Boy Erased: A Memoir

by Garrard Conley

Crumple the first half of the story and toss it in the trash. All else is distraction.

EVEN IF you know the person—especially if you know the person—rape, and the memory of it, becomes a blinding flash.

Added to all of this shame was the knowledge that I had secretly pined for the opportunity

“Don’t ask God to give you a sign,” my father would sometimes tell congregants during his revivals, rubbing the side of a face that had nearly been burned to nothing. “You might not like what you get.”

This was a source of both comfort and anxiety. None of this really mattered, yet none of this really mattered, an equally terrifying idea. Except, of course, when I considered what the Bible had to say about our brief lives on earth, and then all of this really mattered.

Love, over time, could either blossom or wither, become a source of wonder or a remembered ache.

A moment of grace or terror—arguably the same thing—could descend without any warning, and now seemed about as good a time as any for God to resume His communication with me. Lying about my sexuality in front of hundreds of people while standing beside my father as he took his holy vow—this felt like the lightning rod, the pillar-of-salt moment, the thing I couldn’t turn back from.

With each passing day at the facility, it seemed as though becoming straight was simply a matter of good lighting, of ignoring what you didn’t want to see.

These were the circumstances necessary and sufficient for grace,

How could I capture a fraction of what I felt in this moment? I could never be a poet.

“Why would God give me so many feelings if he didn’t want me to feel them? Why would God be such a jerk?”

What happened to me has made it impossible to speak with God, to believe in a version of Him that isn’t charged with self-loathing.