Birthday Boy

Here's the deal:

About thirty-seven years ago, somewhere around 1967, my dad passed the bar exam in D.C. He was out celebrating in Georgetown when he ran into a young man in a leather vest with a motorcycle, who had two (apparent) girlfriends and a monkey on a chain. The young man sold Monte the monkey, who was promptly named -- by my dad and his new wife -- "Hubert". Hubert was a Java Macaque, a monkey who loved the water, and my parents (this was before I was born) would often let him swim in the tub. My parents had a lot of parties, and they would often put a diaper on Hubert and let him hop from shoulder to shoulder among the guests, scooping fruit out of their drinks. ("Goddamn vile beast," one party veteran noted. "He'd hump women's ears. He liked redheads.") So they observed this behavior, my mom and my dad, and they decided to party with Hubert. They made him a banana daiquiri, and served it to him in a big glass snifter.

He drained it in one gulp, and fell over, passed out.

Of course they were worried. They tried to make sure he was OK, put him in the bathroom. The party went on, long into the night. And Hubert woke up.

Hubert was hung over and pissed off, and he felt a breeze. He climbed up the air-conditioning duct to find where the breeze was coming from, and he met the fan. Everybody at the party heard the fan go whump-whump-whump, and they all heard Hubert scream -- but of course, only the hosts had to clean up all the monkey-shit in the ducts.

Hubert's paw got bandaged, and my parents left town for Ocean City, Maryland. Which is where Hubert, a Java Macaque whose species loves the sea and lives by catching crabs and fish, met the sea for the first time, horribly hung over with a bandaged paw. And, according to my dad, he loved the waves.

The only difficulty was that male Java Macaques are horribly territorial.

On November 1, 1969, my dad took Hubert to a friend of his who worked at the National Zoo. On his way back from the zoo, he stopped at the hospital to see me, his newborn son, and my mom.

Several months later, my mom took me -- in arms -- to the primate house at the National Zoo. Hubert recognized her. And he saw me. And he hissed and chattered and flung shit, furious.

Just so y'all know my monkey genealogy: thanks, Clancy. :-)