Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (18 page)

I came out to the kids in the summer of 1985. Once I finally got the word “gay” out, it wasn’t so bad, but getting it out was just horrendous. I don’t really know what their reactions were, because I avoided looking at them. I tried to reassure them that just because I was gay didn’t mean they were going to be gay, and all the other things that my gay fathers support group had told me to tell them. I said that I had tried my darnedest over the last forty-five years to change, but I couldn’t, and I was accepting it myself for the first time.

Farming was a hell of a lot of work. It was hard work and it was hot work, and it was always pretty iffy how it was going to turn out. I hated farming and couldn’t wait to get far away from it, I was just so bored and
always alone. Morning and night, we had to feed and milk the cows, feed the pigs, and feed the chickens. I had to take the cows down to the pasture every morning before the school bus came, and go get them every night. We milked about ten cows, from which we sold the milk until the state put in sanitary regulations that we couldn’t meet. Then we sold just the cream and fed the milk to the pigs. I carried the milk out to the hog lots after we separated it up at the house. We used the cream and egg money to buy our groceries when we went to town once a week. We were fairly self-sufficient and didn’t buy anything we didn’t have to buy.

All summer we had to put up hay and harvest oats. Haying was the worst because it was always so hot in Iowa, and when the hay was ready it had to go in the barn whether it was 110 degrees or not. We worked with the farmers in the area, and had bought a baler together. The baler would go from farm to farm and all of us would follow it, putting up the hay at one farm, then moving on to the next.

We very rarely did anything other than work. We had a large garden and Mom did most of that. I would help when it came time to do things like pick beans and shell peas when she was canning. Mom wore the pants in the family, made all the decisions, and Dad just worked all the time. He never slept beyond 4:00 in the morning and was up and gone by the time we got up, so we had to go out and help.

I was in 4-H for years, an officer in our local club and on the county level, and went to camp a couple of times.
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I raised and took care of my own steer and pigs and dairy cattle. I liked working with the animals, but when your 4-H project was over you sent the animals off to the slaughterhouse. That was just the way it was.

On Sundays we went to a Methodist church. In Sunday school they really drilled into us how lucky we were that we weren’t Catholics. When Kennedy was running, that was a big thing, to have a Catholic as president and have the pope running our country. I was very religious in high school and went to a religious college for two years. I was president of the local and district youth groups, so that took a lot of time. On Saturday nights, I helped put the church newsletter together. On Sundays I helped the minister. For several years, I did everything in the Sunday service except the sermon.

I got into embroidery in my early teens. I liked doing things with my hands, and I liked embroidery because you had colored threads, nice pictures of flowers and little animals, and when you got done you had something that was real pretty. Dad didn’t like that I was doing it—it was sissy— so I didn’t make a show of it. My mother bought it for me in the first place, so it must have been okay with her. One time I told a kid from school that I would let him see my embroidery if he promised he wouldn’t tell. I showed it to him and the next day in school he told everybody, which was disastrous. I didn’t do embroidery again. I became very conscious of what male things were, of what one does and doesn’t do. I’ve always been envious of women who could pull out their knitting and do that while they’re talking or watching television.

Dennis Lindholm with his yearling holstein heifer, Candy, at the beginning of the 1956 4-H club year. Courtesy of Dennis Lindholm.

I started collecting insects when I was in junior high. I would go down to a creek that ran through the farm, where I could find a lot of insects. I don’t think Dad particularly liked that either—there was something sissy about collecting butterflies and those kinds of things.

We were pretty isolated out on the farm, but Sunday was visiting day when people would just drop in. That’s one thing I really miss. We would get home from church and have a big dinner and be lying around, and someone would say, “Let’s go for a ride,” and we would just go. We would stop in and see if somebody was home and they would always be glad to see us. We would go in and stay for a while—play cards and talk and have a good time. “Why don’t you stay for supper?” And lots of times we did, but we always had to get home because the cows had to be milked.

“I started collecting insects when I was in junior high. I don’t think Dad particularly liked that either—there was something sissy about collecting butterflies and those kinds of things.” Dennis Lindholm, about 1957. Courtesy of Dennis Lindholm.

People would come to our place, just out for a ride, and they would stop in to say hello. “Why don’t you stay for supper?” “Oh, no, no.” “Come on in. We’ve got plenty.” “Oh, well, okay.” Those were just the most fun times. Sometimes kids were along, but it didn’t make any difference, because they always included us kids in playing cards.

My sister and I played together because there weren’t any other kids that lived close enough to do anything with. My brother had his friends and I was always in his way, so I was just somebody to beat up on. In high school, I was a real pain for him because he had a driver’s license, and my folks made him take me along to spare them from having to take me to
wherever I had to go to. That’s probably one of the reasons my brother didn’t like me. Another reason was that we had to share a bedroom.

My brother showed me how to masturbate. One day he said, “This is what boys do.” I hadn’t done it before that. I understood what the birds and the bees were about, because of the farm animals, but sex was something you didn’t talk about. Masturbation was a sin. I was tormented by guilt, and prayed myself to sleep at night so I wouldn’t touch myself.

I was the outside one in the family, and felt that I never really belonged. My folks and the neighbors all thought that my brother was a great person, so I was just his brother and not a person in my own right. I was very insecure and tried harder than everybody else. I was really trying my darnedest to be the best little boy ever. I was a big wheel in school, did all kinds of stuff, but I was discouraged because I was too small to be good in sports, which was the only thing that really counted.

I knew I was different, and I knew it was stuff that I couldn’t share with anybody. I was very much taken with good-looking boys, and thought that a couple of the high school senior guys were so big and attractive. I was attracted to a couple of my classmates; we were best friends, and my best friends were all good-looking boys. I suppose I was in love with them. I certainly built my whole life around them, as far as getting together on Saturday nights. The big thing was to go into Red Oak to drive around a lot and go to the movies—there wasn’t much else to do.

It was so awkward when we couldn’t get together because they had a date. I was envious of them, and jealous, and I fantasized about them having intercourse with their girlfriends. I couldn’t wait to go to church camp every summer—god, there were some knockouts there. I would dream about them for months, about them being with girls. I never dreamed about being with those boys myself. I didn’t know one could do that, or even dream about doing it. I knew two men could masturbate one another, but it never occurred to me that two men could sleep together.

The worst thing you could be called in high school was a homo, but kids threw that word around without knowing what it meant. I was very careful not to wear yellow on Thursdays.
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The messages that I got about homosexuality were all very negative, and in the back of my mind I was afraid that someday somebody was going to find out that I was like that. Every once in a while the newspaper would have an article about a purge in Washington, about how they had found homosexuals in the State Department or wherever, and all of them were dismissed. One time, a hundred and some were dismissed under Eisenhower.
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Dennis Lindholm as a college student in 1962. Courtesy of Dennis Lindholm.

Things just happened and I kind of stumbled into them. I stumbled into teaching because I was a history major and there wasn’t anything else I could do with it. I stumbled into marriage because that’s what you had to do. I’m just waiting for retirement, to do all the things that I
want
to do. There are three big milestones in my adult life, three major steps that I have taken that have saved me. First was the divorce, because it liberated me from a very stifling situation. Second was moving back to the country, so I could get back to the soil. Third was coming out.

My sister and I get along real well, so I’ve tried to come out to her. I would never tell my brother. We still don’t get along, and he’s the exact opposite of me—he likes guns and golf, he’s a Republican. After I came out to the boys, I asked them if they wanted to talk it over with their mom, because if they did I said that I should be the one to tell her. They said they didn’t want to, and she still doesn’t know about me. The boys and I are good friends. I’m certainly an influence in their lives and I am definitely their dad. I was always around. Coming out to them was rough, but we got through it and we’re very close today. I love them more than anything in the world.

I’m very closely tied to the land. Living in the country is tremendously important to my self-worth and satisfaction. I would love to farm, but I wouldn’t want to have to make my income from it. My one-and-a-half acres is really all I can take care of, and I want to stay here as long as
I am able to take care of it. It isn’t farming, but it’s more than just a garden. I’m not afraid of work, and I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty, so I get a lot done. I’m pretty self-sufficient, both in terms of doing things for myself and living off the land.

I’ve become very domestic and I like it. When I was married, my wife did the kitchen work. I had to teach myself cooking and canning and all the other things that I do. Sometimes people make comments about how I’d make a good wife. That kind of stereotype just infuriates me. But I
would
like to get married again—this time to a man—and I do mean married. We should be able to get a legally recognized marriage and everything else that goes with it. I don’t know if we ever will, but that’s my political goal.

My social life is entirely gay-oriented, but I’m not out at work, so I still lead two lives in that respect. I belong to several gay groups that meet once or twice a month, and I get together with friends. I’ll probably always be at the edge of gay life, because I have an awful lot of social conditioning to overcome. I bought into everything they fed me all those years and I know a lot of other people who have not overcome that internalized homophobia. I’m not sexually active, partly because of the health thing, but also because it’s just something you don’t do, it’s dirty. I’ve gotten over a lot of that, though. My therapist told me, “Dennis, you’ve got to have anal intercourse with somebody so that you know what you’re talking about. Then if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it.” So I did it, and I thought it was great. But I’ve never been a bottom yet, and I’m a bit worried about that.