Playing It Straight

	Jamie’s gay iPod (top) and straight iPod (bottom).

Thanks to religion and the fact that certain people find butt sex “totally gross,” being gay can sometimes be a huge bummer. Due to this, there are some who would like to “leave the lifestyle.” But can this be done? Were we “born this way,” or do we have a choice? I wanted to find out. My original plan was to attend one of those Christian retreats where you stay in the woods for a week and learn how to appreciate vaginas, but they all require super-intense confidentiality agreements, so I wouldn’t have been able to make fun of it in a magazine. After doing some internet research, I (a 5 on the Kinsey scale, slightly less gay than Elton John) decided to spend a month self-administering treatment instead. Here are some popular conversion methods that I tested.

REGAINING MY MASCULINITY

According to Leanne Payne’s 1985 classic Crisis in Masculinity, the main reason men become gay is because they’ve lost touch with their masculinity. This causes a void in their souls, which they then attempt to fill with other men’s dicks. To rectify this situation, I gave my life a full heterosexual makeover: I started referring to my bedroom as my “man cave,” stopped keeping my clothes in a wardrobe and started throwing them on my floor, replaced my Wii with an Xbox, tacked a poster of 50 Cent on my wall, abstained from using conditioner, and replaced my iPod’s self-conscious mix of fragile indie songs and girly music with white-people rap and soft rock. I also stopped ironically watching Lindsay Lohan flicks and started seriously scrutinizing Matt Damon movies, refused to wash my towels or bedsheets, used my bookcase to store empty liquor bottles, read Tracy Morgan’s autobiography, only ate meals that took less than 20 minutes to cook in the microwave, drank protein shakes and beers, and took part in a soccer game “with the lads.”

Effectiveness: 4 out of 10. The depression that resulted from constantly fixating on every aspect of my behavior served as a welcome distraction from my persistent homosexual thoughts (more on those later).

AVERSION THERAPY

Even though I am a total baby when it comes to getting electrocuted, my initial plan was to self-administer electroshock therapy. The thought of it scared the shit out of me, but using instructions I found (of course) on the internet, I fashioned a disposable camera into a Taser and shocked myself while looking at gay porn. Do not EVER fucking do this. It hurt incredibly badly—like I was simultaneously being punched in the face, being hit by a car, and dry heaving while having cigarettes put out on my teeth. Aversion therapy is supposed to be painful, but I genuinely thought I was going to die. I made an executive decision and downgraded my punishment to self-flagellation. I read somewhere that this is how monks counter sexual urges. Belt at the ready, I prepared a slide show containing a mixture of straight and gay porn. For each gay image I looked at, I whipped myself with the belt. For each straight image, I ate a piece of candy. I did this for about 15 minutes each morning and night for the duration of the month.

Effectiveness: 1 out of 10. Despite the fact that my left arm began to look like it was covered in rosacea, after a couple days, I got used to the pain of the whipping and started to really enjoy my nightly porn-and-candy sessions.