confession, part one

On May 22, 2002, on the train from Fussen to Lucerne, Jason pulled out a couple of sheets of ruled paper and a soft-leaded pencil, and suggested he and Lance and I round-robin a story.

Of course I was game: this was exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to do, and it was exactly the kind of thing that the person I dreamed of being would do. She would sit in a gently rocking train car, approaching the Alps, with her brainy, literary boyfriend, and they would create. It had main character energy; and I was hoping to become Mary Shelley. (You know, who wrote Frankenstein while she was 19 and vacationing in Switzerland with her lover and her stepsister (who incidentally was pregnant with Lord Byron’s child). Byron invited them all to stay at the mansion he was renting, and while they were there, they competed to see who could write the best ghost story. I’d say Mary won.)

The Villa Diodati, where they stayed. Our youth hostel was very similar, of course.

But back to my romanticizing my life exercise: Jason wrote the first line, and almost immediately I regretted my decision to play the game.

I could do a whole analysis of what was bad about our relationship based on this one sheet of paper, but that’s for another day.

“I’ve never been to confession before,” he wrote. "I’ve got some things to get off my chest, but I’m not Catholic, and I don’t want to be… so how do we start this thing?”

I’ve been thinking about this story we wrote that day because I’ve been thinking about the practice of confession, and how mysterious and alluring it can be to protestants or the non-religious.

(TikTok delivered that to me right on time, eerily.)

Jason, Lance, and I were all resolute Protestants in 2002, and I think each of us were drawn to the idea of the confessional booth. Not necessarily because we had enormous things weighing on us that we needed to confess (although — the undertones to Jason’s lines in this story, especially when we get under the fold!). More because of the foreignness of the practice, the dramatic possibilities inherent in it, and even the physical space of the confessional itself, tiny, latticed, worn.

And also because the idea of having such internal clarity about right and wrong, and being able to enter a space where you could be honest, and still be forgiven and beloved — a space where you could let go of something and truly feel its weight lifted — it seemed too good to be true.

The confessional held the same kind of allure for me as writing that story did: there was something romantic and appealing about being the kind of person who wrote stories on trains, and there was something romantic and appealing about being the kind of person who believed in confession and forgiveness.

I was two weeks shy of twenty-one then, and it would be another twenty-one years before I confessed my sins to God in the company of a priest.

But more on that next week. In the meantime, do you have any confession stories?

Read Part Two here.

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Three Things

• Some of the lyrics on the new Katy Kirby album are really *chef’s kiss*
  It comes with the territory
  Sweet pastoral imagery, but
  It's just not polite to call me terra incognita
  You misspelled apology
  You ended it with I and E
  Diminutive contrition
  But I still know what you mean

• Past Lives is now streaming on Paramount Plus (and you can get a free one week subscription to watch it). Maybe on Saturday, for lunar new year, and eat Tteokbokki and cry.

• The two moments from last night’s Grammy awards that you shouldn’t miss: Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides Now,” and Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car.” (Did you know Tracy Chapman and Alice Walker had a thing? They’re of different eras in my brain, and so the fact surprises me every time I think about it.)

Dangerous Territory is now available in an updated second edition and as an audiobook! Buy it in paperback or ebook at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold.

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