A couple of months ago, while chatting on the phone with a friend about my life, it suddenly dawned on me...I was turning into a heterosexual!

What evil spell had been placed on me? Had my mother's fervent prayers for grandchildren been answered? Could someone have spiked my food? Was it a side effect from shopping at WalMart too many times?

No, it was something far more insidious and covert! For the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that I was causing myself to become straight. No one was to blame for this about-face in my sexual orientation except me.

My descent into heterosexuality began innocently enough this past August. I had applied for a teaching job in a town just north of where I live. The idea of being in the classroom again, working on a September to June calender, and getting to create a new academic area all excited me. It seemed like a dream job for me and I really wanted it!

But my fear of how the people at the school would react if they knew I was gay caused me to start denying my sexual orientation.

It started when I began "straightening up" my resume. Don't misunderstand me, I didn't lie about anything on the resume, I just didn't explain in detail everything that was listed. After all, how many heterosexual know what "Stonewall" means (Stonewall was an agency I ran for three years)? And I dropped a few things off of the resume; namely anything with the word "gay" in it. So no longer did I proudly list that I was the co-founder of the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus.

When it came time for the interview, more of my sexual orientation began to slip away. While driving to the school on the appointed day, I gave my new clothes the once over to make sure I would look good.

That's when I noticed it. My earring. Most days it doesn't even cross my mind. But on that drive it plagued my consciousness. I slowly pulled into the parking lot for the interview, I took my earring out and placed it on the dashboard.

I also took the rainbow sticker off of my car's back window and put it in the glove compartment.

Oh, I managed to rationalize all of these actions to myself.. Why wear an earring that might offend someone in the interview? What would happen if they escorted me to my car and saw the rainbow sticker? After all, here in Ohio it is legal to fire people because they are gay (and in 39 other states too). And didn't the town the school was located in boast the "Living Bible Museum?" And weren't a couple of my potential colleagues lay ministers?

My fear had stripped me of being who I really am...gay. And if I didn't want them to know that I was gay, I must then, subconsciously, want them to assume that I was heterosexual. Yup, I had done a better job on converting myself than Exodus could have done in a month of Sundays (literally)! I had managed to put myself back into the closet, a place that I hadn't even visited in over a decade.

Unfortunately, a lot of us in the gay community convert ourselves to heterosexuality. We do it for pragrmatic reasons. But we still pay a price for doing it.

Oh yeah...the interview went well. They liked me and offered the job. I accepted.

But that closet I had built for myelf was pretty darn uncomfortable.

It smelled like mothballs and I kept bumping up against the hangers.

The straight jacket I had willingly put on for a "dream job" was beginning to chafe as I started to meet new people and tried to get to know my colleagues. I began to realize the price I had paid for no longer being gay: my honesty. And I didn't like how my conversion had made me feel about myself.

So today I am performing "reparative therapy" on myself by participating in an accelerated "Coming Out" program at work. The earring is back in my ear, the rainbow sticker is back on my car, and my autographed picture of the Osmond's is up on my office wall. With any luck, I should be "cured" of being straight any day now.

I am still afraid of the potential repercussions. But as my hero, Better Midler, says: "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke!"