Describe your current marriage

I am not technically married. I have an arranged partner: she is a chimpanzee, significantly smaller than I am, unable to speak. She waits for me. She doesn’t do much. Lays around, eats....Frankly, there is very little stimulating about her, but she does appeal to my physical nature, that is I am sexually attracted to her, hormonally, just as I am to human women.

What is your sexuality vis-a-vis humans?

I have not, although I will not deny that my imagination has developed to such a point where I can.....and I have wondered. It would probably be a disaster. When I imagine such an encounter, and this is private information, I only reveal it to get you off of my back, you are like an irritant, like a pesky flea that gnaws at my flesh, I will say that...human men could not follow in my footsteps, so to speak. The woman would undergo a certain journey of transformation. The results would be drastic and the effect irreversible. All this in jest, of course.

Now that you are human, do you look down upon apes? Do you think you could ever be an ape again?

I do not look down at apes. Or do I?

Rotpeter, why do you prefer to live in the dirty city rather than the serene beauty of the jungle?

Who said anything about “prefer”!!!!....To me I believe I feel equally not at home in the jungle and in the city. Both nauseate me, slightly, at all times. Waves of nausea are constantly swimming across my stomach. It is true, the city boasts a multitude of humans, a sea of humans. There are seemingly as many humans in the city as there are fish in the sea, and although one swims and the other walks, the constant movement causes me a modicum of dizziness. As for the jungle, it is the same as the city, an alien place where a tuxedo and top hat are not welcome.

In the city, the final stirrings of my ape nature are unwelcome.

In the jungle, the tuxedo and top hat are hardly welcome either.

The distinction is blurred, however, for now one finds the city in the jungle and the jungle in the city. The other day I stood beside a tree in the city and held its trunk in my hand. In fact I used it to support my weight. We had much in common, I felt.

Do you miss the jungle? If so, what about it? If you had the choice of being or not being captured, what would you choose?

As I mentioned in my report: “If I were invited to take a cruise in that ship, I should certainly refuse the invitation...” So no, I would never “wish” to be captured. However, I must say that although I cannot remember where I came from, in that the memories are not really mine, but merely the photographs of others, to speak in images, I do not feel the same frenzy of longing to return to the “enchanted forest” as do the men and women among whom I live. Somewhere inside of me there must be a source of “memories” but really I feel only the jungle within me in my heartbeat, and in my stomach and in the tremble of my legs when I walk, and I try with all my might to stamp it out once and for all. I do this by learning. For me a newly learned idea means the sudden death of a past reality. The more I learn each day, the more I depart from my cage. And therefore I experience a special kind of joy to learn a new thing. It is the joy of release. You might imagine I mean release from ignorance. If that is your best way of understanding it, I suppose that the image fits to a certain degree. In any case, it is meager, human-like release.

But to imagine the time before there was even that first cage is a real impossibility.

Do you dream? What are your dreams made of?

I do dream. I am not prepared to answer this question. I have to reflect.

Yes I dream. And I am sure I dreamed also as an ape. I dream now that I am an ape. And I am sure that once, as an ape, I might have dreamed that I was a human.

It is only a matter of time and awareness of behavior. You forget that we are the same.

Do you dream that you are an animal?

How can you drink wine with the man responsible for your capture?

Do you drink wine with your boss after work? I cannot complain, my life is good.