Summary

Chapter 12:

As Jack is locked up in Newgate Prison, the guard who registers him asks his name, and Jack is barely able to respond. The guard also kills a beetle that crawls on his desk, leading Jack to think about how tenderly Bess took care of the centipede.

At this point, Voth interjects a pages-long footnote about his date with Ursula. It started well, he says, with Ursula telling a humorous story about how her daughter seemed to get over her intense grief at accidentally killing a spider by masturbating herself on a stuffed toy. Throughout this story, Voth says, he found himself enjoying life more than he had in a long time, and also registered that Ursula seemed to be flirting with him. He berates himself, however, for responding to the flirting with what he says were mood-killing stories about how...