Banana Monkey Boy and Banana Monkey Girl

This happened in 1983. I was at Faywood Hot Springs when I met Banana Monkey Girl and her little brother, Banana Monkey Boy. Earlier that afternoon, I had taken some prime cannabis and a minor dose of magic mushrooms, and soaked in the hot pool until I dissolved into a ball of giggles. This lasted for about half an hour. Later I laughed and laughed for a long time. I felt good.

Then I climbed out of the pool and up into a large mulberry tree which was loaded with ripe fruit. I climbed out on various limbs like a monkey and ate wild mulberries. Then I returned to the pool for several more hours. Darkness came, and with the darkness came strange carloads of the kind of people who haunt hot springs at night. One of these carloads contained Banana Monkey Boy and Banana Monkey Girl.

I didn’t really notice them until they were already in the pool beside me. Like mutual magnets, our spheres of interaction tended to merge. Banana Monkey Boy was eating a banana. “I’m a banana monkey,” he said. So that’s how I started calling him Banana Monkey Boy. “I sank down to the bottom of the pool once and they thought I was dead,” he said. Banana Monkey Boy was 7 years old and his sister, Banana Monkey Girl, was 9. They were acting sort of strange. “Are you drunk?” I asked. “Yes,” said Banana Monkey Girl, “our parents let us get drunk sometimes.”

My memory hazes out after that. I fade away. The signal has been lost. All I can remember is that we soaked together in the hot water without saying too much, just sharing a sense of communion. It seemed appropriate somehow -- two drunk kids and a spaced cowboy.