Monkey on your back

People use the phrase "monkey on my back" (admittedly not very much but nonetheless they do) to signify someone irritating. "Why is this?" You may well ask.

Well from personal experience, I can tell you a few things that are not merely a little irritating to the uninitiated.

First there is the weight of the creature, which is worsened by it's propensity to bounce when it is on any moving craft. Then there is the fact that when a monkey is on your back it changes it's normal mode of conversation (if it has one) to a mode that consists mostly of kicking and slapping. When it is not kicking or slapping because it has nothing to say for itself, it will continue to bounce nonetheless and will turn its attention to goodies that can be found on its steed's scalp and in its orifices. Despite what you might think, the nostrils are not immune from these investigations. That leads us to the surprising coarseness of a monkeys fingers and the not unsurprising smell which is pretty bad anyway and is made worse if it is smoking a cigarette. Not that this is the case with Q-M because interestingly, I can never smell anything from his cigarettes - but if you're a non-smoker, and you find a smoking monkey on your back, it's something you should be prepared for. But I digress, the combination of the weight and the coarse fingers left a rash on my forehead (which he was using as balance) after the trip down to the video shop on Sunday. Quasi-Mojo said yogurt would clear that right up and I agreed, but in his opinion I was "unbelievably and unforgivably clumsy" as I missed my forehead every time I attempted to self-medicate, and lost the whole carton down my mouth.

The thing is though, one gets used to having a monkey on one's back and being the messed-up, neurotic creatures that humans are, we get confoundedly attached to this sort of thing. Besides, walking down the street, hand-in-hand with a monkey just looks silly. But anyway, the rashes, the neck-strain, the slapping, the nit-picking and everything else are things I'd actually miss. I don't think I chose this though. I think it works like a disease. It's possible to get infected with a certain type of behaviour, and then there's little you can do to extricate from this disease of the heart. In many ways, it's my own fault. I didn't wear a crash-helmet. And I've seen this phenomenon in my romantic relationships too. Some people say, Oh I love her despite x,y,z (all bad things) but honestly sometimes I really think, bullfaeces, if she wasn't x-ing, y-ing and z-ing so much you would be entirely disinterested. Well, it seems (lately anyway) that I miss the erratic unreasonable girl and the attentive accommodating girl moves me little. Interesting. Confusing. Ridiculous.

I now declare the floor open as to the moral of the story.