Here Is The Church Here Is The Steeple

 

I have nothing to confess. I’m done with all that—born Catholic, I was forced to take stock of imaginary sins, report them to priests all through childhood. Enter the confession booth, kneel before the screen divider where Father-So-And-So would be sitting, waiting to hear fresh evidence of degeneracy. I lied, I masturbated, I took the Lord’s name in vain, et cetera. He’d cup his mouth, yawn, trying to hide the yawn; prescribe a certain number of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Had the opposite effect than intended: I came to love the sin, resent the religion. The religion an inexhaustible font of sacred unadulterated boredom.

              After you exit the confession box, you were expected to find a pew and kneel, knock out the required prayers. I’d fake my way through it. I’d kneel, fold my hands; assume the position; anyone waiting for their turn in the box would see a kid caught up in the business of penitence. I can’t say what other kids did; some may have counted sheep; some might’ve even napped; I would daydream, follow whatever direction my mind wandered. It usually arrived at far more interesting places. Often, given free rein, it’d double down on the sinfulness, fantasizing about girls a few grades above me, boobs, hips, tanned legs, asses. In my head I guess they weren’t human beings but intimidatingly accomplished projections of amateur lust. When I saw them in the halls, I lowered my eyes. Too shy to even talk to them.

              Allegory versus autobiography. Parable versus confession. A tired dichotomy but one people keep falling for, me included. The confession box, the place where the two meet. Divulge your most private secrets to some custodian of musty cosmology, who in return will assign pointless homework to complete. Primitive therapy, really. Exchanging the profane for the eternal. Why choose between the two? Why feed some racket devised by priests?

Original sin.

Keep the original, ditch the sin.

When you were born, something old was born anew.

It’s your job to live it, live with it, as it leaves you.