Details Blog on men.style.com

For some men, the trouble starts when they realize they're actually straight.

-By Anna David
-Photograph by Roberto Parada

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In the early nineties, Dan Rothenberg was having a gay old time—literally. A rising comedian in San Francisco, he spent his nights at clubs in the Castro, where he discovered, to his surprise, that he was "a bit of a boy magnet." Rothenberg, then in his early twenties, was for pretty much the first time in his life finding hooking up with people easy. A regular at the Stud's disco night, he was known for starting off his routine at local comedy clubs by saying "I like my women like I like my coffee . . . I don't like coffee." Fifteen years later, he sits outside a West Hollywood Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf reminiscing with a woman about his days as an out-and-proud gay man. The woman happens to be his wife.

Rothenberg and Colleen Crabtree, both 35, met seven years ago. Five or so years before that, Rothenberg was paralyzed by fear over the realization that he wasn't actually gay. Although it took about a year to admit to himself that his Castro days were over, one incident stands out. "I happened to see a female friend getting dressed," he says. "I remember watching her and thinking 'There's no way words can describe how much I want that.'"

Despite the insistence of many—straight and gay—that switching between sexual preferences can't technically happen, Rothenberg isn't the only man to have believed he was homosexual before deciding that he was wrong. These aren't gays who attend faith-based programs to be "cured," or bisexuals who rotate between male and female sex partners the way the rest of us alternate pairs of shoes. And they're not the type who hide gay urges in public while privately trotting off to the local bathhouse.

For Andrew Brin, who grew up in Milwaukee, it was all about girls—until he had sex with a guy at the end of his senior year of high school. "It was fun and I had a great time, but I remember having the feeling that I was doing something that wasn't right," he says. In his early thirties, Brin started dating a man and came out to his brother. When he later fell in love with a woman (who was at the time a lesbian) and realized he was straight, he didn't inform anyone that he'd been waving that rainbow flag mistakenly.

And although there aren't statistics to show how many men go through a similar sexual shift, anecdotal evidence suggests that some men who consider themselves to be gay experience this kind of change not because of sexual experimentation or peer pressure but because they decide that they want to sleep with women instead of men.

For Ethan Robinson (not his real name), a 37-year-old film editor from Los Angeles, chasing women during his post-college years became a chore. "If I went to a gay bar I got hit on like crazy, whereas at a straight bar the women all but turned their backs," Robinson says. "At gay clubs you danced, you had fun. At straight clubs, you sat around, posed, and tried to affect a degree of indifference."

Frustrated by his relationships with women, convinced that romantic relationships with men would be easier, and figuring that if he never tried it he'd never know whether it was for him, Robinson got into a casual relationship with a "really attractive, interesting" guy for about two months. After the first time they had sex, "I thought, 'Well, that wasn't as weird as I thought it would be,'" he says. "I didn't recoil from the experience."

After that relationship fizzled, Robinson dated another guy but eventually realized that he wasn't gay. "It just didn't fit," he says. "It wasn't what I ultimately wanted." The switch back to women wasn't complicated, in part because he was never officially out.

But for some men the sexual confusion is a little longer-term. Bob (not his real name), a 33-year-old artist from Los Angeles, decided he was gay when he was about 10. Although he had sex with girls in high school, an extremely close friendship with a neighborhood boy, combined with homophobic taunts from his sports coaches, only strengthened his belief that he was gay. He wasn't wholly convinced he'd been right until he was 25 and went on a date with a girl but ended the night by going home with a male architect the two of them had met at a bar.

Then, while he was in his second relationship with a guy—during which he would have to fantasize about women in order to have an orgasm—Bob realized his decision had been premature. "And finally it hit me when I was in bed with the guy I was [dating] and he said, 'You're not into this.' My dick wasn't hard. I was like, 'I'm not gay, I'm not gay, I'm not gay.' It was like the flip scenario of when I thought I was gay."

While these men all think the switch from gay to straight was a definitive experience, some experts are skeptical that such a turnaround happens in any but the rarest cases. "I've only run across men who came out of the closet and pursued their gay identity but couldn't withstand the pressures of family and society so returned to being closeted and heterosexual relationships," says Ian Kerner, Ph.D., a sex therapist and the author of Sex Detox.

Nevertheless, instead of trying to run from their pasts, these men feel extremely grateful for having gone through what they did—and some even believe it makes them all the straighter. "Experimentation adds to your perspective—it doesn't limit you," says Rothenberg, who, along with Crabtree, transformed his experience into Regretrosexual: The Love Story, a two-person play that they perform to sold-out crowds in Los Angeles. And while she may be married to him, Crabtree isn't necessarily doing much to perpetuate Rothenberg's heterosexual image. When Rothenberg is informed that the blue patterned shirt he's wearing looks a little flamboyant, he sighs. "My wife picked it out," he says with a smile.

Check out these top stories from Details:

DOES EVERYONE THINK YOU'RE GAY?
For some guys, no amount of evidence to the contrary can kill a certain rumor.

IS STRAIGHT THE NEW SQUARE?
Gay men are influencing culture more than ever. Welcome to the age of heterophobia—in which the straight man could become the victim.

ARE YOU IN A BROMANCE? (OR IS IT JUST A MAN CRUSH?)
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Comments

Well, I'm assuming the author has never read any studies about sexuality--and I'm talking about going all the way back to Kinsey and the famous 1-6 Kinsey scale. This article reads like it was written somewhere around 1940, when you were either straight or you didn't talk about it--and there was no gray area. Please get a Funk & Wagnall's and look up the word "bisexual."

adambravo
Aug 6, 2008 12:56:06 PM

adambravo
Aug 6, 2008 12:56:32 PM

The author seems to assume that human sexuality is an either-or, black & white thing. She even seems to assume that being bisexual means always having sex with both genders.

Although it may be difficult for some to imagine, there are people out there for whom sex is not the end all-be all in relationships. For some people, the decision to have sex---and the decision to enjoy it or not---have more to do with attraction to a particular person rather than to a particular gender. IOW, for some people, the gender of their partner simply doesn't matter! It's not part of the attraction equation.

rx7ward
Aug 6, 2008 2:09:40 PM

Frankly, it read like a plug for the L.A. play, "Regretrosexual", which the leading expert witness in this piece wrote with his wife. Frankly, I'm skeptical of Dan Robinson's story. Was he really gay, or was he just working as a comedian in the Castro with an opportune routine?

On another level, his story can be read as an elaborate defense of the closet. As I read it, I thought of all their closeted married gay men, and their wives, rationalizing their miserable lives with pop psychology like this. Certainly gay men can and do love their wives, but gay is gay -- as I see it, it's a fundamental sexual polarity. Their wives should know that.

MatthiasG
Aug 8, 2008 12:29:38 PM

What if you only thought you were straight and were at straight bars all the time? Yes, that's been happening for ever and it is called being in the closet. I have never heard of a straight man, thinking he's gay and hanging out in a gay bar. Obviously, the person who wrote this article thinks that sexuality is a state of mind. I have news for her. If that would be the case, then there wouldn't be any "straight guys in the DL" now these days...

aarz1
Aug 12, 2008 2:57:25 AM

Um, you don't pick your sexuality like picking out a shirt to wear. You would know if you were gay or not. -If you don't know, then you're trying to fool yourself.

nlucasltd
Aug 13, 2008 12:42:26 AM

impossible

hkjshdfksjhdfkl
Aug 20, 2008 8:22:04 PM

Thanks for filling up my magazine with tripe like "What If You Only Thought You Were Gay?". Next month you could print "What if the magazine you read only printed fantasy?". Experimental Psychologist by trade-you gave me a good laugh and made me do an honest evaluation of whether or not I wanted a subscription to a pseudo psychology mag.

borebox
Aug 21, 2008 8:06:45 PM

This article may have spoken about a limited group of people, however I am definitely one of them. I was married for 10 years, came out..dated men, had a two year relationship with a man only to realize that i'm more attracted to a woman's body. I tended to date more effeminate guys, I think to get as close to a woman's body as I could, only to realize....I don't like effeminate guys!!! There obviously is a sexuality spectrum and I fall somewhere in the middle. Just the fact that I don't have any problem being with a man makes me bisexual, I guess. One poster kinda said it, that it may not be the sex at all...if I don't have a connection with someone, I could care less about sex. I also have this weird feeling that's similar to being in the gay closet, like am I in the straight closet now.

darmand
Oct 2, 2008 8:45:28 AM

I agree with Borebox. i am in the same boat right now. I have not had that much experience in the sex seen but with the stuff I have gotten myself into i have realized a lot. Im not sure what it is. But I came out junior year of Highschool. I was fully out. Gay, not femme mind you, just I liked Guys. I liked there bodies. i could go crazy thinking about there penises. I would just enoy showering around them in the showers at school. I would watch gay porn. Then I found it not something i wanted after about 4 months. I was just draging. I didnt like it. I was like im not gay. I have gay thoughts but im not gay. I just completely disregarded girls. Its not that i didnt like them. I just didnt pay them any attention because i wanted to be gay. i wanted to love a man and give him everything. But I realize I didnt want that. So i went back into the closet I guess. But I dont call it going into the closet because i wasnt going into it. I just didnt want to be gay. I wasnt hiding it. I still had the lust and attraction and Desire. But it was because I was never around it. Never around men. i had girls always around me. Always seeing them and hearing them. So I never got to see men. But when i joined the Army I was always around them. Hearing them, showering with them, being able to touch them, because we do a lot of that and stuff being dumb. But just being exsposed to that, I lost a lot of the desire and just curiosity. But just having always masterbated to men, I still have some sexual feelings. But then i had sex with a guy. I was just not into it what so ever. I wasnt hard, not even during oral sex. I just wasnt. Then I was hey maybe it was because i wasnt all attracted. I finally got the nerve to go on a date with a guy, i had always masterbated to. A near friend. i saw him once in a while. Well we had sex. the kissing was amazing. But then it got to sex and i lost all desire. i was like, Yeah I dont want this. i sort of hurt his feelings because again i wasnt hard. i just wasnt. I wanted to be into him and be the same when i thought about the sex i had with him. We did everything that i masterbated to. but it wasnt for me. I have yet to have sex with a girl. Im scared i wount please them the way im supposed to. Idk. I have a more emotional pull to women. I want them, im just scared. But men I could fucking careless. So idk. I dont know what to call this. I just have sexual thoughts of men. but cant have sex with them, but want women but just scared on what to do with them. What do you call that. IDK Im really not opposed to being gay. I Actually wish it was easier. But IDK

anfitchmodel
Oct 6, 2008 10:28:11 PM

anfitchmodel
Oct 6, 2008 10:28:12 PM

I "guess" I'm bisexual. I enjoy sex with girls, love their bodies and their smell. I have enjoyed sex with guys--had a great sexual relationship with a guy for over a year, but at the same time I regularly thought about having sex with women. Now I've had a girlfriend for over two years, and I think about sex with guys and other girls. While I was in a relationship with my boyfriend, I was quite prepared and relatively comfortable accepting that I was gay. In fact, I wished I were simply gay, but I couldn't deny that I remained strongly attracted to women. And now I remain strongly attracted to guys. Unfortunately, many people discount bisexuality, and I often encounter individuals who confidentially explain to me that I'm just too scared to admit I'm gay. Like I said, I wish I could just be gay. I wish I could just be straight. But after my experiences I've realized I am bisexual and just have to understand it for myself so I don't have to wish I were simply gay or simply straight.

matsukawa
Oct 15, 2008 3:59:31 PM

matsukawa
Oct 15, 2008 4:01:22 PM