Experimenting With Heterosexuality

Jeremy Feist reflects on his early romances:

In sixth grade, I started dating Cassandra Palangavich. Cassandra was pretty, sweet, funny, and had one of those last names that looked like it was spelled by eating a can of alphabet soup and then wiping your ass with a birth certificate. Cassandra was one of my best friends, and we did absolutely everything together. During prom, I once again scrunched up my face and smooshed my puckered mouth against hers. Lo and behold, I felt nothing. The experiment had been repeated, and I ended up with the same results. After the "kiss," we both promised to keep in touch with each other. Neither of us did, but at least we had fun while the time lasted.

Lesson Learned: I was gay.

I'm in that same category. I tried so hard to fall in love with a woman. I was young and sex was not a problem. I could have screwed a tree at that point and gotten off. But there was a moment during sex with my only real girlfriend that I closed my eyes and visualized the hot dude I had showered next to in the gym that day. It was then that I knew it was wrong to do this. This was the real sin: to lie, deceive another person in such an intimate moment. She deserved so much better. If natural law is our guide, it seemed to me unnatural for me to violate how God had made me. Eventually, I told my girlfriend that I was bisexual. She replied with such grace and love I recall it today: "Well, that makes twice as many people for me to be jealous of." We hugged. It ended soon after.

And when she invited me to her wedding years later, I RSVPed yes. And then, on the day, I couldn't do it. I felt the weight of my deception and was ashamed. For me, heterosexual sex felt like an unforgivable betrayal. Gay love, in contrast, felt like love. It eluded me for years, because, I now understand, of the shame that lingered within. But with therapy and prayer, I eventually surrendered to God's will:

In everyone there sleeps   

A sense of life lived according to love.

To some it means the difference they could make   

By loving others, but across most it sweeps

As all they might have done had they been loved.   

That nothing cures.

I escaped that fate. I thank God every day for it.