He looks young and is much shorter than Nancy. He pulls off a rubber mask to reveal he is Billy the Poet. As she gets distracted, Foxy Grandpa pulls a gun. Nancy has heard this story before and is bored. He explains more about the history of ethical birth control, and how it was created as a compromise between morals and population control. While Crocker and Mary rush out to see the man they think is Billy, Nancy continues to talk to Foxy Grandpa. She is disappointed she will not get to fight him personally. He is arrested after finishing his rhyme, and Nancy assumes he is Billy. Nancy receives a phone call with another dirty rhyme by a man who says he is delivering it for a friend. He claims he was with Nation when they visited the monkey house. Edgar Nation, the man who invented ethical birth control to try to control the sexual behavior of monkeys at the Grand Rapids Zoo. She helps him pick a last meal before his death and listens to him tell the story of J. Instead, she attends to the needs of one of her clients, nicknamed “Foxy Grandpa” because he has not been taking his anti-aging shots. It contains lyrics to a dirty song, but she ignores it.
A mailman arrives with a letter from Billy the Poet addressed to Nancy.
They are not concerned that Billy the Poet might want to have sex with them and have no fear of him. Mary and Nancy, like all hostesses at the suicide parlors, are virgins and highly trained in self-defense. This reduces procreation to a minimum by eliminating the pleasure element. The police do not know what he looks like, but it is known that Billy is a “Nothinghead”-someone who rejects the “Ethical Birth Control” which deadens sexual desire by numbing people’s genitals. “Welcome to the Monkey House” opens with Sheriff Pete Crocker of Barnstable County arriving at the Hyannis Federal Ethical Suicide Parlor to warn the hostesses, Nancy McLuhan and Mary Kraft, that the criminal Billy the Poet is approaching the parlor. Exploring themes of sexuality, sexual coercion, forced egalitarianism, and the way governments might deal with overpopulation, “Welcome to the Monkey House” is one of Vonnegut’s most controversial and discussed short stories, and has been adapted twice-first as part of the 1972 TV movie Between Time and Timbuktu, and in 1991 by Showtime as Kurt Vonnegut ’ s Monkey House. The government is pursuing the notorious criminal Billy the Poet, who rejects the drugs and intends to deflower one of the hostesses. The government also represses sexual desire with drugs. Set in a world where overpopulation is out of control, the government urges its citizens to commit suicide and runs “Ethical Suicide Parlors” where virgin hostesses guide patrons to their deaths. American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short story “Welcome to the Monkey House” (1968) was first published in Playboy magazine and later in an anthology of the same name.
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