Out in the Middle of Nowhere

Doc Focuses on Gay Men in Kendrick, Idaho

By Joan Opyr, 1-06-06

My family and I have just switched from Dish Network to Direct TV. In the process, we gained a number of movie and sports networks, and also MTV's new gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender-themed channel, Logo.

I'm happy to have Logo. I don't like having to rely on "Will and Grace" for my gay television fix, but on the whole, I must admit that I have found Logo's programming to be a bit spotty. As a thirty-nine year old lesbian living in rural Idaho with my longtime partner, our two kids, my partner's parents, our three dogs, four cats, and fifteen chickens, I find it hard to relate to much of what I see on Logo -- footloose surfer dykes, AKA the Curl Girls, interviews with gay reality show stars, and features about the kind of rich bitch jet-setting lipstick lesbians who can afford to make the annual pilgrimage to Palm Springs for the Dinah Shore Weekend. I might admire the scenery at Dinah Shore, but I've never paid more than thirty-five bucks for a haircut, and I had my eyebrows waxed for the first time ever only two weeks ago.

(Yes, I am a butch lesbian. So why did I have my eyebrows waxed? Again, because I'm thirty-nine. What once looked rather chic and a bit Brooke Shields has morphed into something that looks rather Soviet and a bit Leonid Brezhnev. Not even a lesbian living in rural Idaho wants to brush her teeth with a couple of woolly bear caterpillars staring back at her in the bathroom mirror. It's too disconcerting.)

But I digress. Night before last, I was watching the Logo channel, waiting for a glimpse of lesbian supermodel Jenny Shimizu or the cast of The L Word. You can imagine my surprise – or, if you happen to be a rich bitch jet-setting lipstick lesbian, perhaps you can't – when, instead, Logo announced the following:

"In small town Kendrick, Idaho, a handful of gay men must confront the day to day issues of being openly gay and living in a small town where the residents know of everyone's actions and relationships."

And there, up on the small screen, I saw my friend, Jerry Galloway -- a man who attended my wedding; who gave my partner and me a much-beloved cookbook; a lovely, sweet, decent fellow who only lives about 17 miles as the crow flies away from my own Idaho home, just down the Juliaetta-Kendrick grade. A friend, a local, a guy from the middle-of-nowhere, Idaho. On TV. There, for all the world to see, were Jerry and his partner, Steve, smiling, happy, not bigger than life but actual size. Real guys, guys I knew, out, gay, Idaho men. You could have knocked me down with Jenny Shimizu. (No, really. Please, Jenny Shimizu; knock me down.)

I emailed Jerry immediately and asked him for an interview. I explained that I now worked for New West Magazine as the Northern Idaho Editor. (Jerry and I see one another at Moscow's annual gay pride celebration and around town from time to time, but we rarely meet otherwise. He lives down in Kendrick, I live up in Moscow, and,again, unless you're a rich bitch jet-setting lipstick lesbian, Idaho really isn't that small. Okay, Idaho is that small, but Jerry and I are still ships that pass in the Safeway. I'm always happy to see him, but I don't see him all that often.)

When he opened my out-of-the-blue email, it was Jerry's turn to be knocked down by Jenny Shimizu, or rather, by Heath Ledger. He emailed back:

"Joan, I need to talk with Steve my partner when he gets home this evening. I'm a little shocked in that Michael Culpepper, the producer told us that Logo was only available in large urban cities, thus I hadn't thought much about it being seen locally."

Whoops. Jerry and I spoke by telephone that night, and he admitted that he felt a little sick. "I'm out," he said. "Everyone here [in Kendrick] knows me and Steve," but the thought of the film being seen by the neighbors had not occurred to Jerry. And that pushed what he called "the fear button." Suddenly, what had seemed a small project that would only be shown at a few film festivals and in far-away places like Seattle, New York, and San Francisco had come home to roost via the miracle of the satellite dish.

"Kendrick is small," Jerry said. "It's too small for people not to know [we're gay], but this isn't a gay mecca, and that's what we like about it." Kendrick is a regular place, and Jerry and Steve are regular people. They're an integral part of the Kendrick community -- they're not just the gay part. Jerry works at the University of Idaho, and he volunteers with Hospice. He's a kind, funny, big-hearted man, and I can't imagine Kendrick without him. I don't think Kendrick can imagine it, either. Some GLBT people choose to remain in their hometowns rather than flocking to the urban coasts. Why? Because Jerry and Kendrick and intertwined and interdependent. Jerry and his partner Steve belong to and in their small Idaho town in the same way that my partner and I belong in and to Moscow. It's hard to explain to our brothers and sisters in the gay meccas, but we don't want what they have. We want what we've already got -- a home. A bizarre, rural, red state home, but a happy home nonetheless. Perhaps we're crazy, but maybe contrariness is part of our charm. It might not be a substitute for having our choice of gay and lesbian bars, restaurants, and bookstores, but it'll do.

On Saturday, January 7th, at 6 PM Pacific Standard Time, Bachelor Farmer will premier on the
Logo Channel as part of the original documentary series >Real Momentum. Looking at the rest of Logo's documentary line-up -- old favorites like Forbidden Love, The Celluloid Closet, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Bachelor Farmer seems the odd man out. Jerry and Steve are handsome, but they're not glamorous. Kendrick, Idaho doesn't do glamorous. Kendrick is about old pickup trucks and even older combine harvesters. While the national median income is $41,994, in Kendrick, it's $31,000. The town's official population is either 358 or 369, and I suspect that both numbers might include cats and dogs.

Bachelor Farmer is about modern gay men living in Idaho's rural present. It's about "people like us." Thank God for the satellite dish. Damn the satellite dish. Hey, L Word, I'm ready for my guest spot. Maybe. I think.

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