In “After” I wrote about the few words of wisdom I managed to offer to a friend consumed with that good ole guilt and shame over his pornographic obsessions: I told him that once I started talking about it in therapy, once “I stopped beating myself up so much and just let myself have my desires, the desires and the guilt both lessened.” I do find that the talking cure really is ameliorative, even if it doesn’t always last. After writing here the other day about looking (a.k.a .male gazing), I’vefound myself just plain looking less, less compelled to look and look again and long at whatever objects (cars, art, women) catch my eye. I give it about a week before I’m back on my gazey track.
While I’m guessing it wasn’t designed to do so, per se, Catholic confession surely serves much the same purpose. One is consumed with guilt over a desire expressed in a behavior, masturbation say, and the guilt fuels the taboo and the taboo fuels the desire. What a gift from God, then to be able to sit in a dark little booth and tell all to someone you can’t see who tells you exactly what penance will fit the sin, and then you are freed, for the moment. Oh what a treat it would have been to have had such a thing while growing up, and what an odd coincidence that peep show booths are so similarly designed (but serve the almost diametrically opposite purpose –they’re all about looking, not talking and listening, and are a safe means to commit the sin not confess it). Thank you, dear readers (and dear strippers) for being my confessors, my priests and priestesses – I try to give something back in return. I’m being cute here, sure, but I also really do mean it, sentimental fool at year’s end that I be, thank you for reading.
