Thomm Quackenbush

Scarab: So-Called Great Disappointment

Thomm Quackenbush

“I think,” said the steward of Howe Caverns, sticking her head between them from the back seat of Wick’s roadster, “that we need lunch before we consider the next pin in your map. I always feel a little emptier after I’ve left the cavern. You can’t expect to be divinely guided on an empty stomach.”

The car had felt crowded even before this small woman had invited herself along. Mica’s presence could have overpowered a frat party, to say nothing of a vehicle that only notionally could seat three – Jacqueline couldn’t imagine that Wick found a reason for one passenger, let alone two (she did not consider the scarabs as passengers properly, as she served more as their vehicle). Now, she felt that she no longer belonged in this car, no matter that she was technically the belle of this ball. There was no need for this trip without her, so there was no reason for her to know either of these people. Had she met them on the street, she would not have looked at either of them twice, let alone imagined for them a world so strange as this.

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The Neglected Lock

Around this time

I was not seeking this key because I had decades of practice avoiding looking at the lock. The evidence is plain that I could not stop from discussing my life in molecular detail then, but I did not even allude to an expurgated version of the night for nearly a decade. Looking back at my entries from the beginning, I could not understand why I had gone so long without mentioning Melissa before landing upon the reason: I wanted nothing to do with her because she had sexually assaulted me.
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Rememberology: 2001.04.26

That sounds like a terrible idea. Two young women whom you should not kiss, both of whom you have recently. Secondly is, of course, that Nancy is a very pleasant person to spend time with and I enjoy her company.

And that she gives you attention, more so when you lack self-control in regards to her.
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Corporate Shill: Hormell Plant Based Chili

“Style product”?

Do I have the slightest interest in chili from a can? I never have before. It has too much mental attachment, informed by movies of roustabouts hopping trains and cowboys on the range. Both ate their chili straight from the can, heated over an open fire.

I appreciate cinematic authenticity, but I will not be doing this. Per the instructions on the can, I will be slopping it into a bowl and microwaving it. To entice me further, I will have it with white rice, though the jasmine version. It’s fancier.

Let us pause to consider what this chili has going for it. It is vegetarian-friendly. I am not, but it is nice not to have to deal with suspect chunks of canned beef. I can better trust soy crumbles.
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Rememberology 2001.04.22

You always were a bit solipsistic. Yesterday, I spent time with Nancy. Her parents told her that they trusted me in general and to drive her places, a distinction shared by few of her friends.

Driving, yes. I would not otherwise trust you with a daughter. I was thoroughly impressed with her knowledge. Better, Nancy had the strong teashop smell of Sarah, winning her subconscious favor.

Do you know what young women don’t find charming? Telling them that they are more attractive because they smell of other women you desire. Using the same shampoo is not grounds for a crush.
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Scarab: More Visible

Thomm Quackenbush

As they walked the gentle grade from the hotel to the cavern entrance, Jacqueline observed Wick as though he were something unreal, a special effect in a movie that might be skipping a frame or two in his animation. He regarded Mica with no surprise – she did not know what it took to surprise Wick or if this was an emotion of which he was capable – but less familiarity than he had Jacqueline when first he appeared on her porch. Had he ever regarded Jacqueline as a stranger, as he ought to have, or did he consider her a foregone conclusion?

No, she remembered now. Dropping Houdini in the toilet had surprised him, though this being the exception to his composure almost provoked in her an uncharacteristic giggle. What if the only ways to startle him involved bathroom fixtures and insects?

Mica loped, halfway between a happily gangling teenage boy and a woman who knew that she could crush someone’s larynx with her boot, and they would thank her for the attention. She wore a fitted black leather jacket over an unzipped maroon hoodie, the former all but the only splash of color in a quarter-mile of Cobleskill this morning. Mica appeared better built now than in the office, despite possessing a humbler height than Jacqueline.

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Spilled Milk

Probably not milk

Amber said that she didn’t have the emotion “mad.” She has recently become interested in cognitive behavioral therapy, which my job has made my background vocabulary. She has other emotions that fill in that space – sadness, regret, frustration – but she didn’t think she could be mad.

I, doting husband, make jokes about this and contrive things she could be mad about, dredging up times the world wronged her. (The best I can produce is when Bard kids raided her community garden plot and ate the watermelon she had been nurturing for months.) It seemed perhaps unhealthy not to have the whole gamut of human emotions, as though someone had locked anger away from her. But, no, she wasn’t mad at these slights. She experienced her subsidiary emotions, but not anger.

Friday night, I take to reciting angry monologues to show her want the emotion looks like. Amid one from Arthur Miller, I break down weeping, the tears exploding out of me as I flee into the kitchen and lean against the oven for support. I don’t know from what well this emotion is drawing – I was never this good an actor – and it terrifies me.
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Attach Easily

He would not love that I used this picture

I go into the training room to learn yet again how not to be attacked by my students – what is colloquially known as “Hug a Thug Training.” One of the trainers asks after my family – nothing to report there – and then tells me that people are singing my praises for building relationships with some of the more challenging residents.

I don’t know who he means. I don’t particularly get along with most of the problematic kids. I can work with them, and they mostly like me, I’m sure, but I also partially look forward to forgetting that we’ve ever met. I have mastered finding a reason to like children that the world finds abhorrent or behaving as though I have. For the duration of our contact, I do not need to agree with the majority that they should be kept forever in a box.
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Rememberology 2001.04.20

On the phone, all sweetness and fondness. In-person, bothered. I cannot know the turmoil within her or what part you play in it, but I can persist in wondering if it wasn’t that seeing you forced Kate to confront things that she did not want to have to say to you. If Kate doesn’t want my head to implode, Kate will remain and make me feel appreciated.

Kate comes to the afterparty for the play and tells a childish, off-color joke to the cast (the core of the joke was “kids say the darnedest things,” not “80s standup comedian at a Klan rally”), entirely because she thinks it is funny to horrify you.
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Rememberology: 2001.04.08

It is easier for me, responding more than twenty years later, to ascribe the blame for these things solely on you. You are, after all, a primordial version of me, and I do not eschew self-reflection and repudiation.

Can I say that this was not fair of Kate? Yes, but I’ve also said that she didn’t have much reason to be fair to you. She loved you. She lusted for you. You never did less than make explicit that you would do what she wanted, no matter how much it eroded you.
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