May 30, 2014

"The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas."

I got a lot out of this NYT Magazine profile of the poet Patricia Lockwood. I'll just give one excerpt, about her father:
Greg Lockwood married Lockwood’s mother, Karen, when they were both teenagers; he had just joined the Navy. Karen was raised Catholic, but Greg was an atheist. During one patrol, on a nuclear submarine off the coast of Norway, he underwent what he later described as “the deepest conversion on record.” He claims it grew out of soul-searching following several personal setbacks, but the family legend ascribes it to the fact that he and the crew on his previous patrol watched “The Exorcist” more than 70 times in 88 days. Whatever the catalyst, Lockwood became a devout Christian. He started a family, attended college and seminary and eventually was ordained as a Lutheran minister. And then one morning in 1985 he “woke up Catholic”; a few years later he became a priest, with the zeal of the twice-converted.

In Lockwood’s telling, her father ruled the home as a loving and idiosyncratic patriarch who wore his cassock in the living room, or else very little — “It was either full regalia or nothing” — watched sword-and-sandal movies obsessively, played blues guitar, ate copious amounts of sausage and fed the family a steady dose of prog rock. 
Also at the link: very quirky sex jokes, like: "Sext: I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me."

3 comments:

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"but the family legend ascribes it to the fact that he and the crew on his previous patrol watched “The Exorcist” more than 70 times in 88 days."

Without a doubt, the funniest thing I will read or hear today.

Smilin' Jack said...

"but the family legend ascribes it to the fact that he and the crew on his previous patrol watched “The Exorcist” more than 70 times in 88 days."

Without a doubt, the funniest thing I will read or hear today.


The patrol was on a nuclear submarine. To me, that makes it a lot less funny.

traditionalguy said...

I read all of her twitter jokes, and I have no idea what she meant by any of them. Is it written in code we old guys cannot translate?

I wanted to ask other people what they mean, but it's embarrassing when 1)you do not understand the dirty jokes, and 2)they turn out to be so really gross that asking what they mean offends people.