Love Poem: Ex-Gay, Part I
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Written by: David Welch

Ex-Gay, Part I

My name, it is Reginald,
and I’ve got a story to tell,
some folks, they will not like it,
they’ll cry out,”Go to hell!”

You see my wife beside me?
it wasn’t always this way,
’cause for the past ten years now,
I’ve been living an ex-gay.

If this makes no sense, relax,
some days it barely does to me,
all I can say is that it started
All the way back in puberty.

In the locker rooms in high school,
I gazed with hungry eyes,
never tried to deny it,
I was attracted to guys.

My first time was senor year,
with a friend-of-a-friend,
in the backseat of his car,
where we did not have to pretend.

And when I went off to college
it was just like a vast buffet,
with professors so accepting,
good lord, how did I play…

But later in my junior year
something strange happened to me,
I found myself staring hard
at a woman of great beauty.

She was a junior professor,
and oh, the shape she had…
but I shook it off as crazy,
maybe I’d taken something bad?

And although I brushed it off,
a week later in came again,
this time an Asian cheerleader
when over she did bend.

All senior years I’d catch myself
sneaking girls a lusty glance,
but I kept seeing the fellows,
convinced I was a gay man.

After college it grew slowly,
found myself going on the net
to admire the female form,
but I couldn’t admit it yet.

Predictably, my relationships
never traveled a sunny path,
and at twenty-six I met a man
but knew it would never last.

Three weeks in he was out of town,
I went down to a local club,
got real drunk, picked up a girl,
took her home and we made love.

And still I couldn’t say it,
I kept on putting up a front,
but when backs turned I went out
to get myself some…fun.

Finally that boyfriend left me,
and I spent the next two years
going to shrinks, talking to priests,
confused and full of fear.

It was only sitting in a park,
on a bright and crisp morn,
that I bumped into a woman
who’s eyes promised so much more.

At first I feared she’d run from me
if she heard the messy truth,
but then years later we stand here
still bound by a love true...