Are you sure you're in the right room?

BY MICHAEL KURTZ

At age 20—as a young, dumb kid—I was hardly in the position to make any assumptions or pass any judgements. All I knew, roaming the campus of UF, was that I needed upper-level literature credits—and I didn’t especially care where they came from.

So, when I saw an opening for Queer Theory, two things crossed my mind: 1) I’m gonna get my credits. 2) This could be interesting. Maybe it’s because I was smoking a lot of pot in those days, but it never dawned on me that a particular class might serve the needs and individuals of a par- ticular demographic. A college class composed solely by a bunch of queer kids—could such a thing even exist?

On my first day—needless to say—I was quite pleasantly surprised. I fairly quickly put two and two together, realizing that all the guys in the class were gay and I seemed to be the only straight one. The first thing that struck me was that many of them appeared to be on a meeker side, and most of them had cooler shoes than me. I knew it and they knew it simultaneously. It wasn’t like anyone was wearing a ‘Hello, my name is…’ name tag denoting sexual orientation, but we’re all adults here, right? By that logic, I assumed that a majority (if not all) of the girls would also identify as gay, of which any subsequent lack of interest that they may have possessed disarmed and intimidated me more than anything.

With this realization setting in, I had two choices: I could panic and run and drop the class; or I could pretend that I was actually an open-minded, fully-formed adult and stick it out to see what transpired. Even though I was not completely the latter, the former felt unacceptable. As any young college-aged male, the bulk of my thought-process centered around one thing: sex. With that, not only did I believe that every guy in class wanted me (remember—young and dumb), but I ruminated over the fact that I wouldn’t have a chance with any of the girls, albeit I was far from any kind of ladies’ man. It must be noted that these remarks and speculations are not those of the current 38-year-old me sitting in a McDonald’s reminiscing, but precisely those of the immature brain flooded by them nearly two decades ago.

That said, there was nothing left to do but take the class and learn something new. In 2005, I had never heard of Boys Don’t Cry—let alone Hilary Swank—and I had maybe seen Brokeback Mountain in passing. I certainly didn’t know what Paris is Burning was! — though I can now near-automatically appreciate anything chronicling the tumult of an avant-garde New York City in the 1980’s. It was di cult to match the zeal of my classmates in their discussions, as I neither shared their personal investment in the content nor possessed any working knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the subject. So aside from joining in occasionally (of which I magnanimously thought I was affording some "straight perspective"), I figured it was better just to shut up and listen. I was thrown into a new scholarly world of jargon, histories, agendas, movements and communities resting upon the backdrop of stencil letters edgy and dripping on spray painted posters.

As a Jewish male, I have always felt burdened by that weight reserved for society’s minorities. But it is only now, nearly twenty years later— having not really thought about that class for all this time—that I realize first and foremost it was a safe-space, wherein like-minded individuals shared, in a formal, academic setting, ideas and opinions regarding a subject so inextricable with daily life. Whenever I’ve had "Jewish conversations" with Jewish friends, a part of me instinctively looks over my shoulder to make sure it’s safe. But in Jewish-studies classes we didn’t have to whisper. So today, writing up this piece in a McDonald’s on the way home, I understand that my queer peers were getting the same imperative experience—and I’m glad I got to be a part of it.

After completing degrees in literature and education, MICHAEL KURTZ'S first job was teaching Adv. Pl. English Literature to high schoolers. Following that was a period spent teaching English in China and Vietnam. He returned in 2022 and has assisted countless graduate students with GRE, GMAT, LSAT and MCAT preparation. He always makes time, of course, to work on his novel.