Ape & the scars of fierce soldiers

The story begins in April. The fourth if I can recall, that is the time for some reason I met Ape. We called him that not because he in any way resembled an ape only that his name was impossible to keep straight, if I tried I’d still misspell the thing. Okay, Aperioulapsis but I’m not sure so it got shortened to Ape, no one called him by his given name, Alexander. I know I know you won’t be able to remove the image of an ape from the man but so be it, Rue Morgue and so on. Now I want to rummage my notes but I’ll skip in favor of imperfect recall. He talked about some older woman he got involved with but she wandered off to space camp where the cosmonauts train. She could afford the ticket to the space station, and he knew she’d puke her suit in zero g. Ape was the flavor of the month St. Barts, so be it. He didn’t seem like the sun and sand type but he liked boats, yachts with autos in their belly and a chopper on deck. Working for some Russian who wasn’t embarrassed to show his wealth. He remembered the anti-paparazzi strobes encircling the hull like a disco in hell. Aren’t you Greek? Black sea Greek he said. Most of his friends had been Azerbijanis or Armenians growing up. He wasn’t a big guy but definitely obsessed with Bruce Lee growing up so when it was hazing time during his military service he beat the life out of every man short of the officers. The officers liked him. I think he said he was the only man to not get the sharp end of a pin through his shirt when he went during his service. Not an easy achievement. He said beside that all you had to watch out for were kidney punches, a soldier buddy of his he trained Jeet Kune Do with got hit alot, lost one kidney and then the other failed unexpectedly, dead at 36.