The music was Abba’s “Super Trouper.” My father gulped a martini as I raced through box steps and ball-heel changes for his high-ranking military buddies. In that moment, my father realized that the Read family’s long history at Virginia Military Institute had died with a thud. His son was a fairy.

This May day, I danced again. On a whim, I drove to Liberty, Tennessee for a gathering of the Radical Faeries. I’d heard tiny whispers about the Faeries, but had no idea what to expect. The movement grew out of hippie culture in the early 70s. Dissatisfied with a gay culture that was predominantly urban, white, and moneyed, men began setting up communes all over the country. In 1974, the *Radical Faerie Digest (RFD)*, a “country journal for gay men everywhere” was first published in Iowa. Today, Faerie gatherings are the closest men come to women’s music festivals, except the food is better.

A well-meaning but extremely stoned Faerie had given me directions to Short Mountain Sanctuary over the phone. After 12 hours of driving, I was not in the mood to be lost. The sun abandoned me and the paved roads became dirt. I considered asking for directions at one of the houses on the roadside. But every house had a monster truck parked outside with a gun rack, and I could just hear the banjo strains of *Deliverance*. “You got a pretty mouth there, boy.” I think not. I held my breath and prayed to the Faeries.

Just then (I *swear*) I saw a pink triangle painted on a small bridge. I followed a series of Faerie symbols to a parking lot, filled with over 100 vehicles. My clutch was burning, I was grumpy, and I had no idea where to go next. A fuzzy little man waved at me from across the lot. I followed him to a trail which he claimed was a shortcut to the farm. A twenty minute shortcut, I might add, through mud and poison ivy. “Don’t they have a shuttle bus or something?” I asked my guide.

He smiled and rubbed my head. “Welcome home,” he said.

Short Mountain Sanctuary is a 200 acre farm about an hour Southeast of Nashville. 18 people live there year-round in houses they build themselves. The residents tend gardens, use solar power, and raise dairy goats and chickens. Twice a year, there are week-long gatherings that draw hundreds of people from as far away as Australia.

When I arrived, the scene was like the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert. There were people singing around a campfire, playing drums and flutes, dancing and passing pipes.

It was Beltane, the pagan May day celebration. I’d missed the major festivities, which came as something of a relief. This world, filled with such lovely freaks, was a bathtub I’d need to ease into gradually.

Two guys led me to a spot where I could pitch my tent, which I’d proudly purchased the night before at Super K-Mart. I hadn’t put up a tent since Boy Scouts. In the ten years between now and my last campout, my idea of roughing it has been Holiday Inn. As I wrestled with the bendy-sticks that give the tent dome its shape, a small crowd gathered.

“How cute,” I heard someone say. “A city girl.”

City Girl was my nickname for the rest of the evening. That is, until the next morning, when I became Cinderella.

Saturday morning, I wandered into the main house for breakfast and can safely say that I will never look at scrambled eggs the same way again. There at the oven was a 6’4”, ocean-eyed mountain of a man in nothing but a gold lame skirt. In one arm he held a three year-old girl; with the other he waved a spatula at me.

“How do you want your eggs, pup?” he asked.

I glazed over. “Can I just stand here a minute?” I whispered. All my life I’d waited for this man to make me breakfast. I wanted to clap my hands to prove that I believed in fairies.

After I finished breakfast, a man from Atlanta painted my fingernails with hematite polish and took me by the hand to the “Goat Boutique,” a room in the barn with racks upon racks of funky thrift shop clothing.

“Pick out a dress,” he said. I never played dress-up as a child. I was so busy being a bloodthirsty fullback on my soccer team that I’d completely missed out on Mom’s closet and makeup table. I picked out a peach satin gown and wore it with my muddy hiking boots. All day, I felt like I was on my way to the podium to gather my first Oscar. The spaghetti straps left little white marks on my sunburned shoulders.

My second dress was a simple cotton floral print, like what Meryl Streep wore in The Bridges of Madison County. As I walked into lunch, a 60-ish queen stopped and glanced at me. “What a charming house dress,” he said. I blushed, falling a little too easily into the role of the farmer’s wife.

The weekend was filled with magic; anyone with the courage to grow will discover startling new parts of their identity. Who knew I’d look so fierce in a Stevie Nicks muu-muu?

The next gathering is in April. For a sample issue of *Radical Faeries Digest*, send $6.50 to RFD, P.O. Box 68, Liberty, TN, 37095. *RFD* has no official website, but check out http://www.ruralgay.com