When a raggedly-dressed and presumably homeless man on the street screams "CONFESS YOUR SINS!" as Patrick, Dom and Agustin pass by on their way to check out a rental space Dom is eyeing for a future restaurant, it's not just to lend the scene a gritty edge or to give Patrick and Agustin a good reason to second-guess Dom's judgment.
It's also the advice that Patrick probably needs, lest his paranoia and guilt run roughshod over his life and transform him once and for all into the awkward, self-doubting mess that he seems perpetually on the verge of becoming.
In fact, when we see Richie, Patrick's ex-boyfriend, return unexpectedly into Patrick's life for a brief few minutes, and Patrick squirms around the question of whether he is seeing anyone new, it's hard not to wish for a full confession.
In "Looking for Results," this season's second episode of HBO's "Looking," we are essentially treated to a full half-hour of Patrick trying to process the fact that, whether he wants to fully admit his responsibility in it or not, he is having an affair with his boss, Kevin.
The men of HBO's series on three gay friends in modern-day San Francisco have returned from the cabin trip that framed the season opener, and have slid back into their city lives. Agustin keeps spiraling out of control and doing drugs. Dom experiences the inevitable awkwardness of what seems to be his first conversation with boyfriend Lynn about hooking up with people on the side of their open relationship. Doris, the men's best girlfriend, meets a man who seems interested in more than just her quick wit. And Patrick -- who is the type to feel guilty and paranoid about almost everything -- stares headlong into the most uncomfortable aspects of his secret relationship.
Granted, we see deeper into that relationship with Kevin than we ever have before. We see that Kevin seems to enjoy Patrick's quirkiness, how the two have some things in common besides work and their physical attraction to one another, and how Patrick has fallen into the trap of romanticizing the relationship through the tired naughty-is-hot trope.
But we also see that the secretive nature of their relationship is weighing on both of them.
Patrick is so paranoid that when Agustin off-handedly responds to a subsequent demand for contrition from the homeless man by spilling Patrick's secret -- "He's f--king the boss behind his boyfriend's back" -- Patrick objects.
"You can't do that," he says. "Homeless people have Twitter accounts."
When a mobile health worker asks Patrick if he wants to be tested for HIV, he declines and walks away, but not before awkwardly lingering to tell the health worker he likes her shirt.
When Patrick later gets an HIV test, he apologizes to the health worker drawing his blood for lying on his medical form about having unprotected sex.
He's apologizing to everyone around him because of the guilt he feels. But he's misdirecting his considerate side.
His interaction with Richie, who shows up at Patrick's doorstep to see home a once again drugged and out-of-it Agustin, is a perfect example.
Patrick asks Richie if he's seeing anyone, then tries to pull back from the conversation. Richie throws the question back at Patrick, and he trips over his response.
Given the hidden and confusing nature of his relationship with Kevin, it seems that Patrick doesn't even really know the answer to the question. But instead of acknowledging that -- hell, a simple "it's complicated" would have sufficed -- he instead says he is seeing no one, "full stop," and asks Richie to go to lunch with him.
Patrick is seemingly mindless to the fact that he should probably figure out his own messed up life before dragging poor Richie back into it all over again.
What should it mean when someone spends a ton of time with another person, including to have sex, even though that person is in another relationship? And what are the "results" of such an arrangement?
Most important, how many others will be turned into collateral damage?
Coming episodes are sure to explore that question.