This is just between us, OK?
I have a confession to make: I have become obsessed with the way that total strangers confide their innermost secrets to other total strangers. I wake up nights wondering why we need to unzip our private stories and wave them in the faces of unsuspecting folk who just happen to be around when we have the urge to reveal ourselves. It turns out that people you hardly know will tell you not only about their dysfunctional family (this happens so often that the phrase “dysfunctional family” now seems redundant), but about their sexual history, their eating and drinking binges, their lies, their allergies and their anxieties. Everything except their salary. (That piece of information, apparently, they will take privately to the grave.)
What is so seductive about confessing our secrets that we are willing to risk public shame, public scrutiny and public disapproval? Do we just need to get up and testify, sing out our experience, however ignoble, so that we claim our turf in this world? Is it that we count on our listeners to grant us forgiveness and understanding? Or is it that we no longer believe truth has consequences, that absolution becomes obsolete when confession itself seems to be enough?
Do we, in other words, mistake superficial confidences for genuine intimacy?
Let’s say you’re minding your own business at a big office party, happily having secured a position right next to the shrimp and not far from the wine, when someone you’ve met maybe twice before in this lifetime decides that this is the right moment to tell you all about herself-her oral surgery, her sexual experiences, her sexual surgery, her oral experiences, her miserable ex-lover (she never should have left her first husband, but she called him once only to find that he had already remarried) and her sense of betrayal, at 7, when her rotten parents flushed her goldfish down the toilet bowl without telling her that it was dead. She does this with all the ease, familiarity and questionable sincerity of a socialite offering an air kiss to an acquaintance at a fashion gala.
When this happens, do you gradually move away from the story-teller . . . and the shrimp? (The goldfish story has made the seafood slightly less appetizing, anyway.) Or are you obliged not only to listen but to tell her that everything will work out for the best, thus performing a sort of a secular “Go in Peace” (which might have been rendered as “Leave Me in Peace”)? Have you come to know this woman any better than you knew her 20 minutes earlier? Or is it merely that you can now recite details about the condition of her soft tissue and mauled heart?
Is this intimacy or just information?
Playing out an emotional striptease, removing every layer of social formality or personal shame to reveal the “true” self buried underneath, has become a national pastime. It used to take us years to get to know one another; now we get into the juicy particulars on contact.
We applaud public figures who tell every sin they’ve committed and we show them that we accept their apologies by pouring more loot into their coffers. Politicians, celebrities, athletes-everybody, it seems, has turned the boasts of youth (“I’ve had more than 200 lovers”; “I can drink a six-pack and still drive”) into the confessions of adulthood.
This is the kind of stuff famous folks used to try to hide, but not anymore. Now they hire publicists. (Remember Hugh Grant, whose confession ran something like: “Terribly sorry, chums, but I do have this rather nasty habit, and now that I’ve apologized, can you all show your tender-hearted forgiveness by going to see the otherwise appalling film ‘Nine Months’?” He could be our pop-confession poster boy.). What such personalities once concealed, they now choose to publicly repent-all the while counting on the enthralled attention of their fans, on whose generosity they rely.
The rest of us non-famous folk, too, often end up sounding like the old Yorkshire men from the Monty Python sketch in which retirees compete with one another to tell the most appalling stories about the deprivations of childhood. (“You lived in a tenement? You were lucky. We dreamed of living in a tenement. We lived in a paper bag in the middle of the road.”) One friend told me about a colleague who started every conversation by offering something dreadful that had happened to her recently by way of a greeting, as in “Hello? Is that really you? I can barely trust my senses considering the state of exhaustion I’m in after totally wrecking my life this weekend.”
Judith Martin (a k a Miss Manners) has an interesting perspective concerning the reasons that bad behavior no longer inspires indignation if the perpetrator admits to it.
“This attitude started years ago,” claims Martin, “when exercising judgment (good) turned into being judgmental (bad).” Later, confession was seen as compensation for sin, as in, “Sure, he rapes and pillages, but at least he has the courage to be honest about it.”
My fixation with the motives for and results of confession was aroused by two distinct but surprisingly similar experiences, one concerning my appearance on the daytime talk show circuit, and one concerning my appearance in a church. With the former, I found myself wondering what could possibly drive those poor souls to expose themselves and their families to the possibility of pity at best-and ridicule at worst. With the latter, I found myself wondering why I needed to whisper my sins to a stranger when I no longer counted myself a believer. One was very public, the other almost private and both were unnerving. Not surprisingly, I intend to tell you details about both, in a rather confessional way, so here goes.
I’ll start with church because it was more intimidating for me to appear nameless behind a screen in a confessional and speak for two minutes than it was for me to appear in front of 32 million viewers and talk for 25.
There I was, surprising myself, in a massive cathedral, waiting to go to confession. I thought that after a 15-year absence I should go to the biggest church on the block; confessing in a cathedral seemed like sending a parcel of my sins Express Mail. With an urban native’s parochial vision, I expected to find the most intelligent, sensitive-and, yes, most tolerant-priest in this dark tollbooth of the soul. After all, these priests must hear worse sins than mine. People must show up with their relatives’ heads in bowling-ball bags, I told myself-this is a large and interesting city. Surely, even a self-defined Recovering Catholic, after receiving the sacrament now known as Reconciliation, could walk out with an assigned penance of a few Hail Marys and all the forgiveness in the world.
Why was I there, sneaking around the pews, dodging real Catholics in the aisle? I was driven into the massive, warm, incense-scented cathedral by fear. I was about to make a solo trip to Europe, and “solo” meant I was flying alone. Not that I was actually piloting the aircraft, you understand; that would have given my terror some credibility. Quite simply, I was going without company into my worst nightmare-a seven-hour flight.
I’m one of those. It wasn’t enough to admit that my heart would pound, my eyes would fill up with tears and there would be nobody’s hand to hold. No, I had to compound the problem by believing the plane would dive into the earth like a dart, and there I’d be with all my sins and no ticket to the heaven described by the nuns of my childhood. As certain of my own death as I was of my own hypocrisy, I waited with true penitents-older women in mantillas, young girls with mascara smeared from weeping, young men in suits checking their wristwatches, one elderly man holding his hat in his hand.
I envied them their aura of belonging, and I fidgeted until it was my turn. When it came, I knelt down in the familiar space, and was grateful for the printed version of the Act of Contrition prayer, part of every confession, that faced me at eye-level. I had been afraid I would start reciting the Pledge of Allegiance by mistake. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad after all.
I crossed myself and, with sincere tears-if nothing else, I was sincerely sorry I was going to die in the plane-I began to explain that I hadn’t been to confession in many years. The priest asked what brought me into church, and I stammered out my fear of flying-and my fear of death. Crying in earnest now, I asked whether I could be offered forgiveness when I’d been a lapsed Catholic, and when I probably wasn’t going to be a much better one-even if I lived.
Apparently the only part this priest heard was the part where I explained that what was forcing me to travel was my profession as a writer.
“You write books?” he asked. After I sniveled yes, he asked, “Really? Your books are in stores?”
The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. I explained that I wrote both for general and academic audiences, and that, yes, I’d built up a modest readership over the years. By now I’d stopped crying, and my head was no longer bowed.
“You have an agent?” the priest asked.
I was stunned. I was on my knees, in the first confessional I’d been in since I was a teenager, and this disembodied voice wanted to know if I had an agent. What could I say? I told him that I liked my agent a lot. If this would get me absolution, I didn’t mind bringing up her name. After all, she was Presbyterian and couldn’t possibly mind.
“But does she handle screen rights?” interrupted my confessor. “Because I’ve got a novel in me, but I’ve got a screenplay, too.”
Again I was stunned. Even if I were to die before getting on the plane, this was too much.
“Can we get back to my confession, Father? I really need your benediction.”
“Of course. But would you write your agent’s name down for me?”
I didn’t know what would be an appropriate way to end this exchange. What do you say to a man of the cloth? “Have your people call my people?” Could you substitute “Let’s do Lent?” for “Let’s do lunch?”
I walked away that afternoon-having been granted absolution-without having much faith in the sacrament of confession but with a renewed sense of the all-too-familiar flawed and remarkable humanity that makes up the world. I was looking for salvation; the priest was looking for publication. I gave him access to a path that-who knows?-might have helped him out. Maybe he did the same for me.
And maybe I helped out some of those guests who appeared on the talk shows where I was the “expert” on family troubles, on sexual relationships and on gender differences in the workplace.
But maybe I didn’t.
It’s one thing to want to make a confession yourself; it’s something else to conspire to make someone else confess, especially when that person might not fully grasp the consequences. Sometimes instead of filling the chasm between people, the admission of truth only widens it. Perhaps the knowledge of this, without the admission of it, is what really cries out for forgiveness.
My version of the story? There I was, surprising myself again, this time in the green room of a television studio, waiting to go on a talk show. I was thrilled to the toes to be there, visions of immediate bestsellerdom dancing through my head, wondering which of my old rivals from high school might be watching and chewing her fingernails in envy. I had bought a trendy outfit and practiced crossing and uncrossing my legs in a demure fashion. And yes, I’ll come clean; I had practiced my facial expressions in the mirror to see whether I looked suitably interested and suitably sympathetic when I nodded in professional understanding. I was ready.
What I wasn’t ready for were the emotions that flowed through that plush waiting room as the other guests-the ones who actually would be telling their stories-bubbled over with excitement, or flooded themselves with fear or froze from stage fright. One woman around my age (which I now define as too old for work-study but too young for Medicare) came over and shyly put her hand on my arm.
“I’m here because I’m worried about my marriage,” she began, eyes lowered. “I talked my husband into coming with me, because he has a brother who lives here, and otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to afford to see him this year. But my husband is mad at me for putting that nice producer on the phone, because then he felt too foolish to say no, and I’m scared about what they’ll ask us on TV. What should I do?”
Like a kid at a spelling bee, I knew the right answer immediately. The right answer was: “Leave the studio. Don’t tell all of the Western World and much of Eastern World why you hate the way he breathes through his mouth in the morning and how much it bothers you that he leaves the toilet seat up-and wants to make love only when you wear the frilly ankle socks. Keep these things secret. These belong just to the two of you as a couple, and you’ll be breaking a crucial pact by discussing them in public.”
I did not say this though.
Instead I said something like: “Use this as an opportunity to get closer by sharing an experience. You’ll realize from listening to the other couples and the studio audience that the troubles you have are the troubles all of us share.”
It was disingenuous of me to use the word “share” twice in the space of a moment, and that’s when I blushed-inwardly but deeply. In ordinary conversation I never use the “s” word, since “sharing” has become shorthand for “Let me tell you something you do that bothers me, and then you can tell me something that I do that bothers you.” (Such a conversation, as Phyllis Diller once pointed out, never ends in a hug and a kiss.)
Anyway, it was not the best advice I could have given, but I said what I thought she wanted to hear and what made life easier for me.
The woman smiled shyly, and we all went on to do a fairly good job in the tough circumstances that surround public confession. My book received a modest blip in sales, and when I showed up at my high school reunion two women I remembered as girls said they’d seen me on television. (Since they spent 20 minutes apologizing for watching daytime television, what could have been a fun compliment turned into my listening to their confession: “And after the second baby, I just couldn’t do anything except eat and watch stupid shows-ooh, I didn’t mean yours was stupid; it’s just that my husband makes fun of me when I tell him I watch her program. . . .”) As for the couple, the woman’s husband stayed virtually silent, answering the host’s probing but not unkind questions monosyllabically, as if he were in an IRS audit and afraid of losing his shirt.
Which is a fitting comparison. Like the IRS auditor, the good talk-show host will make it impossible to hide whatever you’ve worked hardest to keep secret, and there is inevitable relief in making a secret public.
Good confessions-meaning those in which you not only tell the truth in order to accept responsibility for your wrongdoing, but those in which you are also willing to understand that there will be some penalty for having stepped over the line-can offer the same sense of freedom as removing a sharp pebble from your shoe. Nobody else could see it, and nobody but you knew it was there, but it was so incredibly annoying you could barely think about anything else. Confession and penitence let you hurry on your way with less hidden aggravation.
A talk show is a form of public confession during which regular folks meet the familiar and trusted host, as well as one expert in a suit, to address issues usually deemed inappropriate for polite conversation. Similar to priests and therapists, the host and the expert are not expected to reciprocate in terms of storytelling, and rarely offer any privileged information in exchange for the confidential disclosure made by the guest. This is one of the most important differences between confession and ordinary conversation. One person speaks while the other person nods (or soothes or applauds or offers understanding) so that the exchange flows one way only, without any expectation that the person in the position of power will offer up personal secrets. (This is one reason that a particularly memorable “Oprah” revolved around the host’s admission that she had at one point in her life used the same drug that plagued her guest. Exceptions not only prove rules; they’re also attention-grabbers.)
Confession in a talk-show setting is a process dependent upon the need of the guest to have others listen, and the desire of the audience members to be assured (in the best way) that they are not alone, or reassured (in the worst way) that however miserable they are, someone else’s life is worse. (“OK, my husband slept with the baby-sitter, but at least the baby-sitter wasn’t a transvestite. And she was not related to our immediate family.”)
And there is something fascinating about watching the reactions of the studio audience, which is essentially a jury of one’s peers, to the process of revelation. Like a Christmas pantomime performed in Victorian England, there is often a villain who will be hissed at and a sentimental favorite who will inspire tears. Unscripted, the shows are nevertheless predictable, and this is one way in which they part company with real life.
In real life, life outside the green room or the church, confession can be as dangerous as a loaded gun or a rusty knife. A confession may make you feel powerful for a moment, but its effects are often incalculable.
“A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage,” Samuel Johnson declared. “People may be amused at the time, but (the tales) will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.”
Words, as much as actions, have lives of their own. They are irrevocable. Confessions are like tattoos in that:
(1) You convince yourself that the immediate pain of going through the process means it won’t bother you later on, and (2) they are permanent.
What about the idea that the truth can set you free? Yes, it’s true. But the truth can also lock the door behind you, preventing you from returning to the comforts housed in concealment and confidentiality. Sometimes life in the shade of dissimulation is better than life in the blinding sun of constant and relentless honesty.
Admit to your friend that for the last 12 years you’ve deeply resented her inherited money and she will think of you differently-and not only when she buys your birthday present. Tell your husband that you find his best friend sexier than he is, and you risk being told that he’s relieved to hear it because he’s been sleeping with your college roommate since 1982.
Confess your weakness and run the risk of having that weakness become your signature character trait as it is reaffirmed for you by the expectations of others.
Confess your strength and run the risk of having that strength become the source of envy, conflict and its own dissolution. Honesty, like any powerful medicine, might be administered best in judicious homeopathic doses. “Tell the Truth, but Tell It Slant,” Emily Dickinson wrote. “Success in Circuit Lies.”
I worry that confession has usurped the role of responsibility: If I admit to something sleazy, I have acquitted myself of the action. If I warn you that I’m a cad, then you are responsible for putting yourself in the sphere of my influence, and I need not offer any apology for breaking your heart. If I announce that I am a needy, greedy, selfish creature, then you must forgive me my foibles because I have been straightforward.
It used to be that the penalty for wrongdoing was being forced to admit it publicly (remember Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”? Hawthorne’s, not Demi Moore’s?)
Perhaps the penalty for wrongdoing these days should be having to live with it in silence. If you had an affair, for example, you would be punished by never being able to admit it, ever, to your loving spouse. If you had a substance abuse problem in the late ’60s, you would no longer be able to weave vivid stories out of your experience to keep the young folks enthralled by your once hip and dangerous life.
Is it possible that we would start behaving better if behaving badly were no longer considered the most fascinating topic of conversation?
Casual confession, like casual sex, debases and trivializes intimacy.
Choosing our confessional words, like choosing our partners, should be done carefully, rarely and with the understanding that destiny-ours and our loved ones’-can hang in the balance.
