Ex-Gay
by Gabriel Duncan

“Oh my god !” She screamed. My cock was buried deep in her pussy. She was all vowels. “Oh! Oh-oh, don't stop!” Then she tensed, and hit number forty-three. We'd been fucking each other for two weeks. In the beginning, it was hot because she liked it so much. I'd never seen anyone go that crazy over it in a very long time. My orgasm was coming on me a like a steam engine. I could feel the boiling in my balls. She shifted so I would be dicking her even deeper. I knocked something in her that made us both lose our breath. “Don't stop,” she gasped.

It started out as a joke. But it was obvious after a while that I was interested in females. I didn't notice until it was too late. I mean, my mind would scream at me from time to time. It would tell me to pull out and leave before things got any deeper. But I stayed. Her eyes kept me entranced. Jessica's body danced in ways I'd never seen before. The promises she whispered kept me coming back. I was sprung, but I didn't realize until it was too late and it was rolling over me like a squirrel under a Mack truck.

She had a boyfriend who worked for the Coast Guard. Every week, he would leave for twenty-four hours to stand guard over his base. He played the paper pusher on a regular day. When he came home from work, most times, he looked tired, drugged, and ready to slip into his unconscious. I felt uncomfortable around him, especially when he was tired. She told me not to be nervous, that they had an open relationship.

As the weeks went by, she would call more often, wanting to hang out. She offered to make me lunch. Lunch was a code word. Then she would start lamenting over her boyfriend. Shit like, “He's tired all the time.” And: “He never wants to do anything.” The recipe was there.

My other friends had no idea. I told them I'd lost it to a girl. But they didn't know who or how involved I was. I was worried about being called a liar, or a fake, and having my gay club card cut in half--which is only half a joke. As time went by, I came to realize I didn't have to worry. The girl I was fucking would lead me away from the gay culture. We spent our days and nights fucking, broken only by the arrivals and departures of her boyfriend.

Underneath it all, there was a bond growing between our bodies. Something so permeating the sheets and covers caressed me at night in memory. That little place in my brain where thoughts of her lived eventually became renovated and grew to take over. The days we didn't see each other I spent thinking about her. When I was with her, I was a different person. I was happy.

There was never a time when I consciously said to myself, “I'm not going to be gay anymore.” But it happened. Guys became less attractive. Not ugly and revolting, just . . . not what I was looking for. I felt my same-sex interest waning and it tortured me.

Did this mean I wasn't gay after all? In the beginning I thought it would just be this one girl. But my list of girls I wanted to fuck kept growing. I was no longer attracted to other males. Even if I were gay to begin with, am I gay now ? I reasoned it away. What does gay mean , anyway? Am I gay because I've slept with a countless amount of guys? Because I have; that should count for something.

I was never as connected to the gay scene as I was in the months leading up to my trysts with her. But that was the gay scene ; I could take it or leave it. I told myself I never liked hanging out with queens anyway. I felt like I was turning my back on the community that raised me and taught me the values of “tolerance” and “freedom”. But I reasoned that away into the void, too.

For the first few months, I tried to over-compensate. I was gay . I liked cock . Pussy was just a warm, moist hole. I went to gay bars to prove my homosexuality to myself. Each night, was a different bar and a different man.

I would be desperate and he could tell. He'd make me worship his cock; then he'd flip me over and root me. That last part didn't happen very often. Most of the time my “straight-acting” appearance would make him hungry, and I, being just as desperate as he, would follow him home.

Up until the moment, I would be digging his enthusiasm. He'd offer his mouth for my pleasure. I would relish it and reward him with a thick wad in the back of his throat. Then I'd push him down on the bed, on his stomach, and stick my tongue in his ass. I'd swirl, lick and nibble until he would squeal and beg me to stick it in. The moment of penetration always makes my knees weak.

John would moan and squirm as I stuffed my cock deeper yet. All the while, I would think of Jessica's pussy. The way it smelled. How it felt when she was on top. I never failed to take in the minutiae. The most vivid memories were the most tactile. Then he'd say, “Oh god, I'm coming.” And I would realize what I was doing.

Those nights, after convincing him I didn't want to mutually achieve an orgasm of my own, after going soft and trying, trying, trying to get hard again . . . . Those nights, after I failed, I would feel torn. Those nights would be the worst. There would be more episodes. But they all ended the same way.

I was frustrated because it wouldn't work; because it felt wrong and I didn't want it to. So I tried guys I used to have crushes on. I tried hot guys; dudes with six packs and asses of steel. I tried pretty boys and twinks. I tried older guys. Soon, the desperation turned to epiphany. I had to face the facts; I couldn't fool myself any longer. I truly wasn't attracted to men.

My whole life was built upon gay. My whole life was about the fighting and the teasing and the bullying I had when I came out. It was about the sin and the physical pleasures, the rebellion and anarchy of giving in to my animal tendencies. It was all negated. I felt like my whole life was a lie. I was scared; I would have to do it all again.

That was a horrible thing to admit, considering I was still involved with several gay non-profit organizations. I was terrified of letting anyone know my true feelings. I decided to get a cover—a guy named Henry, who didn't mind that I didn't want to have sex because he was asexual. Meanwhile I panicked. My cohorts were already beginning to notice my withdrawn attitude.

It was a stormy afternoon when I walked into the office. The sequence of events was eerily familiar. I felt twelve again, at the foot of my mother's bed. It happened the same way, almost. They were sitting at the conference table. I was late for the conference. “I can't work here anymore,” I told them. When they asked me why, my brain exploded, and the twisty-turny, nauseatingly illogical and wrong spewed forth. I told them I liked girls. That it had been at least a half a year since I was genuinely attracted to any guy. I was in love with a woman. Their eyes changed, then, and it was déjà vu when they asked me how I knew; if I was sure. But they made their minds up.

My gay friends told me it was a phase. Some told me I was greedy. I was bisexual. I couldn't hack it in the gay world, so I had to move on to something easier. Some of them said I claimed to be gay all this time to build a network of hags I could boink anytime I wanted. They'd never say no. Someone told me he felt offended that I brought Jessica with me to so many functions. They all said they felt deceived and lied to. Henry, my cover, said the worst of all.

I left feeling rejected and spit upon. I never talked to them again. Jessica and I started going to movies or bowling instead of going to San Francisco . She took my mind away from “failure”, focused on us. We started meeting more often, since I had more free time. Our bond grew even stronger. Neither one of us mentioned how much time we were spending together. In truth, we didn't notice.

One afternoon, we were lying in bed together. “I'm going to leave him,” She told me. It didn't come as a surprise. They were fighting more. She was scared her boyfriend was losing interest; all that working he did had gone to his brain. I listened as she presented her case. I knew she wasn't looking for opinion or advice. “. . . And then he comes home, and he's so tired. All he wants to do is sleep. He makes me feel so . . . lonely.”

I woke to someone pounding at my door. She was wet and her knees were chattering. James' truck was idling in the driveway. A black suit case and a green backpack, that looked stuffed full of clothes, were sitting at her heels. “Can I come in?” I moved aside and grabbed the luggage.

James and Jessica were over. Their break up wasn't bad, but . . . . “He was really upset.” Jessica told me when she asked him to drive her over, he went on a tirade. Her parents lived a thousand miles away, so I was the only one she thought of that could help. She needed a place to stay until she could find another. She told me it was just for a week, a month at the most. Though I don't think either of us expected her to be moving out any time soon.

It was like a honeymoon. You know how it goes: the days turned to weeks, turned to years. I was the happiest I'd ever been. I never thought I would have ended up in a long-term committed relationship with a woman. Before we knew it, two years had gone by and her boyfriend, James, was long forgotten. I was her boyfriend now. And it felt good.

I still ran into the people I used to call my friends. We would face each other awkwardly, and share the same casual small talk, waiting for the elevator, or in the line at the supermarket. They were forgotten, too, eventually. I had to force them out of my memory. The things that had been said to me were still painful, and I couldn't look at any of them without feeling like I did before. So I avoided them. Those days, Jessica would notice a change in me. She could always cheer me up.

I don't know if I will ever sleep with another male again. There is always a possibility, and it's not my place to quantify it. All I know is that I'm with a beautiful, intelligent woman, whom I am completely infatuated with. That is good enough for me. I try not to identify myself by my sexual preference anymore. I think it's too hard living in a world where you can change your identity by will, where your identity changes of its own will, and where sexual identity means more than it's worth.