Take Me to Church

My life had been slowly falling apart since meeting my current boyfriend, Jake, in July. He was incredibly handsome and persuasive and I'd been in over my head since our first conversation. However, he was married and better with words than deeds. In my head I knew what had to be done, the rest of me hadn't quite caught up though, and my heart was breaking. I needed to search my soul and knew exactly where to do that.

The next morning, I was up before anyone else and grabbed the bathroom before the others soiled it. After my hair had dried, I threw my boots and winter gear on to search out a Catholic church with an open confession. On my way uptown to the Immigration office the day before to get papers signed for a surprise booking in Quebec City, I saw a Catholic Church about five or six blocks from Hanrahan's strip club, where I'd been dancing, and I marched off in that direction.

I believe it was St. Ann's. Confession hours began at seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. Even in the frigid cold, my palms were sweating as I pushed open the front door, thinking the roof might cave in on me before I got to the confessional. All Catholic Churches smelled the same, wood polish mixed with an aroma of beeswax and sandalwood. It reminded me of nuns dressed like penguins and rulers smacking my knuckles.

I dipped my freezing fingers into the holy water font and my forehead didn't sizzle when I made the sign of the cross. So, that was good. I slid quietly into a pew a few rows up from the confessional. There weren't many of us sinners there this morning. I thought they'd have more customers if they opened later to accommodate those with hangovers. I tried to pray, but instead was working up the courage to confess my worst sin so far.

Funny, how some things you never forget. They are burned into your memory, no matter how seldom you use them. When it was my turn to enter the confessional, the words came out of my mouth automatically, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned (boy, have I), it's been three years since my last confession."

"Go on", the disembodied voice from beyond the mesh whispered.

"Um. I don't know how to start- or where to start and I don't want to take up too much of your time." I whispered back, hoping for direction.

"This is God's time, young lady, and He wants you to unburden yourself, no matter how long it takes." He replied patiently.

Okay, so I was at Band Camp one year… just kidding.

"I'm just going to tell you the worst thing I've ever done first, I guess. Oh, boy." I took a deep breath and tried not to chicken out. "I'm, uh, I'm seeing a married man, um. I don't know how to stop."

Silence. What the heck? Did the Priest pass out? Did I kill him?

"May I ask you how old you are?" He continued.

Thank God, I didn't kill him with my sin. "I'm twenty-two," I told him.

"And, how old is this man?" He asked.

"Um. He's thirty-five."

"How is this relationship making you feel?" He asked, like a psychiatrist, instead of condemning me to a fiery spot next to Hell's furnace, as I expected.

"Mostly sad, angry, lonely. Then sometimes I just feel guilty. I'm one of those home wreckers now." I confessed tearfully.

"I've counseled many married couples and one thing I can tell you truthfully is there is no such thing as a woman who is a homewrecker. A man who has vowed to be faithful to one woman for the rest of his life has to open the door and invite another woman in." He counseled.

"But I knew he was married, and I knew it was wrong." I protested.

"Yes, sex outside of marriage is a sin," He explained, "and for that, you will have to atone. But you are not the cause of a married man deciding to look elsewhere for companionship. That man has broken his vows and he will have to answer to God and to his wife for that. Not you."

"How can I walk away from this? I feel like I'm going to die when he's not with me. I don't know if I can do it." I lamented, tears and snot dripping down my face.

There was a rustling at the curtain of my cubicle. The Priest was passing me a box of Kleenex.

"Thank you," I said, blowing my nose and wiping my hands until the skin puckered up.

"I'm concerned the age difference has made you a target for this man." He warned, "I'm not saying he doesn't have feelings for you. But if he was truly a man, he would understand what this relationship is doing to you and listen to his better angels and walk away."

"I want to stop seeing him. I do. It's so hard though. I love him." I was full-on crying my eyes out at that point.

"You know I cannot give you absolution unless you are going to turn your back on this sin. But I will give you some Godly advice with love. Pray for the strength to walk away before any more harm comes to you. Then, pray for forgiveness. Bless you, my child. Go with God."

So, I guessed that was it. I left the claustrophobic, little booth and sat in a quiet corner of the church, away from other people with little sins, and prayed as I'd never prayed before until my tissues were sopping wet and shredded.

My head knew what I had to do. My heart was much more stubborn than my head though and I worried all the way back to Hanrahan's I wouldn't be able to follow through on the priest's kind advice. Certainly, everything the man had said rang true to me. I was relieved of some guilt by the priest pointing out that I was not the one who had broken vows. I wasn't out of the woods for my complicity- but I had not said, 'I do', then didn't.

That's probably what confession was for, to take some burdens off our troubled souls, so we don't lose ourselves in grief over our shortcomings and failures.

When I got back to the hotel, everyone else was up and around, scurrying to get ready for our noon shows. Mandy, one of my fellow strippers, saw me coming down the hall with a red face and swollen eyes.

"Tina, what's wrong? Are you all right?" She asked.

"I'm trying to be. I just got back from confession. It was rough." I admitted.

"Confession? I haven't been in a couple years. Do you do that all the time?" She wanted to know.

"No. It was for something special. I guess I needed it." I said as I opened my door and slipped inside the room.

As I got ready for the noon show, I had to make another quick stop over the toilet to make a deposit from my mostly empty stomach. All this worry was probably giving me an ulcer, I thought. I cleaned up and scrubbed out my sour mouth yet again.

I decided on the Nights in White Satin show for the first one of the day. Probably influenced by the statues of angels at the church. Not that I was an angel. But it seemed appropriate. When I passed my tape to the sound guy, he asked again what kind of effects I'd like. I thought for a few seconds and asked if he had a strobe light. He did.

"How about the strobe light for the Nights in White Satin with just the black lights and the strobe?" I suggested. "It's the last song on the tape."

I did two twirling numbers with my white cape, but the final song with the black lights and the strobes was sensational. The swirling white chiffon under that combination of lighting was absolutely stunning. Even nude under the cape, it would have been hard for anyone to focus on me down there. I was going to miss all of the new special effects Hanrahan's was supplying us with. What a tremendous difference a change in lighting made.

When I came down off the stage, Dan, Jake's friend, was sitting at the same table as the night before, when he came to the club to make excuses and lie for Jake. He asked me if I'd join him for lunch after I got dressed. I slipped on street clothes, not wanting to parade around in front of Jake's friend half-dressed. When I got downstairs, he'd already ordered a 7&7 for me and then asked what I wanted from the kitchen.

Charley came over to the table and gave me a strange look as if he was wondering what I was doing with this guy. I explained, "Charley, this is Dan. He's one of Jake's friends."

"Oh, Okay. I was wondering." He said, not sounding convinced.

"Suspicious little dude, isn't he?" Dan remarked after Charley had taken off with our orders.

" I think he's in man-love with Jake." I laughed.

We chatted about harmless subjects until Charley brought us our lunches. Then he got down to the real reason for showing up.

"I don't get it. I'm not ugly- at least I don't think I am." Dan joked, " But Jake always gets the pretty girls and now he gets the midgets too?"

"Dwarf", I corrected him.

"All the way through high school he got all the cheerleaders, all the hot chicks and it was never enough for him. I was on the football team, and I never got as much ass as he did." Dan moaned. "Now he's married and he's still getting more ass than me."

I was getting a little irritated with the direction of Dan's conversation. "I don't know what to tell you," I admitted.

"Look. I'm done making excuses for the guy. You shouldn't keep getting hurt and I'm not going to help him do that anymore. When he told me he was fucking a stripper I sure wasn't expecting you to be who you are. Jesus, you're a sweet kid. He should leave you alone."

"He said he was 'fucking a stripper'? That's how he described our relationship?"

"Yeah. Like he wanted a merit badge for it."

"Oh, God," I said, feeling as though he'd punched me in the gut.

"Yeah, and he's not going to leave Bree anytime soon. I don't know what he's telling you but he knocked her up."

My head snapped back, and I did a double-take at him. "What are you saying?" I demanded.

"Bree's five months pregnant and there's no way her family is going to let him leave her. They'll ruin him. After all his years of cheating on her, she's finally got him by the balls."

Suddenly the meal tasted like marbles in my mouth, and I left the table, a sour taste creeping into my mouth. I ran up the stairs to the hotel and made it to the bathroom in time to heave into the toilet.

Mandy was upstairs in the lounge, and she came to the bathroom door to check on me. "Tina? Tina! Are you okay?" She called out.

I washed my mouth out at the sink and tried to pull myself together. When I came out of the bathroom Mandy put her arm around my shoulders and took me to my room, helping me collapse on the bed. She sat next to me, saying nothing for quite a while. Then she asked me, "Tina. Please tell me what's going on with you. You weren't like this in St. Catherines."

"Mandy, this morning I went to confession because I'm seeing a married man and I can't stand it anymore," I told her.

"Is that the guy you were arguing with in the stairway at the hotel in St. Catherines?" She asked.

"Oh, God. Did you hear us?"

"Yeah. Everyone did. Sorry." She admitted.

"Mandy, I love him so much I can't stand it when he's gone. The priest today told me I had to pray for strength to walk away from him. Now, today Jake's friend came in and told me Jake's wife is pregnant and he will never leave her, and Jake told him I was just some 'stripper he was fucking'."

Mandy chewed this information over for a few minutes and said, "Maybe you got your answer to prayer today."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"How hard would it have been to walk away from your boyfriend if you didn't hear that?" She pointed out.

"Impossible. I've never loved anyone before. When he's with me I feel loved and warm and protected. When he's gone, I feel lonely, angry, and hurt."

"Tina, how much time do you spend with him feeling good, as opposed to the time spent feeling lonely, angry, and hurt?" She asked.

"Not as much time as I'd like, that's for sure," I admitted.

"I heard that you are going to another club next week. Maybe that's just what you prayed for too. Without your boyfriend there to influence you, maybe you can think straight while you're away from him. You shouldn't tell him where you're going and see what happens when you come back." She suggested.

"I've been thinking of doing that before I talked with his friend." I conceded. "I think you're probably right on everything. All I want is to get through this night and move on."

"You can do this, Tina. That guy is tearing you apart. If he loved you he wouldn't be hurting you like this." She told me.

She was 100% correct on all of it. Answered prayers do not always make us feel good. Sometimes they merely present us with hard choices we would not have faced otherwise.

The rest of the day felt like it lasted a year, then, finally, it was time for my last show. I steeled my emotions and got ready for the final show in Jake's hometown, ready to move on from there as fast as I could. I decided to end the week with the Night's in White Satin with the strobe lights again. When I descended the stairs for the last show, I brought a handful of change with me to call the bus station and get the schedule from Hamilton to Quebec City.

Eight in the morning was the only bus with connections in Toronto for Quebec City. Good. The sooner I left this place the happier I would be. Jake wouldn't know where I was and that would give me time to wash him out of my mind. Then, I called the cab company and ordered a cab for seven in the morning.

Charley came over to me and handed me two envelopes. One was my pay from the club and the other was from Jake. I was tempted to rip his letter up and throw it away. Instead, I tucked it into one of my suitcases to read sometime when my feelings were less raw.

Another miserable bus trip, I thought to myself the next morning, as I boarded the bus to Quebec City, four days before a lonely Christmas in 1976. I took a seat near the restroom because my stomach was still feeling queasy. Hey, my naughty stocking wasn't completely filled with coal. Tucked in amongst the lumps was a tiny gift Jake had given me, which I would soon unwrap in Quebec City.