Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (45 page)

I’m talking about it with people who have known for a year, asking them what their reaction was when I told them, talking to other people who are gay, finding out about their life experiences. The very first person I ever told was my last girlfriend in college, who for six years had been
wondering why I really broke up with her. She’s still a very good friend, and I made a special trip to the farm in central Minnesota where she lives with her husband and family, to talk to her. She was able to tell me about all the people who have been talking about me for the last few years. It’s an eye-opening experience when you find that a lot more people are aware of it than you think or hope are.

It’s been eight, nine, ten years, and I’m just now starting to put all the pieces together. Up until the last year or so I’ve chosen to conform and to give the appearance of conforming. My overriding passion has been to meet people’s expectations, and I’ve always been able to do it, largely. That stems certainly from a childhood of doing what was expected of me by my parents. When I told my sister that I was gay, she said, “You’ve always stood out in my mind as the one person who wasn’t in trouble with Mom and Dad for what you were doing on your dates.” My sisters were always in trouble for sitting in the driveway necking in the car when they got back from their dates. “That’s why you got off so easy,” she said, “but now you’re going to make up for it!”

I had three steady dating relationships in high school. I was physical with those girls, but not particularly sexual. I was one to emphasize getting to know someone emotionally and intellectually. In college, I was sexually active with one woman, but that was a very small part of the relationship. I’ve had very deep feelings for some of the women I’ve dated, and I could be physically aroused, but I was never fulfilled sexually. My masturbation fantasies were always about other males. When I was younger, my fantasies focused on the sexual experiences I’d had with my friend in fifth and sixth grades. As I got older, they were about guys I knew who I would like to have physical contact with, like college roommates. I don’t remember fantasizing about someone I didn’t already know pretty well. The sexual fantasy part of it came after the friendship was there. I’ve never been one to fantasize about celebrities or men in magazines.

I didn’t have sexual contact with another male until I was a senior in college, so there was a long, dry spell. That first experience was with a college roommate. We had been friends for two years, but our encounter scared him so badly he barely wanted to talk to me after that. I haven’t talked to him for years now, but what I’ve heard about his life is a sad story. He comes of an absurdly staunch Catholic upbringing, and has been trying to please his parents for years. He has actually moved back—a thirty-four-year-old guy who’s living with his parents and constantly trying to make them happy. I wish he would throw all that off and get on with his life. I’m not Catholic now. I’m not even religious, and in many ways I feel like a more spiritual person now than I did when I was religious. But I never felt like I couldn’t
be Catholic because I was gay. I gave up religion before I came to grips with my sexuality.

A friend of mine who grew up on a farm near Omaha gave in to his homosexuality at about the same age I did. We were starting to deal with being gay at a time when many friends our age who grew up in urban areas were putting things together and getting on with their lives. It took longer to come to grips with being gay growing up on a farm, not so much because of the homophobia but because of the absence of homosexuality in that culture. It’s not that homosexuality was frowned upon. It simply didn’t exist. There were never any strong overtones about it being wrong, because it was never discussed. Of course, the adults were aware of it, but it was seen as more of a big-city thing that they didn’t understand and didn’t have to deal with, so they didn’t. One of my uncles had a gay brother-in-law who moved back to Minnesota from New York when I was in high school. I never even knew he existed until then. My mom and dad would talk about him. “Oh, he’s the guy that
thinks
he’s a homo. Maybe a doctor could help him.”

There was no role model anywhere in that community, so that I could say, “Here’s a person who is like me, who’s gay, who’s an adult, who’s not running away from it.” I’m sure it’s not that way in all farm communities, but I had to wait until I went elsewhere to find acceptance of it—to see it, even, and not be afraid of it—and to see people who were living as gay and not repressing it. I have friends who grew up in larger cities who talk about gay couples dating in high school. Seems like it must have been on another planet. Where I came from, anybody who was suspicious of themselves being gay in high school just didn’t go out, period—or they asked a girl out just to stay with the flow. The two gay brothers who were in my band had prom dates, and I’m sure their mother was pleased that they were home nice and early.

Looking back at some of the people who still live in that community, I wonder if this person or that person is gay. My “Truth or Dare” friend from fifth and sixth grade dated my sister a few times. I’m pretty sure he’s straight, but I don’t know. He’s one of the few people in my class who’s not married. He stayed in town to take over his father’s business. To this day, we’re still embarrassed about the naked games we played as kids. When I go home at Christmas I see him at my parents’ church and it’s awkward. “Hi, how ya doin’?” “Good. How ‘bout you?” “Great.” “Bye.”

A long-term relationship is something I aspire to, but right now I find it difficult to imagine myself with anybody on a long-term basis. And I like living alone so much. I think of a long-term committed relationship between two individuals as an ideal. And though it’s hard to see myself in that kind of relationship, I’ve
never been involved in a one-night stand either. I’ve only had sexual experiences with four or five guys, and I’ve always kind of held a low opinion of people who sleep around a lot. It seemed that they were chasing something that they weren’t even coming close to finding—that their sleeping around was getting them farther away from what they were really looking for.

I came off of my first real gay relationship about four months ago. It wasn’t a relationship I particularly wanted to be in, but it lasted almost two years anyway, so I think my lifestyle and remnants of my nun-induced morality lend themselves to a long-term relationship. But I haven’t yet found anybody that would even be a possibility with. That’s largely because I haven’t been in the flow. I ‘ve been running from being gay, or trying to figure it out. I haven’t been in situations where I could meet a lot of gay men I would find interesting or who would be a good match for me. There’s a community of gay musicians and visual artists in Minneapolis. They’re very campy, cliquish, they have limited interests, and when they have parties, straight people are not invited. I’ve never seen myself fitting into that, but as a singer and musician it’s the only part of the gay community I’ve ever really known. I need to find out what else is out there, and that’s very difficult to do until you’ve decided to be out with it. Over the next few months, as part of my therapy for myself, I intend to get out and about and see what’s there. Minneapolis is a very connected city for the gay community, and I think I can find a lot of areas of common interest other than the arts.

When my mother did her living will, she named me and my oldest sister as the executors. I asked her why, out of ten kids, she chose us, and she said, “Because you’re as logical as you are emotional.” I’m not sure what that means, but I think I have an idea, and she’s probably right. I’ve always thought my mother has had something of a soft spot for me because, more than the rest of her kids, I’ve been able to tell her exactly what I think without being too worried about it. She has looked for things from me as much as I have looked for things from her. It’s been that way since I was probably ten years old. She and I have talked about moral and religious issues, which makes her uptight when she knows I don’t see eye-to-eye with her on a lot of things. Many of my siblings don’t either, but they’re less inclined to talk to her about some of those things that she finds very threatening. I think she and I see the world similarly, but she’s got a conservative, devout religious element that I don’t have at all.

To my parents, a mixed marriage was a Catholic and a Lutheran. Diversity was okay as long as it wasn’t threatening—somebody who was
Danish instead of Norwegian or Swedish or German. Louie Anderson, the comedian, does a routine where he talks about driving down the street with his dad, and his dad says, “Well, look at that guy—what the hell? He’s got a ponytail, for Christ’s sake!” That’s my dad, privately deriding people who don’t conform to the local lifestyle. I never felt like I was friends with my father when I was younger, but I’m very good friends with him now. He’s not aware of my sexuality, but when a kid gets to be thirty years old, and the only one of ten kids who’s not married, I’m sure there are questions in his mind. But so far it has not gotten in the way of us being good friends.

Some of the most intelligent people I know are farmers in the community where I grew up. But to my dad, the reason for going to college was so you wouldn’t wind up farming—as though farming were reserved for only the uneducated or unintelligent. It was always preached to us that we needed to aspire above farming, yet I think my dad really liked it, and still does. I wish he could see more clearly how much he really enjoys it, because you can see it in him. He retired last year, but he still helps his brother during planting and harvest. And I can see his face become more intense and involved when we talk about the crops, how big the harvest will be, or the latest farm machinery to hit the market. I think he discouraged us from farming because he felt that his economic fate was in somebody else’s hands—that he wouldn’t necessarily get ahead by working harder.

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. Every now and then, sitting in a twenty-story office building in downtown Minneapolis, I have the urge to hop in my car and drive until I see corn. Some of my urban friends feel panicky out there, but to me the big open spaces are very calming.

Steven was born in 1962 and grew up with two brothers, one older and one younger, on his father’s 300-acre dairy farm in south-central Wisconsin
.
They farmed another 200 acres owned by his grandparents. At the time of our interview, Steven was living on a small hobby farm in southern Wisconsin and working as a nurse.

I NEVER KNEW my mother. She left us when I was one and killed herself when I was nine. My brothers and I don’t know anything about why she left, because my dad would never talk about it. She and my dad had separated, and one day she just left us with the babysitter and didn’t come home. When my dad came to see us, Neil was running around in the snow barefoot and Kevin and I were so ill we had to be hospitalized. Kevin wasn’t a year old, I was a little over a year, and Neil was two. My dad was so busy with fieldwork and the cattle that Grandma looked after us until we got to an age to help with milking.

My dad oversaw it, but my older brother Neil and I did most of the herd management. It was our job to select bulls for breeding, register the cattle, manage feeding, raise the young stock. Starting at 5
A.M.,
we would have maybe twenty calves to feed, repeated the cycle at night, then fed and bedded the cows. We raised all of our own crops. Haying was never-ending and basically took up our entire summer—at least ten thousand bales a year to get us through. Many summers, if it weren’t for the neighbor kids we would never have had any contact with kids our own age, because we didn’t leave the farm except to go to church. It was very isolating— Grandma and Grandpa and my dad.

Grandma’s a stern old Norwegian who believed strongly in “spare the rod, spoil the child,” so we did not miss an opportunity to be spanked. We always attended everything at the United Church of Christ, and it was very important that we were baptized and confirmed. If we whispered during the church service, my grandmother had this signal—a little nod of her head. She’d look at you just once, and if you didn’t stop, you knew your ass would be cream when you got out of church.

Family functions were very important because we lived with Grandma
and Grandpa, and everybody came there, but holidays were never relaxing or enjoyable. The week before was always hellish. We would clean the house three days before everybody came, and Grandma would be cooking and screaming at everybody, “Don’t mess up the place!” Then they would come, and they would eat within an hour, we’d do presents or whatever, and they would be gone and it was clean-up time again. It was like feeding a threshing crew.

We would can corn from late June or early July, until we were done. It took weeks. Huge gunny sacks of sweet corn would be brought up from the fields and we would husk the ears. Every piece of leaf and silk had to be completely removed for Grandma, who would sit on a chair with a huge basin on a stool between her legs and cut corn for hours. I used to think, “That fuckin’ corn doesn’t taste
that
good,” but it taught me that hard work and stamina is what it takes. Things don’t get done by themselves.

I loved to visit our neighbors, an old couple with no children that lived around the hill from us. That’s where I learned about chickens—what to feed them, what they need, and how to butcher them. I’d consort with all the women who had chickens, because I just had to know more about them. Poultry was one of my major interests, but my dad forbade it. I was not to ever get poultry. “You can’t have those filthy things when you’re on grade A.” My dad’s place was immaculate for grade A milk production. Everything was very clean, and the barn was whitewashed and limed within an inch of its life.