1994 to 2006, Iowa

By Josh Browder

The summer I turned 21 I found myself with cable for the very first time. I was taking college courses, and the lack of extracurricular activities during these months led to extra tube time. I’d never had MTV, and there it was – a Real World marathon leading into the premiere of the New Orleans edition. The season that featured one Danny Roberts. He was handsome, he was masculine, and he was gay. Slowly, I began to realize that I was gay, too.

Looking back, it wasn’t the first time I had questioned myself, but I always brushed off this self-speculation as pointless. My parents didn’t have Internet, and my high school had less than 200 students total. No one I knew was gay, aside from an HIV-positive uncle in New York City.

I remember when my younger sister and I began to realize our uncle’s “friend” wasn’t just a friend. Despite our intuition, the fear of being wrong made us afraid to ask our mom. Then Picket Fences seemed to provide the perfect solution: An episode in which it was suggested that homosexuality can be genetic. I asked, solely with my uncle in mind, if we had any gays in our family. I expected a simple “yes.” Instead, my mother’s eyes widened in fear as she asked if I thought I was gay.

Gay? I had just had my first crush on a girl! And with no real gay role models or potential dates, I would continue to crush on various girls throughout high school and early college. One might think I’m bi, but the truth of the matter is none of the crushes were ever sexual. A shy geek with a good heart, my sisters had a strong influence on how I thought about girls as more than just objects.

At least I thought they did, until I realized Danny Roberts had become an object to me. I wasn’t above anybody in purity, I simply had repressed my desires to the point that I forgot they were there. It was a struggle. I’d always been accepting of my uncle, but now I feared I might go to hell. I made lists of actors and actresses I found attractive. I finally began to explore online. It would be a couple years before I fully accepted myself or told a friend that I was gay.

Eventually I told my sisters I was gay. I hadn’t planned it, but they blocked me on the stairs in a moment of extreme fatigue. They asked questions; I kept saying I wanted to go to bed. They worried it was their fault, their influence. I mentioned genetics. They worried about their kids being gay. Whether my homosexuality was a result of environment or biology, there was no winning. I do know that it’s not a choice for me, for living in rural Iowa it gets quite lonely and hard to be gay. I’d be straight in an instant if I felt it was a choice.

Not telling my parents, however, was a choice. An honors student in college, I had since found myself at a very low-paying job in my field of communications and occasionally needed my father’s assistance. Not that my parents had money, either, but my dad would help with the occasional car problem.

My dad is deeply prejudiced. Throughout the years, I’d heard jokes and negative comments from his side of the family concerning not just gays but also blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and more. This was a guy who liked Ellen – until she came out. I never knew how my more accepting mother could take his comments when she had a gay brother. I feared it would be even worse with a gay son, and I didn’t want to force her to lie. So I did the lying.

I’ve been careful about my secret, but I did have a close call once. At home for the weekend, I was to meet some friends from college for a birthday party of bowling and drinking at the town pub in nearby Belle Plaine. This wasn’t just any town; this was the town my dad worked in, selling seed corn to rural farmers that likely had similar prejudices.

Knowing that my friends have a tendency to be late, I decided to grab some reading material. Out, perhaps, but I couldn’t carry the gay-themed magazine in plain site. My eyes crossed over an issue of Rolling Stone and I decided to use that as a cover. The gay magazine placed inside the larger music periodical, I was almost to the door when my dad stopped me.

“What do you have there?” he asked. “Can I look at it?”

Normally I wouldn’t care if my dad asked to see a magazine, but my grasp tightened knowing that this wasn’t any normal situation. Unfortunately I had no choice but to play rude. “Dad, I’m going to be late,” I said, magazines firmly in hand.

The close calls would continue that night when celebrating at the bar. I walked into the establishment’s restroom and grimaced as I realized the door didn’t have a lock. I turned and stepped up to the sole urinal, located tightly between the sole toilet and the sole sink. As I proceeded about my business, I heard the door open. Why couldn’t I have just had a minute alone? Stupidly, I glanced over – but not down – for a glimpse of this impatient intruder’s face. I wasn’t stealthy enough.

“You better not be looking over here,” he said, and I insisted I wasn’t as I stared firmly ahead. “Don’t want no faggots in here.”

My heart ticked faster, even though I wasn’t flamboyant, and the stranger continued to ramble. “You know, all it takes is one look from them. One look and then you have AIDS.”

By now I was quickly washing my hands and preparing to exit. I consider myself a wimp, but the man’s stature was small enough that I felt I could take him if needed. Thoughts raced through my mind about my uncle, about Laramie, about how could someone still be so narrow-minded and misinformed in the year 2005. It was the questions that got me, though: How many friends did he have in the bar? Did any of them know my dad?

I rushed to get back to my friends, taking the coward’s way out – or should I say, coward’s way in. I could have played straight but still spoken up, as I had in instances with my friends. “That’s funny. My uncle has HIV but he looks at me at Christmas,” perhaps. Had I been really daring, I would have stared directly at him and said, “Guess what? I’m gay. You have AIDS now.”

Luckily, the college towns in Iowa have grown more open-minded. About a year later, my friend Steph and I went to a showing of “Brokeback Mountain” in Ames. A free spirit, Steph wanted to dress up as cowboys for the movie. Never keen on dressing up myself, I reluctantly agreed and we went shopping for plastic cowboy hats.

With the exception of a new shirt for me (Steph already owned a fitting top), our efforts proofed fruitless. It was probably for the best. Our shirts hidden by our winter coats, she commented to me after the serious film experience, “I think it’s a good thing we didn’t dress up more. Some people might have thought we were mocking them.” I replied, “Well, then we would have just told them I was gay.”

As supportive as my friend has been, I was disappointed with her reaction to the film. All she could focus on was that they had cheated on their wives, and how she felt so bad for poor Alma. I felt bad, too, and do not condone adultery, but there was a bigger issue that Steph was missing. In a different time, in a more understanding society, Ennis and Jack would probably have never married their wives. They would have been allowed to be themselves, in love with each other. I wondered how many other heterosexuals would miss this point.

“Brokeback Mountain” may be the most mainstream gay film to have been released since I realized I was gay myself, but that didn’t stop me from downplaying the fact that I had seen it to my family. Visiting home for Easter, our family also had guests in a cousin and his girlfriend. During a discussion about movies in general, the girlfriend brought up the film. “It’s basically just a love story,” she said. Perhaps some new blood to my dad’s side of the family wouldn’t be so bad, as here was someone who got the point. Then again, anyone else would have known my dad and his brothers are full of prejudice.

My dad’s response? “There’s no love in that.” In just five words, I was crushed – my debt-ridden self receiving confirmation once and for all that my dad will never accept me. How could he, when he doesn’t think I am capable of love? What if I still need help? What about Christmas with the family? What about when I do find love and want to share it?

I just sat there, letting his prejudice grow. I can accept that I didn’t stand up to a drunk, but can I accept not facing my father? Eventually, he needs to know. Eventually, the time will be right. Eventually, I need to be strong.

I wish I was strong now. But I’m not.

An Iowa native, Josh Browder currently works as a copywriter, where he won an award for writing the local United Way video. In addition to his career, Josh continues to study writing, and most recently has focused on screenwriting. He is using a pseudonym.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, March 30th, 2007 | Email This Post

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