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I’m tired of being loved for my body alone.
But Monobear, people say, Monobear, surely – it’s a compliment! Don’t you enjoy seeing your audience driven from their minds with desire from just one coy quirk of your smile? And it’s true, I do love that! When people approach me in the street, in tears, and tell me that they start to shake and tremble if they’re forced to go without the sight of my body for too long – I love it! I live for those moments!
But you’ve got to think of it like this. Imagine you serve dinner to a big group of friends, and once they’ve left you find yourself in the kitchen, pushing your sleeves back past your paws, getting ready to start the washing up. And now imagine you’re trying to decide which washing-up liquid to use, and you’ve got a choice between a dazzling orange one that’s very good with grease stains, or a lemony-scented one, in a plastic bottle with some nice pictures of trees, and you know for a fact that that one’s especially effective with little crusty bits of food stuck down in the corners.
So which one do you choose? Both of them have great appearances, but you’ve got to consider more than that. You’ve got to think about what they can do – not just how frothy their bubbles are, or how tasty they smell. You’ve got to look past the surface of the washing-up liquids, before you can make a decision. You’ve got to value them for more than just their looks.
And that’s exactly how it is with bears. If you spend all your time just wishing your ears could be as perky as mine, you’ll never get to know me on a more personal level. You’ll never get to know the ins and outs of my personality! And trust me, you’d be missing out.
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As a cub, I was once close friends with a salmon. I called him Salmon-kun, and he called me Monobear-kun, and there was nothing we didn’t know about each other. Never was there ever a heart-to-heart as honest and open as those I shared with Salmon-kun! What we had was true friendship. The kind of bond found only between brothers.
Or so we thought. One day, another friend of mine saw Salmon-kun and me laughing as we played together in the clear, gurgling shallows of a local stream. Monobear-kun, said Owl-kun, what are you doing playing with a salmon? Are you not a predator? Are you not above that fish in the food chain?
And just like that, after all our long years of friendship, it was as though I finally saw Salmon-kun for what he was. My animal instincts kicked in! Salmon-kun begged me to spare him, but, to me, he was no longer Salmon-kun: merely a salmon. And I, Monobear – I was a bear. I still am a bear! I followed my instincts and I devoured that salmon, skin and scales and tail and all. And it tasted delicious.
Years later, as an upstart young stockbroker poised at the very brink of my future on the floors of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, I trusted my animal instincts once again. Unfortunately, this time, I lost the company three hundred million yen. And that three hundred million yen lost me the job. Much like Salmon-kun, my career was dead in the water!
You win some, you lose some.
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If you look ‘Monobear’ up in a dictionary, you won’t find it. ‘Monobrow’, perhaps, but that’s nothing to do with me! I like to keep my brows in immaculate dual-browed shape.
The thing is, when I don’t see myself represented in the national lexicon, it makes me wonder: who am I?
I’m Monobear, of course – but who is Monobear? What defines me as an individual? Is it my generosity to those in need? My truly exceptional chest-waist-hip ratio? That unique lilt to my voice when I’m enjoying good company?
Or perhaps it’s something simpler. Perhaps it’s just the fact I’m a monochromatic bear.
Dictionaries are important, but some things are beyond description. I, Monobear, am one of those things.
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We were all young, back in the Eighties, apart from everyone who was old or not born yet. I remember how I was scouted on the streets for my svelte figure and natural, radiant charisma, and I remember those few blissful weeks I spent on the covers of the biggest style mags. And the shoots I did! Well, Madonna was popular, so lace was the order of the day. Lace, and conical bras, and lacy conical bras, and crucifixes. I once did a shoot strapped to an inverted, lace-covered crucifix, wearing not just one conical bra – but three! Three conical bras! Arranged all down my body!
Ah, the Eighties! We were all so young back then.
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I was at the forefront of every trend, back in the New York days, and when psychotherapy came into vogue around the mid-Nineties it was no exception. Right away I signed up for the finest clinic money could buy! By that time I’d quit playing for the major leagues, of course, but the money was still rolling in from endorsements and sponsorship deals, and the occasional public speaking engagement, so cost was no barrier to me.
My psychotherapist wore the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. That’s what I remember about him. Let’s talk about your childhood, Mister Monobear, he’d say. Were you content as a child? Were you happy in school? And I’d tell him that bears don’t have school, and he’d apologise.
But what I most remember is lying on the couch, paws crossed on my belly, just gazing at those rolled-up sleeves. Why did he roll them up? Was he too hot? If he was too hot, why didn’t he turn down the heating? Was it for style? If it was for style, why did it look so slovenly? Did he perhaps have stains on the cuffs he wished to hide from his patients? Had he forgotten his cufflinks that morning? It preyed on my mind! Was I paying all this money for the services of a man who couldn’t even wash his shirt? A man who couldn’t even change the thermostat?
That’s why I left psychotherapy, anyway. Not that I needed it! People often comment on what a remarkably well-adjusted individual I am.
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What goes around, comes around. If you don’t believe me, spend an afternoon at a tram stop! You’ll see a tram pass, and a little while later you’ll see that same tram pass once more. It’s travelled round the city, and it’s picked up all sorts of different people, but it’s still the same old tram.
And that’s like karma. Just as a tram travels from one stop to another, eventually returning full circle to the stop at which it started, the benefits of one good deed get passed on through a community until you start feeling them too.
Upupu, that’s what Monomi-chan would tell you! The truth of it is, you’re far more likely never to feel the benefits of your actions. Say you help a little old lady across the road! Maybe you’d be hoping she was a secret billionaire, so grateful and so super lonely that she’d write you straight into her will! That would sure be karma, right? That’d be great! You’d love that!
But what if, the very next day, you get knocked down by a truck? And you can’t struggle back to your feet in time, and the next ten minutes you spend getting run over by every vehicle that passes? Crack! – crunch! – squelch! Just think: if you hadn’t helped that little old lady safely across the road, then perhaps karma wouldn’t have demanded your life in return!
In most cases, it’s far safer just to take the tram.
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Have you ever found yourself alone in a motel in an unfamiliar country, sprawled out in a chair before the television, a cool soda in one paw and the remote in your other?
And you flick through channel after channel of late-night talk shows, and gameshows, and complicated-looking soap operas, searching for something, anything, to take your mind off the fact your wife has left you, and your kids hate you, and you’re destroying the intriguingly complex cogs and wheels inside of you by drinking soda?
And every channel you find is in a language you can’t understand?
And you find the subtitling function on the remote, and you turn it on, but the world on screen still fails to make sense? The theatre does not work with super adapt, one actress whispers, perhaps, into the ear of her co-star? If I exist therefore it, her co-star, perhaps, whispers back? And yet you keep on watching?
It may surprise you to hear that this whole scenario was drawn straight from my own experiences. That’s right! Well, apart from the fact I’ve never married. There have been offers, of course, over the years, but bachelorhood’s always been too good to me to leave it.
It just goes to show, life isn’t all roses – not even if you’re as popular and successful as I am! Which you bastards will certainly never be.
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Let me clear up some rumours I’ve been hearing lately.
Firstly, I don’t dye my fur. No make-up, either. Just a few little dots of moisturiser every morning, cheeks and chin and muzzle – rub it in and I’m ready to go! Bear-faced, that’s my style. I like to let my looks shine on their own merits.
Next, all rumours of a romance between myself and Mariah Carey are utterly without foundation. A global superstar with an admirable sense of chic, and her dapper, enigmatic, monochrome stylist – of course, it’s little wonder tongues started waggling! I won’t pretend she never made advances, but from the start I made it clear to her where I stood on the matter of workplace romance. Oh, there were tears, and there were tantrums, but once she saw my point of view we got on like a house on fire. We made memories together, Mariah and I, but all of them platonic!
Finally, I’ve never had cosmetic surgery. I have a small mole just above my left buttock, and I admit I once considered getting it removed, but as soon as I gave it serious thought I knew I couldn’t do it. Would I slice off my ears if I thought it made me cuter? Never! Would I chop off my tail if I thought I looked adorable without it? Absolutely not! And that’s because, deep in my heart of hearts, I know I can’t get any cuter. So there’s simply no point trying!
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I was up late one night, surfing the net, when I suddenly caught sight of my reflection in the screen. My glazed-over eyes, the orangey cheese-dust stains on the fur around my mouth, my body slumped down in my top-of-the-line leather computer chair. Is this what I’ve become? I thought to myself. Is this really the kind of bear I want to be?
I gazed into my own eyes. Was this the legacy I wanted to leave the world? Empty fast food packets and a mindless internet history? Surely there was more to life than the trappings of phenomenal success to which I had grown so accustomed? More to existence than the love of beautiful women, and the praise of nations, and status as an international pop cultural icon?
That moment at my computer was a real wake-up call. I had been living life selfishly! Taking, taking, taking, and never giving back to the world any of the incredible talent or wisdom I had to spare! I knew I had so much more to bring to the world than I had ever brought it in my years as a lumberjack in French Canada. Sure, I’d cut down a couple hundred trees, but had that really impacted anybody’s life?
That moment at my computer, surrounded by junk food debris and the realisation of my own incredible potential: that was the moment I first decided to become a teacher.
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It’s difficult to use chopsticks when you have no fingers. That’s why I prefer food I can eat with my paws. Dumplings, for example, or tempura shrimp, or chocolate drops. Sometimes I drink soup! I used to cup my paws and dip them into the bowl, and lap the soup up that way, but as I grew older I realised that there’s an easier technique. Nowadays, I prefer to simply lift the bowl to my mouth and sip. Far more effective, and far less mess!
I still have friends who prefer to drink from their paws, though, and I don’t have a problem with that. That’s what they’ve decided to do, and that’s their choice. And it’s all about personal preference in the end, isn’t it?
I’ve always been the open-minded sort.