06.26.06
Countrified gay living
FOR MANY BIG city gay people, the idea of traveling outside the borders of urban development fills them with dread. Add to that the paralyzing fear of the Midwest, and it’s a wonder gay people can even locate those areas on a map.
Gay comedian ANT is the force behind the gay cable channel Logo’s new series “U.S. of ANT.” During the half-hour weekly show, which premiered on June 19, the comic travels into the heartland, searching for signs of intelligent gay life.
“We all seem to rush to the coasts to the big cities,” ANT says of gay people. “I wondered what gay life is like in a small town.”
IN THE PREMIERE episode, ANT travels to big sky country in Montana.
He tools around Butte and Bozeman, Mont., approaching random people and asking where the gay life is. Although you’d expect the small-town westerners to spit, turn their backs or pull out their guns, nothing of the sort happens. Everyone answers politely that they had no idea there was any gay scene within the city limits. That reaction was most of what ANT got while filming, he says.
During one episode, he decided to walk up to a bunch of hard-core bikers to ask about gay life in town.
“The production crew was like, ‘Oh my God, those are Hell’s Angels,’” says ANT. When he approached them, one told him that he would call his gay brother and ask him where to find the gay scene.
“It’s amazing how we touch so many people’s lives,” ANT says.
He’s traveled all over the country searching out rural-living gay men and lesbians. He met a lesbian couple in North Carolina adopting children; a lesbian construction worker in Alabama who’s out to her friends and family; lesbian witches in Mississippi who did a “queening” ritual for ANT, making him an official queen; also in metaphysical Mississippi was the encounter with the gay haunted house.
He also met two high school aged twin boys, one gay and one straight, who stuck up for one another through bouts of teasing and bullying in New Hampshire.
“I never really believed there was a gay community,” ANT says. “Now, I truly believe there is one. The fabric of it is so strong and so beautiful. We quilt a beautiful fabric.”