CHIMPO'S COURTING DAYS

Another outing for Chimpo, this time in search for love

Chimpo slithered up to the prettiest female in the tribe. He knew what he wanted and he was determined to take it because rumour had it that not only he looked on her as the prettiest female. She was known as Kunny to everyone though Kunny might or might not have been her name, and he knew she was available. Kunny was easier than most sounds for the monkeys of the tribe to pronounce with their limited vocal cords and harsh clicking vocabulary, and it had stuck. There were several females with that name, but that didn't concern Chimpo because this was the Kunny he wanted.

So he slithered up to her. And what followed was a grunted conversation, but the meaning was clear.

“You?” he asked, meaning who was she even though he knew perfectly well.

“Kunny,” she clicked back at him, “and Chimpo?”

He nodded. He had been called Chimpo almost since his birth, and he was quite happy to respond to the gently softness of the name.

“Chimpo and Kunny?” he asked. As a question it might have been interpreted in a variety of ways but his meaning was clear to him. He liked the look of her and that could only lead to one possible outcome: he would mate with her and she would swell with an infant, and be known to all as his female.

She chilled him with one look.

She was good at that. Being savagely attractive she had already been propositioned by just about all the males in the tribe, and Chimpo, though already with a reputation for strength and success in the hunt, was younger than most. But none had gone so far as to put her with baby, though several had tried. Fertility wasn’t a foregone conclusion to an act of passion.

“Chimpo big,” he grunted, a phrase that could have meant just about anything about him, but she knew what he intended her to understand. He was boasting about his genitals. Even then, way back in the preamble to history when males were establishing certain things about the important things in life, genital hugeness was considered a priority. Like success in the hunt, providing meat for the nest, defending his home against interlopers, attracting a mate and keeping her at least until any progeny were independent. All were important, but it was just the one thing on his mind at the moment.

“Chimpo small,” she teased him, making a play at staring at the relevant parts of his anatomy. As far as Chimpo was concerned, the interplay meant she was interested, and he was of the rather advanced opinion that a willing female was better than a reluctant one.

“Chimpo strong,” he bragged, and it was unclear to Kunny what he meant, though she rather suspected he was still referring to his private parts, not that any parts were private back in the monkey days when forests were alive with the sounds of males shrieking because some thorn or nettle had savaged their decency, unseen in time.

Anyway, she gazed at the relevant part of his anatomy with an exaggerated stare. Although she was young, younger even than this male and his bravado, she wasn’t inexperienced in the important things in life, and of those the most important was providing the tribe with a future generation. The alternative was unthinkable.

Few were the females who failed in this, but those that did were scorned and referred to insultingly as witches and expected to babysit just about everyone’s offspring when they were called on to do so, and that meant that they missed a whole lot of jolly japes and parties fuelled by poppy smoke and mushroom cakes. It was no fun being a childless female and such became embittered harridans whilst they were yet young.

“Kunny think,” she said after a pause during which her staring at him caused the first signs of excitement in his flesh, which seemed to delight her.

“Chimpo show Kunny,” he grovelled. And she followed him as he led her away from seeing eyes and curious bystanders. After all, Kunny was considered a desirable female and many had been the debates in which she had been suggested for this or that male as a mate. Some had even mentioned Chimpo, and indeed he was even favourite amongst the Oldsters of above twenty summers as a future possible leader, or Bossmonk, in which case he would require a very fertile spouse with a tribe of monklings to brag about.

He led her away from the tribal centre where the nests were, clustered around the bole of a central tree that had been smitten by lightning before any of them had been born, and out to a copse where, sooner rather than later though not quite yet, there would be fruits ripe for the picking.

“Fruit,” he indicated. But he knew that it was all unripe and bitter to the taste, and he would never capture the heart of the lovely Kunny by giving her stomach gripes. So, with huge skill, he added, “tomorrow.”

She nodded. She knew this place. Of course she did! After all, it was the females of the tribe who gleaned from the copse, who took the crab apples back to their nests and prepared sweet foods that wouldn’t give their males diarrhoea. But she knew unripe fruits when she saw them, and she leered at him.

And then he did something truly magical.

“Promise,” he said.

And he reached high into the lower branches of one of the trees and plucked a single fruit, and handed it to her.

Of all the fruits of all the trees, this must have been the only ripe one, and he knew it, he who had placed it there for him to find, a wrinkled but sweet remnant of last year’s pickings.

“Chimpo give,” he grunted, and he tried to smile.

Somehow his mouth was shaped all wrong, and he grimaced, but that didn’t matter. He knew one thing. He had won her heart and very soon he was going to have the time of his life mating with her. And she would like it. She would have to like it, and then she would come back for more, and the future would be certain.

She smiled back at him, also a bit of a grimace, and she bit into the fruit.

Had her eyes been on it she would have noticed the wasp grub that slipped with the over-ripe fruit into her mouth. But it wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Chimpo could provide, and that was all that really mattered. That and his huge member.

© Peter Rogerson 26.10 19