The two or three of you who read the other blog will have already read this story, but because my brain is mush (and I really want to make an entry today), you, my good and faithful readers of this blog are getting a warmed up dish today. Let me tell you about the Monkey Man. He's really just a sub-sub-minor blip on the radar of my life, but it's a good story for a Saturday.Back in 1992, when I was still hot and Ville was married to that stoner dude, the three of us decided to go up to Cold Spring Tavern, which is an old stage stop in the Refugio mountains between Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley. Ville and her stoner dude husband rode on his motorcycle and I rode with one of his friends, who had a Jeep. The tavern is a well-known hangout for local bikers on Sundays; they open up a separate building with a bar in it and they have blues bands come in, and people drink pitchers of beer and dance like the drunken bikers they are. It's great fun. Here's a picture. Click the link. Really. Click it now. You'll wish you could go there, too...
We found a table near the stage and as the brew began to ferment our brain cells, Ville and I got up to dance with each other. Hey, in California, chicks can dance together without being called lesbians by bikers. They like that shit.
There was a guy there who had on a monkey mask and he was hamming it up on the dance floor. After having dumped a few beers into myself, I surmised that he was having a lot of fun, and being a ham bone myself, I joined him in a dance or two. That was all there was to it, I swear. The dance floor was packed, so I thought nothing of it, and neither did anyone else. Except the Monkey Man, apparently.
Later, when we went outside to get some fresh air (this was back when people could smoke in biker bars), the Monkey Man followed us, which was okay until he took off the mask. Gads! He looked better with it on! We didn't say anything, although it was clear that he was trying to pick me up. We were ready to leave anyway, so I got on the back of Ville's stoner dude husband's bike, anticipating a lovely ride along the California coastline. Ville rode in the Jeep; I suspect she slept most of the way home. It wasn't until we got to her apartment in Oxnard that we saw the Monkey Man drive up. He'd followed us (me) for abut 50 miles! We decided to go to my place, about 10 miles away, in hope of losing him. We told him that he really shouldn't have followed us, that we had other plans.
He was not to be deterred, however, and all the way, the stoner dude husband and I tried to lose him. It was to no avail; he stayed on us. When we got to my house, we all kind of felt bad for the guy because it was so cold, so we invited him in for a bit before he had to leave. It wasn't so bad, really, and we sat in my living room eating stew, drinking beer and listening to Dylan, Clapton, and Jethro Tull.
That night, with everyone (including the monkey man) crapped out around my living room, I and my Yorkie, Fritz, went to bed. It was sometime later that I was wakened by Fritz growling and yapping, and someone getting into my bed. It was the Monkey Man!
I jumped out of bed shouting, "This does not happen! Get the hell out of my house!"
He apologized sincerely and explained that he didn't have enough gas money to get back to Santa Barbara so I gave him a few bucks and he left, never to be seen again. And that's my story about the Monkey Man.
