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Confession

Nic Bernstein

In 1983 I met a crazy man who insisted that he had been a close friend and adviser to John F. Kennedy. While he was of an age that made this claim conceivable, I knew that he was crazy, and thus his claim suspect. This is due to the fact that I met him while he was in line to get his meds at a “residential care facility.” In the Reagan era this was the new name for a nut house. This man was free to make all sorts of outlandish claims – he claimed to have first hand knowledge of the truth behind the assassination, for exampe – because he was nuts. He had license, thanks to this infirmity, to confess to whatever tickled his fancy.

He refused to take his meds until a nurses aide could stump him with a trivia question. The staff kept a book of trivia behind the counter for just this purpose. On this day, however, they were having a hard time of it. I ventured a question, and stumped him on the first try; “What is the given name of the man for whom the unit of electrical capacitance is named?” I asked him. He tried several times before giving up. “Michael, Michael Faraday,” I told him.

We chatted for a while. He told me he planned to write a book about the Kennedy years. “Blow the whole thing wide open!” he proclaimed. “If they let me publish it, you know. I am controversial, they don't want the truth out.” The planned title of this book? “Don't call me boy, the devil calls me sir.”

Would that I were as free with my thoughts as he. Would that I could confess with such abandon, such confidence, as he. Would that I had as good a title in my back pocket, for that matter.

The burden I carry is immense. My back hurts with the weight of secrets I hold within my heart. I despaired of any relief of this until this morning. This morning I heard of a web site, http://postsecret.blogspot.com, to which one can confess one's secrets. Finally, now, I have an outlet, a confessor, to whom I can turn without worry of exposure, of broken confidence.

My secret, you see, is not one which can be told to your normal confessorial outlets – doctor, lawyer, shrink, priest. I have heinous things to tell, and any one of these might feel compelled to break confidence were I to unburden myself to them. This web site, though, I can finally tell it all without fear.

Here, then, is my submission:

That I love his wife is not the problem; that he doesn't is. There is no ground to be made with most married women if not for the indifference of their husbands. He is not only indifferent, he is abusive. Thus it is started.

Her I love, I adore and I must protect. He, I despise, I abjure our friendship. Any previous bond I felt for him is as nothing next to the contempt now flooding my heart. That we are partners, confidants, compadres, this no longer matters. It is her, it is only her. I am driven, and I am sworn to action.

I go to meet him, we have a standing weekly dinner, but I have plans this time for a different outcome than hearty slaps on the back after the fifth cocktail. I ask him to come to my home to help me move an old piece of exercise equipment from my garage; time to make room for the new snow thrower.

He is glad to help, and once in the garage I put my plan into action. We pick up the treadmill together, and move it towards the hoist cables I have prepared to raise it to the rafters. I ask him to hold one end up while I position the cables underneath. As I do so, I am careful, or careless I guess I will tell them, to leave a loop of one cable draped just so. As I start the hoist the cable tightens first around the end of the treadmill, but then slips and the errant loop slides quick as can be up his legs and torso till it catches underneath his arms and begins to haul him aloft. He has let go of the weight of the treadmill, but it is too late, the cable has already tightened about his chest preventing him from breathing. He gasps for air and flails his arms as the winch pins him against the roof beams.

His screams are silent, his expression unfamiliar to me, as his arms stretch out before him and his hands grasp at empty space. I watch. I am a little surprised and, I admit, a little disconcerted, at my own dispassionate remove.

The entire thing takes only a minute or two. The hoist is able to complete its assigned task just a few seconds before the circuit breaker trips. In a macabre coda the loss of power causes the cable to slack ever so little, and as his chest is allowed to expand a last breath is drawn through his now blue and lifeless lips. This sigh, this involuntary death rattle, caries in its lower notes the undertones of her thank-you.

Now freed, I am sure she will come to me. At first for solace; I am his partner, his friend, our bonds are long and deep. With time, however, I will be more and more to her, and she will see that life with me delivers on the promise of happiness and fulfillment which with him was empty and painful.

Now I must call 9-1-1 and await the police and paramedics. Now I must let the future unfold.

I press “Send” and it is done. I have confessed to the greater consciousness that is the World Wide Web. Millions of people may now read my confession, though in reality I guess only several hundred actually will. How grand is that, though, up against the paltry few that most murderers spill to.

. . .

I find that my outlook, my spirit, even my gait have improved. I check on a regular basis to see how I rank, how my confession scores amongst all of the secrets revealed this month. They are so pale in my shadow - “I cheated on my boyfriend with his band mate while he was passed out at the after party.” “I stole money from my mother to support my drug habit in high school.” “I copied from my roommate for my LSATs.”, etcetera, etcetera ad nauseum. They are pulling a measly fifteen or twenty readers each to my now thousands.

. . .

That was several weeks ago and there have been no negative ramifications, no fallout of any kind.

I had expected at least some questions, some investigation, following my confession. There have been none. My conviction and certainty grows.

There is just one thing left to do then – I go to the usual Chinese restaurant and shortly after the second cocktail and the egg fu yung are cleared I ask him “Hey, I need a hand in my garage, would you mind, after dinner, coming over to help?”