Priestdaddy: A Memoir

by Patricia Lockwood

The internet addicts somehow banded together and raised the money in less than twelve hours. Their sense of humor had not abated. They gave in increments of $4.20 and $6.66 and $69.69, and they gave under usernames like gilled_burpito and PLEASURE_STEPDAD. The jokes were gifts too. Everyone gave, students and rich people, a man who had written a television show about an island and a dancer called Bubbles who donated all her tips from that night and a comedian whose chest hair looked like three otters engaging in a leisurely orgy while floating up the river of his torso. It was people I knew and people I didn’t know. It was so total and unexpected I couldn’t look at it directly, as if generosity itself had opened up its trench coat and flashed me. Jason shook me awake that morning to tell me to call off the fund-raiser, we had raised enough. It was his thirtieth birthday, and he was crying. • • •