2024-04-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Subtle visual metaphor
"What do you think about fostering?" asks Amber. "Are you still interested in that?"
I freeze. "Cats?"
"No, children."
I blink at them… Read More
Blog Directory > Books & Literature Blogs > Contemporary Blogs > Thomm Quackenbush - Home contemporary Blog >
Thomm Quackenbush - Home Blog
xenex.org
The home of Thomm Quackenbush, author of the Night's Dream series and more
2024-04-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Subtle visual metaphor
I am almost shaking driving to the Queer Board Game Night at Megabrain Comics in Rhinebeck. I had been looking forward to it all week an… Read More
2024-04-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
2002.01.01When I was just 17, a wee 17 indeed, I had Nick, Jen, and Coley over to my home for New Years Eve. [...] Coley had arrived first and was very muc… Read More
2024-03-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Gaze not upon my hideous visage!
My nose is a different shape. Amber, who sees it more often than I do, has made no mention of it. They likely have not realize… Read More
2024-03-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I am a drunk?
My English 101 course is a trial, is pulling teeth, is a crucible. Half the students at my facility withdrew. Of those who remained, half failed… Read More
2024-03-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I opted not to use the bite picture
"You're Thomm," says the woman when I enter. I am unsure what description she has been given or if we have met. It is likel… Read More
2024-03-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Best way to enter the new year
It is yet another new year. The century is nearly a quarter done, which reads as wrong. It was just 2000. We panicked about compu… Read More
2024-03-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Festive
The scream had been building in my chest for days.
Its first whispers, its gaining wind, began—as so many things do—on Christmas Eve when A… Read More
2024-02-27 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Basically this
I don't remember how to be the person who was his friend. Perhaps it isn't my responsibility. Neither of us are those people anymore. Maybe we n… Read More
2024-01-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Amber
It is some minutes before I find Amber at the bottom of the stairs, cradling the kitten and weeping.
I ask Amber to confirm the obvious: "Are you cryin… Read More
2024-01-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Kristina, a goat, and Amber (right)
I arrive home to an older man splayed on our shared porch. I think that Jake, my neighbor, is working on something, such is… Read More
2024-01-01 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Rec Park
I did not know Tyler. He cut a distinctive figure, with a mop of curly brown hair and an angular face, an easy smile most photographic subjects lack… Read More
2023-12-22 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Circus
Amber sees a post from a friend or relation of someone with whom they went to circus camp--Amber is the sort of person who, of course, went to circus cam… Read More
2023-12-22 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Traffic
My job requires me to drive over an hour each way on the second day to go to a training about creating a unified English Language Arts curriculum for al… Read More
2023-12-22 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Do I love him?
How does one love something meant to be healed and released?
Amber brings home a kitten to foster. He is underweight and runty, his white spott… Read More
2023-10-04 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
You, Younger Thomm, are my concern. Were your friends and acquaintances problematic at times? Of course. This is their nature, and you cannot change that. You ca… Read More
2023-10-04 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pink
We break up the drive at the Ross Park Zoo in Binghamton. Though we are consummate lovers of zoos -- Amber more professionally -- it was merely something… Read More
2023-09-24 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I've checked the math, which shows that it will take me five days less than forever if I only respond to one of your entries at a time. You often write three in… Read More
2023-08-15 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Tres chic
In part, my mother calls to ask whether Amber is nonbinary. The clue is not that I had written as much here -- no one reads this site, not even you … Read More
2023-08-15 06:00
I attempted to speak to Nazi Girl today. She, I think, is a regional phenomenon. She walks around campus in a black coat, with a flag featuring two red and two blue squares and oversize… Read More
2023-07-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Their first graduation
Amber inclines her computer so It can approve a letter she is sending to a professor at Cornell, discussing her research and aspirations… Read More
2023-07-20 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Sometimes, I expect adult understanding and healing from people in my past who were as much children as you are. This is far from everyone -- there were adults… Read More
2023-07-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pride
The queer community is hairless twinks and leather-clad dykes with close-cropped hair. There is a smattering of drag queens for flavor, none an hour over… Read More
2023-07-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I know that it is not generally my habit to speak on the books I am reading, assuming that the fact that I am confessing to read them is enough as an insight in… Read More
2023-06-22 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
The family
I had not seen most of my niblings since Christmas of 2021. My father and I had helped Elijah, previously known as Alieyah or Leelee, move from one a… Read More
2023-06-22 06:00
I am coming to terms with the fact that I very likely have an addictive personality. [...] I get frantic, typing into the wee hours of the morning, striving for connection. Striving to b… Read More
2023-06-07 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Stephanie is my Sociological and Philosophical Foundations of Secondary Education teacher.
You have an enormous crush on Stephanie. She is twenty-five and tak… Read More
2023-06-07 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
All I photographed this year
"I have a question," says a teenager in my audience at the Pine Bush UFO Fair. "More of a hypothetical. Who do you think aliens wou… Read More
2023-05-15 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Do I know you?
Melissa sits in an apartment. The lights are so dim the only light comes from the setting sun outside the window, played on a flatscreen TV to he… Read More
2023-05-15 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Home
An aspect of Amber's neurodivergence is that she hyper-fixates. She cannot detach or slow down until she has consumed as much as possible. It is why she h… Read More
2023-05-15 06:00
I admit my default appears to be criticism. Understand this comes from envy that you have experiences and friends from which I am alienated and annoyance you lack the capacity and persp… Read More
2023-05-15 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Know, please, that I am writing this entire entry under considerable physical pain. Were I to lie down, all would be eased. Instead, I write to you.
That is our… Read More
2023-05-08 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Here is what I know of the Mansion. It has more than a few myths and legends associated with it, not all of which I believe.
The thing with myths and legends i… Read More
2023-05-08 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Just keep swimming
My old facility emphasized the therapeutic. I would never want a child in this system, but they would be there if I had to make that call. Ev… Read More
2023-04-25 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Emily and I began out month long stint at The Haunted Mansion.
Years after you cease to be an actor for them, they begin to pay them. Headless Horseman always… Read More
2023-04-25 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Zen
One comes to work at a juvenile detention facility and expects occasionally to be gutted. Sliced open, eviscerated, everything spaghetti-swirled, then told… Read More
2023-04-10 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I should update you on my thoughts and feelings about Miss Katherine the great.
As always, I would prefer you not to do that.
I definitely feel, with some certa… Read More
2023-04-10 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Probably not my skull
A lesson of therapy is that you are not upset about what you are upset about. I did not learn this pithy statement in therapy. I stole it… Read More
2023-03-27 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
It was a prettier egg
One distant Easter, I decorated an egg, as one does. I didn't go out of my way to make it memorable. Egg decorating has never ranked in my… Read More
2023-03-27 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Over the weekend, Emily informed me about sororities and frats in frightening detail.
I won't get into the specifics of what she said beyond noting that it e… Read More
2023-03-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I do not teach anywhere as bright now
I sit in front of the computer on the first day of my college class. All twelve of my in-person students cannot come down… Read More
2023-03-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I was visiting the bathroom in the Humanities building yesterday, doing what one does when one is in a bathroom: pondering whether to take a nap in my car until… Read More
2023-02-16 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
She had been working for the optometrist for something like a week. And she quit. Last night. At 1AM. And is refusing to speak to them.
I feel that, should I eve… Read More
2023-02-16 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Not caroling
It isn't all the time. I can anticipate what might set me off, but these antecedents do not reliably. Walking away from me when I am speaking to yo… Read More
2023-02-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Is there a hole in that washtub?
I do not know whose Christmas we are enacting. It does not feel as though it belongs to us. Just as we've never had an adult v… Read More
2023-02-11 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I am a chronicler of stories and a means to various ends. I collect people and grow to love them because they make the best characters for this particular chap… Read More
2023-01-05 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Happy birthday?
It is easily half an hour after I have bundled up and slid beneath my sheets. My brain blesses me with the thought that I am not yet asleep. Ho… Read More
2023-01-05 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I am an English major, not a business one.
You start as a secondary education teaching student. Yes, you aspire to teach English, but you are not an English s… Read More
2022-12-21 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Gratitude
It is not that I do poorly with the idea of gratitude. I am thankful for so much in my life. It seems cheesy to say too often that I have been blessed… Read More
2022-12-21 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Sunday, Emily and I were trapped in a deluge of ridiculous people who hated us. It seems something like seven people who hated one or both of us decided separate… Read More
2022-12-13 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I'm on the right
Amber and I stand at the light in Red Hook, which is always stingy in changing for pedestrians. We wait to cross for dinner with my parents, ow… Read More
2022-12-13 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Miss Katherine has returned. With a vengeance.
How much I did not miss her influencing your life.
I shall begin this sordid tale, I think, with her own words… Read More
2022-12-08 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Mabius originally found me about five years ago. I was probably 15.
I do not know how to class this woman -- her actual name escapes me, and I am not sorry f… Read More
2022-11-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Good Witch
A woman invites Amber to a bonfire in her backyard. Amber asks whether the invitation extends to me. I assume any invitation not marked under the col… Read More
2022-11-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Buddy, you know you can write separate entries for different topics, right? It is better for all involved.
And we are all alone in our booth with no one to su… Read More
2022-10-31 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
In some ways, small ways, I envy the young. Well, the younger, as I am not exactly shuffling off a wrinkled mortal coil any time soon.
I have no idea what this… Read More
2022-10-26 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
My favorite band
That left the adult bands: Irish step dancing, blues, and an all-women Tom Petty cover band irresistibly called The Tom Prettys. Then there is… Read More
2022-10-26 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
That being said... Emily, Melissa, and I (and two of Melissa's friends) are going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Yes, really.
No, not really. If you were wea… Read More
2022-10-17 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Trashy
I press myself against the narrow staircase as a young woman, eighteen at her oldest, tries to negotiate the lumpen bag in her arms. Her burden must w… Read More
2022-09-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Actually, more correctly, I have been writing quite a bit. It merely is in a journal that no one can see without my express permission. It certainly is not the… Read More
2022-09-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pretty
As the Holder of the Vacation Orb, an honor I take more seriously than I ought to, my parents tasked me with planning a trip to Maine. This represented a… Read More
2022-09-14 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Still jobless, still sleeping late (though I am doing it in my own living space with a decent amount of personalization), but at least no one else is dead.
Oo… Read More
2022-09-14 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pretty
I have not taken a trip with only Amber in years.
This will not be changing yet.
It was the intention at first, Amber asking if I would like to spend h… Read More
2022-09-04 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I feel that I suck as a human being because I rarely wake up before noon now. I stayed up until nearly four last night figuring out enough java to put lightning… Read More
2022-08-05 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pretty
Night no longer welcomes us. Amber and I used to lose ourselves in the then-unfamiliar roads and paths in our new town, ending up on strangers' farms, ta… Read More
2022-08-05 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Not pillowy
At the core of rhetoric, what can one say about pillows?
These free samples of Thrasio Beckham Hotel Collection Pillows arrived from BzzAgent in t… Read More
2022-08-05 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I use humor to cope. You'll excuse me. If I cannot laugh about something, than I obviously cannot deal with it.
This has not diminished with time. I tried to… Read More
2022-07-21 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Pretty
Melanie -- who prefers to be called Leonard these days and whom I call Leo half the time -- referred to me as queer. It is offhanded, a statement of fact… Read More
2022-07-21 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
In addition, the interviewer asked me about my hobbies. I told him that I read and I had a popular web page. And that is it. How completely misanthropic do I… Read More
2022-07-18 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I told you about Todd, right?
I don't love how literary and intimate you tried to write this, but that's not my main point of my reply.
Todd was not your best… Read More
2022-07-03 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
She's lovely
There must theoretically be an upper limit on how much we could see Kristina, but I doubt it is one we will ever meet.
As it was with Holly and Sa… Read More
2022-07-03 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I realized that, recently, I speak more of events than thought and feelings.
Yes, I want to read about events. They are more interesting than navel-gazing. I… Read More
2022-06-14 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Proud dog
Though I am cis (for want of a better term) and straight (by dint of always having found women attractive, sometimes distractingly so, whereas men see… Read More
2022-06-14 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Firstly, to get this out of the way, the gods are not one bit concerned with bringing people to my webpage. Clinically psychotic obsession is an entirely diff… Read More
2022-05-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
However, we are infatuated and wont to take any chance to be together. Utterly lovely feeling.
Infatuation does feel pleasant. That is the point of it, but it… Read More
2022-05-16 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Trust No One (whose wife made this mask)
I receive a message from Dawn, the director of my local library. The crux is that a man had come in, asking if she knew… Read More
2022-05-16 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
See, you do not know Emily, so that confused you.
Yet another entry to which I have not been looking forward.
I wrote this for the first time as though I coul… Read More
2022-05-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
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 dis… Read More
2022-05-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I have just arrived home after having seen both Nancy and Kate.
That sounds like a terrible idea. Two young women whom you should not kiss, both of whom you… Read More
2022-05-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
"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… Read More
2022-04-30 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
When I was little, I thought the whole world was black and white before I was born.
You always were a bit solipsistic.
Yesterday, I spent time with Nancy. He… Read More
2022-04-18 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
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 m… Read More
2022-04-18 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
The later date was brief, but cuddly (not kiss-y, you'll please note). So, we are on playful, good, but pretty unspoken terms. I visited her surreptitiously seve… Read More
2022-04-13 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
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… Read More
2022-04-13 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
she admitted that she greatly enjoyed kissing me and thought often of when we did. That she wanted to kiss me again. I gave her permission to do so, as I want… Read More
2022-03-30 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Yesterday, I ended up lounging on the front lawn of Dutchess with a shirtless Todd, Idania in strawberry pants, a very black (thus overheated) Zoey, and Ian (th… Read More
2022-03-09 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Black like your soul
The box BzzAgent sent me for a review is black and sleek, but the contents are plastic, which my eco-concerned wife considers a fatal flaw… Read More
2022-03-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I have no pictures of wolves or hyenas
At my previous placement, I made a point in not knowing my students' crimes. It wasn't my business, and I did not want it… Read More
2022-03-06 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I realize you really do not know who Jen is, other than extrapolating that she was my lover at some point.
Given that you retroactively created entries enoug… Read More
2022-02-25 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
The dead were quiet then
This pond I visited once, White Pond, haunts me.
It was night when we visited, the hours when most significant memories of Melissa for… Read More
2022-02-25 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
On Friday, I rather salivated over several high school girls and skimpy clothing and a high school boy in a black trench coat and shortpants. No, it's okay, I a… Read More
2022-02-09 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I am flirting in an effort to expand my social sphere (it was a social circle, but it feels three dimensional now). I am, of course, still being OCD picky. I mu… Read More
2022-01-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I have been depressed for the past several days. No, not sad. Not upset. Depressed.
One, you are upset. Despondent by the situation into which you keep diving… Read More
2022-01-23 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
In Memorium?
In November, our next-door neighbor stopped Amber as she was about to enter our apartment. We have lived beside him for the better part of a decade… Read More
2022-01-19 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
[...] these friends feel the need to choose who is more their friend and treat the other prior friend as some annoying and clingy freak.
Yes, this is common… Read More
2022-01-08 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I was foolish to say I do not want to desire Kate. It is beautiful to want her.
You infuriate me. Have some backbone, man! Continuing to want Kate after all th… Read More
2022-01-03 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
I desire very greatly to no longer want Kate. I can't and won't say I don't love her or that I do not want to love her. I wish, however, that I didn't ache dai… Read More
2022-01-03 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Perhaps better in person?
As an appetizer to dinner at a pancake restaurant, we are playing blacklight mini-golf -- indeed, the mall has something for everyone… Read More
2022-01-03 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
Will they return to Santa?
On the 23rd, my final day at work, I receive the email from my mother:
Well, Dans kids were exposed to covid...Jodie tested positive… Read More
2021-12-22 06:00
Support Thomm on Patreon
One of my favorite pens: leather with Swarovski crystals
In the morning, I use a dark wooden horsehair brush to provoke lather from a disc of soap in a wooden bo… Read More
Subscribe to Thomm Quackenbush - Home
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!