Geek Love

by Katherine Dunn

We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear’s worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.

In a carnival you call it luck or chance, but it’s the same as hope. Now hope is a good feeling that needs risk to work.

The hope you get from religion is a three-ring, all-star hope because the risk is outrageous.

You can’t imagine what it is to realize that there are people at large whose first reaction to the sight of your children is to reach for a gun.

Arty, meanwhile, laughing, mimicking the committee members cruelly, with me as his audience.

David Miscavige? That u?

“When does he climb trees? When does he sneak candy from the booths? Where are his friends to coax him into teasing the cats or giving Horst a hotfoot? They’ll drive him into the ground. They’ll suck him out of his natural growth. Look at his wrists and elbows! He’s knobby!”

YOURE THE WORST