JD Vance's boyhood mistaken gay confession story smacks of head-spinning inflation

CARROLL, Iowa —

In reading the-then (and now-again) publishing sensation 'Hillbilly Elegy" eight years ago as it announced a culture-crashing new voice I found myself stopping at points in the book, both angry and doubtful of its author's authenticity.

I'd intended to fiercely pan “Hillbilly Elegy” in reviews, but the author JD Vance and I had mutual friends who persuaded me he was a honest-intentioned guy with a platform who could lift rural reaches of the nation like my hometown of Carroll, Iowa.

What's more, Vance is a gifted writer and the narrative pace of 'Elegy" kept me hooked, but the suggestions, in the book itself and reviews, that rural America is some sort of monolith infuriated me. Southern reaches of Ohio are not Western Iowa. Our economies and people and cultures are vastly different.

I do know salty-dog, sailor-mouthed, world-weary, seen-it-all rural women like his grandmother, Bonnie Blanton, a defining figure is Vance's life whom he affectionally called "Mamaw." Vance peppered his Republican National Convention speech with references to Mamaw, framing her as something of a posthumous hillbilly cult hero.

At the time of my first reading of Vance's 2016 book, well before his political aspiration took form, perhaps prior to the internal whispers of his own ambitious mind, I highlighted the bottom part of Page 97 and doused the margins with question marks as I laughed out loud at what appeared to be at best poor recollection, but more likely, intentional fiction.

Again, this was my reaction when Vance was a progressive darling, far from the world of the Senate, much less the chain-link-fenced MAGA echo chamber.

Yes, Vance had portrayed Mamaw, I believe truthfully, overall, as a foul-mouthed, no-BS-tolerating grandmother. We have these sorts of women in rural Iowa, too — I know a lot of them.

But Vance's account of Mamaw's alleged response to him as he struggled to understand homosexuality when he was "eight or nine, maybe younger" struck me as something between improbable and fantastical.

"I'll never forget the time I convinced myself that I was gay," Vance writes. "I was eight or nine, maybe younger, and I stumbled upon a broadcast by some fire-and-brimstone preacher."

The preacher, Vance said, talked about the evils of homosexuality, and how it had infiltrated society.

Vance said that his young mind simplified the issue -- gay men preferred to be around men, not women.

"This described me perfectly," Vance writes. "I disliked girls, and my best friend in the world was my buddy Bill. Oh no, I'm going to hell."

So he approached his grandmother — by his own accounting, at age 8 or 9, or younger.

"I broached this issue with Mamaw, confessing that I was gay and I was worried that I would burn in hell," Vance writes on Page 97 of "Hillbilly Elegy." "'She said, 'Don't be a fucking idiot. How would you know that you're gay?'" I explained my thought process. Mamaw chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain to a boy my age. Finally, she asked, 'J.D., do you want to suck dicks?' I was flabbergasted. Why would someone want to do that? She repeated herself, and I said, 'Of course not!' 'Then,' she said. 'you're not gay. And even if you did want to suck dicks, that would be okay. God would still love you.'"

Senator Vance, as one rural guy to another rural guy, I call bullshit.

I don't believe that conversation happened  when Vance says it happened.. None of the edgy, rural, provocative, chain-smoking grandmas I know would use such sexualized language with an 8 year old — or younger kid — especially not a woman whom you eulogized as protective and nurturing in the most important of ways. No one who cares about an 8 year old, talks that way to the kid — and what's more, JD’s Mamaw would clearly know that at age 8, you are not going to understand what it means to do what she describes.

If Vance's grandmother had fashioned a children's book out of the exchange, aimed at 8 or 9 years olds, it would be banned from most schools, and should be.

"Is this book banned?" said a friend after reading the passage. "You would think it would be."

Then there's this: anyone who would use such crudely homophobic language would not pivot within seconds to a "God-would-still-love-you" stance on gay people.

I also just don't think any 9 year old is mature enough to be "flabbergasted" about anything. Confused. Angry. Surprised. Frightened. Sure. But not flabbergasted.

Vance, of course, did not have a stenographer following him around as a child, and most memoirs would be plates of blandness without some garnishing embellishment. He deserves some license. As a writer. Not as former President Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate.

This anecdote rang false to me eight years ago during a much lower-stakes time in Vance's life.

I still don't believe it. Now his words have global import. What else is Vance writing and saying that I shouldn't believe?

Vance, a product of the de-industrialized heartland, may be overcompensating by engaging in industrial-scale self-reinvention with wildly shifting narratives to fill his political costume of the day.

(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )