Can I tell you a story?

When I was about 15 years old I was in DC for my brother’s wedding and convinced my parents to drop me off alone at the National Zoo.

I eventually wound up at the ape enclosure, which had one big clear aquarium wall and amphitheater seating. (1/?)

There was a tour group of much younger kids there generally excitedly yelling and dancing in front of the enclosure and taunting the gorillas & orangutans and generally, y’know, being 8 year olds confronted with large apes.

Except one orangutan was NOT having this. (2/?)

Extremely agitated, maybe baring his teeth (can’t remember), but getting up on a log perpendicular to the observation window, sprinting the length of it, and hurling himself into the window, shaking the pane.

The kids just got louder and kept teasing the orangutan. (3/?)

The running/slamming defensive display happened 3-4 more times before the adults in the tour group picked up on “wow, our kids are really pissing off these animals, let’s leave.”

And then I was in the ape house alone. (4/?)

Now, the Zoo has signs posted on “here’s what good etiquette looks like to these creatures.” Something like, “squat down, turn your back to them, and look over one shoulder, because they parse direct eye contact as a threat” and I’m at least familiar with that last feeling. (X/?)

So I take my sweet time turning around, squatting down, and waddling backwards towards the glass, periodically looking over my shoulder.

No one comes in while I’m doing this.

The silence is profound.

It takes me at least 5 minutes to move about 20-25 feet. (6/?)

I finally gently rest my back against the glass. There’s an orangutan at the back of the enclosure looking...curious? unimpressed? Ascribing specific emotions to a mind I can’t know feels weird, but I felt distinctly *considered* so I broke eye contact.
(7/x)

A minute later I look over my shoulder again, and the orangutan has turned around, and is peering over their own shoulder, and takes a few steps backward, towards me.

There’s almost a waltz of not making too much eye contact, and eventually they reach the glass.

(8?/x)

The orangutan plops down on the other side of the glass, perfectly mirroring how I’m sitting.

We are now openly staring with curiosity, but with a gentleness I wasn’t expecting.

I’m still alone in the Great Ape house.

I slowly twist so that I can put my hand up to the glass.

After several long moments, they put their hand up against the plexiglass, mirroring mine.

Memory has a way of exaggerating things, but I want to swear I could feel the warmth of their palm through the barrier.

Just...two creatures, meeting.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but eventually they withdraw their hand.

And turned more fully towards me, exposing the toddler orangutan who’d been sitting on their lap this whole time.

Suddenly the really pissed orangutan from earlier made way, way more sense.

The much smaller orangutan put their hand up to mine and, once again, we just kinda quietly sat there, sharing space.

This remains one of the most inexplicably beautiful things I’ve ever had happen to me.

It was a holy moment, and believe me I feel Weird about using that term.

I think in total we may have stayed like this for only a few minutes, but it felt like hours.

As soon as they heard someone else come into the Ape House they scrambled back into the bushes, and I was back to being just a teenage goth acting weird in front of the monkeys.

But this is one of the moments that, 14 years later, I still play in my head when I want to feel less alone in the world.

I’ve been needing that a lot recently and I suspect you have too.