I was seven—the youngest in a class full of retirees, suburban hobbyists, and lost souls trying to paint their way into meaning in a finished basement that smelled like turpentine and old carpet.

And there you were: a chimpanzee, squirrely and mean-eyed, perched like some doomed oracle in your corner cage. You screamed at nothing. You flailed at ghosts. No one knew why a hippie art teacher needed a chimp, but there you were anyway.

One autumn afternoon, we went outside for our fresh air break, crunching leaves beneath our feet, feeling human and peaceful for a whole five minutes.

What we came back to was a war zone.

Apocalypse Now.

You'd broken free, and the room was a psychedelic nightmare. Paint tubes were torn open like party poppers. Oils and turpentines were smeared into diarrhea rainbows across the walls, the shelves, and our neatly packed art kits.

The stench was its own violent artist statement.

You sat on the highest shelf, squeezing Burnt Umber straight into your mouth like Go-Gurt, screaming into the void between each tongue-lashed gulp and shitting unholy rivers of technicolor crap everywhere.

I watched our teacher break down sobbing, her utopia melting under the weight of your mess.

And yet, part of my young mind admired you.

You weren't painting for others. You weren't painting for praise. You weren't even painting, really.

You were just existing in unadulterated chaos—living your truth in Raw Siennas, Phthalo Blues, and Cadmium Yellows.

What a time to be alive.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing, and to the screaming chimp who showed me that art is never as pure as we pretend it to be.