really eat a lotta bananas, or is that what people say about them, about the banana thing, and they don’t care either way about bananas? You wouldn’t know with the media nowadays. Because I don’t go to a lot of zoos, I gotta admit. I used to, in my teens, when I didn’t have nothing else to do, but then I began to find them kinda depressing, y’know? So then I’d start going to zoos drunk, but that wasn’t right either, so then I’d go to zoos drunk and think about doing a bunch of rescuing, but I never rescued shit, man, that was just the booze talking. All I would sometimes do, for instance if it was a gibbon, I would put my finger thru the bars, and have him or her pull my finger. I wouldn’t even be scared about my finger. It was like the gibbon knew and cared that I was drunk and wondered why. But then I thought, to the gibbon, “My god, look what they have done to you. They have put you in a cage you don’t wanna be in and make you pull my finger, when what you should be is at home, in a rainforest, and not pulling anything you didn’t choose to pull.” More likely a banana off a tree or the tail of another gibbon. And then I thought to myself, “My god, is every single monkey in every single zoo around the world going asleep tonight thinking “Man, I don’t wanna be in this cage, pulling some drunk guys finger, not knowing what the hell’s going on, I wanna be at home, in Africa, or wherever they have rainforests, swinging from tree to tree, having a banana, or what have you.” And then I thought, “Oh no, every night when they’re asleep they’re probably dreaming “I am back there, I am in the rainforest, I am having a banana”, and then bam! Waking up each day in fucking Arizona. And here comes that drunk guy.” Around then is when I stopped going to zoos so much and I started taking a lot of speed. And it was because of a speed arrest that part of the bail conditions was I had to come and work in this fricking hotel. Which leads me onto now. I didn’t wanna work in a hotel, man. Who wants to work in a hotel? Some kinda hotel-loving freak? But that’s why I’d always hope something exciting would happen, y’know? Maybe a prostitute would get stabbed and I’d have to go rescue her? Or some lesbians would get stabbed? I wouldn’t mind they were lesbians. I’d save ‘em. You’ve gotta look out for people, y’know, even if they’re different from ya. Maybe I’d get some kinda medal from some kinda Lesbian Association. A protecting lesbians medal. Do they have them? They should have. （Pause.） Yeah, I always used to hope they’d have one of those shooting massacres at my high school, didn’t you? I did. But they never had shit at my high school, they just had lessons. So I’d always kinda, I guess you could say it was a daydream. I’d always kinda daydream that a couple of the more perturbed kids would come in and, y’know, start shooting up the place, cos of whatever it was in their personal life was making ‘em sad, y’know, like they wasn’t very good at sports or what have you? Which can get you down. And they’d come in, y’know, as they do, dressed like soldiers, just to be different, and then I’d, y’know, do something brave and save everybody. Well, not everybody, else it wouldn’t be a high school massacre, but maybe after they got, say, twelve? And then I’d hold a door shut with my broken leg maybe while the bullets came in through the door and I lay there semi-bleeding to death. Or a window. Y’know what? I wouldn’t even mind dying, as long as I got to do something brave. But I definitely wouldn’t wanna be one of the ones just got shot in the head at the outset and didn’t know what was going on. That’d be lousy. Just sitting there doing algebra and then nothing forever. Waste of being in a high-school massacre. Although I betcha most of those kids who survived, even the ones who did something brave, if you asked them afterwards what they would’ve preferred, they probably would’ve preferred the day just played out normal and they went home bored and no one would’ve come in their classrooms to shoot them up at all. Or their cafeteria or whatever. （Pause.） We weren’t even allowed in the cafeteria at start of school when I was a kid, were you? We weren’t. Cafeteria was for lunchtime. I don’t know what’s going on these days, cafeteria at nine o’clock in the morning. （Pause.） Maybe they was having breakfast? （Pause.） Makes it even more sad. （Pause.） How did I get onto my high school massacre thing? Oh yeah, the one-handed man. Yeah, so I guess it was around midnight I seen him hopping off at the fire escape and sprinting off into the night with a gun in his hand. I knew he had a gun, didn’t I? I knew it wasn’t no car back-firing. Liar. Which of course meant that the pretty girl was still up there, possibly dead or dying at this point. I was hoping dying rather than dead ’cos then I could maybe staunch the blood with my shirt or something and we could get chatting. ’Course, if it was a choice between her being dying and her being just tied up or something. I’d choose her just being tied up, y’know? I ain’t sick. ’Course, her coloured friend, I didn’t know where the hell he was. I did remember where I knew him from, though. He was the little prick that stiffed me in that speed deal, two winters back. I gave him sixty bucks and he told me to wait there and I waited there and he run off and he didn’t come back. He just didn’t come back. I was standing there for an hour. In the snow. And then the cops showed up. I probably shouldn’t have been rude to ’em, it wasn’t their fault, but, y’know, I was furious. That little prick, he was probably watching from round the corner or something, laughing. Which is why it really stuck in my craw when he didn’t even recognize me on the reception desk, man, he just looked right through me. Maybe it was the boxer shorts, but I don’t know, man, it stuck in my craw. （Pause.） Anyway, when the one-handed man’s mother rang up I just put her straight through to the room. What else was I gonna do? Say, “I’m sorry, your son’s not here at the moment, he’s just jumped off at my fire escape and run off in the night with a gun in his hand.” She mighta gone hysterical. She already sounded a little hysterical. So, yeah, I just put her through to the room. Let those fucks figure it out. （Blackout.）