Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (36 page)

It’s this odd paradox within me, to want to be unique and different on one hand and on the other hand to want to be like everybody else, to feel like everybody else feels. I always have felt badly that I was never one of the guys. I was never athletic, I never hunted, I never understood the thrill of talking about pussy and tits. Now, as I try to become part of the gay community, I still feel different. Most of the gay men I talk to had early
sexual experiences, as often with male adults as male teens. I didn’t even know anybody who was gay. And when gay men talk about sexual activity of a casual nature, I haven’t done that. Part of it was morality and part of it was that from high school on I’ve had an extremely negative body image. I feel okay about my face, but I think my body is very ugly, almost grotesque. I have not had sex with very many men, in large part because I can’t imagine anyone would find my body attractive.

When I went to bars in San Francisco, a lot of the guys wore very skimpy shorts, and ninety percent of the younger ones would have their shirts off and had well-developed chests and great tans. I finally quit going to those bars because I would be so depressed. If I’d grown up in the city and been part of a group of guys, maybe I would have developed more of a sense that everybody has different bodies, they come in all shapes and sizes, and that’s okay. The locker room was the only exposure I had to boys’ bodies, when I cowered in a corner, quickly changed for gym, and always avoided taking a shower.

Outside my office is an expanse of lawn, and in the summer lots of guys go there and play ball or frisbee. They’re in shorts, shirts off, very attractive. Some gay guys love to sit and watch them, but I don’t. It’s depressing to me, like the bar scene. I wonder if that’s related to growing up where it’s not part of your experience to look at other people. In the city or suburbs, people sit on their porches and watch their neighbors. They ride buses and trains and stare at others. We never did that, and it’s uncomfortable for me to do it now or to think of somebody doing it to me. When I’m home, the blinds are closed if I think anybody can see in.

I’ve spent much of my life working very hard at being a sociable person. I often get down on myself because I wish I was more gregarious. If I go into a group where I don’t know anybody, I’m very much a wallflower. When I get together with a few close friends, I’m the life of the group. I wish more of that part of me could come out in other social settings. If I’d had more opportunity to learn about developing friendships and relationships, not being shy and backward, I might have come to grips with this sooner. It has just been within the last two years that I’ve turned my self-concept around. Body image is still a problem, but I feel good about the kind of person I am. If they could meet me and get to know me, I think a lot of people would be interested in me, not just in terms of a relationship but friendship too. I would like to meet somebody just like me. That’s how good I feel about me.

What I face now is the same issue I grew up with—how do you meet people? The frustrating thing about being in this small community is that there aren’t many opportunities, and after a while you feel like you’ve met every gay man in town. I’m
not comfortable with the bar scene, although I don’t mind going out with a group of guys for a good time. I love observing, and there’s something about being with a bunch of other gay men that’s really thrilling. There’s something about the chase that goes on in the bar that’s fun, but nine times out of ten I’m not part of the chase. To go to a bar and never get hit on is devastating to my almost futile effort to build up my body image. But my friends always say it’s hard for anybody to hit on me because I won’t give them a chance. Somebody could stare at me for half an hour and I’d never look at them. There’s still that sense of feeling awkward, not knowing how to relate socially and meet people. And there’s a fear that I haven’t figured out yet. What am I afraid of?

N
OTE

1
. John Reid. 1973.
The Best Little Boy in the World.
New York: Ballantine.

Born in 1955, Frank was one of seven children on a small livestock and crop farm near Poynette, in Columbia County, in south-central Wisconsin. He was married and the father of one child. At the time of our interview, Frank lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He died in 1993from AIDS-related causes.

The farm where Frank grew up had very rocky soil. For several weeks each spring, Frank and his siblings had to pick the rocks from the fields, load them on a flatbed wagon, and haul them to a ditch. Many wagonloads of rocks were dumped in that ditch each spring, and the dulling, oppressive nature of that work haunted Frank for many years. In the last few years of his life, he made a kind of peace with that rock-picking and all that it represented by selecting colorful rocks from the farm of his childhood and hauling them to his home in Milwaukee to create borders in his backyard garden.

This brief narrative describes Frank’s relationship with his father.

MY FATHER WAS a section foreman for the Milwaukee Railroad, so he worked away from the farm five days a week. After work, he’d go to the bar. As far back as I can remember, Mom would wake me up early in the morning to go out and do chores before school. After school, as soon as I got off the bus, I would do chores again until dark. And the whole summer was farm work. I was very angry about being charged with all those responsibilities, but Dad was off at the bar drinking, so I just did the work. I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t do what had to be done, there would be physical reprimand.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family. I would cower in my bedroom, afraid that Dad was going to come up with his five-foot leather strap with a big brass buckle. He’d hit us with that a lot. Mom was always the enabler. She would not make any judgments about Dad. He knew how to discipline us boys and keep us straight. She was protecting herself, making sure she didn’t get reprimanded or physically assaulted.

All through high school I liked to keep the garden and lawn nice, and Dad didn’t think I should be spending as much time on that as I was. He would bitch me out and tell me to get my ass out in the fields. Then he would be very critical of the way I did the farmwork, even though he wasn’t there to teach me or to supervise. He’d tell me I wasn’t feeding the hogs enough, I wasn’t keeping their pens clean enough, I wasn’t cultivating the corn right. He demanded that I cultivate a big field of corn when I was only eleven or twelve years old. When I fell asleep on the tractor and drove through a fence, I was beaten. When I started talking about going to college, Dad was very much against it. The day I actually packed my car to leave for college, he finally understood that I really was leaving, and we got into a fistfight. I beat the living shit out of him and drove away.

“I grew up in a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family.” Frank Morse, age four, sits on his mother’s lap, next to his father and sister. Courtesy of Joy Morse.

In college, I got to be a very heavy drinker, and when I was drinking I could be just like Dad. A few years ago, I gave up alcohol completely. I was very conscious that when I was angry or sad, I’d stuff all those feelings down myself with beer. As a child, I was very angry about my dad’s drinking. I yearned to have him recognize my performance and my achievements, but it never happened. In high school, he never attended my football games, track, wrestling, or plays. He never said, “You’ve done a good job,” or “Thanks for doing that,” or “I’m proud of you.” Part of my yearning to be with a man is yearning for that kind of recognition. I want a man in my life who will give me that.

“All through high school I liked to keep the garden and lawn nice, and Dad didn’t think I should be spending as much time on that as I was.” Ten-year-old Frank Morse kneels in the family vegetable garden. Courtesy of Joy Morse.

One day, in 1981, while my father and I were talking about the farm, he had a heart attack and died in my arms. For me, there was no grieving; it felt like the right time for him to go. Now, sometimes, I miss him and feel a need just to be with him, or to say, “Hey, Dad, look at all the achievements I’ve had in my life.” I know he would be proud of me, and I know that he probably wouldn’t say it. What if he had found out that I’m gay? Part of me thinks he might have been very accepting. I think, deep down, that’s one of the things he struggled with—that he wanted to be with a man. Since I’ve found out that one of his drinking friends was gay, I’ve wondered what went on.

Mark was born in 1955 and grew up with two older sisters and a younger brother in southeastern Nebraska, near Adams, in Gage County. The farm was predominantly a grain operation, with some livestock. At the time of our interview, Mark lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for a printing company as an electronic prepress specialist and Macintosh consultant. Mark killed himself in 1994 in the midst of what he described as “an ongoing struggle with clinical, hereditary depression.” In this brief narrative, Mark describes how his rural and small-town roots continued to shape his achievement-centered identity.

MY BROTHER DAN is the heir to the throne of the family farm, and he can have it. I have a feeling my parents would have been pretty thrilled if I had wanted to farm, since Pm regarded as more of a perfectionist. According to my dad, when we went out to do fieldwork during planting season, I knew how to prepare the fields just perfectly for him. But Dan is pretty much a perfectionist now, too. Some people might think he fell with his proverbial ass in the butter, but Pm not envious. Dad is supposedly retired, but even in retirement he lives and breathes farming. He goes out to the farm every day, come hell or high water, and kind of manages and manipulates things. Dan has had to learn to finesse that and sometimes has to undo my father’s damage.

It was pretty well-known, maybe even from kindergarten, that I was going to be an artist. I just exhibited that talent and it took root. God, the number of times I grumbled about being out on that fucking tractor going back and forth over the fields. And the number of times I grumbled about getting dirty with grain dust. My mom says that’s why I didn’t become a farmer. I don’t like to get dirty. My parents indulged me when I’d put up resistance after three weeks straight of going out to the field. Then it was time for me to do something else for a couple of days. But that doesn’t mean when there were emergencies I didn’t pitch in. It was a group effort, and I still feel a part of that effort today. My parents haven’t the faintest idea what I do in my career, but it’s kind of expected that I will keep up with the price of grain, and how much rain they get,
and I do keep track of that stuff. It’s second nature, something you never lose.

Even though I didn’t grow up in Adams, I considered myself an Adams person because I went to public schools there, and I had a very strong sense of community—of contributing and sharing. Sports, academics, and everything were very competitive, and when you did something, you did it as much for the glory of Adams as for your own enhancement. In my class, peer pressure and cliques were virtually nil, and the pecking order was minimal. We all tolerated each other’s idiosyncracies and respected each other’s space. The teachers instilled that in us.

In high school, anyone who had any athletic ability went out for football and basketball, because it was important for Adams to have outstanding teams. Not being a jock, I still felt a part of all that. I was student manager for the football team all four years, the right-hand man to the head coach. And I made posters that went up around the high school building the week prior to each basketball game, to help build up enthusiasm. They purchased special poster-making supplies for me, the whole nine yards. It was regarded as a significant contribution, and that’s quite a big deal for someone who’s not a jock.

It wasn’t until I was a senior, second semester, that I actually had a study hall, because I always had every minute of school filled up with something. I often had to split band and art classes because both sides were saying, “Mark, we need you!” I saw myself going to school to prepare for other things, not knowing specifically what, but it was all in preparation for something else. Mrs. Harrold, my trig and geometry teacher, could be a feisty, unyielding person to other people, but I always thought of her as someone who would not accept less than your best. Mrs. Knowles, my choral teacher in high school, was a godsend. Under her wing, I got my love of classical music—my first and last love—and the sense that you are what you set your mind to be.