GLR May-June 2024

justify the practice.” Anderson’s field notes were eventually de posited with the Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago, where they now provide an intimate view of life on The Road as it was a century ago. One interview is particularly frank and poignant. In Ander son’s field notes, the youth is identified only as “Document 122 / Boy Tramp.” Let’s call him “Sam.” Sam was eighteen and from Dayton, Ohio, but, when Anderson began to interview him, he was temporarily living on what hoboes referred to as the “Main Stem,” the skid row district centered on West Madison Street in Chicago. Anderson confessed in his field notes that he had rep resented himself as a news reporter researching a story about the neighborhood, and sensed that Sam felt “honored” that his life was deemed worthy of newspaper coverage. The two met for several interviews. “I suspected that he was homosexual,” An derson wrote in his field notes, “so I asked him one day if he was. I told him that it did not make any difference to me what practices he indulged in, but I wanted to learn something about it.” Sam at first denied being homosexual, but Anderson contin ued pressing during subsequent interviews. “I asked him again if he himself did not belong to the ‘sisterhood’ sometimes. He admitted that he did, and he volunteered his story.” Sam explained that he had never heard of “such practices” back in Ohio, but when he was sixteen (in 1920), he went on The Road, to Kansas, to work in the wheat harvest. There he met a tramp who expressed an interest in him, even sharing food the man had obtained by begging. They spent most of the day together, but then Sam hopped an outbound train. He was sur prised when he ran into the man again in a town about fifty miles away. This time the two stayed together, and in the evening they shared a strawstack on the outskirts of town. The man wanted to have sex, and though Sam at first declined, he eventually agreed. He stayed with the man for several days, “and each night they would retire to some strawstack or other obscure place, where the man would hug and kiss him. He al lowed the fellow to masturbate him each evening.” Eventually Sam began to feel “afraid and ashamed,” and caught a train out of town. For a month he avoided sexual con tact with other tramps, until he was approached by a man who

was sleeping with him in a boxcar, a man he found irresistibly attractive. “This man also played with his penus [ sic ] andmas turbated him while performing the rectal coitus. He did not care so much for the female role, but he permitted it as part of the process of getting satisfaction.” Sam stayed two nights with the man, but then again became disgusted with himself, and swore he would avoid all sexual contact with men in the future. His re solve lasted for only “a week or two.” At the end of the summer, Sam returned to Ohio, but by the following spring he began to feel “uneasy.” There was no sex to be found in Dayton, and he was eager to return to places where he could find it. He headed for the farms and fields of Nebraska and the Dakotas, where he was once again approached. “This time he yielded with less coaxing than before. He began to get a certain pleasure out of the practice, and even put himself in the way of men who seemed to be interested.” At the time of the interviews with Nels Anderson, Sam was living in Chicago, but he was eager to jump a train to join the migrant laborers in the Midwest. Anderson described Sam as “an intelligent, handsome lad of good build, and the very type that would attract the wolf,” and he was surprised that such a normal-appearing young man felt no shame at all about being part of the “sisterhood.” Sam had found his family of choice, and appeared to be happy about it. Anderson’s field notes on “Boy Tramp” conclude by record ing Sam’s personal philosophy. “He has boiled the problem of getting along, down to this: ‘A man has got to live and enjoy himself,’ and that would mean to enjoy himself at the things he enjoys, as long as he may.” While many observers wrote about tramps engaging in ho mosexual activities while on The Road, Nels Anderson came closest to reversing the issue by discussing why “perverts” might choose to become tramps. “The greatest danger the per vert faces is that of being ostracized,” Anderson noted. “So long as one is in the tramp class this danger does not worry him.” The conditions were perfect for a man fleeing possible scandal in his hometown. Tramps usually traveled anonymously, adopt ing a “monica” (moniker) by which they were known by friends and strangers alike. (Jack London’s was at first “’Frisco Kid” and then “Sailor Jack.”) Every tramp also prepared a standard “line” about himself, a brief biography designed to give out the least amount of information about his past. Anyone who asked too many questions—or who shared too much information about himself—aroused suspicion. Any homosexual who took to The Road would find himself in a community that included “abnormally masculine” men who engaged in sex with one another, men who preferred to reveal as little as possible about their own background, and who were never in one place long enough to become known except by a colorful moniker. At a time in American history when gay men had few options but to remain hidden, the open road provided the perfect closet. R EFERENCES Anderson, Nels. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man .Uni versity of Chicago Press, 1923. DePastino, Todd. Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America . University of Chicago Press, 2003. Flynt, Josiah. Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life . Century Co., 1899. London, Jack. TheRoad. Macmillan, 1907.

Canned Goods Back in the canned-goods aisle again, I hesitate, faced with so much choice. I swipe a can from the shelf, turn it around, and read the ingredients: water, muscle, bone, fat, tobacco smoke, tattoo ink, semen, desire. Too much of this.

Not enough of that. I put it back and look at another one: Consume within 24 hours of opening. After passing on New look same great taste

and Best served hot , I pick a willing can, put it into the shopping basket, and we go together to the nearest checkout. N EAL K ENT

May–June 2024

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