Pervert's Parable
- Eli L.A.
- Nov 19, 2023
- 18 min read
Updated: Nov 27, 2023
ESSAY by ELI L.A.
PHOTOGRAPHY by PENELOPE DARIO
The Pervert did not masturbate in churches. But it didn’t matter. His wife was done with him. She delivered the divorce papers herself, her French manicure uncharacteristically bitten. Then it evolved into lawyers, and every Sunday her parents would call The Pervert to swear at him. He was amazed that despite the contract he had signed, he still did not own her. “And now she wants me to sign another one?” One day, after a particularly heated negotiation, he slouched into a nearby Greek Orthodox church.
The Pervert was worrying.
He had no idea her family was rich. He hadn’t known the whole two and a half years of the marriage, or for the year of courtship that preceded it. Maybe the gourmet cat food should’ve tipped him off, but so what? It was ridiculous that a relationship, ended for lack of feeling, should be extended by an abundance of money.
