Boy Erased: A Memoir
by Garrard Conley
Riverhead Books. 340 pages, $27.
AS THE SON of a strict Missionary Baptist practitioner, Gerald Conley understood in grade school that he was a sinner. He writes in Boy Erased: A Memoir about the furtive, irresistible thrill of men’s underwear catalogs and of unrequited fantasies about other boys. But those memories are tinged with guilt, with the fear of being caught or teased, and with anxieties that “the increasingly blurry God” he’d known all his life would send him straight to hell for being a homosexual. That’s what his parents believed and what Conley was told repeatedly in his church. He learned from his father that being the gay son of a pastor-to-be would “stain” the entire family.
Conley writes of his childhood without overwhelming passion, as if composing a grocery list, though the reader can sense otherwise. At the time, Conley felt all the emotions that go with being shamed, belittled, and quietly bullied. As a teen, he tried to tamp down his hormones and shun his true sexuality by having a girlfriend, a pretty, God-fearing “girl of one’s dreams” who was raised in the same Ozarks church community. In the end, much to her chagrin, it was a largely chaste relationship. Their respective families were thrilled by what they’d hoped would be a happily-ever-after story, but Conley’s sexuality didn’t allow it. Feeling revulsion at the prospect of a physical relationship, knowing full well that his parents would be disappointed, he ended the affair.
At this point, the book takes on a surreal and foggy turn. Conley admits early on that he has recreated from memory much of what happened, acknowledging that he’s unable to remember large parts of his life. It shows in the dreaminess of his college story: he met a defensive, possibly gay boy with whom he had a confusing love-hate, passive-aggressive relationship. Eventually, the boy outed Conley to his parents, after which there followed a fatherly ultimatum: accept a “cure” from a Memphis organization or leave everything. At nineteen, Conley checked himself into Love in Action (LIA) to “fix” his sexuality. Loosely resembling a twelve-step program, the program encouraged deep thought about one’s past actions and God’s plan. LIA required him to literally “count the number of times I’d sinned against God.” But instead of turning Conley into a cleansed (not gay) Christian, it launched him on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance.
In the end, Conley’s story changes pace, but it’s an abrupt and welcome shift: the thread of apathy that has been curiously, quietly apparent suddenly turns into a cord of anger that we come to understand has always been there. After many chapters of measured prose, Boy Erased comes to a surprising crescendo of realization, leaving us with a story that’s uneven but memorable.
