Forgive Me Father
today’s offering is a short story: an unnamed protagonist contemplates her morality and who influences it.
When I meet him at the bar, a damp woody low-ceiling nook of a dive, he buys me a drink. I don't have to ask or faux fumble for my card. He just does. I’m a little nervous, as I always am before these kinds of things—meeting various men in various bars for a screening before the action. As an act of ritual I order a paloma, not caring that its grapefruit base will impede my body’s absorption of the pill I take to placate my emotions. To dull them down like a stale pencil. Across the table in my casting director’s chair I typically ask the men— “Are you married? Can you do a spin? So you said you’re from where again? Tell me about that.” When I decide they’re attractive enough, non-murderous, and decently conversational to the point of my amusement, I down the rest of my watery drink sullied by time, and we go. Tonight though, I bypass the questions, immediately disarmed by his kind eyes and the sweater he referred to in our texts as a jumper. We sit in a sticky spot, as if there was anywhere else in a bar such as that, and he reaches for my hand. Our small talk takes a winding road, and I spill onto his lap that my education was handed to me in a strict Catholic way, molded by old white rigidity. I'm not sure exactly how it came up. It just does sometimes. He is listening to me ramble, intently and without pause. I like having an older man's ear. It makes me want to strip, and I try to communicate that with my eyes, letting them drift down his chest and underneath the table with x-ray vision. He picks up on this and suggests we close out.
The loft was tucked away on an industrial street by a canal that could take your toe. A friend's home he’s watching. I’ve always found that funny. If you’re watching his, who’s watching yours? Like a doctor’s doctor. After handing him my coat to hang, I slip into the bathroom to perform a seance with my reflection. I run my hands over my body as if they’re his, trying to channel the spirit running through my veins before we begin. I take a peek into the cabinet only to find the toiletries to be sparse, his friend surely between cities. If he weren’t I wouldn’t have quickly found myself face down on the cold slate cement floor of the common area, writhing around like an earthworm in ecstasy, so shortly after arrival. The place was so nice I didn’t mind it down there. It felt decadent actually, to be so dirty in a beautiful place. Heavily surrounded by high quality furnishings, a privilege given to the fuck guest of a good friend. There was a glossy red motorcycle parked next to my face. Its shine reflecting my eyes of delirium back at me. I saw color bursts and stars and my brows all furrowed up. It was all so ridiculous, extravagant, and extreme. But just as I was sinking into myself, he abruptly quit all motion and held himself still inside me. All five digits balled up in a steady fist.
“Tell me what you’ve done.” he demanded.
His hand was so deep I swore he was excavating my vaginal memories. My first period–age 12, the first time I had sex, the other first time I had sex too.
“You don’t get to come unless you confess.” he said.
“Hm? Please. Uh. I- Fuck please can I just-”
“You’re a slut, correct?”
“Yes.” I manage.
“So, tell me some of the slutty things you’ve done. Only sluts get to come.”
Oh. He wants me to tell him my sins. Daddy and Father, he’s decided interchangeable at this moment in time, confidently settling into his almost twenty year stature over me. Confession. I've never done it, but I've seen it, been subjected to its air, threatened with a socially ostracizing chokehold.
“I fucked someone.”
“Please. Fucking someone doesn’t make you a slut, what did you really do?”
I found his insistence for candor both exciting and unusual, and I believe novelty deserves reward. So I spelled it out for him.
J E Z E B E L.
Just like the brothers wanted me to.
I couldn't lie to myself. He wouldn’t let me lie to him, and even greater I didn't want to. A few months ago, when that man told me he was married I didn't bat an eye. Not one. Not two. Not the intuitive third. In fact I liked it. I remember how good it felt when I brought him to his end in that hotel. Having all that matter in my mouth made me want to swish his DNA around, like I was performing one of my mother’s coconut oil pulls that she used to do during her wellness phase when I was in high school. Back when large sacrilegious Buddha head statues looked out onto our street through intentionally curtainless windows. Our neighbors able to watch us live, in an Imax format. But I didn’t. Instead I gulped it down like a champ, the Evander Holyfield of blowjobs.
I liked doing wrong, liked being the other. It felt good to have a captivated audience flattering me with all his spell boundedness. I had something he needed–a break, a pause from goodness and grace, a willing and eager mouth. Am I disgusted with myself? Maybe. But disgust like any other emotion can be shoved under the bed to collect dust, alongside old chipped up porcelain dolls and shoes you ordered online that don’t fit but you can’t be bothered to return.
I know Brother Thomas would say I'm an awful wretched thing, ruining good men with temptation. That's what they wanted me to think of myself back then. Back now. That I was a born sinner, slipped out the womb with debauchery on the brain. They'd beckon us from our desks and usher us in, my classmates and I. Single file into the auditorium. Men in cream and gold robes were stationed in the back by the doors we entered from. You could feel their judgment wash over you as you walked by. They were standing there like pillars, stations of condemnation. I tried not to look back too hard. We'd shuffle down the aisles, plop into the seats, and buckle up for our journey to salvation.
God I'd love to be a priest. To sit back and listen to all the reasons people stay up at night, tossing and turning. To be the recipient of so much delicious shame. Not because I want to judge or hand out penances, but because it could make me feel better. To know there are no saints.
"Your grace still amazes me. Your love is still a mystery. Each day, I fall on my knees, Because your grace still amazes me." some reverent tenor would croon over the speakers while a projector screen was lowered into view.
"Have you ever cheated on a test?"
"Have you ever masturbated?"
"Have you ever had thoughts about engaging in homosexual behavior?"
"Have you ever spread gossip?"
"Have you ever told a lie?"
They were prompting us just in case we got stuck. In case we thought we were alright, safe from Lucifer’s incinerator. The words wiggled across the screen in a whimsical wavy font. Floating across one at a time to the Christian rock they played. There was something sinisterly modern about the set up of it all. I couldn't, I still can't, wrap my mind around it–the meditational period before our teachers sent us up one at a time to spill our regretful guts, bile riddled with poor decisions. I didn't want to. I could barely admit to myself who I was. What I'd been doing at night under the covers or at sleepovers with the friends I found the prettiest. Just the thought of fixing my lips to say a single letter made me ill. So I stayed. Stayed in my seat and declined the offer to be saved. Everyone stared at me down the row in shock. With him however, I shudder at the release he's provided through his questioning, mumbling my truth repeatedly. Who am I to say no to God?