by Ethan Seavey
“Sometimes, before I take a piss, I spit into the toilet as a sacrifice to a false idol.”
The priest nods. He’s heard this one before. He was somewhere else before. Now he’s a resident of the confessional inside the attic of the home inside my head.
“I’m gravely concerned about coyotes, how easily they’re conquering the foxes, and the wolves, and how they’ll soon fill every niche humans have left in their wake. But I do nothing about it.”
He pulls his face closer to the wood surrounding the meshy grate, and inhales. The confessional’s distinct smell, that of a cedar box baking in the moist heat of an Illinois summer, hangs in the air, as thick as the tension between listener and listened to.
“Once, I had this dream—I was driving a car down the road, and then I just opened the door and stepped outside, leaving the car running, in drive. I watched it run 15 feet forward, running head-on into another car.”
Dreams are not sins.
“But I remember feeling no remorse.”
Before my family home was our home, it was a convent, and before that, it was a farmhouse. It hasn’t seen many renovations. I’ve spent years learning which of the aged floorboards creak, which doors squeak, and which of the fireplaces actually provide heat. My father tells guests that the original electric fireplace used to be a symbol of wealth. (A technological marvel! Who wants to sit around the standstill flames of the retro-future?)
Now they’re just tacky.
“I forgot New Jersey on a state quiz, in my fourth grade social studies class, and started to doubt the existence of a state there in the first place. A few minutes later, through welling tears, I looked at one of the finished quizzes Ms. Rafa was holding as she walked by. And apparently Jacob had it right, so I got an A.”
The attic was finished only recently, in the 90s, when it was passed back to the hands of the general public. The family that owned the house right after the Church did them the favor of inserting a trendy, timeless blue shag carpet in the sitting room of the attic.
But when the house was a place of and for the Lord, a confessional was installed in what was then an unfinished attic. The floors leading to the sin-box were bare and splintery. The attic acts like the trial that is necessary for trust to develop. The Church did their best to elevate the experience. They laid down rugs and installed a door made of strangely patterned and bizarrely contemporary stained glass.
“I broke a girl’s clavicle when I was in eighth grade. We were being kinda flirty, and during soccer practice I didn’t know my size and totally pushed her over. She spilled and landed on her shoulder. And I broke her clavicle. And I knew that I was gay. So that flirting was exceptionally misdirected.”
I imagine a nun would take her seat on an air duct which clung to her skirt with every movement. She’d sit still for a moment, calming herself, and think over her sins for the week. She’d look first at the door on the left, hoping the sister confessing would finish soon, then to the right, at the priest’s door. While the sinner opened a plain door, the priest was given one with an intricate cross on the front, a delicate mess of woven lines that lulled the sister into a trance. Eventually, her sister would climb out of the box, the nun would stand, and she’d face His judgement under the weight of a thousand sanded cedar trees.
Now, the confessional sits empty in a dusty closet of the attic, because it was considered far too massive to move by both the Church who wanted it and the owners who didn’t. I’m sure someone wanted to take it apart, but as I learned in Religious Ed. once something’s blessed, the only way to dispose of it is to burn or bury it. Or eat it.
Recently, I’ve been reclaiming this space which exists only in my memory, but as a smoke space. As far as smoke spots go, this one’s prime. The seat’s worn-in but comfortably so, and the old wood cloaks the smell, somewhat. Still some smoke spills outside, as by the heavy-handed bartender, pouring through the cracks in the wood like sun beams through a window.
“I smoked weed a few months ago in my dorm. I don’t really feel bad about the weed part, you know, but it was in the bathroom and then my suitemate caught me with red eyes and a can of air freshener. So I guess it’s a sin that I got caught.”
The priest seems to have no sense of humor whatsoever. He sighs, frustrated. I pull the lighter from my pocket, and for a second I hold the flame next to the metal grate, and for a second, I can almost make out the priest’s face through the smoke.
“You know, you have to listen to me. My sins, your ears. That’s how this works, Father.”
I am listening.
“You’re ignoring my sins.”
They’re not really sins.
“Like hell they aren’t.”
What have you done on purpose?
I don’t particularly like this inquiry.
“I can’t cry when I’m alone.”
Waiting.
“I know that’s not a sin. I just think you should know. Look, Father—you think I want to be in here? Alone, a week before I was supposed to leave for school? I sit every single damn night alone, sitting on the roof outside my window for hours every night, watching the sunset fall, then steeping in darkness, just trying to feel something. I wring every drop of emotion from myself. I can’t take myself seriously.
“I go out on the roof now and feel the soft blues and yellows of a mediocre sunset, and keep on eye on the few stars I can see, and force myself to cry. I lied. I keep lying. I keep slipping up.”
His smoky figure leans forward. I trace his figure instead, find an intricate cascading of smoke forming a set of shoulders and even a Roman collar—it’s all there. Except for his face. And his hair, I suppose, but I imagine he’s bald. In my experience, most priests are.
“Is it wrong to keep confessing such banalities?”
I wait a moment for the priest of smoke to answer the question. He doesn’t. I flick the lighter once. I begin to pry off a metal piece with the edge of my nail.
“I suppose so. But I’m alone, and you’re here.”
Standing and peering through the circular air-holes at the top of the confessional, I see the sun setting over the houses to the west. The direct rays warm the wood cedar: it’s steamy, smoky. I turn my fear of suffocation on the priest.
“I did some shitty things, father. I don’t like sitting in here, baking in my sins—do you like this? Why are you so certain you can bear the weight? Is it right to wrong and confess to someone else? I’ve manipulated and lied to people, I’ve done much worse than smoked pot when it wasn’t explicitly legal. I’m trying to be less of a cockhead, really, Father. I think I am. I just need someone to show me how. And maybe you’re not the right person for that.”
There’s silence. He doesn’t give me penance. He knows we’re not done, he knows I’ll be back soon. In the light of a fiery sunset, his body turns crimson. He reaches forward, and slides five tendrils of smoke, grasping the metal grate. I swing the door wide, sending ripples of force through his smoky fingers.
The priest’s cabinet has a second chair in there for those comfortable with face-to-face judgment. I’ll stop hiding behind the screen when I’m ready.