Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (43 page)

My dad always did the planting because he didn’t think we could drive straight enough. He was a very difficult man, a hard man to please, but I was always trying to make him proud of me. When you’re fourth in line, it sometimes doesn’t seem like you’re getting a lot of attention. I guess that’s why I wanted to start farming as early as I did—to gain some attention. Dad showed no emotion except for when he was mad, and when he’d get mad he’d take his farm hat off and hit you with it. He’d never put a hand to you, but he had a temper. One time I saw him lose it and break a scoop shovel over a horse’s head. We worked together all day long during planting season, and you always kind of hated to tell him if you broke something. Ray could do everything and just whiz right through it, but I had an innate ability to find every rock in a field and break a plow point or a disk blade or something.

Ray was quiet, cool, a good guy, and I always wanted to be like him, but he always wanted to be somewhere else. You could just tell farming was not what he wanted to do, and as soon as he was graduated he was married and gone. All my brothers, the minute they reached eighteen, they were gone. That kind of left the farming to me, because the brother between Ray and me would never drive a tractor, period. He had a fear of it or something, and Dad and Mom never made him do it. I resented the hell out of that, but it was
my
fault—I said I wanted to do it. But dang! Day in, day out, dealing with the breakdowns and this, that, and the other thing.

When we weren’t in the fields, the horses kind of took up the rest of
the time. We stood three or four stallions at stud service, so we had breeding mares coming in all the time, and we trained and boarded horses. I was big into horses, and I was good. I showed pintos and paints for national points, and I marvel at how my parents had the money for me to do that, because horses are an expensive hobby. You can make money showing, but not if you’re a kid. I was out there for the fun of it, getting the points. Mom and Dad hired a trainer for me and he hauled me around to horse shows almost every weekend from April until Labor Day. We’d go to shows all over—Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio. We’d leave on Friday night and get back Sunday night. It was a lot of fun.

He was a real cowboy type, just a real good guy, and I was really tight with him—that first love type of thing. I was fourteen, fifteen, and he was nine years older. We engaged in quite a bit of sexual activity through two summers. We’d do the full gamut, but there wasn’t the mature lovemaking that goes on when you get older—the kissing and the whole range of passion. It was more the act. I never had anal intercourse with him, but he did it to me. When I got my own driver’s license, Mom and Dad dismissed him, but I don’t think they ever had a clue I was doing anything like that. The whole time, I had my girlfriends and was doing everything to keep Mom and Dad happy.

There was always work to do, so we never took vacations, but we got to do all the activities we wanted to do in school. My oldest brother was very musical and he loved the horses. Ray was very athletic, a great basketball player and cross-country runner. He was kind of a wild one, really good at partying. My brother who’s just older than I was a great football player, and any free time he had you could find him in town playing pool.

Basketball was my thing—I played all the way through school—and I loved music and was fairly good at the saxophone. In the seventh grade I got moved up into the high school jazz band because they needed a saxophone player. That put me in with an older group and they all liked me, so I was getting asked to do things with them. That’s when a lot of deception crept in. I lied to my mom a lot to get to do all kinds of things I knew they wouldn’t let me do. I wanted to go to a REO Speedwagon concert in Terre Haute when I was a seventh grader, and I knew they wouldn’t let me go. So I concocted a really elaborate school trip, and she bought it and I went. I started drinking beer here and there. “No, I haven’t been drinking.” Driving tractor all day, I started smoking, and I’d lie about that, too.

Some friends had given me tickets to a Doobie Brothers concert on the night of my graduation day. After the graduation there was a reception at the farm, and all of Mom and Dad’s friends were there, but who the heck cared?
So about an hour and a half after that started, I said I had to take a buddy back to his house, and I never came back. I went to the concert, and then I had to explain that one. Mom and I were close, but I caused her quite a few problems from time to time.

Mom and Dad really tried to instill responsibility and religion. My dad smoked, but I never saw him touch alcohol—never in the house. Mother never smoked, no alcohol. We had a solid church upbringing, and Mom was the real drive behind church. She taught Sunday school, she taught vacation Bible school, she did the youth group. I was the first one out of my brothers to join church, and I went every Sunday. I played the piano in church, did the youth group thing on Sunday nights when none of my other brothers were going, did Bible school until I was too old for it and then helped out with it, went to church camp. In the back of my mind it was always to make Mom and Dad happy, especially Mom. I never wanted to upset them.

When I got married right after high school, it carried on. I became a deacon at the church, my wife and I took over a youth group on Sunday night, I was on the church board. When the divorce happened, all of a sudden I woke up thinking, “Where are all these people who are supposed to be there for you when things are going bad?” I walked away and didn’t go back to church for a long time.

I learned sex from my brothers. We never talked openly about it, but each one of them had sex with me from when I was about ten to fourteen, fifteen. My two oldest brothers had a bedroom by themselves, and my brother just older than I shared one with me. With my oldest brothers it would usually happen when we were changing clothes after school. When they’d get horny they would just come in and pull it out and expect me to give them a blow job, forcing my head down on it. I was quite a lot younger and smaller, so there was nothing I could do. But I couldn’t figure out why I was the one. Why were they grabbing
my
head and making me go down on this thing?

The majority of the sexual activity was with my brother just older than me. He’d come over to my bed. I cried real bad after the first time we had anal intercourse. The next time he wasn’t as rough with me, but it still hurt. It happened for quite a while, until he got his first girlfriend. I don’t want to make it sound like I was saintly or anything. After things got to the point they did with him, it was like, “Well, if you’re going to do this, you go down on me. I’m not going to do this for nothing.” So there was some sexual release for me as well. He went down on me a couple times, but I never had anal intercourse with him.

From first grade, I always had girlfriends. It was important to have girlfriends. But I knew there was something different, and it must be me. In high school, I would double-date with a good friend of mine, and after we took the girls home I’d give him a blow job, or he’d spend the night. Those times would start out, “Oh, suck me!” “Well, you suck me!”—that type of thing—and before you know it, “All right, whip it out!” Well, this guy had the balls to whip it out and I had the balls to do it. It’s amazing what you can get that way. I had lots of friends through high school— guys I ran around with, double-dated with, went to parties with, played basketball with—and I had sex with all of them. But I lied all the way through it; I’m doing it, but I’m not gay. I’d wake up the next day and call my girlfriend and go on—find out where we were going that night, or she’d say, “The family dinner’s this Sunday. What time you going to be here?” I did that all the way until I got divorced.

I watched my brothers grow up, graduate, and get married, so that’s what I did. I got married right out of high school. Two to three years into my marriage, with two kids, I finally started saying, “I really
am
gay, I really am. What am I going to do about it?” I finally woke up and stopped some of the lying. I came home from being with a guy and I said to my wife, “I love you as a person and as the kids’ mother, but this isn’t working. I am just not happy here. I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ve got to figure out what’s going to make me happy.” My wife wasn’t happy either, so we started mapping out what we could do about it.

I went back to my parents’, but after about six months I realized you just can’t go back. I was too old to be coming in at midnight with them still waiting up for me, or to be saying, “Mom, I’m not coming home tonight.” That was a wild time. You’re out all of a sudden, you’re free to do what you want to do, and there’s all this world out there you’ve never experienced. I’d had plenty of gay experiences, but I’d never been to gay bars, never experienced the nightlife, and I was trying to soak it up as quickly as possible. I got really out of control, but it didn’t take long to pull myself back.

People get lost in the bar scene. I did at first. It was exotic, it was new, it was exciting. It didn’t take long for that to wear off for me. But there are a lot of gay people out there who have no direction, no vision—the only thing that’s important is being in the bars over the weekend, having something new to wear, and enough money to drink themselves silly. Keith and I are both very responsible and driven, and we want to work and be successful. I’m sure there are a lot of gay people out there who are the same way. But we have run into so many who are completely irresponsible, who think things are owed to them without having to work for them.

On the farm you are secluded; the people you interact with are pretty much your family. We were real private people, not telling everybody in the neighborhood all our problems. In fact, we worked real hard to keep our problems under wraps. I never saw my mom and dad openly do anything, and that’s the way I’ve always viewed being gay—as a very private thing. I don’t want to wear it on my sleeve. It’s not open for discussion, and I don’t ever intend it to be—with people I work with, the next-door neighbors, the family even. If you know me, you’re either going to like me or you’re not going to like me, but not because I’m wearing a banner up and down the street so everybody knows, or saying in your face, “I’m gay, like it or leave it.”

I haven’t been honest with my parents about being gay, but I’ve lived eight years with Keith and he’s always welcome in their home, so I think they have a pretty good idea. I’m HIV-positive, and I’ve known that for about a year and a half, so I’m really to the point where I need to talk to Mom and Dad. We’ll see, but I do think that’s going to happen soon. It’s time. But how can they not know I’m gay? Maybe they’re just being pleasant all these years, not blurting it out, because we never talk about sex. As far as my brothers are concerned, I don’t feel the need to tell them. I know they all know about it already, but I don’t owe them an explanation. They probably feel responsible in some way. But I don’t see the time I’m going to sit down with them and just lay my cards on the table.

Sex with a man, being gay, is what I’m comfortable doing. It’s what I like to do and it’s what I feel like I’m good at. When Keith and I make love, there is something that is right, completely right, and that never occurred with a woman. Yes, the act could be done with a woman, but the feeling, the passion, the pleasure is just right with a man. You’ve got to be born with something like that. Maybe my brothers saw something in me I didn’t know about, something that was saying to them, “It’s okay to do this to him—he wants to do this.” I don’t
blame
them for this. I don’t blame anybody for this. But I can’t help but wonder what they saw that allowed them to do that, why they thought it was okay, and if that’s why I am the way I am—that I started enjoying it after a while, and continued with it.

I have trouble coming to grips with this because they all know they did it, and we’ve never talked about it, and they’re all very standoffish with me. I think it makes them all uncomfortable. We interact, but there’s no closeness. I really think I’ve made an effort throughout the years. I helped one brother build his house, and we’ve taken another brother’s kids on vacation with us, and I’ve let my oldest brother spend the night with us numerous times when he needed to. They’re the ones who really
have a problem with it. I know I’m okay. I’m being honest, as far as my sexuality goes. The way they view me has made me a little stronger and helps me come to terms with it a little bit better.

My oldest brother is a mess, but the rest of us are all successful and responsible. Ray and I are not close now. It’s not like we don’t like each other. We just don’t make time for one another. I don’t get along with my brother just older than I, and I don’t like my oldest brother at all. We’ve tried, but we haven’t succeeded. He may be gay, too. Keith and I ran into him in a bar one night, so it was kind of tough to get out of that one. I was uncomfortable from the very get-go, and—in this big city—he was with a guy I’d dated before.

Who I am and why things have happened is something I’m trying to figure out right now. I’ve started seeing myself, and there are some parts I really don’t like, and I’ve got to face them. Trying to make everybody proud of me, I spent a lot of time not recognizing who I was and lying about who I was. I tried for so long to do what I thought was the thing to do, to be the way I was supposed to be—and I tried all those things for all the wrong reasons. I had the two kids, which I don’t regret at all— they’re wonderful kids and bring me a lot of happiness. But it wasn’t the reason to do it. I lied to myself. That’s what I’m really struggling with right now. Throughout my life, there have been lies and then lies to cover lies, and lies and lies and lies.

Now I’m trying to figure out what role God has in my life. About a year ago, I started going with my parents to the church I grew up in, an Independent Christian church. I went real steady for about a year. I’ve yet to find me a church around here, but I really am trying to come to grips, because I do believe in God. I don’t know what God thinks of me right now—that’s something I need to work out.