One for the Fesshole

 

The Fesshole is a social media phenomenon which acts as an outlet for people to reveal dark secrets and wrongdoings they have committed; funny not criminal. It is short for "confession hole" and probably refers to the anonymous opening in a church confessional between where the priest sits and his parishioner. A friend made me aware of it and some of its content is hilariously embarrassing; therefore the least I could do is contribute to it myself, and I have the perfect ingredient. Sometime back in the '90's I was having a drunken night in with some brother HP's and a few hangers on. It started in the social club after the 2-10 had finished and ended up in Arthur Sanctuary House, the main staff accommodation block. One of the revellers was called Oswald, not his real name. He was not a porter and was not even on the civilian staff. How he became attached to JRH society was always a bit of a mystery. He ended up marrying a nurse, but that was years later. Anyway, a nurse's dress made its appearance... somehow and Oswald put it on. This was for a joke of course, except he kept it on all night. (He eventually turned out to be bisexual, leaning heavily on the homo side; and that was not a surprise to anybody who knew him in those days.) We eventually left ASH and took a raucous stroll through the hospital grounds. This was relegated to the nearby streets after security threw us out. I can't quite recall what happened after that except that at about 3 AM I found myself wandering home carrying Oswald's stolen nurse's dress.

In those days I lived with my parents shortly after splitting up with my daughter's mother and when I got home everybody was asleep at that hour. I can't remember my thought processes, or what passed for them after about five pints of cider and a dozen vodka shots, but I decided to put the dress in the laundry basket. I think I just wanted to see what happened if I did. It took about two days and then my mother called me into the lounge where she was reclined in her armchair as usual. "Ben, could you come here for a moment please?" She always addressed me like a head porter summoning me to the office. "Ben, I found something strange while doing the washing; it looks like a nurse's uniform. Do you know how it got there?" I shook my head and replied: "No idea, mum." I was desperately suppressing the urge to laugh, and she knew it. My mother was disabled by a condition that was never identified, but it resembled multiple sclerosis and worsened steadily during her lifetime. As a result she suffered a lot of frustration by not being able to do much physical activity. By the time she died in 2006 she could barely walk a dozen steps. I think this was the main reason she was extremely paranoid, controlling and nosy. She wanted to know every single thing that went on in the house and in our lives. She continuously criticized everybody else over everything we did. She once challenged me because she thought I had been running a tap in the bathroom too hard. She worked this out by listening from the bottom of the stairs. Her ears were like a bat's. The problem was she always had absolute conviction in her own conclusions and believed she was incapable of making a mistake. Once she had decided on something she never changed her mind. As a result a lot of her judgements were wrong. I found this very bothersome. I think this was why I decided to plant the nurse's dress in the laundry. I knew she would find out and her brain would immediately start spinning like a flywheel to come up with some kind of explanatory model for how this situation had come about. I wanted some payback and gained a lot of catharsis from it. (This was for many other reasons to do with my terrible relationship with her.) She stared at me suspiciously while I struggled to keep a straight face. She frowned. "Are you sure, Ben?" "A hundred percent, mum." I responded. There was a long pause in which she glared at me balefully. "Alright, you can go now." Immediately afterwards I heard her on the phone talking to Isabel, her unofficial stepmother. I couldn't hear all the words, but I could guess the gist of the conversation: "A, B or C has happened. It's all Ben's fault and he is lying about it!" The phone-call lasted about an hour. I deliberately avoided moving closer to hear the words because it would have caused me a lot of emotional pain; see here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/10/am-i-gate-child.html. After that my father came home for work and it was his turn on the stretching rack. There were no raised voices. Arguments between my parents were always calmly one-sided. My mother accused and attacked, and my father just bowed his head took the shit. At one point I heard him say: "I really know nothing about this, Marga!" She didn't believe him. They themselves had a very rocky marriage involving all kinds of ménage à plusieurs that I won't describe in detail because it involves more painful childhood memories. If you're curious, this is a where I have covered some of it previously: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2019/10/peter-croft-and-ben-emlyn-jones.html. That was not the end of it. For about three weeks afterwards my mother drove herself into a frenzy trying to solve The Mystery of the Appearing Nurse's Dress. At one point I overheard her talking to her friends that she suspected my father of having an affair with one of the domiciliary nurses who cared for her. I was tempted at that point to come clean, but my bitterness stopped me. For most of my life I had resented my parents enormously; my mother for her malice and my father for his weakness. So I left the outrage to play itself out. Did I enjoy it? Yes, I had to giggle continuously under the blankets on my bed so nobody could hear me. Do I feel guilty? Maybe slightly, but not to any great degree. This all happened about thirty years ago. Eventually the storm blew over and our family returned to normal. I retrieved the dress from the washing machine and returned it to Uniform Issue. There you have it! I've confessed! Not that it makes any difference. My mother and Isabel are dead and my father never reads the HPWA. Still, I hope you who do so enjoyed this little acknowledgment of misdemeanour.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/02/humiliation-reply-to-stefan-molyneux.html.