Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (20 page)

My mother was rather strict and her emotions could fly apart at times, and my dad was always difficult to reach. Except for my grandfather, I never felt any intimacy, and I never felt my parents understood me. They loved and cared for me, but I sensed that I was not living up to their expectations. Early on, I began to sense there was something different about me. I didn’t know what it was, but there were things that I couldn’t relate to them.

Often I wished I could be at my mother’s side to cook and bake and sew, but in German Catholic farm families only girls did those things. When we would go visiting, I was very interested in how the house was decorated, what type of food was on the table, how well-dressed they were. Needlework, knitting, and crocheting fascinated me, and I really wanted to do them. But had I done them, I would have been ridiculed for being such a sissy. My uncle would have started it and it would have spread out from there. Even my grandfather would say, “Oh, you don’t want to do that. That’s girl stuff.” My grandfather would never do anything domestic, and washing dishes was the only thing my dad would ever get involved in.

When I was in the seventh or eighth grade, there was a very nice and attractive young man who lived on a farm not too far from us. He was a junior in high school and a very good basketball player. In Indiana, basketball is king. It shocked the community when he shot himself, committed suicide. They talked about the fact that he didn’t go out with girls. I admired him and felt like I understood him. He too felt that pressure to be the square peg in the square hole.

On the farm, I was able to bury myself in so much work that I was tired at night. I couldn’t think about going out. I was exhausted, and I was so busy with the 4-H club and with my projects. In high school, the kids in town would go to the swimming pool and mess around at the drive-in restaurant. I never had time to be there. Through farmwork, I buried a lot of fantasies. I became very caring towards older people and was a darling to a bunch of old ladies. I think I was doing this to find relationships.

The drawings on restroom walls was where I got my sex education in high school; penises, the female organs, that’s where it goes. One time when I went over to a neighbor boy’s place after school, I saw his bicycle by the chicken house. I peeked inside and saw that he had an erection and was having intercourse with a chicken. He must have ejaculated, because he was really going at it. When he came out the door, I had stepped away and acted like I had just arrived, and nothing was said about it.

I would see bulls and boars mounting cows and sows and I would wonder, what makes them do that? How do they know what to do, where to stick it? I would wonder how a man and woman could get together to have a child. What arouses them? I never felt that, and I thought maybe it was because the human race had advanced beyond those animal instincts. At Purdue, I had a course in the physiology of reproduction in farm animals. The professor was rather blunt and to-the-point, and it wasn’t until then that things really began to go together. I was so naive, I didn’t even know about the female anatomy.

I was twenty-two or twenty-three when I began to masturbate, and had my first sexual experience when I was twenty-five, in graduate school. A guy approached me in the library rest room and we went to his dorm room and had sex. I loved it, but I was so scared I was shaking. The old-time Catholic church was wonderful at teaching guilt. I went to a priest immediately afterwards and cried uncontrollably. “Don’t worry about that, it will pass,” he told me. “It happens to a lot of guys. You’ll meet a fine girl and you’ll have some kids.”

Two or three times after that, the same guy approached me. When I said I couldn’t do it, it wasn’t right, he tried to tell me it was okay if it was what I really wanted and if
I
felt okay about it. I had a couple of experiences with a married guy in graduate school who followed me into my room. I didn’t like that, because he was forcing himself on me—although I have to admit there was a little bit of it I liked.

I was twenty-seven when I got married, in 1968. I thought I would grow into it, because that’s what the priest told me. It was time to get married, and she was a fine woman. I think one of the reasons I married her was that she was a few years older than I was, like my brother, and she seemed to be the type of woman he might have married. It sounds strange, but in many ways I looked at her as being more of a sister-in-law than a wife. And because my brother would have had children, I had children. There was a time when I thought of my own children as my brother’s children.

In our early years of marriage, sex was okay. I could do it as long as we were having children. But when my wife had a hysterectomy, sex became
impossible for me. My wife knew something was wrong. I was in pretty bad shape, very despondent. I had decided to suppress my homosexual feelings, and that I would end my life if they ever came to light. I would never accept it, and became very much a homophobe as a defense. I knew all the dirty jokes about fags and queers. Then, when I was about thirty-four, I met a guy—gay and good-looking—and I fell head-over-heels in love.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I went out to the piece of farmland that I owned, drove my car into the barn, and made a serious suicide attempt. There was no reason why it failed, except maybe the grace of God. The vent came loose from the tailpipe. I kind of lost consciousness, rolled out of the car, and found myself on the ground when I came to. After wandering around the farm for a while, feeling like the biggest failure ever, I went home and my wife took me to the hospital. She kept telling me that whatever the problem, she would be willing to accept it. When I got to my third stay in the hospital psych, ward, I told her I was homosexual. She was hurt, but there was never a thread of anger. She was so relieved to know what the problem was. I’m not sure I would have pulled through, had it not been for the way she accepted it.

I called my parents to ask them to come to see me in the hospital. It had gotten to the point that I wouldn’t even talk to them. They were calling and sending letters, saying they cared about me and were praying for me—whatever my problem, they wanted to know about it and would accept it. But I knew they felt absolute disgust about this issue. When we had a little family conference in the hospital, I told them I was homosexual. They reacted negatively, said it was just so disgusting. My wife told them that if they wanted their grandchildren to be a part of their lives, they would have to accept their son for who he was. They’ve never talked with me about it since then, but they’ve accepted it. I love them and they love me, and they see how happy I am. My dad and I have gotten closer. The last few times we’ve seen each other, we’ve actually given each other a hug.

I told my children when they were in high school, and we have very amiable relationships. My daughter had a lot of anger toward me, but is accepting things very well. My son is having a tougher time dealing with it and is not real comfortable being around me. He has always been kind of the macho athletic type and is terribly paranoid that someone is going to find out. I think in time he’ll be okay.

On the farm, I learned to appreciate nature, and for me being gay is a very natural thing. Some cornstalks do not bear ears of corn, some gilts do not have babies. Normally when you raise breeding stock they reproduce, but
not everything fits into place perfectly. On a farm, you accept that some things are out of the ordinary. That has helped me to accept being gay. One time, a neighbor had paid a lot of money for a bull, but it wouldn’t breed any cows. It’s a natural thing—it happens in nature. I wonder what would have happened to that bull if it had been with a bunch of bulls?

Living alone as I do, there’s a degree of loneliness. Farmers are that way too. They have neighbors and friends, but on the farm they’re out there working alone. You learn to accept and appreciate the quietness. I love being alone sometimes, but not all the time. I like having a lot of friends. I don’t have a lot of real close friends, but I have a lot of good acquaintances. I don’t feel compelled to jump in and out of relationships. I was involved in a relationship for six or seven years, and for five of those years I was pretty much monogamous. But I don’t feel the need for a relationship now. I would probably be much more promiscuous if it weren’t for this whole AIDS situation, but there are ways to get around that. I’ve had some wonderful experiences in the past sixteen or seventeen years, since I really accepted things.

Farming taught me the value of hard work. I love that good old rugged work ethic. But realizing that I was different and that I was having trouble fitting in, I engrossed myself in long hours of hard work, covered up all of my problems with work. It wasn’t all bad, because I got well established and achieved a lot in a few years. I did well in school, and had I been out in the open about understanding my feelings, I’m not sure I would have achieved as much. I don’t regret not knowing that I was gay when I was growing up. When I see young kids at the bar, I sort of envy them, that they’re able to be themselves, but I feel sorry for them in a way too. They’re not going to appreciate life the way I appreciate it. It was a lot of struggle and very lonely, but a lot of what happened to me has made me appreciate what I am today.

Farm people are perceived to be conservative, not the activist type, not as vocal. When it comes to economic issues, I tend to be very conservative. But when it comes to social issues, I’m a liberal. I’m still a Catholic and I’ll probably be one all my life, but I take sharp issue with how the Catholic church has been so detrimental to the acceptance of homosexuality. I go shopping for the right priest to talk to. But faith is a very personal thing, and my Catholic faith is still a strong part of me. I’m active in the church and attend on a fairly regular basis, although I’m not as hung up that it has to be every Sunday.

I love to go to New York City periodically. I have a friend there who says I should live in a larger city, where I could have more of a social life. There’s a part of me that agrees with him, but agriculture is my life. I like
working with farm people, although they don’t really understand me. I love their character—their sincerity, their down-to-earth honesty, their love of nature, of things in the open. And I admire good business people, and good farmers are good businessmen. I think the people I work with have a pretty good image of me, but most of them don’t know about my personal life. I can’t share that with them now, but when I retire I want the word to get out to the people I’ve worked with—the dairy producers, the veterinarians, the feed salesmen, the guys at the co-ops. They’re going to be shocked, but their eyes are going to be opened.

1.
The Cooperative Extension Service is a national program of agricultural education sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state and county governments. Consistent with an emphasis on learning by doing, personal demonstrations are one of the methods used to promote innovative practices in farming and homemaking among farm households.

2.
Hoosier Boys State is the Indiana version of an annual program of citizenship training for boys of high school age who have demonstrated leadership qualities. The Boys State program originated in the Midwest in the 1930s and is directed by the Americanism Commission of the American Legion.

John was born in 1943 and grew up on a succession of six rented farms near Monroe, in Green County, south-central Wisconsin. He has four brothers, two older and two younger, and a younger sister. John lives in the country near Stoughton, Wisconsin, where he is a high-school music teacher.

THE FIRST TIME I fell in love with a man, when I was twenty-six, I realized that I wasn’t going to walk down the aisle with a woman. Through my late twenties and thirties I had a lot of friendships with men that I thought were relationships, but I was insecure and wasn’t capable of focusing. I would lose interest and have to stray and have more sexual partners. In my early forties, during a period of considerable depression, I went through a couple of years with a psychiatrist and pulled some things together, but I still didn’t get relationships.

In the last few years I’ve come to the realization that a large part of my identity has been as a teacher. Every bit of energy I had went into my teaching, to the point that I ignored relationships. And my self-esteem wasn’t very high. I’m exceedingly shy and non-aggressive. I still like teaching, and work hard at it, but it isn’t the definition of me anymore. I’m beginning to understand who I am and I’ve gained a lot of self-confidence, whereas before I was just trying to blend in and be nice. For the first time, I’m able to have friendships on an equal footing, and I try not to worry so much about what other people say. I’m more likely to go to the bar and wear what I want to, rather than what I could wear to blend into the wall. This is sort of hackneyed, but—I am what I am. The first time I heard that song in “La Cage aux Folles,” I cried and cried.

Now I’m very much up for a relationship. I think I’m ready to talk about the things that need talking about. But now that I’m ready, I’m having trouble getting one off the ground. There are times when I don’t like living in the country because I’m alone, and it’s lonely for me. But there’s also a part of me that says, well, you can be lonely in the middle of New York City. So I’ve been back and forth about whether to move or stay here. I really like it here—the privacy is very attractive to me—but I still have a longing to live in a large city. But I’m pretty much set in my job right now, and it’s very difficult to move. I have the great fortune of being
able to travel, and that has made up for not living in a city. I don’t want to teach in Chicago, but I think I would love living there. Some of my friends tell me I would come running back here after two weeks.

My father came from Germany with his parents in the 1920s, when he was twelve years old. From when they were married until I was three, he and my mother lived and farmed with my grandparents. My first memory is when I was two years old. We had a housewarming party and all the relatives were there. My great uncle Otto played his accordion, and everybody danced in the living room. I sat alongside the rolled-up carpet and whenever my grandma got the broom they did a German broom dance, and everybody would laugh.