Cowboys, Truckers, and Bears—Oh My!

By Gregory S. Hughes

Last summer I lived the life of a gay cowboy. I slept in a log cabin in the remote reaches of northeastern Washington state. I learned to discern Reba McEntire from Trisha Yearwood. And I drove over 4,000 miles while conducting interviews, making campfires, and attending gay rodeos. My summer amidst cowboys began as a research project through Berkeley’s Haas Scholars program, but by the end of it – after I finally grew accustomed to Wranglers – I realized that I hadn’t simply co-opted some alien existence. I hadn’t even developed a cowboy fetish. I found, to my surprise, that these gay cowboys, hundreds of miles from the nearest major urban center, smack in the middle of a rural landscape that most gay men fear by instinct – well, I found that these rural gay men maintain a community that somehow makes sense to me.

Before I left for the wilds of Newport, Washington, my friends were jealous of the hot, manly cowboys I’d invariably meet. But my friends, all urban dwellers, were conditioned by years of education from Falcon films, where no cowboy appears onscreen without buttless chaps and a dildo. I assured them that my objective was to do research, not make porn. Other friends seemed to think that rural gay men don’t exist at all, like leprechauns. And of course some people worried for my safety. I myself wondered if I was at risk: if something went wrong out there in the boonies, if some lug decided to larn me a lessun, would Hilary Swank play me in the movie? Would the cougars get me before the grizzlies? And just how dangerous were those wild turkeys?

But then something very strange happened. After two months, I had no desire to return to Berkeley or San Francisco—or any city, for that matter.

I’m not talking about “returning to my roots” or any of that nonsense. My roots are in Los Angeles, where I discovered West Hollywood at the age of 15. Between the ages of 16 and 23 I moved from city to city as a professional ballet dancer. I’ve partied in Chelsea, North Halsted, the Castro, and Fire Island, and I’ve been to gay bars in cities all throughout this country. I’ve always been grateful that these places exist, and I can’t imagine my life without them.

Still, I have complaints.

When I go out to the Castro or West Hollywood, I figure it’s a way to release stress. But I mostly enjoy visiting with friends and catching up, and I’m almost always disappointed with the night – it’s tough to visit when everyone is looking over their shoulders to see what the crowd is like. In fact, I’ve started to realize that I don’t even know my friends that well. Last summer, I threw a party at my house, and the crowd was predominately heterosexual; two or three of my friends ended up leaving because there weren’t enough gay men. Rather than just be social, they wanted to spend the night someplace where they might get laid.

This is partly an age thing. I’m 27, and I’ve been out for 12 years. A lot of my college friends are 19, 20, or 21, and some of them are still somewhat closeted. And when I was 19, I sometimes felt like I’d spent enough of my life around straight people; I needed to catch up on my time with gay people. But these days, I’m sometimes more interested in connecting than I am in getting laid. And that’s a good thing – because as I headed north for the summer, I knew that I wasn’t getting laid all summer long. (The Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects would probably frown upon the idea of sleeping with one’s research subjects.)

While living at the cabin, I attended two big events – the Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo and a large campout. At these events, I talked to and hung out with everyone I could, and I really tried to get to know them. But I wasn’t the only person doing this. People were using these big events to catch up with old friends and meet new people; the nights at the rodeo were spent drinking, chatting, and doing the two-step.

Sure, you’ll find that in the Castro, too – but with a difference. These rural men talked with people older, younger, uglier, or better-looking than themselves. When conversations started, they didn’t automatically assume that the other person was interested in them; conversation wasn’t necessarily a pretext for sex.

To me this was all new. Most often, the friends I’ve met, whether I met them at a bar, at school, or online, started out as some kind of sexual attraction. As a result, my friendship circle is a little incestuous: my friends are clones of each other, we tend to be each other’s type, and new attachments bring in more of the same.

This kind of network, produced on a larger scale, gives us places like the Castro, with people separated by looks, body, age, and race. Newcomers to the Castro might observe that the neighborhood is a mixture of eclectic groups – but on closer inspection, those groups don’t mix. What ultimately connects most people in San Francisco’s gay male community is not a common sexuality, but tastes in men.

One of my bizarre summer discoveries was also one of the most liberating: I didn’t worry constantly about my body, my hair, or my clothes. And I made friends this summer with guys I wouldn’t normally associate with. I talked with younger men, older men, handsome men, cowboys, truckers, farm workers, and even some ex-urbanites. And each man had a unique story and experience related to his life and sexuality.

On my last weekend in Washington I met Dave, who recently quit his job as a DJ at a gay club in Phoenix and embarked on a career as a trucker. As a young, attractive man, he turned heads everywhere. But in recent years, as he grew older, he lost those things that are so highly valued in the gay male community – his youth, looks, and hard body. He was no longer able to attract many men, or even create new friendships with men. He told me this was a karmic backlash after years of mistreating older and less attractive guys.

Dave is now a part of the rural gay community. He tries to come hang out with the guys in Newport whenever he isn’t on the road. And like me, Dave felt better about himself than he had in years.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not planning to pull up stakes and move to North Idaho. I still like cities and all they have to offer, including the gay ghettos. But if I’m going to stay, I want to enjoy places like the Castro into my old age. I don’t want to be alienated from my community just because I’m no longer physically desirable.

We need to think about what kind of community we have and what kind of community we want. For many of us, our sexuality exposes us to prejudice from an early age. We don’t need to create more prejudice and pain within our safe places—within the Castro. And we certainly ought to embrace older men, to involve them in our lives and our communities. Let’s not push them out of the gay spaces they built. If we don’t respect ourselves, our history, and the men who made our history possible, will our community ever be healthy? I’m afraid not.