I haven't from the start, been convinced that the dichtomy here is as simple as gay/straight. I can see how those readings arise, but there just isn't enough here to hang your hat on. I think either Paul and/or Ted (sorry I can't remember which of their two great posts I'm thinking of) point out that this is an interior monologue whose narrative sense is subordinate to the language and the sound of that interior voice, grappling with a sturggle that is sexual/gender/idenity oriented.

After many readings the other curious thing about this poem is its sense of time: the tense seems to shft all over the place. It's not quite fixed in the present, it's too deeply entrenched in the "transgressions" of the past for that, but it zooms back to the present with "I'll Crawl, for them." And then those last two lines squeeze together almost a visionary sense: looking from the present into the lamp black, which prompts that "Remember" and then "Just after she left, burning the last wick" I'm wondering whether this sense of unfixed time reflects the narrators unfixed identity or perhaps the interior and timeless nature of the voice?

It didn't start with the phenobarbitol or the reefer,
The ironweed or the magnetic force of a gentle woman.
It started with a voice saying return that I could not hear,
And the nineteen Amidahs did nothing for transgressions.
Scarletted-up—all those years—I fiddled and giggled
And got muscle-bound as a deaf dreamer, a striper,
A pressed-against pirate, got teary and ripe with the scuttled
Worry coming back again and again, and no winners
To speak of, no vintage TV to settle in with like sins
Of the zodiacal light or kissing cousins or crummy laws.
I haven't been called a weak sister, and I don't mean to, that's plain.
But the rummy tumblers, the bloody knuckles, I'll crawl
For them. I'll crawl. And the cutting up and the swear words—
Such crimson no wool can wrap around. Look unto the lamp black
And see givers and campy gents and you'll forgive anything hard.
I have. Remember? It was just after she left, burning the last wick.