I stood in the checkout line in the Powell Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, my arms full of books, and absently looked out the storefront window to see if the rain had stopped. I was trying to decide if I could walk the one and a half miles back to the hotel with such a load. It was October of 1996, and I was in Portland for the first time, attending a social work conference. Finding an entire floor of used books had triggered fond childhood memories. I love the smell of weathered books, overstuffed chairs, and the enchantment of slipping in and out of hidden nooks and crannies. Even as a child, I hated being in the spot light, preferring to be invisible and retreat into the world of books. Finding an entire section on gay and lesbian studies and gay novels, had been genuine godsend. I could not have carried one more book. Seeing that I was next, I deposited my armload of books on the counter with a groan. The cashier looked up as he started ringing up the prices and commented, “You are certainly buying a lot of books this morning.” I explained how thrilled I was to find so many wonderful books because these types of books were almost impossible to find in Wyoming. As if on cue, the salesperson blurted out, “How can you be gay and live in Wyoming?” This was not the first time I had been asked that question, but it still amazed me how instantaneously it had jumped from the lips of this cashier.

The first time the question had been asked of me was five years earlier in 1991, when I was at a seminar in Tucson, Arizona. That was the first seminar I had ever attended as an openly self- identified gay man. In a small group session, when we were introducing ourselves, I was asked: "How can you be gay and live in Wyoming?" At the time, I was so nervous about the fact that I was actually coming out to these people, the question simply seemed like a positive affirmation and didn’t carry any particular significance beyond that. Since then, I have been asked that same question at every national conference I’ve attended. Here again, standing at a bookstore checkout counter, five years later, I was being asked: “How can you be gay and live in Wyoming?”

I loaded my books into a couple book bags and started my trek back across the river and up the hill toward the convention center in a mild drizzle. As I walked, I reflected on both the question, that it was such an immediate response when I let people know I was gay and where I lived. I was increasingly struck by the implications of the question. That the question is so consistently asked implies there is something about Wyoming, or people’s image of Wyoming, that makes being gay and living there unexpected, undesirable, or perhaps even dangerous.

As you read this book, having someone ask that question may not seem so strange. In fact, you may think it would be stranger if people didn’t ask the question. But remember, I am talking about a time which was two years before Wyoming was cast into the world spotlight as the place where a young twenty-one-year-old, college student was brutally beaten and left to die because he was gay.