So the professor spit little feathers of joy when he got going. But still. The professor all but warbled. “Can you imagine being a fly on the wall? Dr. Max could. He made movies. Sometimes through peepholes. That’s how we knew Dietrich preferred to pee standing up…it’s all too much! I am reeling!”

Sometimes, the professor would stand up and start to spin, Sufi-style. Until you had to look away or throw up the way you did when you were three and your Mommy took you on the SPINNING TEACUP so she could make out with Tommy Wonderflex or whatever his name was, and you had to sit in between them with Mommy and Johnny kissing over you, ripe armpits right in your eyes, bashing into the wet as the cups spun not just around, but in place—so it felt like you were in some kind of Nausea Vortex, spinning inside and spinning outside. It’s another story altogether, but you don’t try to stop the memories any more. You can’t.

Memories, on speed, are like little children running in traffic, only there are not enough cars to hit them all. The past keeps intruding, even now. How to keep order in your brain? You can’t, you can’t! Your mother saw you greening up between her and her boyfriend of the moment and shouted over the squeal of the Spinning Teacup, the carny din, in a rare moment of attention, let alone empathy, over the squeal of Spinning Teacup. “That’s how it is honey. One minute you think you’re taking a nice little ride with your boyfriend, the next thing you’re being thrown buck-wild over a pool table with your dress over your head, and the last thing you remember some peckerwood is making change for brown guys in cowboy hats.”

That is when Mommy gives you a big sip of beer and you whip your head around, faster than the teacup spinning you between the snaky adults, faster than the sourball-colored carny lights and stars whirling overhead, and you vomit up at the sky. Ah, the feeling. When you remember this later, it’s like you puked into the face of God. The night you learned about gravity. When God turned out to be Tommy Wonderflex, who said you mouth-barfed him on purpose, and wanted to smack you, until your mother said “No, she’s always been dainty. She’s got her father’s stomach.” Somehow the subject of daddies always wound your mother’s boyfriends up. Tonk was the same way. It was something your mother knew how to use. Tonk had Daddy issues. And this Tommy here had them too. (It’s not like your mother didn’t teach you anything. She clued you about manipulation. How to give a blowjob without really putting it in your mouth. Well this she didn’t actually teach, but showed you often enough. Since wherever you were, there never seemed to be more than one bed. She used her spit-wet hands and made lots of slurping sounds. As marketable skills go, it probably meant more than shorthand.)