"It is gone. I have wasted it. Looking back, I have wasted it all. I could have been an educator, a musician, a lawyer. But I have been none of these things. This extraordinary gift, I have taken for granted, and for what I can't be sure. To exist alongside you, I suppose, without causing any unpleasantness. Allow me to explain.

"I was born in the back of a truck. This is what I've been told. On the way to a hospital or laboratory or some kind of medical-science-compound. It had a large fence topped with barbed wire. This always felt wrong to me. I thought medicine and science was supposed to help people, not isolate itself behind prison-like barriers. I remember some of this trip to the compound, though I have later read this to be impossible. The problem is that I cannot be certain whether it is a false-memory, or if it is another gift that I have let go to waste. My mother died during that birth. The only family I've had was a series of workers in the compound. I killed the first one, but no one seemed to mind. Perhaps this is part of my problem, why I have wasted my gifts. I have always been coddled, or if not coddled, excuses are made for my every action. Perhaps I have no internal drive of my own, no instincts, no ambition. The irony in this is that the usual excuse for my behaviour has been 'it is just in his nature, it was instinctual'. I wonder though, what is my nature? Am I more man than beast, more beast than man? Is it 50%-50%? 60%-40%? Do I still keep my species-name, Troglodytes gorilla, even though I am vastly different from the others I have known? What makes a man? Am I to stop eating my shoots, and the occasional insect, for steak? Do I smoke a pipe and slowly become an alcoholic? Am I just a trained-primate? One who mimics or 'apes', as they say? Or are these thoughts my own? Is it the same, their learning and mine? We are both apes, you and I, but I digress.

"I often worry the workers at the compound only gave me this gift of communication so that I may tell them about primate-communication. I worry because this makes me as extraordinary as any tool. My mind is a wrench. My emotions are a tractor. Have I been used? Not well, to be sure. The compound was all I knew, so I had little to tell about primate culture, primate anything. I learned, of course, from the other captives, but this I don't feel to be genuine. The whole thing seems a ridiculous oversight on the part of these workers, doctors or scientists, whatever they were. I suppose it doesn't matter. To me, it doesn't matter. I'm sure to someone else this is all very interesting. My concerns, however, lay in my end. Erikson, you know. As you can tell, my despair is beating integrity. I have become the bitter old man who hates the young for being as I was: young. And stupid. Mostly stupid. When I was young, I was vaguely aware of my gift. It was impossible to not see the difference between myself and the other primates. But, looking back on my youth, I know it was all wrong. At the time it felt right, but looking back, I see how base I was, am. Early on I did not know what end I could reach or aim for, so I hoarded as many ideas as I could. But the ideas weren't enough. I still needed to regulate my behaviour. As you can guess, being so unsure of what my nature was, is, I found it difficult to decide on an appropriate character to model myself after. Was I to ape an ape? Would it be most appropriate to behave like others that resemble me most closely? No, I decided. Even if it was to be a caricature of human behaviour, I decided I should strive to be like them, like you. So I modeled myself after the workers in the compound. After all, whether they were doctors or scientists, both are respectable professions, making me respectable for being like them. I began by joining them in their discussions. By this point, you see, I was deemed civilized enough to travel freely within the compound. No one seemed greatly put off by my presence alongside them in the cafeteria. They all thought it to be sort of novel. I understand this, but it made it all the more difficult to model myself after them, being constantly reminded that I was not like them. I tried, though.

"We talked about television mostly. This too was a problem, because aside from the security monitors, the compound did not have television. From this problem, however, I learned the important skill of maintaining conversation without knowing anything about the topic. I wonder how many of the workers, during these conversations, did the same. It's fairly easy; I could just offer small generalizations about whatever character, and chuckle at the right time. It was as though I had watched as much television as the best of them. I learned the importance of discussing the weather, if not television. The trick here was to know not only what the current weather was, but to know a little further from a weather forecast, so that I might say something like, 'Yes, and it's going to be like this for a few more days, I hear.' I got the weather forecasts from abandoned newspapers in the cafeteria. The newspapers also gave me news about the actors on television, and enough information on current events that I could discuss a political issue if it was a topic of discussion.

"The most important part of the workers' conversations seemed to revolve around other workers. I gathered this from their hushed tones. While, when we discuss the weather, we speak freely, loudly, when the topic is a coworker, we glance behind us suspiciously, and talk like we are conspiring against this person. When something of this sort came up at the table in the cafeteria, I would notice all the faces suddenly turn serious. The workers leaned in to hear, and then leaned back as though sated by the discussion, as though this information would truly be of use sooner or later. Being thought of as less-than-human around the compound, for good reason I suppose, I was privy to plenty of this talk of coworkers. The turning point, I think, or felt rather, in the discussions in the cafeteria, came when I revealed something I had heard from a man named Ellis. I don't remember what it was. It wasn't particularly important, but the feeling I got from truly being able to join this most holy part of the workers' conversation was...It is hard to describe even now. I felt as though I was one of them. We then conspired together, and I felt accepted. I found I could also, simply, lie. When I had no conversation to make, I made it up myself. I suppose this all became that I had friends, or acquaintances, but I never saw the result of my lies. The compound, you see, being a place of business, consisted of employees filing in and filing out. If someone left looking upset, or did not return, I never thought it was as result of my lying and gossip. There were so many employees, you see, that I saw this all as normal or inevitable. When you get enough people into the same place, after all, this sort of thing is bound to happen. I saw nothing unnatural about conflict, even fighting, between employees. It simply happened. I did not understand my part in this.

"When I eventually left the compound, being all I knew, I applied for several jobs. The response I got was surprising, to say the least. Apparently there are no others like me. While in the compound I accepted this, assuming there were other places like it, with others like me in it, but upon my release, I received two distinct reactions. The first was disgust and shock at my monstrous size, and my fur, or whatever physical characteristics I have that are so inhuman. It was never really specified. The second reaction was a sort of celebrity. So, when applying for jobs, some institutions rejected me outright, out of what I saw as an unfair prejudice. But other institutions, some that I did not even apply to, would seek me out as some sort of spectacle. I didn't find this to be prejudice at the time because I welcomed it, but now, it is clear I was exploited. I don't care to recount my entire employment history, so suffice to say, eventually the novelty wore off but I was competent enough at my job that I could stay. I made many friends, but unlike the compound, I found that I made many enemies. 'Enemies' is a strong word, but I had never been disliked before, at least not to my knowledge. An older man who worked with me explained, 'that's just how it is: some people will like you and some will not. All you can do is be yourself. At least that is honest.'"

The gorilla later died and was given a proper Christian-burial which was televised on several news stations. His friends from the compound attended and spoke warmly of how human he was.