APRIL 29, 2026

I was sitting on my mother’s couch, watching TV, as thoughts about my life circled my head, the way vultures treat their prey from a distance. I mustered up the courage to ask her a theoretical question. There was never a better time than this; it was now or never.

“Mom, what would you do if you found out I was gay?”

She looked at me with eyes full of anxiety and horror. “You’re not, are you?”

“Of course not.” I could hear a door slamming shut in my head, and the sound of a key turning, however so faint it was.

“Good.” She looked away from me. “Well, first, I’d cry…and then I would try to get you into conversion therapy.”

What I thought was me simply posing a hypothetical was actually my subconscious seeking to be heard and understood in any way possible. The truth of what I was hearing was more frightening than the truth of who I really was. I nodded my head, unable to speak. The television droned on as my brain processed her response.

In this day and time, saying this to your kid while they were essentially trying to find their place in this world would be considered egregious. However, this was the mid-90s, and I lived in a somewhat conservative state, where everything from your family and friends to religion and the broader culture told you, implicitly or explicitly, how to live your life. It was also a learned behavior to threaten your kids with whatever was at your disposal to make them do what you wanted. At merely 20 years old, with no other parent to turn to, and no one I could rely on for financial or emotional support, I suffocated the idea or thought of being a lesbian. I snuffed it out quickly, as though it were a candle at the end of its wick. However, this was at my own expense. It would be still a few more years before I left home. Instead of an opportunity for self-discovery as a Peace Corps volunteer half way around the world, as I had hoped, I found myself house-hopping three thousand miles away, moving in with my now ex-husband. Within ten years, I would go from posing such a scary question to my lesbophobic mother to being immersed in chemotherapy to treat stage IV breast cancer to becoming ensconced in the idyllic framework that involved me walking down the aisle in a white dress. I was essentially saying yes to the idea of a compulsory heterosexual life, though the damage it caused could never be undone, but only healed over. The universe had been offering a gift to me I could look at and say, “Ooh, how pretty! I think I’ll take it.” All boxes hold some potential, don’t they? Except for the rare occasion you open one, to discover there’s nothing waiting for you to admire. Just air, and maybe a little dust from the floor it was wrapped on.

I need to be clear: yes, this is a true story, one I wish did not come true. I had a chance, in my early 20s, to discover, on my own, if being a lesbian was really for me. Instead, I lived another 30 years believing I was straight, though some might have thought the flannels and the leather jacket gave me away. Or the way I walked heel first, striking the floor hard, just to feel that grounded state. The truth was I had no other place to go. It was CompHet or die.

Since I realized my true nature months ago, the questions continue to surface, because my curiosity is just built that way. But the question of “which way does my arrow point?” has been answered, at last.

This week’s story, “All The World’s A Cage,” is a piece of flash fiction I composed in less than an hour. It is a cautionary tale disguised as social horror. It is a story of a woman forced to undergo conversion therapy, as the dystopian society she lives in actively roots out the last women on the planet who refuse to conform to its heterosexual standard. While this story has fantastic potential to become a longer narrative, may you enjoy it now, while it remains short, sweet and simple. ⚢