by Edward Lee
"Yes," the confessor says. "You have."
The thurible sways closer, its arcane blue embers for the first time revealing glimpses of its bearer's face. The writer shudders. It's a terrible visage. A mouth like a knife-cut in meat, and chiseled slits for eyes. My God, the writer thinks. The blue glimpses steal everything left in him at once. If he'd ever had any courage, any courage at all, it was gone now. If he'd ever had any faith...
Gone. All of it, gone.
The confessor points down with a finger of black stone. Derision looms in the unearthly voice. "Look now, seer. Into yourself."
My God, he panics. What is truth? What is truth really?
Her words reach back to him like corpse hands reaching back from death. That's the saddest part of all. Her words are ghosts. Her words are tiny specters.
—i'm proud of you—
—can i have a kiss?—
—i would do anything for you—
—me, too—
—you do, huh? well i love you more—
Next: visions. Memories pouring into light.
She's so beautiful beneath him, he's astonished. It rifles through his eyes into his head: her raw, naked, indefectible beauty. Even her sweat is beautiful, the sweat on her breasts and legs, on her angel's face, the beads of sweat nestled like jewels in the lovely little plot of fur. She's shining, glowing, in this avatistic beauty, wet in flesh and real blood, real love. Perhaps the only moment of genuine truth in his life collides with him now in the vivid image, like hammer to piton. Even if it's only a shred of a moment, it's still perfect. Her voice is a tiny plea impoverished out of the desperation to communicate that which reduces words to total inferiority and sails away beyond anything even remotely conveyable through primitive human utterance. Her plea is this: "I love you."
The writer falls to his knees, in ashes.
"Seen enough, seer?"
"I've buried my own faith myself," the writer croaks. "All my courage, virtue, insight, all my truth. Forgive me."
"I am not your confessor," the confessor repeats. "You can only forgive yourself."
The writer's fingers worm through the ashes. The ashes are warm. He lowers his face and kisses the pallid puffs, thinking of his love and how brightly it let him see the world.
"You can stay here forever if you like. But where is the truth in that?"
The writer's eyes widen; it was a good question. His loss has made his face a wet, ashen mask, and on high, atop the plinth, the confessor slowly leans back and begins to laugh. The laughter blurts outward like a gaggle of black birds.
So this was the essence of self-knowledge? To be laughed at? He expected unimpeachable sagacities, not mockery and humiliation. He expected blessings.
He expected an answer to his ultimate question and now was being crushed for even daring to presume to ask.
"It is your own pretension that crushes you," the confessor remarks.
"I know," the writer says.
"It is your conceit and all you take for granted. You've let selfishness and self-pity make you blind."
"DON'T YOU THINK I FUCKING KNOW THAT, YOU STONE-FACE OBSIDIAN MOTHERFUCKER!" the writer bolts up and suddenly screams, spittle flying off his lips. "DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW?"
But the confessor's voice turns clement, sinking to the softest suboctave. "You've created loss out of gain—a golem made of clay with your own hands. The maker destroyed by what he makes."
What is truth? the writer thinks again, disgusted. What is truth really? The thoughts bleed across the scape of his mind. Was it really selfishness and self-pity? He would do anything for her. Anything. He would cut parts off himself for her.
The vale's silence descends...like death. It's an atrocious contrast against the fullness of the writer's revelation: the verity of his love, and all the vision that his love gave him, vision in the broadest and most inscrutable sense. The contrast makes him want to throw up right there at the confessor's black-marble feet. Yes, contrast. All the world's love against all of its loss. He sees beautiful flowers tossed into pits of excrement. He sees maggot-filled bodies and stray rot washed up onto beaches of pristine, white sand, and the stretched brown bodies of the starving, dead children found raped in culverts, and the Belsen SS catching babies on bayonets.
"Is that all there is?" the writer sobs.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know what to think, goddamn it!"
"Then look behind it all. If you're perceptive enough, if you're smart, you might see something. Tell me what you see."
"I..." The writer shuts his eyes, fails again.
"Do you see angels or devils?"
"Angels," the writer moans.
"Yes, and they smiled on you once. Try something new."
"What?"
"Smile back."
Her name explodes from the writer's throat. The vale quakes with her name and what it really means. The shout nearly tears his lungs out of his chest.
After a silence, the confessor asks: "What have you just done?"
"I don't know what you mean," the writer wearies, still on his knees in the ashes.
"Of course you don't, because you're stupid and weak like everyone else. So I'll tell you. Do you want me to tell you?"
"Yes!"
"You just answered the very question you came here to ask."
Suddenly the writer feels seized, paralyzed.
"You can go back now," the confessor says.
"What?"
"You are absolved."
Only now does the writer dare to look up. The confessor is walking away, leaving trails of mist. All that's left to meet the writer's gaze now is the radiant white light of the moon.
That was the story. Not bad for a 19-year-old college kid. He'd been majoring in Literature at St. John's—the art college in Annapolis, when he'd written it, and the story actually went on to win some minor literary awards and was later included in a fat Penguin anthology entitled The Best New American Writers of 1970. Regrettably, Leonard's MSAC grant ran out the year before and he'd had to leave the St. John's campus. But over the next few years, the story stuck in his mind and began to transform into something else, just as his creative interests were transforming. Like "the writer" in the piece, Leonard began to see. He was a seer. He began to see The Confessor as a quasi-literary film. He studied the film greats of the era and their masterpieces. He studied film, also, on a technical basis. Suddenly Leonard had a goal in his life.
"I'm going to make a film," he told himself one morning.
Lots of people made independent films, and the really good ones launched the creator's career. Leonard knew he had what it took to make a film of unparalleled symbolic importance.
He had what it took, all right, except one thing.
Money.
One step at a time, though. First, he procured a job—as janitor—with Maryland Public Broadcasting, Channel 22. This was a tax-funded PBS enterprise, located on Hawkins Road in Davidsonville, Maryland, directly across, in fact, from a famous nudist colony called Pinetree. (If one ever wants to visit the nudist colony, just drive down Maryland State Route 450 and look for the blinking, 780-foot TV tower. You can't miss it.) Anyway, while cleaning studio floors and taking out garbage for $1.55 an hour, Leonard watched the studio's technicians with a focused eye, learning their tricks, and in his off hours even worked with said technicians. He learned how to develop film, using the station's fleet of automatic processors. He learned how to run the cameras (good cameras: Canon Scoptic Series, Chinon sound models, and Beaulieus!), the track lights, and the big professional grade Sankyo film editor.
Then, one night, he stole the cameras, the track lights, and the big Sankyo film editor. He was promptly arrested by the Anne Arundel County Police—their city substation was located less than one-mile from Channel 22—and was even more promptly convicted of breaking and entering and theft of state property. He received an 18-month sentence in the County Detention Center on Jennifer Road.
It was musing of his future film that got him through it. Leonard, being a slim young white man with no street smarts was very positively received on D Block of the center. He was raped with absolute gusto by fellow inmates with names like "Cadillac," "Shooter," and "Tyrome." On his first night of occupancy, in fact, Leonard met his cellmate, a terrifying African-American man with shining skin, zero body fat, biceps akin to apples, and an afro like the black guy on Ironside. This man's name was George. "Hi, I'm Leonard," Leonard introduced himself, offering to shake. The gesture was not returned. Instead, George replied to Leonard's greeting with these words: "Ah'll beat myseff off wiff my hand affa I woke yo' ass." George kept his word, most every night, and often traded the use of Leonard's anus to other members of the general prison population in return for cigarettes. "You myyyyyyy bitch," George reminded Leonard on such occasions. "You give yo' boy-pussy an' yo' mouff ta who I say or I'll'se bust you up." Leonard believed him and soon became the cellblock bitch. His rectal sphincter acclimated rather quickly, and just as quickly Leonard learned to perform fellatio with a commendable degree of proficiency. "Swallows my nut, bitch, alls of it!" Leonard didn't think about the act, nor of the taste which followed often in dizzying volume. Instead, while sucking virtually any penis put before his face, Leonard reflected upon his movie. He storyboarded every frame in his mind, calculated every scene, every camera angle, every lighting effect. Before he knew it, the deed was done. And the same too for rectal coitus. The casual disregard for the act of non-consensual sodomy truly astounded him at first. Upon Leonard's very first shower while "in stir," he scarcely had time to lather up before an elephantine penis had found its way fully into his colon. "What—what are you doing!" Leonard wailed. "I'se heppin' myseff!" his query was answered from behind. And hep themseffs they did, to their heart's—and groin's—desire. Leonard did not by any means enjoy being sodomized, nor did he enjoying sucking rank penises and swallowing bitter convict sperm. But he was perceptive enough to realize that compliance was the only way to increase the chances of leaving this stone motel on both feet. So he did his time twice, in a sense. He grinned and bore it. All the while plotting each frame of his movie to the most diminutive detail.
After nine months, Leonard was paroled on good behavior. The film was all he cared about now, his only goal. And he reckoned that in his experiences as an incarceree, he had paid for his sins doubly. "Please, God," he prayed one night. "Don't let me get caught again..."
And God did indeed answer Leonard's prayer, for on that very same night he stole a red Chevy Chevette from the front of a house in Edgewater whose owner had left the keys in it, and he went right back to Channel 22, whereupon he restole the cameras, the lights, and the big Sankyo film editor. He stole some $1700 from the petty cash box and eight 400-foot magazines of Kodak Ektachrome 16mm film, a couple boxes of quartz replacement bulbs for the ARRILITE and Dedolight floods, and a bunch more stuff.
And this time he got away with it. Leonard could scarcely have been sitting prettier, save for one thing.
He had the equipment now, but he still lacked a production budget. So he figured he'd procure this the old fashion way—he'd earn it. He figured maybe $2000 for set rentals, and another $2000 for design, props, effects, etc. He landed a job—for a hefty $2.50 an hour—at a classy Gambrills restaurant called The Widow's Walk at the corner of 301 and 450. Dishwashing. Lots of overtime, and a free meal from a cool chef named Freddy every shift, and even a free room upstairs with the other dishwashers who were all illegal immigrants from red China. I'll have that four thousand in no time, Leonard figured.
This was what it was all about, wasn't it? Working hard to get what you wanted. Getting out there in the work force and doing it.
"Leonard!" came the fierce whisper. "Let's do it!"
This mysterious bid came to him late one night, not a week after he'd begun the job. A Friday night, well past 2 a.m. Leonard finished the last of the "pot pans," as they were called: alloy metal plates on which seafood entrees were broiled, and a motherfucker to get clean. It was nearing time to turn in but he still had to empty the drain can beneath the salad bar which collected the water from the ice that had melted. Upon doing so, in the dark, paneled warrens of the sedate restaurant, a sleek hand latched onto Leonard's arm. The hand was hot, urgent, moist. It startled him...
"Leonard! Let's do it!" she whispered. "She" proved to be the restaurant's hostess, a stunningly attractive woman in her late 20s named...well, let's not use real names here since this is a true story. Let's just call her "She." Short, honey-blond hair perfectly straight, and perfectly straight bangs. Huge, luminous eyes, ocean-blue. And a body like the new girl on Charlie's Angels. An aura of desire seemed to radiate off her, along with something else that smelled like it might be derivative of some alcoholic beverage. "I've been hot for you since the day you walked in here!" her whisper complimented. Of course, Leonard had heard that she was hot for any male human being in the place but that hardly mattered, right? Leonard's sexual experience in life was, at this point, limited solely to a few Duroc pigs as a youngster back on his father's farm, and the forced rectal plumbings he'd been treated to at the County Detention Center. But this?
This was the real thing...
In a moment, that lovely hot little hand on his arm became the lovely hot little hand on his groin. "Mmmmm," she remarked. "I can tell you like me." Leonard liked her, all right, as the response of his sexual amines affirmed. He came in his pants after just a few crotchrubs. But...she was so nice! "Don't worry, I'll get'cha ready again in a minute." She dropped her cute little hostess top, bearing perfect apple-dumpling breasts, and then her tongue was snaking down his throat. Her hips ground against his as she wedged him between herself and the salad bar counter, moaning into his mouth. Next, she was sucking his tongue with the same dexterity that Leonard had previously sucked a multitude of penises on D Block. The sensation was exotic, and his blood seemed to turn to hot mist all at once. She pulled up her cute little hostess skirt and dragged his hand between her thighs. "Feel my pussy, Leonard!" her whisper pleaded. Leonard felt her pussy, with adoration and awe. A small pelt of soft down and a tender, slick opening that seemed to pulsate around his investigating finger. "I need you in me now!" she revealed as her own hand found its way back to Leonard's stifled groin. The zipper came down and the hand went in, expertly parting the already wet Fruit of the Looms. Leonard was erect again instantaneously. "Ooooo, ooooo," she turmoiled. "Fuck me right here on the salad bar!" She sat up on the stainless steel counter, hoisting up her dress, and urgently helped Leonard pull up his dishwasher's apron and get his size 29W 31L Levis down to his ankles. "Aw fuck, aw shit," her breath profanely gusted when Leonard, for the first time in his life, engaged in the act of sexual intercourse with a human female. He could smell the dank, peppery fetor of his previous ejaculation, and evidently so could she... "God, your cum smells so good!" she pointed out, eyes closed, head back, and legs wrapped around Leonard's hips. He fornicated with strained slowness, each glide of his erection into her vagina bringing sensations like rampant electric current from his feet to his genitals. It was as though his penis were a plug and her sex...a light socket. Don't come, don't come yet! he screamed at himself. To stave off the inevitable, he thought about proverbial things: Mantle's 500th homer, Paul Casanova of the Washington Senators, the Redskins recent ass-kicking of the Rams, putting Roman Gabriel in his place, the asshole. Oh how I hate John Brodie! Leonard reflected. And Staubach! If ever there were evil incarnate on earth it was Roger Staubach for being the best goddamn quarterback in the biz and summarily walking over the Skins at will. Meanwhile, during these reflections, P—, er, "She" was coming like a freight train on the salad bar, her feisty vagina spasming around Leonard's penis like an apoplectic sheath, each breath a sucking shriek into her lungs. No one had heard of g-spots back then, but Leonard found it nevertheless and gave it a good thrumming. By now her chest shined like shellack, and her nipples stuck out like rose-colored thumb-ends. At each cli
max, her eyes rolled back in her head to show only the white (sort of like the girl in The Exorcist which Leonard had seen with his friends at the Hampton Mall twin theater) and she was even drooling in her rapture. "God, you can fuck, Leonard! It feels so good to have some good cock in me. Shit, my husband never fucks me... He's queer..." This information surprised Leonard, for her husband was a squat, rock-faced unfriendly motherfucker named... Well, let's not use real names here, since this is a true story. Let's just say that her husband was "The Boss." He owned the place. And as to the revelation that The Boss was homosexual, Leonard grew confused. If The Boss preferred sexual congress with men, why marry this beautiful, sexually charged lightningbolt of a woman? But the answer came almost psychically, when between respiratory gusts and orgasmic spasms, she said, "The cocksucking old fuck only married me so his business partners wouldn't think he was a fruit," and immediately after this intriguing bit of information, her ankles locked yet again around Leonard's clenched buttocks and she squeezed off another drenching, groaning, gusting, eye-rolling orgasm. "Come in me now!" she pleaded. "Fill my pussy up with your cum!" It was a most dire request, and it was Leonard's full intention to fulfill it. Goodbye to the mental images of Mantle's 500th homer. 'Bye to Brodie and Staubach. Here were the goods, ready to launch from Leonard's seminal vesicles and into the deep delights of—