Jason Dilts is a political activist, writer, and non-profit manager currently based in Wichita, KS. He pens a regular column, “Homo on the Range”, for Wichita’s premier arts and culuture magazine, Naked City and also writes art and cultural pieces for “The Wichita Eagle”. He is a graduate of Wichita State University, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology.

You can’t quite pin a person’s sexuality to a wall. Sure, you can produce alluring images that reflect a sexual act. You can create art that is titillating, but you can never capture the true essence of a single person’s complex socio-sexual horizon by freezing it in time.

There’s an element of “pin-up” sexuality that permeates the gay community, and it’s particularly perplexing here on the range. We often turn to pornography or online hook-ups to satisfy our sexual appetites because the inherent isolation that comes with being gay in a place like Kansas leaves few choices for healthier outlets. We rarely talk about it, but those of us in the LGBT community have gotten used to our sexualities being highly compartmentalized. As a result, the sexual relationships we form are frequently fragmented or underdeveloped.

Before I lose you hetero-readers to the “ick factor” of having to think about gay sex, let me remind you that we homos have to stomach more than our fair share of opposite-sexing. Sexual health is part of a community’s vitality, so anyone who cares about living in a wholesome world should be interested in this “pink pin-up problem”. Open your minds a bit and you’ll see this issue is more about sociology than it is sin.

Today, we can get off by cueing up our smart phones. Access to sexual imagery has never been easier. When you’re formulating a sense of your own sexual identity, there really is no digital Pandora’s box. There’s so much more to one’s sexuality and sexual orientation that the carnal act of sex, though. Within that truth, a tangled problem tangoes.

Gay people often see themselves represented for the first time in a porno. That’s a jarring statement that deserves some consideration.

If you are heterosexual, when did you first see another person emulate your sexual essence? If you had straight parents, it was the moment you were born. If you didn’t, I’m sure it was only a few minutes after that! We live in a heterosexual society. We’re saturated with boy-girl narratives in all elements of popular culture. Movies, books, and songs are full of opposite-sex tales. We form our identities, in part, by associating ourselves with representations of who we can become. We color our lives with the paints of others. Our sexuality is one of many elements to who we are, but what happens when there are few representations to draw from?

We want so desperately to know we aren’t alone; to be reassured that we aren’t the only one. That means we’ll go anywhere to find ourselves.
The consequences are complex. Pornographic images produce unrealistic expectations about body image and sexual pleasure. They’re devoid of humanism, making sex a solo activity, and later sexual encounters potentially awkward. Porn is also exclusively focused on sex as a corporal act. To be truly sexual, one has to bring their whole self to their partner. Spirituality, intellect, and sociability matter to LGBT people, too.

It’s easy to “pin up” our sex lives, though.  There aren’t many places outside of clubs or bars to meet gay people in this town. A holistic community is still very much in formation. In the mean time, a lot of us are bumping into each other on Grindr or conversing via Craig’s List. No one teaches you how to be intimate with a person of the same-sex. Even the most supportive of parents probably don’t know how to talk to their gay kids about how to form an appropriate relationship. There’s that “ick factor” again. It’s uncomfortable, so we avoid it. Can we afford to ignore the health problems that it parallels, though? AIDS hasn’t been eliminated. People still get infected with HIV. STDs happen. Beyond the body, though, there’s the soul. We all deserve more than a social media dating app profile.

There are more positive LGBT representations now than ever before in the media, but what about our local community? Celebrities have marginal impact on forming our identities; it’s the people in our daily lives that make indelible imprints. Coming out is a public health issue. Don’t fool yourself into thinking a lack of gay representation will lessen the chance that your kid will be gay. We homos don’t have much choice in the matter. The choice is in how we all live our lives. If you’re straight, encourage your gay friends to talk to you about their dating life. Try to help them out if they’re alone by introducing them to new people. Check in your “inner-ick” at the door. Don’t let someone you care about compartmentalize an important aspect of his or her life.

Let’s start pinning up our sexuality and start owning up to the wholeness of who we are.

Readers of The Gayly know what it means to be “homo on the range.” Wide-open spaces are unparalleled opportunities to make our lives as large as we desire; yet within that expansiveness is the uncomfortable intersection of loneliness and isolation.  There’s a place in Oklahoma City that manages to marry these two realities into one happy conclusion. That place is The Habana Inn.

Situated just off of the highway, The Habana appears to simply be a large hotel. Yet beyond the palm trees that line its marquee, something truly unique awaits. To be at The Habana is to have the freedom to indulge the essence of your persona while escaping the secrecies, seclusions, and stresses that abound so many of our lives.

Billed as the Southwest’s largest gay resort, there truly is nothing like it for well over a thousand miles. It’s the anchor for the city’s gay district known as, “The Strip”, where six diverse clubs, several unique restaurants, and a trendy local coffee shop (Beans & Leaves) offer a sense of community LGBT people in the Midwest often miss. It’s a truly unique offering of culture that will be appreciated by any connoisseur of queer experiences.

A stay at The Habana is fully loaded. 170 hotel rooms surround two outdoor swimming pools in a maze-like fashion fun for exploring. Two nightclubs (The Copa and Finishline), a restaurant (Gushers) with an adjoining piano bar (Ledo) and a gift shop that stays open into the wee hours of the morning remind guests that they are getting much more than a typical hotel offering. My stay took place during a frigidly cold weekend in mid-February. There was plenty of hot action inside, though, to warm me up!

I started my Friday night with a late dinner at Gushers. The restaurant is a classy dining room that blends comfort with sophistication. The menu offers a wide range of choices, from burgers to pasta dishes to their famous prime rib dinner. A lit fireplace set the perfect ambiance as I sipped a generous glass of merlot and enjoyed a delicious veggie pizza. After dinner, I slid over to The Ledo. Overlooking Gushers, the fashionable lounge was the perfect environment to sip an after-dinner martini and relax to the sound of dancing piano keys. This was just the buzz I needed for dancing!

Before hitting the clubs, I was lured into the tempting gift shop that is situated between them. An impressive volume of gay-themed magazines, apparel, toys and clothes mixes with some high-quality decorative religious iconography. This is the only place where I’ve ever been able to buy a bottle of lube and a Buddha statue! They also have a fantastic offering of gay films, including some recent and hard to find foreign and indie releases.

After the shopping, it was time to experience that famous Habana nightlife—and it did not disappoint! The Copa is a fun club with an enticing dance floor. A diverse, inviting crowd mixes along the edges as beats from popular top-40 songs and classic ballads from the 80’s and 90’s boom. The drinks are strong, bar tenders super cute, and the merriment contagious. It wasn’t long before I had made new friends and was dancing to Lady Gaga! After a while, I need to cool off, though. The Finish Line just across the hall provided the perfect spot to do so. It’s a country bar with boot-scooting dancing and gentleman and ladies worth getting to know. There’s a distinct crowd that imbibes at each joint, but it was fun to be able to mix and mingle between the two. When it was all over – at 2am, of course – I went back to Gusher’s to enjoy a late night breakfast buffet. It wasn’t until around 4am that the night truly ended.

My time at The Habana Inn reminded me that life in the Midwest is just as fun and alluring as experiences had anywhere else. For folks looking to get away and escape into an enclave of acceptance, this highly accessible and very affordable spot offers LGBTs anywhere in this region a place where they can be themselves and make new friends. For Oklahomans already familiar with its presence, it’s a place to reconnect and make memories with friends old and new.

The Habana is one of those places that could only exist on the range!

When we go to a bar, we have an agenda. Refreshing, tasty beverages are not what most of us seek when we walk into our favorite watering holes. There is no natural lust for alcohol that beckons us to imbibe. There is, however, a yearning for connection imbued in each of us. We buy drinks, dance with strangers, and take random people home in hopes of filling a void. We believe others will give us what we cannot give ourselves. We are always disappointed.

You do not have to be gay to have this experience. For people who are, though, the emotions are compounded. We are not just looking for a partner when we intimately connect with someone of the same sex; we are often trying to find ourselves inside another person. That dynamic is an equation for ascertaining emptiness.

There’s no greater catastrophe than a life unfulfilled. Yet, most would admit that something is missing. Every person who is gay has experienced some kind of rejection; we seek shelter in the arms of others. Intimacy cannot be manufactured, though. It cannot be found on Craig’s List. It cannot be ordered up on smart phone apps. It also cannot be served at a bar. That gut-level dissatisfaction so many of us feel everyday is really an imbedded barometer reminding us that we need to get our internal house in order. And so, we try.

We are sitting at a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon, the latest issue of The Advocate our only companion. We feel lonely. We want to be connected. So we pull out our iPhone and log onto Grindr! The gay-dating cell phone application displays diagonal rows of dozens of men within a few thousand feet from us who we can talk to. We zero in on a shirtless guy with scant information about himself in his profile. We chat it up.

We decide during the nascent texting/dating ritual that this avatar will be our salvation. The shirtless man behind the pic will fill our void. He will see the beauty of our soul. He will love our quirky tastes, laugh at our jokes, and explore the world endlessly by our side. He will give us everything we deserve. None of that is apparent by the few dozen lines of text we exchange, though. We decide to meet up at a downtown bar later that evening. In the flesh, it will click.

So we enter the bar with an agenda. We fail to consider that we are about to meet a distinct person with a whole host of issues and aspirations distinct from our own. We meet. We order a drink. Shirtless Grindr guy turns out to be pretty lackluster. He is rather boring. We have little to talk about. Or maybe we do. It is hard to have a real conversation with someone when you are holding at bay the disappointment that this person is not exactly who you wanted them to be.
Now, we have a choice. We can politely excuse ourselves and go home to a lonely night’s slumber. Or, we can invite our bland beau to our abode. The night’s machinations can either be tame or wild; the morning’s musings are pre-ordained. Either way, he leaves. The chasm remains.

It is within that space—that void—that redemption lives. The awkward moment when we realize the person we are drinking with is not the person we want is really the instant when we discover that pieces of us are missing. We can wonder the world, cruise every bar, and chat up every person in cyber space. No one we encounter will ever be able to give us what we have to give ourselves. Instead of going to out bars, we should probably be doing yoga, meditating, or just spending some quiet time reflecting on how to become the people we want to be.

When we do meet up with people, we should interrupt that awkwardness with something real. We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the uniqueness that lies within. We should receive individuals as they are, too. Our own agendas must be set aside. People are not canvasses for us to paint our insecurities onto. Everyone is their own masterpiece, worthy of faculty and symposium. Ultimately, we hold the keys to the undoing of our own doom.

This isn’t just a gay issue. Heterosexuals manufacture intimacy, too! There’s a certain politeness in straight society that prevents the honest admission of what’s really going on in most people’s lives, though. Leave it to the gays to shake things up a bit.

Let’s all try to fill our inner-chasms with more than just alcohol. Let’s stop looking for other people to make us whole. Let’s dig deep into our own firmaments.

We can fill the void by mining the chasm.

I’m not talking about an organized group of homos raising awareness, organizing rallies, or staging events. While we do have political groups in the region that do good work for the gay community, sadly I’m referring to different type of motion. Gay people from states like Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas have a tendency to get the hell out of here as fast as they can. This mass exodus can often feel like the most significant movement that has taken place within the local LGBT community in recent years.

This region has a long-identified “brain drain” problem, with young, talented people often choosing to flee our cities for greater opportunities in larger, more urban areas on the coasts because they feel they can’t have the quality of life they desire in their home states. We have a parallel problem in the gay community. Call it a “gay away”!

From the minute young queers come out of the closet, most are itching to get away. They feel that The Midwest isn’t a safe place where they can be themselves. They don’t believe that their love—and by extension who they are as people—will ever be accepted in towns with reputations for being a bit on the backward side. They don’t see a widespread, visible gay community they can safely fit into. They come to a simple conclusion—they’re not welcome in middle of the country. And so, when they graduate high school, or if they couldn’t get away then, definitely when they’re out of college, they pack up their talent, take with them their dollars, and make a home somewhere that ISN’T over the rainbow.

Within this reality, there are plenty of losers. The gay community gets smaller every time this occurs, diluting our political power and social influence. Gay individuals leave behind treasured memories and all of the people and places that made “the range” feel like home. Those they leave are left with empty voids.
The cities and states themselves are perhaps the biggest losers, though. Every person who moves away from The Midwest takes with them their potential involvement in the community, their probable contributions to local industries, and their likely contribution to the local economy. When it comes to having a strong state with bustling industries and a vibrant economy, does the sexual orientation of those participating really matter?

The answer is obvious to me, but it’s up to us as a collective to really address that underlying issue. The LGBT community can mitigate this “gay away” by refusing to feel that they have to leave their home to be themselves. The community at-large can be proactive in welcoming and embracing people from all walks of life. We don’t have to agree on every issue to be one, unified community. We can all be ourselves without threatening other people’s values. Let’s face it, life on either coast in the major cities is fast paced and pretty expensive! Here on the range, it’s much more affordable and relaxing. Sometimes the boldest thing you can do in life is to simply stand your ground. Each gay person who elects to stay in The Midwest does just that.

It’s time for a new gay “movement” in middle-America. Instead of moving away, let’s move this entire region forward together!

[box]Jason Dilts is a political activist, writer, and non-profit manager currently based in Wichita, KS. He pens a regular column, “Homo on the Range”, for Wichita’s premier arts and culture magazine, Naked City and also writes art and cultural pieces for “The Wichita Eagle”. He is a graduate of Wichita State University, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology.[/box]

“It’s so frustrating living in Wichita!”

That’s the message a friend tweeted me on a Friday night. I knew exactly what she meant without even having to ask.  A forty-something successful attorney, she was fed up with being culturally sidelined. It’s a perplexing phenomenon gay professional’s all over the heartland feel.

“Nothing happens here. Nothing ever happens here. I can watch the same ten girls get drunk at the same gay bar or go to a dance club that plays bad music and pretend to be overjoyed that my hetero friends are getting married,” she bemoaned. “Meanwhile, I’m just stuck. I’m not happy. Just stuck”

I empathized enormously. Her words have resonance. There’s a problem in Midwest cities that doesn’t quite have a name. It’s the gut-level unsatisfaction many LGBT people feel. It has nothing to do with our sexual identity or self-acceptance. It has everything to do with where we fit into the fabric of the community. That restlessness is intrinsic with being a homo on the range.

That anxiety is “flyover frustration” and it’s an issue as vast as Middle America itself. Our region’s regressive political climate does much to drive away talent. However, the real challenge to being gay here isn’t political. It’s very personal, and it’s downright detaching.

Most would probably assume that it isn’t easy being gay in the Midwest. The reasons for why, though, are perhaps not so obvious. To comprehend the difficulty of being gay in Midwest cities, you have to dissect the factors behind the colloquial culture as well as understand the dynamics of the LGBT community. That’s a tall, perplexing task!  Yet, it’s central to my friend’s vexation.

Most people like a life full of connections. For that reason, it’s common for gay kids who grow up “in the middle” to have an escape plan. They flee for the bigger cities because of the promise those bastions hold for enhanced encounters with people who are like them.  LGBTs lean more toward being inventive, creative, and dynamic. We’re a resourceful people. We tend to enter into industries that engage our more imaginative instincts. We survive as a community by thriving as individuals. Art and culture are our lifeblood. Activity is our anthem. Entertainment is out ethos. Progress and innovation propel us forward. When we find ourselves in the midst of manufacturing economies with limited growth potential and living in towns where cultural and economic progress are stalled, we tend to want out.

And often, we do get out.

Sometimes, though, we stay. We stay for our families. We stay because we have a job. We stay because it’s an affordable place to live. We stay because we don’t want to be forced to leave. When we stay, we often find ourselves standing alone. On a Friday night, while our metro friends are taking in edgy plays and dining at fusion restaurants, we’re sidelined, left only to tweet away our frustrations.

Go to any gay club or pride event and you’ll see the same people year after year. Most of us are delightful individuals, but there’s never a cycling in of fresh faces to enhance our charm. There are never quite enough people for us to find a lasting group of friends we belong to, let alone a lover we truly connect with.

New influences keep us from falling into old patterns. A part of you blooms that was never alive before each time you make a new friend. Flyover frustration unfolds each time vibrant individuals get stymied by the lack of growth a community offers them.

I’d like to say that the solution is to stay and be the change that we need. If more of us stayed in-mass, this issue would resolve itself naturally. I’ve realized, though, that one person’s decision to stay won’t effect change fast enough for that individual to live the life they deserve. We homos who live on the range have a complicated relationship with our land. We love it for its enormous prospects; we resent it when it robs us of our vast potential.

No dynamic individual should ever be left with a twittering blue bird as their sole friend on a Friday night! Getting to the root of “flyover frustration” is a step toward all of us being able to find our own eventual happiness—on or off the range.

Jason Dilts is a political activist, writer, and non-profit manager currently based in Wichita, KS. He pens a regular column, “Homo on the Range”, for Wichita’s premier arts and culture magazine, Naked City and also writes art and cultural pieces for “The Wichita Eagle”. He is a graduate of Wichita State University, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology.