The Gorilla Behind Me

I’m sitting on Jimmy’s porch, smoking a cigarette and listening to his story of a co-worker’s t-shirt featuring Mr. Snuffalupogus, Big Bird’s imaginary friend. “I had an imaginary bodyguard when I was a kid.” I say, and then realize what it must sound like. It sounds like I had a horrible childhood, full of God-knows-what dastardly abuse. “It’s not like that, “ I say to Jimmy, who has obviously been jolted out of his beer/weed/sex haze. “My childhood was fine!” I’m giggling now. “But I used to get so mad when he wouldn’t talk to me!” Jimmy is shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve got to write about the gorilla,” I think. I spend the night with Jimmy. It is one night that I am not alone.

My bodyguard was a large, purple-furred gorilla. He was not cute and cuddly, but he was not scary either. He was business-like, a gorilla who could get things done. I take it for granted that his inspiration was the cartoon character Grape Ape, but I fear that if I google Grape Ape to confirm this, I will find my hazy memories of my bodyguard entirely remade in the cartoon’s image. I fear that Grape Ape might have sported a bowler hat—an indignity that my silent, stoic bodyguard would never have suffered.

I remember my bodyguard best in my father’s house, following behind me on the stairs at night. I was never afraid of the dark, but he was always there anyway, mute and
unmovable. He certainly was not there for my amusement; he refused to speak. But he was there, in the night, when I was alone.

I do not remember how old I was when my bodyguard appeared, nor do I remember how old I was when he finally failed to appear. For most of my life he has been reduced to an anecdote, a one-liner thrown out for laughs whenever the conversation turns to childhood imaginary friends. I do not remember when or why I needed him.

I can barely remember the questions I used to ask him—Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you following me? I remember my frustration at his unwillingness or inability to answer me. I do not remember being calmed or comforted by his presence. I only remember my acceptance of the situation, tempered by a mild irritation.

I do not remember, was not capable of articulating, what my bodyguard was there to protect me from. I can guess, of course. To have the monolith of “my parents” split into two uncertain people, with previously sublimated needs and wants, raises spectres of loss, loneliness, passion, and struggle. New adults with their own selves and histories would come and go with little regard for the small girl who talked out the side of her mouth, like a bum with a stogie, and trailed an invisible gorilla behind her.

Now a divorced mother myself, I have a new invisible bodyguard. She is real this time—my friend Donna, a large, solid woman with a reckless love of power tools and has the truncated finger to prove it. She and her equally imposing girlfriend are the self-appointed watchdogs of my safety as I sow my long-delayed wild oats. Before I meet a new man, I call Donna to say where I am going and whom I will be with. Before I go home with him, I call her again to give her his address and arrange a time to call in the morning to report that I am still alive. We have a code question I will ask if I ever feel unsafe—an inquiry after one of her dogs is the signal for the avenging dykes to come to my rescue. So far, this has not been necessary.

What I feared as a child, I am living now. I have left the airless desperation of a dying marriage and barely survived the inevitable, unsuitable rebound man. I have gone home with the inexperienced but tenderhearted techie, the guitar player who made me scream like a banshee, the ex-Satanist who missed his ex-girlfriend, the lonely man with cats, the dude who owns more pairs of shoes than I do, the New Orleans hippie with paint peeling off his walls like a neglected fresco, the ex-army man now growing his goatee to his waist, the guy from Jersey with the little blind dog, and Jimmy, the scrawny kid from Kansas with crates full of vinyl. I am not afraid of men, or what they do, in the night, when we are alone.

The truth is that the only danger I face is that which blossoms within me. The neurotic tendencies I was born with, the anxiety and sorrow planted in my childhood, have bloomed into a chronic state of dread and self-loathing that informs every waking hour, often leaving me gasping for breath. The chaos and loneliness I feared as a child surround me now.

There are scars beneath my clothes— each a reminder of a terrible night. The Y-incision of an autopsy bisects my torso. One foot reads “no more velveteen rabbit,” the other says merely “everyone lies.” Xs are carved over my heart.

The only one who touches my body with intent to harm is me. I’m dangerous at night, when I am alone.