Reuben Cabot was born on January 11, 1970 at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. His parents, Mary and Patrick, had only been married for six months, so this tended to raise a few eyebrows when people did the math. Patrick was a year out of college and getting his start in petroleum engineering when Reuben was born. Mary had worked as a secretary at Hallmark Greeting Cards until she quit just before Reuben was born.
In August of 1970, the family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Reuben spent the next thirteen years of his life. Although a rather shy and introverted child, Reuben tried to please his parents by joining Little League and the YMCA soccer league. One broken arm, one separated shoulder, and a sprained ankle later, his parents let him drop sports entirely. It wasn't that he tried to hurt himself, but rather that he was, sadly, a klutz. Reuben was tall and gawky as a child, although in his late teens and twenties his body (and coordination) caught up with him.
He excelled in academics through elementary school, and even participated in the gifted and talented program at the public school he attended (Hamilton Middle School). In 1983, the Cabots moved from Tulsa to Houston, Texas. Unhappy with the public schools there, his parents enrolled Reuben at St. Pius X High School, where he remained until he graduated high school.
Although he chafed at the structure and formed the beginnings of a long-time distrust of organized religion in general and Catholicism specifically, Reuben came into his own in high school, working in the Theater Club and helping out with several productions ("Camelot" and "West Side Story" were his favorites) at the Houston Community Theater. Although a passable singer (but a hopeless dancer), after a few small roles, Reuben stayed backstage, where he showed a real talent for set design and construction. The drawback to his extracurricular involvement was that his grades started to suffer. After the move to Texas, his grades fell from an A-average to a C-average. This was a particularly sore point between Patrick and Reuben, with his father stressing the importance of academics and college and Reuben arguing for doing what he wanted to do, not had to do. In 1989, Reuben's senior year, into this rift fell his first love - tall, blonde, and...a guy.
His name was David Price. Reuben met him when David was playing Lancelot in HCT's production of "Camelot". Now, Patrick and Mary had wondered about Reuben all through middle and high school - no girlfriends, no prom dates - and had been getting increasingly anxious. This, too, fed into the rift between Reuben and his father. As for Reuben, he hadn't really consciously considered the lack of contact with the opposite sex. He did know that he felt an attraction to men, but hadn't equated that with homosexuality. He didn't know of his parents anxiety, just that they seemed to getting increasingly annoying.
David was 25, and though he wasn't limp-wristingly, lispingly gay, he was still a known quantity among the HCT regulars. After weeks of flirting during rehearsals, David literally swept Reuben off his feet backstage one day with a quick, furtive kiss between scenes that left Reuben dazed. This developed into coffee after the performance, followed by dinner the next night, and a movie the night after that. One of the ladies in the chorus who attended church with the Cabots noted with disapproval that the two were spending more time together, and mentioned it to her neighbor, who mentioned it to one of the members of her bridge club, who whispered it to Mary Cabot. Mary, who had been shopping, went home immediately and called Patrick at work, in tears. Reuben came home late that night to find his father demanding where he had been, and with whom. Stunned, he told his father the truth - he had spent the evening seeing "Star Trek III" then had gone out for coffee with his friend David. Patrick slapped him, said some very ugly things about faggots, and threw him out of the house.
With the exception of the next day, when he went by and picked up two suitcases of clothing under his mother's tearful gaze, Reuben hasn't been back to his parents' house, nor has he talked to his father. He speaks with his mother once every couple of months, but the conversations are usually strained and short. Reuben never did see David again.
All of this happened a week before Reuben's graduation from high school. He crashed with a friend who had his own apartment and vowed to escape Houston as quickly as possible. Graduation was more a matter of inertia than conscious decision, although if all of this had happened even a week earlier, he would have dropped out of school with or without the diploma.
Reuben was fortunate to have a small savings account that his parents had made him put all monetary gifts from his grandparents into - around $5,000 by the time he was in high school (his paternal grandfather - for whom Reuben was named - had a small successful petroleum drilling company called Cabot Rigs). Digging into his funds, he bought a bus ticket to Washington, DC. Once he arrived there, he called Rosa Hernandez, his best friend from Houston who had graduated the year before and gone on to attend the University of Maryland. Rosa put him up for a few months, while he worked a number of minimum wage jobs around College Park.
In September, 1989, Reuben got a steady job at House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park and moved to a funky little apartment up the street which he shared with three others. One of his roommates, a Deadhead named Spooner, introduced him to woodcarving during this time. Since Reuben was hopeless with musical instruments, this gave him something to do during the day. After a few months, he became quite proficient at carving, although he never thought he could make any money with it.
In January of 1990, Reuben steeled himself and enrolled as a freshman at the University of Maryland, having come to the conclusion that he was doomed to a lifetime of minimum wage without a college degree - any kind of degree, it didn't matter what major. This started a procession of majors - psychology, English, classical studies, architecture (the latter lasted all of three weeks). After two years, he had a falling-out with the head of the Greek Department over his lack of direction and it was strongly suggested that he seek schooling at another institution.
In his two years at UMD, Reuben had kept his job at House of Musical Traditions. He'd met many of the local performers, and had even turned out his first commisioned carved piece - an intricately carved fiddle-head. He'd been offered $200 for the piece, but refused the money, insisting it was still just a practice work. Now, he wondered if maybe there wasn't some possibilities in the arts.
In his time working with and around folk musicians, Reuben had picked up an interest in Irish-American folklore, and one of the few institutions to offer Folklore Studies is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So in September of 1992, Reuben moved to Chapel Hill.
In the intervening years, he has taken classes off and on at UNC and has found the Folklore Department to be very patient with him. In August, 1994, while walking along Country Club Rd., Reuben saw a young lady on a bicycle get sideswiped by a passing car. Although he was at her side until the ambulance came, he was shaken that he really didn't know anything to help her. He was inspired to take first Red Cross classes, then some paramedic training. He continued to visit the young lady (whose name is Susan Baum), and struck up a continuing friendship. He frequently meets her at the Skylight Exchange for coffee.
Following a succession of retail and waiting jobs (including a very short-lived stint as a bartender at BW3's), Reuben hired on at The Avid Reader, a used book store on Franklin St. He worked there for a year before he met his mentor.
Reuben's love life since moving to Chapel Hill (since Houston, really) has been nonexistent. Although he is by no means closeted, he hasn't yet found anyone he would feel comfortable about approaching - and he hasn't yet been able to build up the nerve to do so.
In June of 1995, Reuben had a small showing of his carved works at the Duke Univesity Museum of Art, as part of a showcase of local artists (Susan knows someone on the DUMA staff). This has in turn generated a few offers of commissions, but he is still somewhat unsure of the rightness of accepting money for his artwork.