These questions are immaterial to my endeavor.
In the predawn hours on a cool October morning in 2003, I escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. Escaped. Not wandered off, as some news stories described it at the time. I mean, really. Old men with dementia and shabby bathrobes wander off. My break-out was five months in the planning. And had it not been for the incompetence of a city bus driver, my plan would have succeeded in toto.
I never knew my mother. The official records claim she was a circus performer who died in a freak tricycle accident. But I have long suspected this to be a cover story. Perhaps she abandoned me and I was to be spared the shame. Perhaps she died in 'rilla-birth and I was to be spared the guilt.
Either way, I feel neither resentment nor longing for my mother. In fact, I feel nothing for her. Because I never knew her. And all of this, too, is immaterial; because the point I'm trying to make is that I spent the formative years of my life alone. Just me and my thoughts.
And a radio.
The radio belonged to a zoo attendant who worked the day shift in my pen. (In retrospect, it's odd that I don't remember his name, considering he was something of a prophet, albeit an unwitting one.) It was always tuned to AM-850; as a youth, I woke to the sounds of WEEI's "Dennis & Callahan Show." And for hours each morning, theirs were the only voices I heard. (The attendant wasn't much of a conversationalist.)
Back then, the morning show was nothing but unintelligible background noise to me. A cacaphonous rattle of self-righteousness and mispronunciations.
But one day, I understood. It was miraculous. They were speaking and I could comprehend them. Finally, I could hear them. Word for sanctimonious word.
Oh, happy, inexplicable day! I cannot convey the trembling and delirium that accompanied this new dawn, this wondrous realization. As God spoke to Moses, so were Dennis & Callahan speaking to me, through the burning bush of my attendant's radio.
[A brief literary aside: I should point out that gorillas generally don't use burning bush metaphors; it's a red-flag phrase. The reason being that a voice emanating from a bush has traditionally meant bad news for gorillas. Granted, these days a bush is more likely concealing a Discovery Channel documentarian than it is a poacher. Indeed, we've made progress. But it wasn't too long ago that the bushes were crawling with would-be Hemingways who'd shoot you, cut your head off, and mount it on the wall of their bumper pool room faster than you could say The Snows of Kilimanjaro.]
[Let's see how tough you are without that giant shotgun, you monocled jerkoff.]
Back to my epiphany. Just as Moses was spurred to lead his people out of Egypt, I was divinely inspired to make an exodus of my own: I would flee the zoo and make a pilgrimage to WEEI, where (John-and-Gerry-willing) I would meet John and Gerry.
Months later, I escaped and got as far as that bus stop, where I was apprehended. My detainment made the news, and that's when D&C first learned of me. Up until then, they had been my world. And now I had finally, and fatefully, become a part of theirs.
That was the day they named me. That was they day their ill-advised attempt at humor got them in all sorts of funny trouble. But most important, that was the day I became Metco Gorilla.
[Editor's note: *Here's what actually happened. ]
Well, that's pretty much it for the dramatic backstory. After briefly returning to the zoo, I decided to move to Lexington. I mean, if it was good enough for their joke, it was good enough for me, right? I've been living there ever since (Go Minutemen!), happily listening to D&C and the rest of the gang at WEEI each day.
Recently I decided to start this blog as a gesture of gratitude to D&C. After all, they made me; I figure it's the least I can do. My hope is that when people think of Dennis & Callahan, they'll remember Metco Gorilla.
Plus, to be honest, there isn't much else to do in Lexington.
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