A Preventive Repentance

Two years ago, this was my first attempt at creative writing. Purely fictional. Enjoy.

Picture: fineartamerica.com

With two condoms in my back pocket, my Guess jean is probably wondering what it is that I am doing knelt by my bedside confessing what had just happened and repenting in the same breath.

My hands go up in surrender and come back to meet before my face in a prayer posture. The stench of guilt still reeks through my very finger nails and words are hard to utter to express the conviction my spirit, body and soul are feeling.

The scene is so fresh that it doesn’t fit under the term “memory”: closing my eyes to pray, it comes to life before my very eyes, again.

Trust! Yes, I used that to express the passion that smoldered within my loins for days on end.

“8 days and 16 hours without a lay, we are going somewhere.” So I said with my lips yet my entire body shook as I recalled how long it had been. The war has been against myself; beating myself. It’s in rare occasions that I get a victory, well, most of them are short lived and on to the next “strategy meeting” I go with self and plan how to beat self. The struggles that a young man goes through… sigh.

These overpowering feelings come seasonally and when they do come they come to stay a while longer. Sometimes as I look around I actually sense that not many people are rooting for me to make it: my male friends brag about the night that was; female friends are frustrated because he’s just not doing it how he should; media says that the night that was should be a merger of both parties communicating and reaching for a common goal – satisfaction!; other saved and church buddies talk about the perfect sex in riddles and in our conversations there’s no real sense of remorse and repentance. This relegates me into a corner – a vicious cycled corner.

And so I spear the floor with my knees repenting, yet I already have appointments on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for another lay, a different lay. As my body guesses that I will attend to them, my jean wonders why it’s on the floor in the first place. “Can’t I come in this posture on Friday after the wheel has turned?” One voice asks. The other suggests rather we throw away the two condoms and cancel all appointment as a sign of turning away from fornication. I listen to the second voice, dunk the condoms in the bin and say my prayer and declarations – a new start I profess and stand to bathe as a confirmation.

Naked and dressing on the bed a call for Thursday comes in; “Just a visit”, so we’ve eloquently termed it, forsaking the undertone fermented in that expression. I do not say “no”, yet I can’t say “yes”. Just in case, I raid the bin as if it was an island with promises of hidden treasure. Trust! This I shall use should the undercurrent consume any floating canoe.

As a precaution, I pray. This time, a prayer of prevention.