Boy Erased: A Memoir

by Garrard Conley

It was the kind she would come to know as the ex-gay smile. Once she saw it for what it was, this smile would trail her through the next nine years. She would imagine seeing it almost everywhere, even on the faces of townspeople she met every week, as if the whole world had been carrying these secret ex-gay lives all this time without her knowledge. Turning down a grocery aisle, the wobbly shopping cart steering away from her grip, she would seize up—freezing, hands clenching the plastic handle—the moment she felt this smile sweep over her, as if a gunman had just waved a pistol in her direction. Such was the power this smile would hold over her, over us.