Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Confessions.
Embarrassment to Engagement
It’s September 30, 2019. COVID-19 is not yet a worldwide pandemic. Restaurants are open. The days are warm, but getting shorter. Zale (that’s me) is in a long distance, polyamorous relationship with a non-binary girl in Germany. He’s on Grindr, trying to get a good hook up. Someone identifying as non-binary hits him up and asks him out to tacos - it’s a Monday night, a weird day for tacos, but he’s hungry and this person is super pretty. His non-binary girlfriend says go for it - so he does.
By Zale Cook5 years ago in Confessions
My First "Bestseller"
The idea struck me when my eighth-grade English teacher approached a student in the hallway, a girl much more loud, outspoken, "rebellious," and popular than shy, nerdy me, asking her, "Where is the stuff??" Although I knew he was referring to classwork, the exchange sounded much like an illicit drug deal. A story idea took seed in my young, fertile imagination.
By Julia Schulz5 years ago in Confessions
Demons Rising
Demons Rising Truth be told, I’m a very honest liar, I’ll admit to stretching the truth until it damn near tears in two, yet something or someone possesses my soul when I write and like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. It’s actually frustrating, my stories are always so tame and mellow, they could use a spicing up. And just when I think I’ve turned the corner and started to mature, an old memory will float by like a lazy cloud and catch my attention, then attack my mind like a Bald Eagle swooping down on a trout.
By Gregory Dolan Dies5 years ago in Confessions
The Last Dance
The Last Dance So to continue my segment in embarrassing moments, there may have been a few, and one that comes to mind was when I was still married to Patty and the two of us, her five siblings, and their mates at the time, all went to a bar down in San Diego. (I’m starting to think I drink a lot or at least did, but God blesses me with hangovers so that helps)
By Gregory Dolan Dies5 years ago in Confessions
Surrender:
Recently, I have been growing up. By growing up I mean building up my self-control. I have been listening to audiobooks, investing in bitcoin, becoming a vegetarian, going to the gym consistently, and so on. But somewhere along the internet of things I read that fasting was the best way to increase and accomplish this goal of ultimate self-governance. The idea being if you could deny yourself one of the most primal necessities of being a human such as food; you could easily deny yourself any other fickle desires that may come up. I never would have imagined that embarking upon this spiritual journey of denying my flesh would end up with me, a 27-year-old fully grown man, to lose all control and pee on himself.
By Shaunte5 years ago in Confessions
Define Functional
Chapter Two: Girls Girls Girls I’m not sure if I ever said it to her out loud but in my head, I called her Jewlz. Her name was Julie and we met during a freshman summer program at Marquette University. It was a program for students with high test scores but lower than expected grade point averages. I was again amongst a group with which I should fit. We all shared the same disease, we could but we didn’t. The program was our chance to prove ourselves and show we were capable of performing at a collegiate level. It was highly structured requiring us to take one 3 credit course and spend the rest of the day in orientation classes and mandatory study hours. I don’t remember exactly how many of us there were but we all stayed in the same dormitory with men and women on different floors. I landed on that campus, 800 miles away from home, after an eventful senior year during which I created my own half-day schedule by skipping half my classes every day. To make things fair I would alternate leaving or arriving after lunch during the week. I didn’t feel that bad about it because to make up for my freshman failure I had two periods of gym every day. I had a grade point average of 1.1 entering the year and really shouldn’t have been promoted to the twelfth grade. I remember a friend who resented my flippant attitude toward school calling me, the summer before the twelfth grade, to inform me that I had failed two classes and wouldn’t be a senior in the fall. Having grown in arrogance, due to the magic doors administrators would open to allow me to dodge consequences, I confidently replied “Well see”. And as I expected, we shared most of the same classes that next year, on the days I bothered to show up for them. When the year ended, I shouldn’t have graduated but to fit the pattern that had been established in my life my English teacher mercifully decided not to fail me stating that she didn’t want to “Hold me back” because “the world needed me”. No pressure right? But despite all the lessons I didn’t learn that year JROTC had put me in a position to go to college. A counselor that worked with our cadets was a Marquette Alumni and found this program for me. JROTC had also netted me a girlfriend and by the time I was leaving for college, we were still in the throes of passion following our mutually lost virginity. Before I left for school that summer, I bought a micro recorder to use during lectures but tested it out first recording her moans during one of our love-making sessions. I and that tape would make our way to a majority white Jesuit campus, with me nervous about leaving its star, nervous about the new world I was in, nervous about meeting the standards of college life, and unknowingly one floor beneath Jewlz.
By JdotFlan5 years ago in Confessions
My worst writing won a competition
I have always been an avid writer, but 98% of the words I have written have never had another pair of eyes criticize them as much as my own have. Most of my stories are mediocre, average at best, with too many plot holes to count and shallow characters that are immune to change. I say I am an avid writer, but I am by no means a good one. I will probably NEVER consider myself to be a proper writer with any considerable talent until I win a Vocal challenge. That seems like an unfair thing to do to myself, I know. There are so many thousands of talented writers on Vocal that, just because they win a challenge instead of me, shouldn’t mean I am therefore a poor writer.
By Eloise Robertson 5 years ago in Confessions
That was smooth
It was my first year in college and I was as equally nervous as I was excited. It was a fresh start and new way to reinvent myself from the person I was in high school. I didn't have many friends and I was heavily introverted. My parents were shocked when I told them that I would me majoring in Theatre. "So you'll be backstage helping with costumes?" they asked. "Well...no...I want to act." Mind you, I had never acted a day in my life because I was so shy. But it was somehow something that I was passionate about and decided to go for it. My first class was a theater and design class. We did the basic introduction of who we were and presented images that we liked. That class would be the beginning of many friendships...and a future relationship. But we'll get to that point soon.
By Nicheal Gadson5 years ago in Confessions
Love, 16
Growing up sheltered makes life hard. You miss out on opportunities to grow and make mistakes that other kids have. Especially when you grew up like me. My parents were strict Mormons and raised me as such. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, I wasn't allowed a phone, I wasn't allowed to hang out with friends outside of school or church and I went to church two times a week. Add this to my crippling social anxiety and you get a recipe for disaster and a girl with barely any friends. And definitely a girl with little to no experience with boys. This is the story of one of my first real encounters with dating, love, embarrassment, and heartbreak.
By Alyssa Zeschke5 years ago in Confessions
Mojave Rain
He promised me coffee…not Starbucks (too stuck up he said), and not Dunkin’ (I have something better). He didn’t want to meet in the silvery light of a November afternoon, sipping drinks in the front seat of his Impala convertible. And he didn’t want to take a walk at any of the beaches that beckoned from Marblehead to Revere. No, for the first date he insisted on showing me his espresso machine and promised a perfect cup of Italian roast. He sang the praises of its masterful mechanism and offered to grind the beans for my pleasure. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I preferred tea, that my mother was British and I’d grown up on endless cups of Earl Grey and Scottish Breakfast, perfectly steeped, with a spoonful of raw honey. I didn’t share that my heart rocketed out of my chest when I drank coffee. Nor did I reveal that I’d never gone to a man’s house before meeting him first publicly. And I certainly didn’t add that the last time I even went on a date with someone I truly desired was two decades ago, when I danced to Springsteen’s “Love is an angel disguised as lust,” and wore skin-tight Guess jeans secured at the ankles with a row of my mother’s safety pins.
By Julia Bobkoff5 years ago in Confessions
I Made a Coloring Book for Amazon
Once again the mood music is set (breast pump and the baby's sound machine). My coloring book is now LIVE on Amazon and I just about flipped out with excitement. It feels like a big accomplishment. I set a goal, worked towards that goals in small, manageable chunks, didn't beat myself up for missing a day here or there, and steadily reached the goal.
By Jessica Stapp5 years ago in Confessions
When You Change The Way You Look At Things...
The Instagram Version of My Former Life For ten years I had a gruelling, job for which I gained no sympathy from my friends. They saw only the sparkly, shiny surface of my life; jetting off constantly to Paris, Madrid, Rome, Barcelona or Athens on a weekly basis.
By Deborah Wilson5 years ago in Confessions
