13 Country Boys, Cowboys, Farmboys, Truckers, and Rednecks

Both of my parents grew up on farms, and everybody who finds out that I'm from Illinois makes a crack about farming, so I've never found country boys particularly exciting. I was always into short, dark-skinned, muscular, not tall, chunky, and Anglo-pale.

Besides, I spent my childhood trying to avoid football, pick up trucks, country western music, hunting, fishing, and beer  Why would I want to hang out with someone interested in those things?

Still, country boys are often attractive, perhaps due to their hard iconic masculinity.

And the gay ones are so unexpected.  What causes someone to resist the siren call of West Hollywood and spend his life amid the vast fields?

Here are my top 12 country boys dates and hookups.












Texas

1. Ole Miss.  On my way south from Rock Island to my horrible year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I stopped in Oxford, Mississippi, and in one of my few experiences in street cruising, picked up a University of Mississippi undergrad named Elmer (really)

2. Carl the Cowboy Cop.  Texas had fewer country boys than one would expect, though lots of guys pretended to be.  Carl was 6'8, lanky, blond, and from a ranch near Abilene.  On our first date, he bought me a pair of cowboy boots and took me country-western line dancing.









West Hollywood

3. The Cowboy of Sunset Boulevard was actually a college music major from the San Fernando Valley, but he pretended to be a cowboy, and hit it off on my Montana-born roommate, Derek.

4. Frozen Custard and Gay Bashing.  During my semester in Nashville, I got a date with a country boy who wanted to go through my photo album, insisted that we didn't do it in the bed near the open window.  And smoked.

5. The Country Western Singer, also in Nashville. At least, a singer.  Adter I crammed Country-Western into my brain to impress him, he turned out to be into pop.

6. The Nebraska Cornhusker.  In 1995, Lane and I took a road trip from West Hollywood to Rock Island: The Great Redneck Roundup, 20 hookups in 20 days.  But few actual country boys.  A highlight was the Nebraska Cornhusker, a former football player who now worked as a college recruiter, and had three of the six characteristics of Country Boys.

7. The Honest-to-Goodness Cowboy of Missoula, Montana, another highlight of our   He made his living in rodeos.

New York

8. The Bear Who Wasn't into Sharing.  My boyfriend Joe's ex, a carpenter who lived in rural Rhinebeck, New York.  We thought he wasn't into sharing, and he thought Joe wasn't, until two of his friends convinced us otherwise.

9. The Football Player Who Got Unstuck In Time, Carey the Alabama Farm Boy who was going to the University of Alabama, and got lost on a field trip to New York, either in 1939 or 2000.

Florida

10. The Florida Cowboy.  Did you know that there were ranches in Florida?  The ranchers are called "cowhunters" or "crackers." But the tall, buffed guy that Yuri and I shared actually worked on an alpaca ranch.

11. Tucumcari Two-Step.  When I was visiting Larry in New Mexico, I met a guy from Tucumcari, on old Route 66. He had never heard of the tv series.

Ohio

Not a lot of country boys in Ohio.








Upstate

12.  The French Canadian Farmboy.  When I took Troy to Montreal to go to his first glory hole, he hooked up with Max.  Troy was impressed that he was an actual, honest-to-goodness farmer.

Plains

13, The Dakota Boy.   When I went to a Pow-Wow, I expected to meet a member of the Dakota Indian Nation, but instead I got a farmboy of German ancestry.  Cute, though.