Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (8 page)
Read Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest Online
Authors: Unknown
Some of these men expressed considerable enthusiasm about being gay. For others, feelings were more mixed. Although none indicated a desire to become heterosexual if that were possible, some men were clearly distressed by the ways in which being gay had affected the course of their lives. Nonetheless, many of these men reflected Harry Beckner’s opinion that “farm people tend to be down to earth, to accept things for what they are.” For some of these individuals, however, achieving that acceptance had been a very long and rough process.
These men varied greatly in the extent to which they were open with their parents or other family members about being gay. Some were actively open about it; some were passively open, making no particular effort to reveal or to conceal being gay. Others made a considerable effort to conceal their orientation—in some cases because they were not yet ready to take on the task of coming out, or because they believed that such self-disclosure would serve no useful purpose, or would give too much satisfaction to troublemaking family members.
Gary Christiansen’s direct approach to telling his family about his sexual identity is most characteristic of the men who came of age since the mid-1970s. Born in 1967, Gary grew up with an older sister and brother on a mixed livestock and crop farm in western Iowa, between Missouri Valley and Logan. The coming-out letter that Gary sent to his parents and siblings when he was twenty-five included this statement: “From the very beginning, I have accepted that I am ‘different’ and I have never struggled with my identity or wished to change it. There is nothing to change, because I am the way God made me.”
In our interview, Gary explained how his upbringing had influenced his response to being gay, including his decision to reveal that part of himself to his family.
We were raised to face things, to do what you’ve got to do to take care of each problem as it comes up. Life is unfair, but you’ve got to bounce right back. You don’t run away from your problems, because you aren’t going to get anywhere. When a problem would come up, my dad would say, “Well, that’s just the way it is—you’ll just have to deal with it.” When I realized I was gay, I didn’t try to run and hide from it. Even though I knew my parents weren’t going to like it, I knew that was just the way it was.
I sent the letter to my mom and dad, my sister, and my brother and sister-in-law. My mom called and was in hysterics. “We don’t understand this. It’s abnormal. It’s not right. We can’t tell anybody about this.” She said it was a good thing I lived in Omaha, because if I lived up there they’d
have to move. When she said she didn’t know how she was going to tell my dad, I said she didn’t have to tell him. “That’s why I sent the letter—he can read it just like you did and fall off his chair if that’s the case.” When my dad had a really hard time with it, I told him that “my being gay is no different than your goddamned tractor having two flat tires. That’s just the way it is, and you’ll just have to deal with it.”
My mom was a lot calmer when she called two days later, but she said she just didn’t understand. I said, “Think back and put things together.
You must have at least suspected.” But she said she’d had no idea. My dad said that he had suspected, and then he said, “With modern medicine, why can’t you just take a pill to take care of it?” When my mom asked,
“What did we do wrong?,” I told her that it was nothing she did that made me this way. “It’s kind of like a field of clover,” I said. “Most of it is three-leaf clover, but there’s one that has four leaves. That’s a gay clover—it’s different, but it serves its purpose. It’s there with the rest of them, just trying to survive and do its job.” She didn’t buy that analogy.
Since a few weeks after that letter, the subject hasn’t been brought up.
I’d like to sit down with my parents and talk about it, but I know my dad would just leave the room. I think, in time, my mom and I will discuss it once in a while, as we feel a little more comfortable. It’s a long process. I don’t know how to answer some of her questions, and it’s hard for me to talk to her about sex. Of course, she’s worried about AIDS. I’m trying to get into her mind that I don’t sit around in bars and have sex all the time. I get up, put my pants on, go to work, and pay my bills just like anybody else.
In one of his radio monologues on “A Prairie Home Companion,” Garrison Keillor stated that “every family needs at least one good sinner who does it right out there where you can see it.” By being open about being gay, some of these men have played that role in their families. As a result, they have experienced varying degrees of familial disdain and rejection. In some cases these negative reactions have been rooted primarily in biblical injunctions. In other cases, concern about the family’s image in the community appeared to be the main consideration. The potential for disapproval, gossip, and ridicule tends to be an especially potent enforcer of conformity—or the appearance of conformity—in farm communities, where families are often deeply rooted and thus less able to sever social ties or move away in the face of disapproval.
Terry Bloch’s description of the area where he grew up provides a vivid snapshot of the force of conformity in a rural community, and how it affected his life as a gay man.
Southwestern Minnesota is white, conservative, Republican country where, in those days, you didn’t admit there was such a thing as childabuse, you didn’t
admit that your husband was a wife-beating alcoholic, you didn’t let yourself get a divorce. You’d go to church on Sunday, smiling and waving, and keep your skeletons in the closet. The husband was the strong, dominant one in a marriage, and he didn’t talk about things. I brought those values into my relationship with Jahred, only to discover it wasn’t right. We have to be equal, we have to be more open with our feelings and thoughts. Sometimes I do a real shitty job of that.
Despite the list of apparently negative influences that one could compile from these life stories, many of these men saw much that was positive in their childhoods. Lon Mickelsen’s assessment is characteristic.
Looking back, the farm and my hometown seem like distant, impossible places—places where my life doesn’t fit, and where “keeping it to yourself” is considered an admirable trait. But growing up on the farm didn’t seem that limiting to me until I was no longer there. And though there were times when it was rough around the edges, my life on the farm gave me many of the things that I value most today : my appreciation of the importance of relying on others and allowing them to rely on me, of balancing work and play, of keeping a wide-eyed fascination in the world; my love of animals and nature, my work ethic, my desire to grow things.
Although it was common for these men to believe that their farm upbringings delayed their sexual self-understanding, they did not necessarily see that as a drawback. Barney Dews speculated that if he had grown up in a city he would have come out earlier and would likely be dead by now as the result of less-healthy living—drinking, smoking, and engaging in risky sex. “If I had come out when I was younger, I probably would have died of AIDS,” Terry Bloch commented. “Growing up where I did made me conservative, traditional, straight-laced, slower to jump on the bandwagon.”
Many of these men believed that their farm upbringings instilled in them a strong and persistent work ethic. “Be responsible, work hard, and win acceptance” appeared to be a central motivating principle in many of their lives. Mark Vanderbeek described the role of work in his life.
I tend to be an over-achiever. At times it’s a blessing and at times it’s a curse, but I don’t want anyone at work to ever have reason to say, “Not only is he gay, but he doesn’t do above and beyond the call of duty.” You can call me a faggot, you can call me any slur you want to, but don’t ever call me a sluff-off or someone who doesn’t put out 110 percent. It’s definitely a trait I picked up from my father. He would say, “Count your blessings for every day you can work.”
Karl Gussow elaborated more broadly on the work-ethic theme.
Farm life has a certain amount of genuineness to it—honesty and an inability to shirk responsibility. The cow’s udder is going to burst if you don’t milk it, the weeds are going to continue to grow if you don’t hoe them, the hay is going to rot if you don’t put it in the mow, the silage is going to reach its peak and go the other way if you don’t get it put up. I think being reared where I was has caused me to be a little more appreciative of the urgencies and the responsibilities with which we have to address life.
It was common for these men to see the reality of their homosexual orientation from a perspective very similar to Karl’s view of udders, weeds, hay, and silage. James Heckman compared his own homosexuality to a bull that doesn’t take to cows and concluded that, however inexplicable, it’s all a part of nature and must be accepted for what it is. Some of the men for whom religious belief continued to be significant had a similar “that’s the way it is” way of looking at things. Their belief that God made them the way they are and loves them the way they are seems to be a theological extension of the belief that whatever nature creates is the way it’s meant to be.
In thinking about the farming country of his childhood, Barney Dews acknowledged “something very organic that draws me back there because it’s familiar, it’s home.” Many of these men continued to feel strong connections to their rural midwestern homelands, but their feelings for these places did not tend to be wistfully romantic or sentimental. Martin Scherz described his feelings of a continuing connection to his Nebraska home.
When I go back home, I feel a real connection with the land—a tremendous feeling, spiritual in a way It makes me want to go out into a field and take my shoes off and put my feet right on the dirt, establish a real physical connection with that place. I get homesick a lot, but I don’t know if I could ever go back there and live. ... I feel alienated in a lot of ways, and it’s not the kind of place that would welcome me if I lived openly, the way that I would like to live. I would be shunned.
For many years, Dean Gray concealed his rural heritage. After finishing college in the mid-1980s, he moved from the Midwest to New York City, where he works in theater and lives in the West Village.
Now I cherish having grown up on a farm. It’s one of the first things I tell people about myself. People in New York say to me, “You’re a farm boy. What are you doing here? Don’t you miss the country, the open space, the animals?” I do. When I go back home to Wisconsin, I’m out in the barn first thing in the morning, feeding the animals and cleaning the barn. I feel something there I can’t feel in New York.
However, apart from fantasizing about living on a few acres in the country, most of the men who were living in cities and towns were not looking to move back to farming communities. They tended to believe that, despite the appeal of certain aspects of farm life, urban life offered them as much or more promise of fulfillment. It appeared that what they valued most about their farming backgrounds they carried with them, wherever they lived.
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Life:
June 26, 1964, pp. 66-74, 76-80.
Our Favorite Team
, by Jeff Kopseng, based on a 1920 photo of an Indiana farm boy, courtesy of Larry Reed
DESPITE PROFOUND changes in the character of U.S. life from the early 1900s to the mid-1960s, there was little change throughout this era in the kind or quantity of information about homosexuality accessible to a farm boy coming of age in the Midwest, The invisibility of homosexuality through the 1930s was described by Robert C. Reinhart in
A History of Shadows.
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