Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (52 page)

Nobody told us that some of the authors we read in high school were gay, that some of the music we heard was written by gay men. I feel like I was cheated out of a whole culture. At college I was able to get a better connection with it, and when I moved to Washington, D.C., I really saw there was a culture, it wasn’t just a bunch of men having sex. We had art, we had history, we had music. It seemed like I found a home. There’s so much about gay culture I like. It’s fun, it’s creative. It’s also catty and vicious, but it’s just so colorful. I wish you could inspire young kids who are coming out to look at what’s available to them. They don’t have to do
mainstream America. I know gay men who would love to be straight. My god! White, middle-class, Protestant, college-educated. If it weren’t for being gay, I would be part of the horrible majority. I don’t see Range Rovers and car-seats in my future. I see gala balls and Halloween masquerades and horrible drag shows and pride festivals, tit-piercing and tattoos and big, burly lesbians in leather jackets. And then there’s that whole other side of it, where they take off the leather jackets and teach Sunday school.

I live in one of the gay neighborhoods of the Twin Cities, and a couple years ago I was beaten up two blocks from my house. A friend and I were walking across the street and a car ran a stop sign and tried to hit us. Then he got out and beat the shit out of me. There was nothing overt about us. Neither of us were wearing any gay insignia; we weren’t even talking at the time. But people see us and jump to that conclusion, and there’s a segment of the population that will act viciously on those assumptions. I learned a lot from the experience and became very vocal about my bashing; I did a lot of public speaking and interviews. Now Dallas and I make it a point to make public displays of affection. You try to explain it to people who are not gay by telling them to imagine going out with their date and not being able to kiss them or hold their hand or put their arm around them.

I grew up eight miles from town, and I always thought it was a great distance, mostly because my father drove only about thirty miles an hour. “Set the cruise control for thirty? Come on, Dad, cars can go faster than tractors!” The isolation was compounded by the whole sexuality issue and by my strengths being in academics. That sense of isolation pushes you together. It’s infuriating to have seven people in a house with four bedrooms and one bathroom, but you overhear each other’s conversations, you talk to each other, you bump into each other constantly, you really get to know each other.

Despite living in different cities and states, we’re a pretty close-knit family and they’re very important to me. I call my mother two or three times a month and we’ll chat. When I was having such a problem with my folks about my sexuality, I was furiously angry, but there was no way I could cut them out. They’re too important. I need their support so much, to hear good things from them, to hear about what’s going on back home.

I laugh the hardest when I’m with my sisters. Within ten minutes we’re just screaming, tears rolling down, almost wetting ourselves. My dad just looks at us like “What is
with
those kids?” Lisa is a lesbian, very open, very vocal. She’s thirteen months younger than I, but it’s like we were switched at birth. She was such the tomboy, and I was such the wuss. I would be
given toy trucks and rifles, and Lisa would play with them. I would play with dolls and she would have war games and blow up my GI Joes. To have it be a surprise for either one of my parents—come on! Were you guys paying attention for fifteen or twenty years?

Lisa is the sister I’m most like, for a variety of reasons, our inverted sexualities being one of them. We feel like the odd people out, the other part of the family tree, and that kind of pulls us together. I love her dearly, and she’s the one I wish I was closest to, but we have different ways of getting things done, different views of the world and politics. In particular, she is becoming a real man-hating dyke, a separatist. Every year her hair gets shorter.

Lisa has been in a relationship now for almost five years. Her girlfriend, Pam, is such an integral part of the family. She has been at every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, everything, first as my sister’s roommate, then as her partner and lover. So when my parents choked on my sexuality, I said, “Wait a minute! What do you mean I can’t bring anybody home? You have a lesbian daughter who’s been bringing her girlfriend home for years, and you know it.” But I don’t think my parents could conceive of a sexual relationship between two women, whereas—very graphically and luridly—my mother could picture her baby boy being sodomized. My mother is convinced that all gay men do is have sex, and Lisa perpetuates it when she says, “All you do is fuck.” Lisa says when she goes to Gay Pride she sees the lesbian couples with their babies, and a lot of single men being bawdy and ostentatious. She doesn’t realize that kind of overt sexuality and camp is very much a part of our culture.

It’s not just lesbians who are out there having long-term committed relationships. I think a lot of gay men are looking for one person to share their life with. A lot of us want and hope for that. Whether or not we have the skills to get it is a whole different thing. I learned a lot about relationships by not falling into one, by making it a point to be single for almost two years. Dallas and I have been together a little over a year, and he is the only partner I’ve ever wanted to bring home. I say partner because the rest of them have all been boyfriends, and I see Dallas in a whole different light.

I never would have thought I would be able to bring Dallas home, but about two months ago we were going to be driving to Chicago and he asked me if I wanted to stop at my parents’ place. I suggested it to my mother, just off-the-cuff. “But I’m not coming home with any pretenses,” I said. “Dallas is coming as my boyfriend. And
no,
we’re
not
going to have sex on the kitchen table.” Mom was really taken aback, but I had given her time to ask Dad and Grandma if they would be comfortable with it. They
had a lot of preconceived notions, having never met any of my boyfriends. I’d had a couple of really awful relationships, Rob being the first one. Then I had a lover when I lived in D.C. who turned out to be a psychotic killer. Mom knew about that one, too, so she was probably wondering what kind of Jeffrey Dahmer look-alike I was going to be bringing home, or what kind of flaming, ostentatious queen wearing a tutu.

I told Dallas, “You’re not only going to be meeting my parents, you’re going to be meeting my entire family. They’ve all found an excuse to come home this weekend.” When Dallas and I pulled up and he was just a real average-looking, nice, cordial kind of guy, I think it blew them all to hell. The stress level was high, but they were all really nice, very civil, and a lot of fun. Dad talked to Dallas more than he talked to me. My grandma was a little jittery, up-front and personal, and her smile was stretched very thin, but she was very cordial. Everybody was being civil about as long as they could. When we pulled out I said to Dallas, “I think if we had stayed another hour, my grandmother would have had a stroke.”

When I was maybe ten, Dad fell down beside a cow and was repeatedly kicked. His leg was broken in many places and his ribs were cracked. It happened in April, just as planting season was starting, and he was in a wheelchair and crutches for a long time; the cast came off in November. Dad came from a large family, so we had lots of help that entire season. There were crews to do the planting, the cultivating, the haying, and to help with the milking. I had cousins I hadn’t even known about. I don’t know of any other occupation where something like that would happen. It’s not just an occupation, it’s a whole culture.

In the last six months, my father has decided to sell the farm. I’ll be glad to see Dad not working so much, but it’s going to be hard to sell the farm, because it really is a part of every one of us kids, and very much a part of my father. With Dad planning to sell the farm, there’s a lot of people who are looking on it as a real loss, because he’s been at it for fifty years in the same place, and the farm has really changed under him. I feel some guilt, but I think Dad and Mom have come to terms with the fact that I’ve chosen a life of my own. I know there’s been a real longing for me to be there so that it would continue, but Dad has said he doesn’t want his kids to do it, because you have to work too hard for too little money and recognition. He wants his kids to have a better life, and he sees it off the farm.

I never thought much of the farm growing up; it was just where I always was. Then there was a time when I thought the farm was a really bad place to grow up, because I felt I missed out on a lot of things. Now I realize how important it was, and I know that huge tract of land so
intimately. I can traipse around in the woods and know my way in and out. We used to joke that we lived on Walton’s Mountain, because our farm is perched on top of a very steep hill. It’s a very bluffy area, but it wasn’t until I went away that I realized how beautiful the area really is. When I look down those precipices, those virtual cliffs we pushed ourselves off of on toboggans, sleds, and inner tubes, I’m amazed that we weren’t killed!

Postscript:
In 1994, I set up the “Shulka Scholarship for Social Equity” at my high school in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Applicants were to write essays on topics such as government, gay history, AIDS, racism, and leadership. The school was eager to offer a scholarship from an alumnus, but when the school board found out I was gay they attempted to bar my scholarship. Although it ended up being allowed, the climate that was created resulted in no applications. In its place, I purchased two dozen books on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender themes for the high school library. I hope that these books will help educate students so that they will be eager to apply for my scholarship in coming years. I am working with several other gay alumni to set up additional gay-positive scholarships at Prairie High and in surrounding small towns.

N
OTE

1.
In describing himself as “a Kinsey six,” Joe is referring to a scale developed by sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, who viewed homosexuality and heterosexuality as parts of a continuum. An individual’s position on the seven-point Kinsey scale was based on both psychological reactions and overt experience. The scale ranged from zero (those whose histories were exclusively heterosexual) to six (those whose histories were exclusively homosexual).

Todd was born in Hastings, Nebraska
, in 1967,
and grew up with a younger brother on a farm/ranch near Prosser,
in
Adams County, south-central Nebraska. His father and two uncles farmed about 2,000 acres of row crops
—
corn, soybeans, wheat, and milo. In addition, his father ran and calved out about 500 head of cattle. At the time of our interview, Todd lived in Omaha.

BEING GAY HAS never really bothered me—there it was and that was it. I’d always been different in every other way from everybody I grew up with. What the hell was one more thing? And nobody else around me had ever been perfect. I still couch it in terms of, “Okay, I’m not perfect, but nobody else is.” Friends will say they wish they were straight, but it’s kind of silly to wish for something you’re not. And being gay is my only claim to minority understanding. Otherwise, I’m a complete majority person: white, male, Republican. If I wasn’t gay, would I know that there’s a whole other world out there besides Prosser, Nebraska? I really would have missed something if I didn’t know anything besides my family, my farm, my church, my small town. So, in that sense, maybe being gay is the best thing for me.

Where I came from, social life consisted of dating the girl you were supposed to marry, going to a movie, and sitting in a hometown bar talking about the same things every day. When I was twenty-two and first came out, the gay scene in Lincoln seemed ultra-exotic and fascinating. There were new people to meet, new ways to talk and think and dress, new music. I had no clue how to operate socially, but it was fun to learn, to figure out how to fit in. Here in Omaha I know I’ve been laughed at and looked at as stupid because I come from the country, so a lot of times I don’t tell people. You just kind of dust over your tracks. You try not to talk like you’re from the farm, you don’t act like you care about the weather. It’s almost like being gay twice; you hide two things instead of one.

Some people assume that if you’re gay you’re going to move to the biggest city and wear the flamiest clothes and learn how to walk the swish. I would rather be able to go back to live in my hometown—maybe not find the perfect mate, but be happy with what I’m doing. I’ve never met
anybody else who loved where they came from as much as or more than they loved being gay. Where I came from is as important as what I am. In fact, it’s hard for me to separate the place from the person. I listen to country music and I go out of town to do rodeo on as many weekends as I can. I have the big belt buckle I won in college and I have the big black hats in the closet, which I like to wear. If I go home for a weekend, I start talking like a redneck. When I get boisterous, I’m very physical. My family was not above rassling, and it wasn’t unheard-of to hit somebody if you argued.

My brother Tony and I started driving the pickup on the farm at age six, as soon as we could reach the pedals. We also learned how to drive a tractor right away; we started out doing the things that didn’t require a whole lot of brains. Disking a field a quarter-section in size didn’t require driving straight. You could just drive and tear up dirt. When you got into junior high, you were old enough to cultivate corn. Hopefully, along the way, you’d learn to do all this right and you’d pick up all the mechanical skills. I never did. I was always saying, “Dad, I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s not working.” I felt I had to prove I could do things, but I wasn’t getting, it and Tony was. Until Tony came along, my dad would tolerate teaching me things. But it was obvious that Tony was what my father wanted—the next generation of farmer. There was something that was drawing them together—or at least not pushing them apart—that wasn’t there with Dad and me. It drove me crazy! From then on, my father and I grew further and further apart.