"Not so with Matty Pemulis": total recall and the maturer perspective

pivotal · UNDATED (standing; the childhood memory carried to the present, voiced at twenty-three)

• When: UNDATED (standing — Matty's lifelong relationship to the memory, narrated in the 14 Nov YDAU present "still, now, at twenty-three")
• What: Matty's defining trait is that, unlike the people he has seen block childhood trauma out and forget it, he never repressed any of it — he "remembered every inch and pimple of every single time." That unblinking recall is double-edged: it is the cost ledger Michael's chapters never open, but it also let Matty eventually reach a "maturer perspective" — snapping to the facts that the abuse "was laid out" before his Da ever entered the room and would have happened regardless of anything he did or felt, and that "no sone on the planet could in any way ask for that." The perspective is grim and partial: the one thing "years and experience" let him find "to be thankful for" is that his father at least used a lubricant — the source text names the Vaseline — its familiar nighttime use an origin "not even adult perspective could illuminate."