ther, my studies, his latest protest against Reaganomics. The fact that we barely knew each other wound up in the usual dance around the elephant in the room, routine.
My parents were a pair. A notorious pair, actually. Divorced for years, they remained connected by a shared history of radical politics and a general disinterest in conforming to societal norms. They were the kind of people who’d name their kids after Marxist revolutionaries if only they had a better grasp of history themselves. Though they fancied themselves intellectuals, they were more like bohemian artists without the art.
Then, mid-sentence, as I was describing a particularly absurd performance art piece I’d witnessed, he dropped the bomb.
“You know, Andrew,” he said, his gaze locking with mine, “your conception was… unconventional.”
My fork clattered against the plate. This was it. The moment when things got weird with my folks, and my anticipation was pretty high.
“Unconventional?” I echoed cautiously. Was he about to tell me I was the result of some bizarre commune ritual? I always suspected something similar to the way my parents acted.
He cleared his throat. “Your mother and I… we weren't exactly trying. We believed in free love, open relationships. You were… an experiment, of sorts.”
‘As near as dammit Unit 731 (Manchu Detachment 731)’ The thought flashed in my head similar to the ignition of a bright flare of a matchstick; the friction created when the matchstick (sulfur) and matchbox (red phosphorus) make striking contact.
An experiment?!
I stared at him. He was telling me, over pad Thai, that my existence was some sort of social commentary. That I was the living, breathing byproduct of his parents’ intellectual (red) rebellion?
“What does that even mean?” I finally managed to ask.
He launched into a lengthy, rambling explanation about societal constraints, the stifling nature of traditional marriage, and the revolutionary potential of uninhibited sexuality. I vaguely wished I had a notebook. I was going to write down the next outlandish thing he said.
I already knew I was different. Mark, my older brother, born in 1956, was the golden child, the one who understood and embraced our parents’ ideals and had always seemed like he belonged in their world. I, on the other hand, felt like a misplaced cog in a machine I didn't understand.
From the time as a kid, I'd realized that most people's parents weren't constantly quoting Marx at dinner. They didn't participate in naked drum circles in the backyard (thankfully, that phase ended before I was old enough to fully comprehend it). They certainly didn't casually inform their sons about the experimental circumstances of their conception over lunch.
My parents were… inappropriate: an absurdity that stems from them being progressive and socialists or communists from the early Sixties. They were shockingly honest, brutally blunt, and utterly devoid of the social filters most adults possessed. They treated me and Mark like miniature adults, engaging us in debates about politics and philosophy that went way over our heads. They encouraged us to question everything, to challenge authority, to break the rules, enculader par buttselence.
Nonetheless, beneath the veneer of mental autonomy, there was a profound emotional neglect. They were so busy fighting the system that they forgot to be parents. I was never sure if they honestly loved us or if we were just pawns in their ideological game. They were progressive. Very progressive. So much so that they outran the upbringing of their offspring. Well, not just that, there was also the experimental macaque simian syndrome, running around the neighborhood, buck naked, thinking it was Woodstock all century round.
I remembered one particular incident when I was about ten. I had a crush on a girl in my class, a perfectly normal, pink-cheeked girl with pigtails and a penchant for jumping rope. I confided in my mother, expecting… well, I don't know what I expected, but I certainly didn't expect her to lecture me about the patriarchal oppression inherent in romantic relationships.
“Love is a social construct, Andrew,” she had declared, puffing on her unfiltered cigarette. “It’s a tool used by the system to control women and perpetuate inequality.”
Er… Right… Yes, Mother, you are probably not yourself today, you psycho-killer of infantile cognition.
I just wanted to hold hands with a girl. That is all I wanted. Instead, that day, I uncovered the malice afterthought behind every jaundiced eye intellect behind ‘The Patriarch’, and how ‘The Man’ is the devil incarnate, and women, mere victims, unhinged casualties of the ‘valet de chambre’ masquerading as boy scouts, and taking some of them to the back of the camp.
Mark, on the other hand, always seemed to thrive in the chaos. He became fluent in their language, participating in their protests, lapping their books up like a hungry Bolshevik dog, and echoing their sentiments with unwavering conviction. He was their perfect disciple, Juthas, and it was done!
I felt myself becoming increasingly detached, withdrawing into my world of books and movies, trying to find some semblance of normalcy amidst the pinko madness.
The revelation at lunch with my father was not only shocking but also painful. In a way, it confirmed my deepest fears and insecurities.
I was an accident, a byproduct of a misguided social experiment.
I was never wanted, not in the way a child should be. How gorgeous. That was a nice pull. Now I can sit back and breathe easy, with only fifty thousand kilograms deadweight of prospering métier of this devastating long suited encumbrance.
Or is it a Faustian swop? Bargain would be looking at things through a crimson lens.
The pad Thai suddenly tasted like ash in my mouth. I pushed the plate away, the vibrant colors now seeming dull and lifeless.
“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “what’s the point of telling me all this now?”
He shrugged, a gesture I knew all too well. It was his default response when confronted with emotional questions.
“I just thought you should know. It's part of your history.”
How multiculturally sensitive of you, you monster!
My history. A history built on radical politics, free love, and a profound disconnect between intention and consequence. A history that had shaped me, for better or worse, into the person I had become. I had a lot to think about.
We finished the meal in awkward silence. As we parted ways, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was walking away from another piece of myself, another layer of the carefully constructed façade that my parents had built around their lives and, inadvertently, around mine. I had a thesis to write, and I just figured out what it would be about.

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Matter processed from doc titled, “Unravel – Chapter Two Backstory”
The farther I look into my past, the murkier it gets. One may compare it to peering into a swamp, the silt constantly swirling, obscuring whatever might lie beneath. Unfortunately, my mind is a minefield of lost connections and blank spaces. The physical injury I sustained as a baby – the one my mother so casually inflicted, or so I’m told – scrambled my young brain. Add to that the mental blocks, the self-imposed amnesia my mind erected to shield me from the worst of it, and you have a recipe for a fragmented history.
The human brain, in its infinite wisdom and occasional cruelty, has a remarkable capacity for dissociation, for burying the memories too painful to bear. And because of that, because of this internal barricade, I could never rely on my recollections to paint a clear picture of young Andrew P. Jacobucci.
The story I've managed to put together, a salmagundi narrative still riddled with holes, comes from the unlikeliest of sources: acquaintances, therapists, and anyone who dared to comment on my parents' idiosyncrasies.
Therapy, surprisingly, has been the most illuminating. Years of unpacking, of carefully probing the buried ruins of my childhood, have yielded slivers of truth, moments of clarity amidst the fog. The other significant contributors to this gallimaufry are the few courageous souls who knew my parents, who witnessed their charade firsthand, and are willing to share their observations, their suspicions.
And, of course, my parents have always been conspicuous by their absence in this project. They never contributed a single memory, never offered a word of explanation, never taught me anything of real value. Such was my relationship with them – non-existent. There was always a chasm between us, a cold, silent expanse where communication went to die. By now, I understand. I know they are responsible for what I suffered, for the lifelong scars I carry. We, their children, were their test subjects, their unwitting participants in a sick and twisted experiment.
Is all this projection? If yes, it would be a bonafide Greek tragedy, complete to the straitjacket and a one-way, free pass to the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital.
My story, or rather, the beginning of it, unfolds four years before my birth. That was when my parents had their first child, Mark, my older brother. He was the original masterpiece, the shining star, the golden boy upon whom all their hopes and expectations were pinned. They considered him their heir apparent, the expected and exalted one. But after a few years, my mother, in her infinite wisdom, decided that Mark was lonely. She needed a companion for him, a sibling to share his gilded cage. Thus began the battle for the second conception, a cold, calculated war waged between the two creatures who, for reasons I still struggle to comprehend, were my parents.
The problem, as I understand it, was that my father simply didn't want another child. He thought he had fulfilled his familial obligations with Mark. A second child, in his eyes, would be redundant, an unnecessary expense, a distraction from his grand ambitions. Unfortunately, or perhaps predictably, that's precisely how I felt to him: redundant. But my mother, a woman driven by her own inscrutable desires, wanted another child. And more specifically, she wanted a girl, a daughter to dress up, to mold in her image. Who does she think she is, Genesis, from the New Testament?
This set the stage for the central conflict of my existence, a conflict that began before I even drew my first breath. My mother, with her characteristic ruthlessness, eventually got her way, claiming victory in the battle of the womb. But her triumph turned to bitter disappointment when they were saddled with another boy: yours truly, little Andrew.
A disappointment, every way they looked.
The specifics of how my mother manipulated my father, how she managed to circumvent his objections and achieve her desired outcome, are nothing short of devious. She simply stopped taking her contraceptives for a time, all the while maintaining the illusion of compliance. It’s a story my father recounted with a disturbing blend of amusement and resentment at a Thai restaurant in the Boston Park Plaza Hotel.
Setting aside the sheer inappropriateness of the tale, the casualness with which he shared such a deeply personal and potentially damaging piece of information, my conception, my very existence, seems to have originated in deception. It makes a warped kind of sense in the grand scheme of things; it seems almost appropriate, given the way my life has unraveled.
Nevertheless, when you step back and examine this couple, the architects of my misery, their actions, however abhorrent, start to fit into a perverse pattern. Too bad for me, I was too young to recognize this pattern earlier. It appeared as if their entire lives were meticulously crafted to serve as some grotesque experiment.

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The Little Red Riding’s Hook
The salt spray of Cape Cod always tasted like hypocrisy to me. Raised on the very edge of the Atlantic in a weathered shingle house that screamed “New England charm,” my childhood was a carefully constructed window dressing. My parents were masters of appearances, their lives a performance for the benefit of the community, a performance in which Mark, my older brother, and I were unwilling, unwitting actors.
My parents, with their carefully cultivated air of progressivism and benevolence, presented a fascia so convincing that no one, even the authorities, at least initially, could imagine the darkness that lurked beneath. Especially my father, the great and benevolent Louis Jacobucci, the champion of the neglected children of Cape Cod, the protector of the vulnerable. In reality, he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a predator disguised as a humanitarian.
As noted above, in the remote areas of the then-undeveloped Cape Cod, my father was the first social worker. Because he and my mother came to the area to draw attention to the condition of the silent ones, they were regarded as the first Cape Cod family. Under the pretense of social service, predators like ‘my father the molester’ would target backwater places to stake them out as their hunting grounds, but the administration was unaware of his degenerate shenanigans at the time. For you see hardly anyone suspected a very prominent children's Advocate and also a community organizer in Cape Cod in the 1960s and the 1970s. He was something like Dennis Rader, just that he didn’t kill people in cold blood.
Or maybe he did…
Like I said, even now, after the passing of these many years, I am still conflicted with major trust issues. I couldn’t disbelieve or counter any claim brought against him, I couldn’t then, I cannot discount it now, neither can I brush off any allegations made by the victims or their families.
The CPS and other authorities conveniently pushed the file on my father away, seeing that Louis Jacobucci was a local hero and the founder of Cape Cod Children Protective Services (something that added a coating to his faux persona), a pioneering social agency. He was a tireless advocate for abused and neglected children, a champion of the vulnerable, while in reality, he was abusing and neglecting his own children, me, and, to a lesser