Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (28 page)

Boy with Angus at Fair
; by Jeff Kopseng, based on a photo courtesy of Doug Edwards

Through my college years and my twenties I dated girls regularly, and tried to get in their pants a few times. I never succeeded, but I knew I could get it up for one, and if she had dropped her pants I would’ve hooked her, and I probably would’ve liked it for two or three minutes. Marriage was out of the question. I never conceived that I could hide in marriage. Girls scared me, frankly—the idea of what I would do if a girl got me in bed and wanted me to have sex with her. In my late twenties I realized I had to get off this merry-go-round of dating. It wasn’t fair to the women and it wasn’t fair to me, so I quit. I began to see more and more signs of depression, and I knew it was from loneliness and the pressure of not dealing constructively with my sexuality.

About the time I turned thirty, I started almost annual trips west for hiking, and one of the first trips I took was with a fellow I knew through work. He was two years older than me and also unmarried, a good-looking fellow, an outdoorsman, interested in a lot of the same things I was. We had done some hiking and canoeing together locally before we took a three-week trip to the northern Rockies. Even before we embarked on the trip, I started to fall for him. We camped at a particularly beautiful location in Wyoming and one morning, waking up, I was laying on my back and he was on top of me. He wasn’t laying on me, but he was on top of me looking square in my face. Just as soon as my eyes opened he went back over on his side. The sexual tension was so thick by the end of the trip, we were at each other’s throats. I fell in love with him. Infatuation is what it was, but that was a first for me. God, I was thinking about him all the time, and didn’t know what I could do about it. A few weeks after that trip, I got the nerve to tell him that I loved him, but I didn’t reveal that I was homosexual. He had a hard time taking that; he was dating girls, and it was just left at that.

That winter, the depression got quite a bit worse and I didn’t know where to turn for help. The year before that trip, I’d had major surgery, and my doctor in Danville had been very aggressive at getting at that problem and getting it taken care of. I thought he would know how I could connect with other people like me. The day I saw him, I told him flat out, “The reason I’m seeing you is because you handled my other problem so aggressively, got right to it and got it solved so I’m physically okay now. Well, I have another problem—I’m homosexual. I’m a non-practicing homosexual.” The doctor looked shell-shocked, absolutely flabbergasted, and kept asking me, “What do you mean, non-practicing?” I could not have anticipated his reaction at all. I thought this guy, having gone through medical school so recently, would know how to handle something like this. I told him, in the most specific way I knew how, what I was hoping he would do: “I’ve got to talk to someone who can help guide me.” He mumbled around some and asked a few questions. Finally he said there was an M.D. that he thought could help me.

Dr. Dooley practiced in Broad Ripple, a little artsy community in Indianapolis. At my first appointment, his questions made me uneasy right from the start. “Was your father weak? Was your mother domineering?” I knew I was in trouble when he went down that road. He told me that it was going to take quite a few sessions, but he knew he could help me. “I can make you heterosexual. My brother-in-law used to be homosexual, and I treated him, and now he’s married to my sister.” Among the techniques
he used was aversion therapy. I knew what that was, and I told him, “Excuse me, Dr. Dooley. You’re trying to get me out on first base, and I’m already on third.” I didn’t go back to him.

Two years later, I attempted to come out to a guy who I’d considered my best friend in college. We’d been roommates and I had been best man at his wedding. He was also a farm fellow. I hadn’t been much in touch with him for quite a while, but I still considered him a good friend and I needed to tell someone. His wife had a cousin who was openly gay, and they’d talked about him a lot, so I knew he was a little uncomfortable with it, but he didn’t seem to be totally put off. I put it to him as delicately as I could. “You talk about your wife’s cousin? Well, I need to tell you something about myself. I have something important in common with that person.” He knew instantly what I meant. He was rattled, but there was no outburst, and we just left it at that.

A couple months later I was in his part of the state again. I hadn’t heard from him and I wanted to find out whether or not anything was left of our friendship, so I called him and asked if I could stop by for a brief visit. He said he was going to be working in the field, but they would be around the house at noontime, so I could come on over then. I hadn’t even gotten out of the car when he came out and met me. His dad and grandfather and a lot of other people were at the house. We greeted each other and he said, “You can’t come into the house.” I didn’t even ask why. I saw his wife at the door and his dad peeking around the corner of the house.

There’s not much to say about my sexual life between 1982 and ‘89, just more bouts of depression that I dealt with by myself. I didn’t know about cruising in adult bookstores or health clubs, and the thought of going to gay bars scared the shit out of me. I did make a stab at meeting some guys through personal ads, regular guys who had similar interests to mine. All but one of the respondents were not genuinely interested in outdoor stuff, but seemed to be looking for someone to fulfill a flannel fantasy. The one who
was
interested turned out not to have any particular interest in me, but wanted me to turn over the responses of all the other people and get us together for an orgy in the woods. I didn’t want to have any part of that, so I went back in the closet.

When I was just shy of forty, I was in a retail bookstore in Castleton one day. The salesman that helped me I’d seen in there before—a very masculine, hot-looking guy. He was real friendly, had a big sunny smile, and we quickly found out that we had similar interests. Watching him write out the special order for me, I saw his nice big angular hands and I thought, god, I’d love to have that hand around my cock. He was just a regular guy, and that’s one of the things that I found so appealing about him. He said, “You want to join me for supper?” So he
clocked out and we walked across the parking lot to a restaurant. I began to sense that maybe something was happening, but I was not versed in the game of nonverbal communication. I was still averting my eyes, concealing my interest. I was scared.

TV monitors suspended from the restaurant ceiling were showing a wrestling match, and at one point, in the middle of our meal, a guy got up in the ring and took off his robe. He had a wonderful body, and we both happened to look at it and then saw each other’s unguarded reaction. We finished our meal and walked back across the parking lot. I really didn’t want to leave it on that loose end and obviously he didn’t either, because he finally said, “Doug, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” I knew what was coming, but I loved the way he put it. “Are you straight?” We made a date and a couple days later was my first sexual encounter. That’s when I lost my virginity, thirty-nine years old.

A lot of the problem I’ve had in coming out, in connecting with people, has been a personality problem—being very backward, shy, scared of people, like my father was. I had to wait till I was thirty-nine to discover what most guys take for granted when they’re fifteen. It’s a sad story, but the first time was good. I’m grateful that it happened that way instead of at a rest park, or at the hands of my father or an uncle. In all those years I never even came close to having an opportunity to mess with a guy. Why is it that I never got into a situation where I could’ve been propositioned, or where someone could’ve just flat out come on to me? I probably did too good a job of concealing my interest, not just acting straight and butch like a good, manly, farm kid should, but avoiding eye contact, avoiding anything that even hinted I was interested.

Later that year, I stumbled onto cruising. I’d gotten a new mountain bike and was riding it around a park on the south side of Indianapolis. A fellow stopped me and we started chatting, and he complimented me on my legs, and smiled. I suddenly became aware of solitary men sitting in cars looking at me. I went back to the parking lot and just sat there and started watching. For months, I would go to that park and just sit and watch, never talking to anybody. I was too scared. Then everything started falling into place. About a year and a half later, I screwed up the courage to go into a gay bar. Several married encounters had told me that the 501 was the place I should go—the Levis and leather bar. I still go to the bars fairly regularly, but I’m pretty much an outsider. I don’t talk easily to strangers, and there are some people I simply don’t want to have anything to do with.

I started doing volunteer work for the Damien Center in Indianapolis a year ago, paired up with a person with AIDS in a buddy program. My
PWA has lived the life of a street person for many years. He’s somewhat retarded, he looks bad, and has real social problems. He likes to go to a local mall to play pinball and shop in record stores, so I knew that would be one of our major activities. One of my brothers recently moved into a house nearby and works nearby. I knew he would see us out somewhere sooner or later, and it would shock the hell out of him to see me with someone like that, so last year I decided I’d better tell him what I was doing and why. I also felt it was time that someone in the family knew that I’m homosexual; I’ve never liked the word gay. He handled it okay, and said he had suspicioned it.

No way I’ll ever give my oldest brother the satisfaction of knowing for sure, even though he’s called me a queer ever since I was in junior high school. He’s pretty sure of it, but he has not a shred of evidence and I don’t want to give him that satisfaction. I hope he goes to his grave not knowing for sure that I’m a queer. If he finds out, that’s fine—I’m not going to slink away from it—but he doesn’t need to know from me. My other brother it wouldn’t bother at all. I’m sure he suspicions, and I imagine his wife does too, but there’s no compelling reason for me to say anything to him, so why bother?

Since Dad died and my mother is in a retirement home, I have the majority of the responsibility for looking after her needs. Our relations are cordial, but there’s a distance and a tension there because of differences in religious and social outlook. I have a respectful regard for her—a parental love, not an emotional love. My dad in certain respects was the kindest, broadest, most generous-spirited man I ever knew. But he had his blind spots and his narrowness.

Every Sunday afternoon I would go out to my folks’ house for dinner. Mom went to a conservative Christian church, and every week the preacher was ranting and raving about some issue. A year before Dad died, the issue was AIDS being God’s retribution on the unholy, and that came back to the dinner table. Many other times, I had rebutted things Mom brought home from her preacher, but this time I didn’t say anything. Dad stayed silent until finally he just said, “I don’t think I could stand to be in the same room with a homosexual.” I don’t know if it was just a lack of exposure, a lack of compassion, or uncomfortableness about something inside himself. Dad came from a family of all boys who, with the exception of one, were all late to marry. Their excuses were always economic, but money doesn’t keep a man from marrying till he’s in his late thirties. If you really want to live with a woman, you do it regardless of your circumstances. What my dad’s problem was, I don’t know, and of course I’ll never know. It’s not important now.

N
OTE

1.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was an English psychologist and specialist in human sexuality who called same-sex attraction “sexual inversion.” In 1936, his multi-volume
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
was published by Random House, making it available to the general public for the first time since it was originally published in the late 1890s. Until 1936, its sale had been restricted to doctors and lawyers. The volume on sexual inversion was the first book to present a comprehensive and sympathetic perspective on homosexuality.

Born in 1950, Bill grew up with one sister on a beef and grain farm operated by his extended family in Clinton County, Indiana. He lives in Indianapolis, but is still involved in raising registered livestock. In this brief narrative, Bill reflects on how the gender roles of his childhood have influenced his identity as a gay man.

ANYTIME I NEEDED to get away to think my own thoughts, I’d go walking through the woods. Often the cows would be in the woods somewhere, and part of my wandering was to connect with them. When I’d eventually find them, over a ridge or down in a hollow, I’d sit down and be with them. I was a part of the herd as far as they were concerned—they were used to me. Off in the woods, lost in my own little world, I felt like I belonged. A lot of my problems were solved sitting on a tree stump in the woods with the cows.

I never wanted to be a tractor jockey, but I could never get enough of working around the livestock as a boy. My dad didn’t spend a lot of time with the livestock, but I learned a lot from my grandfather and my uncles. In the springtime, when everybody else was busy doing fieldwork, I was much more at home with the cows—counting them and keeping records on who was bred to who and when they were going to calve. In the summertime I was showing cattle and going to rodeos, where I was belt-buckle-high to a lot of cowboys. That was a great attraction.

At the International Livestock Exposition in Chicago one summer, when I was twelve or thirteen, I was introduced to a couple of steer wrestlers. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. In a moment of pent-up excitement before they competed, one of them grabbed me from behind, lifted me off the ground, and rubbed his big knuckles into my crew-cut head. Watching him compete and slam his steer into the tanbark, I got excited thinking about how playfully rough he had been with me earlier.