“Bless me, Father”

I stepped into the confessional booth nervously. I had planned everything; imagined every step. Yet still, I was anxious to the point of being jittery. I was sure it was going to go as I intended, or almost so: you never really know. As I sat down on the little bench, I closed the wood-paneled door behind me. I took two deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. I had just about accomplished that, when I heard the door on the opposite side open, and then close.

I knew it was Father Daniel, the slightly older priest who’d been in the church for longer than I had been alive, and I knew it was him because I had watched and figured out his schedule. He was here on Tuesday afternoons just after lunch, every week. I also knew that there would be practically no other parishioners there at that time, because I had tracked that, too. I wanted to catch him alone. All alone. I took another deep breath, and began. Calmly. Assuredly.

“Bless me, Father, for I am about to sin.” The variation caught him a little off-guard, but only a little. “How long since your last confession, dear?”, he asked, trying to refocus the confession. I didn’t allow that, because I’d planned not to allow him to change the direction of things. “That doesn’t matter, Father, because I don’t want to be forgiven for what I’ve been doing or thinking since the last time I was here”, I answered. “I just want you to give me a blessing for what I’m about to do.”

“Tyler? Is that you?” He asked. Of course, he recognized my voice; he had known me my whole life. All of it. He had baptized me. First communion. CYO. All of it. “Of course, Father”, I said. He went on. “If you haven’t committed the sin yet, then just don’t do it, and you won’t need forgiveness”, was his reply. I could hear the uncertainty about the destination of the conversation begin to enter his voice, and I could hear him trying to get back on a familiar plane. I was having none of it. “I didn’t ask for forgiveness, Father: I asked for your blessing. Are you going to bless me or not?”

“Before I can act, dear, I need to know what it is you have in mind, and when: I can’t condone something without knowing what it is and who it might harm, including you.” “No one’s going to be hurt”, I countered, “least of all me: in fact, I’m going to be extremely happy.” I left the ambiguity to hang in the air. I could nearly hear the gears spinning in his head. And so I added, “And he’s going to be extremely happy, too. I just want your blessing first. Can you help me, Father Daniel, or what?”

He said nothing for nearly thirty seconds, then forty-five, pondering the imponderables. He’d been unable to pick at the request from one angle, so he tried another. “Tell me who ‘he’ is, the man that’s going to be happy . . . and how he’ll be made happy.” It was time for bombshell number one. “I’m going to give him my virginity.” I heard him lean back on his bench attached to the wall in the opposite half-booth, and I heard him breathe in deeply and exhale.