Priestdaddy

by Patricia Lockwood

“What they want to do is cyber,” my mother broke in. “They’ll tell you anything, if it means they get to cyber.” I took a moment to wonder what constituted my mother’s understanding of “cybering.” Hackers in black leather gloves, giving each other handjobs in space, while glowing green numbers streamed through the air?

“Did you see how ugly the church is?” he asks me now. I did. He suggests it’s because it was built in the 1950s, when people were already starting to be Communists. “I’ll tell you what the problem is,” he says, taking on the comfortable tone of instruction. “When people started forgetting about gender roles, they started building ugly churches. Architecture requires an equal balance of the male and the female in order to be beautiful.” What? There’s no way that can be right. According to those standards, the perfect cathedral would be a gigantic Prince symbol people could pray inside.

New kindle. New read.