Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (40 page)

I need to write a letter to my FFA advisor to tell him how much he helped me. I hated him but loved him because he pushed me to do so many things that I never would have done otherwise. He pushed me into public speaking, pushed me to run for office, to be on all kinds of judging teams and apply for all kinds of awards and scholarships. I never wanted any credit for anything. He pushed me to run for state FFA treasurer, which I was and enjoyed very much. I loved traveling all over the state, speaking at banquets and presentations.

After my first year in college, I went on a diet and lost one hundred pounds. I started feeling better about myself, and started running and swimming a lot. At the gym one night, a man approached me. It was very exciting, because I realized there were other people who had the same feelings I did. I enjoyed what we did and I wanted to do it again, but I was very embarrassed and felt cheap. I would flirt with men at the bars here in Columbus, wanting to have sex but afraid to go home with them.

I had just graduated from college when I met Cal at a bar and we started seeing each other. He went with me to the farm a lot; he enjoyed gardening too, and Mom would always set an extra place for him at Sunday lunch. She assumed he was just a friend from school. Cal and I were together for three years. Not too long after that I met Michael, and we had a relationship for seven years.

When Michael and I broke up I moved home for about a week till I could find an apartment. Mom found a card I had saved that was signed, “Love, Michael.” She showed me the card and said, “What does this mean?” I told her she didn’t want to know, and she said she did, so I told her he was my boyfriend. She said, “You were right. I didn’t want to know.” But she wanted to talk about it, and she wanted me to see a psychologist. I said, “Fine, I’ll see a psychologist, but I think you need to go with me, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way I’m feeling.”

The psychologist told my mother, “If David doesn’t want to change, there’s nothing I can do to change him, and there’s nothing you can do to change him. You’ll have to accept that.” And he said, “I think I’m finished seeing David, Mrs. Campbell. You can come back as many times as you feel necessary.”

The whole family always gets together for Sunday lunch at my mother’s. By now they all know I’m gay, but I don’t flaunt it and we don’t talk about it. If I bring a guest to lunch on Sunday, they don’t say anything about it. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to them. We’re all very accepting of each other, to a large extent. My mother doesn’t approve of my being gay, but she says she wants me to live my own life and be happy. She has asked me periodically if I’d consider dating women, and I say, “No, I don’t want to, and I don’t ever care to.” I say it kind of snippy, not to be disrespectful but only because I’ve said it so many times.

Everybody in my family is pretty much goody-two-shoes. I’ve always wanted to be accepted and liked by everyone, so I’ve always been kind of a middle-of-the-road person. In growing up, I was always just agreeing with people and doing what they told me. I would never say anything real controversial, because I didn’t want to be an extremist, I didn’t want to alienate anyone. I didn’t like confrontations, and I never
was
in a fight. When I’ve been in arguments with somebody I’ve been living with, I’ve always ended up crying.

Keeping a clean public image is important to me. I try to be just a person, rather than an openly, politically gay person. I think I’m a lot more responsible than a lot of gay men. I’m not somebody who goes flitting in public, advertising the fact that I’m gay. I don’t think of myself as a barfly or a very effeminate faggot who walks down the street. I don’t think I’m a butch person either. I just think of myself as a person. I don’t wake up every morning thinking I’m gay, I don’t read gay publications, I don’t surround myself with gay things, but I’m comfortable with being gay. For the most part, I just live my life day-to-day, and the gay part never enters into it.

Here in Columbus, I don’t worry about telling people that I’m gay, but back home it’s an issue. I go home a lot, but I avoid going into town so I don’t run into somebody at the grocery store and have them ask, “Are you married? How many kids do you have?”—all those kinds of questions that people you grew up with tend to ask you. But that hasn’t kept me from going to high school class reunions, which I’ve enjoyed very much. The first time I went was my tenth year. I really wanted to go because I was one hundred pounds lighter than I was in high school and I felt good
about myself. No one knew me when I walked in, and I just talked to the people I wanted to talk to.

When I went away to college, I came home on weekends and during the summer. I still have a huge garden out at the farm every year. I go out there at least three or four times a week in the summer. Once I was off the farm I didn’t think I’d ever want to go back, but now I would love to live out in the country again. I’ve always enjoyed having animals, and I like being away from a lot of other people. As soon as I get this house finished and sell it, I’m going to build out there. I’d like to have animals and a huge garden, raise all my own food, build a fifteen-foot wall around the entire thing, and let no one else in, ever, unless I invite them in—and that would be very infrequently. I’m serious about this—my self-sufficient little commune.

I don’t want to be by myself forever, but I don’t want somebody around just to have somebody around. I want companionship and a feeling of love. Sex would be fine, too, but that’s not a big concern. My life doesn’t revolve around sex like I think a lot of people’s lives do, straight and gay. I would love to find somebody who has the same interests I have. I can go out and work in the garden from sun-up till sundown, never see anybody, never eat, and just be so happy. I lose all track of time, and I get mad because it gets dark and I can’t keep working. It would be great to work in the garden with somebody else right beside me who felt the same way. But I don’t think that will ever happen, as strange as I am.

Born in 1959, Jahredgrew up on a mixed livestock and grain farm in northwestern Minnesota. He lives on a small hobby farm near Webster, Minnesota. His partner of nearly ten years, Terry Bloch, died in 1992. In this brief narrative, Jahred describes what it means to him to be gay and rural.

I’VE LIVED IN the Twin Cities, and I think so many gay men’s lives there are so superficial. They are so concerned about things that don’t really matter, like where they live and what they wear. I’m real content with where I live, and if I have a clean tee-shirt and jeans on, I’m fine—I don’t feel awkward at all, no matter where I go. I guess I’m more down to earth, very common, and when I go to parties where it’s all urban people I feel like I’m the country boy. Once I went to visit my friend Alan in San Francisco. He had invited people over, and then we were all going to go out to eat together. Alan was a little uncomfortable introducing me because I’m midwestern, from Minneapolis, just like Mary Tyler Moore; we don’t know anything! When all these hardcore city people started talking about where we were going to eat, they asked me if I liked sushi. I said I’d never had it. You’ve
never
had sushi? It was as if I’d said I had grown up in Antarctica. It didn’t bother me at all, but Alan was uncomfortable, like they were thinking I was just a hick. So I asked if any of them had ever had lutefisk, and not one of them had even heard of it.
¹

I decided as a kid that I was going to live on a farm when I grew up. I hated the mechanical stuff with a passion—vehicles, tractors, machinery— but I enjoyed taking care of the animals. I did all the livestock chores, and if an animal was sick, I gave the shots. With the heifers, ewes, and sows, I was good at delivering the young ones. When I was three or four years old I would deliver lambs by myself, and when the ewe would knock me down I’d get right back up to take care of the lambs and get them to suck. If a sow had pigs outside in the winter, we’d bring them into the house. Mom says that when she’d get up in the night, I’d be up taking care of them.

It takes a special kind of gay person to grow up in a rural area and want to stay there, and I’m more that kind of person than my partner Terry is. He could be a city person very easily. Terry needs to have people around a lot more than I do, like most of my friends and acquaintances who live in the Cities. I enjoy having company, but I also enjoy being by myself. A lot of the people who stay in rural areas are like that, and it’s real hard for gay people who grew up on the farm and want to live on the farm to find someone who also wants that. My friend John says that when he goes out with someone and brings them out to his farm, he can tell by how they act the minute they get out of the pickup if it’s going to work or not. Most gay people from the city think living in the country is isolating, and they just can’t handle it. It
is
a simpler life on the farm, but whether you’re on the farm or in the city you have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve really only got yourself in life, and if you don’t make yourself happy someone else isn’t going to make you happy. Too many people clutch onto someone else, looking for security and acceptance.

“I decided as a kid that I was going to live on a farm when I grew up.” Jahred Boyd takes a walk with the pups in the spring of 1994. Courtesy of Jahred Boyd.

I think I would have been a real
good farmer because I really enjoy just going out and doing the chores. I thought about going into dairy farming when I bought this place. I could buy my hay and feed and just take care of the animals. What a good life that would have been. To me, farming is real relaxing and doesn’t even seem like work. But I’m kind of a workaholic, and I think that comes from growing up on a farm. It’s hard for Terry to get me to go anywhere on a vacation because I just don’t trust other people with the animals. They’re my responsibility, and if something happens I feel guilty. No one but Terry would put up with that. Someday I’d like to have a farm or ranch for young gay runaways and gays whose parents have kicked them out, an oasis where they can get away and not worry about straight people or being closeted. They could stay here and Terry and I could be surrogate parents until they’re able to get on their own feet. They need positive role models, and they need to see that relationships can last.

N
OTE

1.
A staple of Scandinavian cuisine, lutefisk is dried cod which is tenderized by soaking in lye, and then rinsed before cooking.

Born in 1959, the ninth of ten children, Steve grew up on a dairy farm near Waterloo, in Dodge County, southeastern Wisconsin. He lives and farms up the road from his parents’ place with his lover, Jim Lawver. Steve and Jim’s life as a farm couple is the focus of this brief narrative.

MY MOM AND dad are from the old German straight-and-narrow school of thought. I haven’t had much of a relationship with them since my oldest sister took it upon herself to tell them I’m gay. I talk to them, but I don’t get invited to holidays or anything with the family because they don’t want Jim there. I let it be known that if Jim was not welcome to come along with me, I preferred not to come at all. Jim has pretty much come out to everyone in his family, and I’ve been included in every one of their holidays since we’ve been together. His whole family comes to our place for Easter every year, and last year they were here for Christmas too.

Jim and I have been together for eight and a half years. We were introduced by a mutual friend at Rod’s, a gay bar in Madison. We were probably in lust when I asked him to move in with me after a couple of months. It wasn’t until about a year later that we really started to get to know each other, so we’ve had a lot of rocky roads. I think the way my family reacted probably made us stay together more than anything. After my father found out about Jim and me, he said, “How long do you think this is going to last anyway? You know, gay relationships don’t last very long.”

At one time, Jim and I were the gossip of Waterloo. “There’s two gay men living outside of town.” In a small town it spreads like wildfire. Being as open as I am, it doesn’t bother me that everybody knows and thinks it’s their business. In a small town that’s what you’ve got to put up with. Maybe a year ago, there was some gossip going around that Jim had AIDS. How that got started is beyond me, but I guess everybody’s got to be talking about something. I think they’re done talking about us now. Hell, there are lots of gay people living in Waterloo that they don’t even know about.

Jim and I used to go to a pub near town—kind of a rough and tough bar that gets a lot of farmers and roughnecks. I think most of them knew we were gay. A couple times when we’ve been there and heard things said about us, I’ve looked right back at them. There’s one idiot who was a year behind me in high school who was really drunk one night, and he was saying things like, “Hey, Gay, why don’t you come over here and suck my cock?” When I looked right at him, he looked the other way. I thought, you’re just a drunken asshole—but I couldn’t believe that the other people there who knew me didn’t tell him to shut his mouth. A couple of them were fairly friendly with Jim and me, but they just sat there and let him say what he wanted to.