BOOKS

Stories of gay men who grew up on the farm

by Bob Boone

"This is not meant to be a Norman Rockwell picture of farm life," author Will Fellows said of his new book, Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest.

The book is a collection of 37 stories Fellows gathered in interviews with some 75 gay men across the Midwest.

Will Fellows

UNIV OF WISCONSIN

As Farm Boys garners rave reviews, Fellows is embarking on a book tour. "I'm really looking forward to doing some Midwestern travel," he exclaimed.

He has scheduled five appearances in Ohio for the end of February.

Some of his stops will include a slide show which Fellows called "a composite family snapshop album that spans 70 or 80 years.

The show features 120 childhood photos from his interviewees, who ranged in age from 27 to 84.

The idea for Farm Boys grew from an offthe-cuffremark Fellows had made to a friend in 1992. When his friend suggested writing about something from his own experience, Fellows responded facetiously, "Like what— gay men that grew up on farms?"

The thought took root and Fellows placed ads in gay newspapers across the Midwest. Advertising his "Farm Boys Project,” he looked for men willing to share their stories in his book.

Receiving over 120 replies, Fellows talked to 75 men mostly in their homes and whittled that down to 37 stories.

Many of the men were openly gay and over half used their real names. That percentage somewhat surprised Fellows. He explained, "Some of the men whose real names are used in the book talk about some pretty sensitive stuff."

According to Fellows, some men seemed to have "a need for some sort of catharsis to

sort of tell their story to somebody, perhaps to a degree or in a way that they had never done it before."

Fellows aimed for a full range of encounters in Farm Boys. He said, "I wanted the book to be funny. I wanted it to be educational. I wanted to sort of push the boundaries of propriety a little bit. You know, and not just talk about the things that are more comfortable, but address head-on what these men's experiences really were about."

Fellows himself grew up in the rural Midwest on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. He described his own experience as "really quite positive."

He attributed this to his own naiveté about being gay and to the sense of self-worth his parents instilled in him.

Another factor, he said was that "while my family is certainly a church-going family and so on, I didn't grow up in an environment that was characterized by religious fundamentalism and fire and brimstone notions of sin."

Fellows said his parents have been enthusiastic about Farm Boys, in spite of his mother's initial introduction of the book. The first time she opened the manuscript, "she just happened to open to a page where one of the men is talking about having sexual activity with farm animals."

Fellows said that while his mother is "not a prude, she's pretty conservative when it comes to what she thinks should be in print.”

While he could not quite convince her about the need to include the farm animals incident, Fellows did get her to understand why he did not delete it.

He told her, "By some people's definition, gay persons talking with openness and a sense of integrity about their lives is some-g thing that they would like to silence."

Fellows and Farm Boys will be featured in a segment of In the Life on PBS in April. He hopes to gain momentum from the exposure and develop the stories and the slide show into a film. Fellows envisions a “documentary based on the book that kind of looks at the intersection of gay and lesbian life in rural culture."

He wants to use the video to reach a larger audience.

Fellows has been thrilled by the response to his book from the gay and lesbian community. However, he said, "That's not the only audience that I want to reach, and I know it's not the only audience that a lot of the men who told their stories want to reach."

In Ohio, Fellows will appear in Cincinnati on Feb. 23 at 1 pm at Joseph-Beth Books and at 7 pm at the Cincinnati Gay and Lesbian Center. On Feb. 24 he will be at An Open Book in Columbus at 7 pm. In Cleveland, Fellows stops at Borders Books in Beachwood on Feb. 26 at 7:30 pm. His final Ohio stop will be in Toledo at Tallulah's Community Center on Feb. 27 at 7 pm. ▼

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