Confessions 1:07 by Kendra Yvette

This is my confessional right here. Instead of an old wooden box full of stale air, I sit on a rickety old concrete porch at a rusty metal table with a stained-glass top. I always stay in room 107. The seashell wallpaper makes me want to die, and the air stings with the putrid stench of vomit, but this room has a perfect view of Main Street. This motel is the only part of this hick town that’s worth a damn. I fill my glass ashtray, stained yellow with wear, with cigarette butts as I spill my sins and people watch.

My priest of choice happens not to be a priest at all but rather the perma-scowled, grey-haired, cigar-smoking motel owner. Once a year, I pay a visit to the man who raised me because my dad was too drunk to do so and dump all the hatred in my heart out at his feet. We don’t say hello, and we don’t say goodbye. We just plop in our seats and get down to business: smoking, scowling, and shit-talking. The old man snatches my Bic off the table, lights his cheap cigar, and fills the open space with a sweet, woodsy scent. Grey smoke plumes dance on the sun’s rays and quickly overtake the air of our makeshift confessional.

“There! You see her?” I point a black-painted fingernail at a chubby blonde waddling through the diner entrance. “Marcie Jean-Locke. Stood me up at the 10th-grade dance to go conceive her first kid instead,” I shake my head at the rueful memory.

“You tell me that shit every time we do this, boy. Come up with something else,” the old man says.

He’s a prickly old bastard. I’ve got plenty. “Okay, what about that stop sign with the bend in it? Some dudes jumped me freshman year, would’ve cracked my skull in two had I not dodged at the last minute, and the main scumbag kicked the sign instead,” I say.

“You didn’t fight back?”

“There were five of them.”

“That a no?”

“No.”

“A sissy bastard in more ways than one, I see,” He exhales a heavy stream of smoke.

“I think you were just looking for an excuse to call me a damn sissy,” I say.

“Where are they now?” the old man asks.

“Well, one of them has a wife that constantly cheats on him with his neighbor, another is in jail. None of them are worth a damn, really. Guess I get the last laugh,” I say with a smirk.

“How do you know this? Who are your sources?”

“I made it up. In my head,” I tap my temple with the butt of my Bic. The old man shoots me a harsh side-eye and a shake of his head.

“Sounds like they all moved on with their lives, as pathetic as they are,” he says. Not this lecture again.

“One year. I’m asking for one year when we don’t do this. Just let me people watch and bask in the resonance of their failures and my successes.” I light another cigarette. I’ll need about a dozen to get through his bickering.

“That’s your perception. You wanna know mine?” he shoots a sly smirk my way. Are real priests this fucking annoying?

“No,” I say immediately.

“It’s my perception that— “

“I don’t wanna hear.”

“That they have all moved on—”

“The bullies always fucking move on.”

“And you’re stuck here. Your body is in that sky-high penthouse you built a thousand miles away, but your spirit is still doubled over on the sidewalk, hurling up blood at the base of a stop sign,” he lectures.

Seconds stretch to minutes as I sit quietly. This is not what I came here for.

“When I told you to leave,” He takes a puff, “I meant all of you,” he exhales.

“You sure are a stickler for tradition, aren’t you? You always give me the same damn lecture at the end of these visits,” I toss my cigarette butt in the tray and leap to my feet, feeling like a virgin in a lily-white wedding dress.

“You go visit your dad?” he asks.

“I’m visiting him right now.”

He offers a slight smile. So slight you’d only know he was happy if you knew him.

“You’re blushing, old man,” I say.

He shoots me a bird as I turn to leave. I can’t wait till next year’s confession.

Kendra Yvette

Image: An ashtray full of cigarette ends with on lighted cigarette still burning wedged on the side – from Pixabay.com