Fictionish: This monkey’s gone to heaven

Earlier this century, a Tibetan monk was scheduled to be executed in China. We will come back to that in a minute.

I moved to the midwest in 2002 and struggled to find work. I quickly ran out of money and stretched my budget by eating only one 711 egg and cheese muffin and an orange juice every day. I was tired, broke, and malnourished. It was the best I looked in years.

I eventually found a job at a daily newspaper in a very liberal college town. The local university had a popular football team and I worked late nights until after the game ended and the recap had been written. I waited for the final stories to come in, laid them out in the paper, and sent it off to the printer.

The office was a few miles from my home and I had no means of transportation. The town had bike trails and skate parks everywhere, but not a single curb could be found outside of the downtown. So, I walked carefully each way, unintentionally playing chicken with traffic if I stumbled.

One day, the university students held a protest against the Tibetan monk’s execution. The editor told me the story would be coming in late, and that I would need to fit it in the paper’s layout, adding a photo, caption, and my own headline.

“Students are planning a protest,” he said. “The last story is going to come in really late.”

I asked what was going on. I had no TV, no friends, and my only source of news was the newspaper which had yet to be printed on that particular day.

“A Tibetan monk is scheduled to be executed and these fucks think they can save him with a bunch of signs and folk music. Bullshit Buddhists.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, unsure of why anyone cared this much about a tiny monkey.

“I shit you not.”

There was always a lot of cursing in the newsroom.

Exhaustion and malnourishment had me on the brink of collapsing at this point. I was beginning to lose a bit of my grasp on reality. So, cut me a little slack here.

Freshly out of college, I loved alternative and indie rock bands like the Pixies and thought I would give them a nod in my headline, “This monkey’s gone to heaven.” The stock photo I chose was no better.

The next morning, I dragged myself back into the office where the justifiably irate owner sat at my chair.

“What the fuck, man?”

“I’m sorry,” I responded. “What’s up?”

Apparently, the protestors had been calling in all morning to complain about the insensitive headline and photo.

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

In short, I did not have the capacity to think like a rational human being anymore. I was an automaton running out of power.

He slammed a newspaper down on my desk well, as much as anyone could slam a tabloidsized publication and walked away.

I froze, unsure of what was to happen next. Nobody said a word. So, I sat down at my desk and started working. Soon, the normal conversations started back up again and life continued as this had never happened. I did not think much about it at the time.

Years later, I wondered how I was not fired. I recalled a conversation I had with my manager at another point. I asked how I had gotten the job here. I was barely qualified and did not interview particularly well at the time. He told me the job was offered to a few other people first but refused to say why none of those people took the position.

At this point, it was clear. I was the only sucker who would work for such little pay. That’s why I was not fired. The cost of replacing me was not worth the hassle. So, this monkey kept going to work.