Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (25 page)

Compared to the men who went before them, those who came of age between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s generally had less difficulty coming to terms with being gay. A more liberal social climate lessened the pressure to marry, which made it more likely that a gay man would figure out that he really
was gay
before he found himself hitched. And America’s sexual revolution increased the likelihood that he could envision a life apart from the heterosexual mainstream. Though limited in scope and usually negative in tone, the growth of gay visibility in the mass media helped to foster the idea of a distinctly gay way of life. But it was apparent that this kind of alternative lifestyle would have to be lived clandestinely, or as part of a fringe community in a large city, and neither of these prospects seemed feasible to many men. An empowering sense of gay community and a more open, mainstream gay identity were just beginning to develop.

David Foster gives a candid account of the emotional and sexual passions and frustrations of a highly romantic adolescent. Some may be repelled by his descriptions of bestiality, but his story is an important illustration of how a socially isolated teenager found an outlet for his sexual urges. In contrast, wet dreams constituted Doug Edwards’s only sexual outlet until he learned to masturbate at age eighteen, and masturbation was his sole outlet until his first sexual encounter with another man at age thirty-nine. The insularity of German farm communities figures prominently in what Larry Ebmeier and Martin Scherz say about the ways in which their childhoods have influenced their lives. Richard Kilmer exam
ines the comfortable middle ground he has found between rural and urban; Tom Rygh ruminates on the assets and privations of his small-town life.

Mark Vanderbeek reflects on his efforts to achieve, as an urban professional, the solid self-identity and support he felt as a Nebraska farm boy. Abusive parents are the focus of Heinz Koenig’s and Frank Morse’s accounts. In contrast, Bill Troxell celebrates his grandfather’s gentle influence. Dale Hesterman and Everett Cooper, both recently divorced, examine their hard-won gay identities and the hurdles they faced—for Dale extreme social awkwardness and a poor body image, for Everett the blinders and baggage of a rigorously fundamentalist religious upbringing. John Berg, never so burdened, recalls with fondness his first date—with another teenage farm boy.

1.
Paul Welch and Ernest Havemann. “Homosexuality in America.”
Life:
June 26, 1964, pp. 66-74, 76-80.

2.
Described in
The Alyson Almanac.
1990. Boston: Alyson Publications, pp. 28-29.

3.
“God and the Homosexual.”
Newsweek:
February 13, 1967, p. 63.

4.
Described in
The Alyson Almanac.
1990. Boston: Alyson Publications, p. 28.

5.
“Where the Boys Are.”
Time:
June 28, 1968, pp. 80-81.

6.
“Coming to Terms.”
Time:
October 24, 1969, p. 82.

7.
“The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood.”
Time:
October 31, 1969, pp. 56, 61-62, 64-67.

8.
Described in
The Alyson Almanac.
1990. Boston: Alyson Publications, pp. 32-33.

9.
James Kirkwood. 1973.
P.S. Tour Cat Is Dead.
New York: Warner.

10.
James Kirkwood. 1968.
Good Times, Bad Times.
New York: Fawcett.

11.
Gordon Merrick. 1971.
The Lord Won’t Mind.
New York: Avon.

12.
John Reid. 1973.
The Best Little Boy in the World.
New York: Ballantine.

David was born in 1948 and grew up with four brothers, two older and two younger\ on a grade-A dairy farm in Manitowoc County, in eastern Wisconsin. He lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

I LOVE TO go to straight bars, but I don’t cruise per se. I just like to look at guys. I usually run into somebody that I know from work and that makes me feel confident—if anybody is wondering why I’m there, he’ll see that I’m talking to one of the gang, so I’m okay. One time I met two really sweet guys from work at Ten-O-Two, a popular bar in town. I asked, “Are you guys married?,” meaning were they married to women. One of them laughed and said, “No, Dave, we’re just buddies.” I thought that was kind of cute. He was answering me in a gay context, so I knew that he knew I was gay. Usually if we’re drinking, things come up and if there’s a private moment here or there they’ll ask me questions about being gay. They’re curious, and sometimes it’s to my advantage.

When I’m with buddies from work, I’m very conscious of how I talk and conduct myself. I believe in blending in, maybe because I have to in my job and in this size community. I don’t go for guys that are trying to prove a point by holding hands and walking through the mall, saying “We have as much right to hold hands and kiss in public as straight people do.” I just don’t like that public display, proving to the world that you’re gay. I would never take part in a gay pride parade. If I see somebody being ostentatious, earrings galore all the way up the ear or something like that, I think it’s too much. I believe in being yourself, but there’s a proper time.

I ‘ve met some gay people from the bigger cities, and I think there is such a thing as coming out too early. Coming out later is significant in getting a broader aspect of the whole thing. I think I’m more concrete-thinking on a lot of things, not so flitty. You’re older when you’re learning about things, so you think a little more and can make better decisions, like about doing drag or taking it up the wazoo. I don’t do risky things, like public cruising.

Mom cleaned the milkhouse every day and did many other farm chores. I helped her with the house-cleaning, gardening, and cooking, while my two older brothers helped my dad with the farm chores. I preferred to work with Mom, but when my two younger brothers became old enough to help her, I was forced into doing some of the farm chores. What I did, I did very well. I’ve always been a very thorough person, very organized and clean. I did farmwork that way too, cleaning the barn and sweeping the feed into the cribs. I loved side-raking hay, transforming the field of cut hay into neat rows. When I followed the row of hay, it would bug me if I missed any. I’d get off the tractor and take a fork and throw the hay in on the corner. I would wash the glass block windows in the barn after whitewashing. Nobody else would do it, but I just thought it wasn’t finished—there was whitewash sprayed on the windows and it didn’t look right, so I washed it off before it cured. Once it cured, you couldn’t get it off. I was complimented for things like that. My mother would say, “David’s the only one that sweeps it that clean.” My dad liked my working for him. I never lost my temper, I never complained. We were up at 4:30 in the morning, went out there and did chores, then washed up a little bit and changed clothes. We undoubtedly smelled like the barn when we went to school, but
we
didn’t know it.

We had to wear the same pants and shirt to school all week. In high school I was a little self-conscious about that, so I would try making it look like a different outfit by wearing a sweater with the shirt. But everything was ironed, and there was no way that four boys in school were going to change shirts every day, plus all the barn clothes. It was just too much work. Sunday nights the kitchen table went way to one side, and Mom set up the stuff she needed to start right early in the morning washday Mondays—the old wringer washer, and the three washtubs for rinse and bluing, and a scrub tub with the washboard in it. She did the socks and the handkerchiefs on a scrub board before throwing them in the washing machine, and then everything went out on the line.

When I was little, I was such a mama’s baby, always hanging onto her leg, that she’d finally just slap me one and say, “Sit down and play.” With some of the gifts that I wanted for Christmas, Mom or Dad would say, “Oh, that’s for girls,” but I still wanted things that other boys wouldn’t want, like an Indian bead craft set, a loom to make potholders, a little aluminum tea set, and a Betty Crocker baking set. I had a big Gilbert erector set with a real electric motor, and I really enjoyed that. I loved to watch
The Wizard of Oz
^l
every year. It bugged me because it would start at 6:00 in the evening and I had to go out and milk cows at that time. I was pissed off—they could at least let me watch the beginning when the tornado comes.

David Foster, age thirteen, with Skipper. Courtesy of David Foster.

We were a fun family and had a lot of fun times when cousins and aunts and uncles would come. We had food galore under the big shade tree, and played croquet. I was good at that. We got together at every meal. Supper was when things were talked about, and we were all at home in the evenings. We were tired. We all had chores to do before supper that started as soon as we got off the school bus. We’d get into our farm clothes, feed the chickens and gather the eggs, throw straw down for bedding, put hay down from the mow. Putting the milking machines together was always my job. After supper we’d go out and milk the cows, and that lasted sometimes till 8:00. We’d come in and do school work around the kitchen table under a buzzing fluorescent light, watch a little TV—”The Ed Sullivan Show,” “Gunsmoke”—and then we all went up to bed about the same time.

Our clubhouse was originally a chicken coop. I would keep it clean, and asked Mom for some old curtains, ran a stick of wire through them, and put them on the windows. When Mom threw out an old rug, we even had carpeting in there. Aunt Clara lived in Milwaukee and would bring all kinds of old dresses and purses and hats—even little bottles of cologne and old lipsticks. My younger brother and I would put this stuff on and parade around. I made a hoop skirt with binder twine and rings from a barrel, and put a big skirt over it. I had heels and nylons and a hat. It was wonderful. My brother liked to dress up in an old suit and put on little wire-frame glasses. He had a cane and walked like an old man, and we’d walk around arm in arm. My parents would laugh and take pictures.

“Putting the milking machines together was always my job. After supper we’d go out and milk the cows, and that lasted sometimes till 8:00.”
Above,
fifteen-year-old David Foster helps with milking.
Belowj
he pours a pail of milk into the bulk milk tank in the milk house. Courtesy of David Foster.

Sometimes people would stop in to buy eggs. I was the guard when my mom would wash her hair at the kitchen sink, where she could use the sprayer. She would take her blouse off and had a bra on. “If anybody comes to the door, tell them to wait.” I was a good boy. We were all good boys. We didn’t get into town much, and even in town there wasn’t anything really bad going on. My older brothers went out for football and track, but I just wasn’t into that. I liked gardening, and my mom would let me order some gladiolus bulbs or something different. One year I raised First Lady snapdragons from seed. I started them in an old dresser drawer full of dirt, with plates of glass over it, and I set that by the house at the southern exposure. I nurtured those little transplants, and stuck them all in a big row in the garden. They were beautiful, one of my achievements in my teens. I was good in the garden. The care was there. I looked at things every day to see how much they had grown. We always had a big garden— a big row of raspberries, strawberries, always a big potato field, and a big patch of pumpkins.

Once I asked my dad what the rooster was doing to the hen, standing on top of her with her neck feathers in his beak, pushing his tail feathers behind hers. He told me that it made the hen lay more eggs. As for breeding the cows, Dad used artificial insemination—and even that was a mystery. We had to leave the barn when the breeder man arrived, so I grew up thinking that
he
fucked the cows.

My younger brother and I would play around with our cousins, Linda and Ruthie, in the empty corn crib, showing off how far we could pee, much to their delight. I kind of had a crush on their father, who was very open about taking a leak in the barn. My dad was very prudish. If we’d walk in on him when he was taking a piss in the gutter, he’d quick put his hand there to cover it. My cousins’ father would whip it out anywhere. He had a big cock, and he’d just take a piss, and it kind of turned me on. Once in a while he’d come out and help my dad do farmwork. Fixing the chopper, laying there on the ground underneath it, his shirt would ride up and I’d see his belly. It was erotic.