Jamie
For the love of Christ! Every Catholic in the old city section of Philadelphia must have felt the need to cleanse their souls today because I couldn’t remember a time my confessional had seen so much action. I looked down at my watch and noticed that only a few minutes remained until confessions were over. Thirty seconds ticked by and I silently said screw it and got up to leave. I was eager to get to my dad and Marcia’s house, throw back a few beers with my brother, watch back-to-back football games on television, and eat some turkey.
And then I heard her voice.
“I have forgotten how to do this.” Her admission was only slightly above a whisper, but I heard her clearly. Her voice echoed against the walls of the small chamber, and I sat back down, or rather fell into my seat. There was a breathy quality to her voice, one that I could only describe as raw and sexy.
“How long has it been since your last confession?” The question rattled off my tongue easily as it was part of the script I typically adhered to.
“At least ten years.” Shuffling and movement from behind the screen that separated us ensued. “This wasn’t a good idea.” Her silhouette was gone, which meant that she was no longer kneeling.
“Why is that?”
“Because confession is for those who seek forgiveness.”
“And you do not wish to be forgiven?”
I could hear her breathing and smell her perfume as it bled through the small holes of the screen. She smelled like soap and vanilla. Her scent was like a shot in my vein, one that traveled south, making my cock twitch. “I think it’s closure I seek,” she said with a newfound edge.
“Tell me what’s troubling you. I will not judge you.” I held my breath while I waited for her to either bolt or comply.
“But isn’t that what priests do best? Judge us sinners and try to steer us away from damnation?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her tone, but it was the anger beneath I focused on. And pain, I suspected. So much pain.
“Talk to me.” I was met with silence, and then I heard the twist of the old doorknob. “On your knees.” More rustling from the other side of the screen could be heard, and then her profile came back into view. She had complied. I had given her a command, and she had obeyed almost instantly. My cock went from limp to impenetrable stone.
On your knees.
I hadn’t said those words to a woman in over eight years. Three words. That was all it had taken for that part of my brain that had lain dormant to awaken . . . and to remember what I once craved.
And what you still need.
No! I needed to get ahold of myself and not think with my cock. This woman on the other side of my screen needed help. It was obvious she was struggling with something. I tried to convince myself that she was hideously unattractive; that her sultry, seductive voice did not reflect her appearance in any way. And then she spoke, and my feeble attempt blew up in my face.
“Today I learned that my mother has fallen ill. But I still can’t find it in my heart to forgive her, for what she did . . . and didn’t do . . . so many years ago. I know what it sounds like, how it must appear. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a grudge and a stubborn streak that I refuse to give up.”
“But you want to forgive her? You want peace between you two?”
“Maybe.” She sighed, and a hint of a whimper escaped. “Or maybe I just want closure so I can move on with my life. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about Catholic guilt eating away at me until I am dead and buried.” The fire in her voice made me sit at attention.
“Were you two ever close?”
“Our relationship prior to . . . the incident that led to the great fallout . . . had been shaky at best.”
The incident? I wanted to ask. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I held back in fear that I would scare her off.
So I opted for levity. “Ahh. No mommy-daughter day outs?”
She chuckled, and the sound made my heart quicken. “No. No side-by-side pedicures or shopping sprees, either,” she said.
“And why do you think that was?”
She hesitated for a moment, which made me anxious because I was hoping she was beginning to relax a little and then she asked, “Do you really want to know? Or is this just part of the script you priests need to refer to?”
I didn’t know why her questions pissed me off. But they did. They also made me want to reach around to the other side of her confessional and punish that smart mouth of hers. My cock ached against the seam of my pants. “Is that what you want? A script? For me to listen to you? To tell you to say an Act of Contrition and two Our Fathers and try to be nice to the woman who brought you into this world? Or would you rather just have a conversation with me?”
“A conversation?” she asked, her words a bit shaky, not as confident as she was a few seconds ago. “One in which I don’t hold back? One that could make you uncomfortable?”
“Why would I be uncomfortable? I may only be thirty-two years old, but I have a pretty thick skin. Why don’t you give me the benefit of the doubt?”
“It’s not your age or your life experience . . . it’s because you’re a priest.”
“I see. Well, would it help to know that I’m not in my typical priest get-up today?”
“You’re not wearing clerics and a white collar? Isn’t that against the rules? Sacrilegious?” she asked, her tone playful.
“I’m wearing khakis and a Philadelphia Eagles t-shirt, and no, I don’t think I’m committing any mortal sin by donning such salacious attire.”
Again, she laughed. “Okay. Then here goes.” She cleared her throat. “I started channeling my inner slut halfway through my junior year of high school. I had been subtle at first. Wardrobe-wise, I was locked in, held prisoner by my Catholic school uniform. But there had been a few things I was able to manipulate, like ‘accidentally’ leaving the top few buttons of my white oxford blouse open and hiking up my skirt an inch or two. I was absolutely certain that my mother hadn’t noticed at first. Because not only would she have forced me to de whore myself, she would have doused me with the holy water she had kept on her nightstand. It wouldn’t have been the first time I was subjected to such a sacred shower.”
“So, your mother is what one would call a holy roller, a Bible beater?”
“Yes, a very opinionated one at that. She never wasted an opportunity to tell me how sinful I was, how I was going to go to Hell in a handbasket.”
“You think because you hiked up your skirt a little, you had earned yourself a spot in Hell?”
She chuckled, but it wasn’t playful; rather it was laced with pain and sadness. “You may find this hard to believe, but I used to love going to Mass on Sundays. I wasn’t one of those kids you had to force to go to church week after week. In fact, I looked forward to it, to sitting in the first pew and listening to the priest read from the gospels and leaving us with words to ponder. My mom would sit on my right, my dad, in his tweed jacket with suede elbow pads, would be on my left. Sandwiched between, I hung on every word the priest said and then on the ride home from Mass, I would bombard my parents with questions.”
“What kind of questions?” I asked, intrigued.
“The kind of questions that earned me disapproving looks and trips to my bedroom without supper.”
“No holding back, remember?” I asked.
She sighed. “Why can’t women be priests? Why can’t priests marry or at least have a girlfriend to keep them company? Did Noah really have every animal species on board during the great flood? Why didn’t Jesus just hightail it out of Jerusalem when he had the chance instead of staying in that garden, waiting to be betrayed? Those were just a sample of questions that tempted my mom to look to see if a 666 was somewhere branded on my body.”
I didn’t hold back and laughed . . . hard.
“Do I amuse you, Father?”
“I’m not making fun of you. If you want to know the truth, many adults have knelt in your place and have asked me similar questions.” I liked talking to her. It didn’t feel forced, but natural and . . . easy. “So you were an inquisitive child. I haven’t heard anything that would have earned you a one-way ticket to Hell.”
“An inquisitive child who challenged God’s teachings every chance she got. The more questions I asked, the angrier my mom got. Then when I was twelve our parish priest, a man I liked and respected, retired and was replaced with someone who shared my mom’s views. He too, thought my soul was tainted, and their unholy alliance was solidified. My mom basically worshiped him, believed that his word, not God’s, was law. As I entered my teenage years, things got worse and I rebelled against my strict, brainwashed parents. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was . . . curious.”
The inflection in her voice went straight to my groin. “Explain,” I said . . . I demanded.
She didn’t answer, but I heard her sharp intake of breath. The walls seemed to close in around me, envelop me, and I struggled for air. I was seconds away from darting out of the booth and sucking oxygen into my lungs, oxygen that had not been shared with her, when she said, “When I was thirteen I started masturbating. I knew it was wrong, that I was violating church law by touching myself once, sometimes multiple times in a single day. But I couldn’t help it.”
Her exhale stuttered and then she continued, but her voice remained shaky. “And because my need to do this was so . . . strong . . . I started to make mistakes, like forgetting to lock my bedroom door. One night my mom walked in on me doing it . . . at the very moment I climaxed in my hand. She dragged me into the shower and forced me to scrub my body until it was raw. Afterward, she made me get dressed and took me to church, where I confessed to our parish priest the abomination. But I wasn’t sorry for what I had done, and I knew even as I confessed to that priest that I would do it again and again and that it was just the beginning.”
Holy fuck!
I fisted my cock through my pants as I envisioned the woman just inches from me, not the curious teenaged girl she had described, making herself come, her back bowing as she rode out every wave of her orgasm. It had been eight years since I had been with a woman and nearly the same amount of time since I had taken myself into my own hand. Although it had been difficult, especially in the beginning, not to succumb to temptation, I had been successful. But right now, as this woman bared her most intimate memories, I felt my moral compass falter and my grip tightened.
I was failing her. The woman who had come to me for guidance. I was failing myself. And I was failing God.
I released my death grip and prayed for control, for the strength to finish this confession or whatever the fuck it was. But fortunately, she ended it abruptly. “I . . . I need to get out of here. I’m sorry, Father,” she said, breathless. I heard her confessional door open and then footsteps fleeing across the hardwood floor.