HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
STRAIGHT TALK
feelings before and after treatment. Most reported that the
therapy had worked. Adding legitimacy to the study’s credibility
was Spitzer’s record on gay issues;
he had presided over the APA’s removal of homosexuality from the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973.
By this time, John had begun
wondering whether the practice
really changed anyone, but the
study helped alleviate his doubts.”
It gave me hope that maybe this
could become a mainstream idea,”
he said.
being gay thing” was for him, and
he wanted to give himself two
years to see if he could get over it.
In the sessions that followed,
Mathew pressed John to help him
understand why Jacob had left him.
Eight months later, he found out.
DAMON DAHLEN
A
few months after Mathew
and Jacob first slept together, Mathew started his
freshman year at Baruch
College and moved to Manhattan.
Jacob was still living at home, but
he slept over at Mathew’s once
or twice a week, and they would
sometimes spend weekends together. One day in early November, as Mathew was walking home
to his apartment, Jacob called and
said he needed to talk. Lingering
nervously outside a Starbucks on
2nd Avenue, Mathew heard him
out. Jacob told him he needed a
break. In Mathew’s telling, Jacob
said he didn’t know if “this whole
An old photo
of Mathew
Shurka and his
mother lays
atop some
architectural
sketches in his
apartment.
It was late spring, nearly a year
since he and Jacob had first slept
together, and Mathew was back
home at his parents’ house for the
summer. He was surprised to see
Jacob’s number come up on his cell
phone. Jacob asked if he could come
over. “We were intimate with each
other,” Mathew recalled. “Then, he
asked if we could go for a drive.”
Out on the road, Mathew listened with growing astonishment