Michael Harding: What I never told anyone was that I actually enjoyed Confession

As a teenager, I went to Confession every Saturday night. The priest was a large pudding of gentility sitting in the dark confession box smelling of cigarette smoke. That didn’t bother me because I too was addicted. I smoked my first cigarette when I was 11; offered to me in a fish-and-chip shop by a boy with hair oil.

“Give us a pull,” I said; it was a common phrase on the lips of children in those years, and the senior boy responded by offering me half his Major; an expensive cigarette that was thicker than all the rest and carried a more intense blast of smoke to the lungs than cheaper brands like Albany, which was my “go-to” cigarette. I had to sustain my addiction on meagre pocket money. But smoking wasn’t the issue.

Every time I saw girls cycling their bicycles past the boys’ college I was overwhelmed with lust. We males usually lingered around the school gates for ages waiting for the Loretto students to appear. Clouds of smoke rose above our heads as we stood frozen in meerkat awe when the girls in maroon skirts pedalled by.

[ Michael Harding: The motorbike had been a gift for his son’s 18th birthday. But he had lost his son to suicide ]

But it was the remembrance of such moments that caused the trouble. In the dead of night, I took pleasure in my memories; and that was what required confession to the elderly man behind the grill in a dark corner of the cathedral aptly named the “confession box”.

The box was an enclosed space no bigger than a telephone kiosk. It was pitch black inside and only by memory could one find the step on which to kneel. Then a shutter in the wall opened and there, behind a small lattice aperture, sat the old man.

He sat on red velvet cushions whereas I had only a ledge for my knees as I stuck my nose close to the opening and began my rigmarole. I confessed the same thing every Saturday night; that I had impure thoughts, and that I took pleasure in them.

Coming out of the cathedral I would often light a cigarette which had been lodged in my sock

“How many times?” he inquired, in the early days. I always said “three times”, and eventually he abandoned any further attempt to explore the forensic details of my lust.

Coming out of the cathedral I would often light a cigarette which had been lodged in my sock; that being the best method of transporting a single cigarette while riding a bicycle.

[ Michael Harding: I hoped someone would visit during the good weather – but no one darkened the door for a week ]

Adult men regularly lit cigarettes as they emerged from the cathedral, to show that even if they did go to Mass or Confession it was something done under duress, and with the same unease as when they went to a dentist to have their teeth pulled. I wanted to become an adult male as soon as possible, so it seemed obvious that I too should light a cigarette in the face of the slightest mental discomfort.

But what I never told anyone was that I actually enjoyed Confession; whispering into the ear of an elderly man was somehow comforting; like the intimacies shared with Santa Claus in his den at Christmas time. And the priest always went through the linguistic ritual with a detached equanimity. He never suggested that sex was in any way wrong, but I came to realize that saying sorry was not a bad thing. And the ritual taught me that being a healthy person didn’t mean being perfect.

On the way home I would even dare to knock on the door of the girl I worshipped

Confession also provided me with an excuse to head for town on Saturday nights without parental scrutiny. I could spend an hour chatting with my friends in the chip shop or an hour sitting on a biscuit tin in a sweet shop where the owner facilitated our teenage addiction by providing loose cigarettes at a cost of three pence per smoke.

On the way home I would even dare to knock on the door of the girl I worshipped. She would humour me briefly on the porch, twirling a biro between her teeth to indicate that she was in the middle of her homework and when conversation collapsed I would take out a cigarette to impress on her how mature and masculine I had become. She refused to smoke and later went on to become a doctor.

I, on the other hand, sucked the poisonous fumes into my lungs for two more decades without anyone suggesting that I was doing something wrong.

And at night, after those escapades to town, I would fall exhausted into bed and dream of the biro between her lips and I would take enormous pleasure in the remembrance of it.