Short Talk on High School Gym Class (a queer memory for Pride)
High School Football in Washington, D.C.: Eastern vs. Central (November 2, 1923), Library of Congress.
There is no queer space; there are only spaces used by queers or put to queer use. Space has no natural character, no inherent meaning, no intrinsic status as public or private… It is always invested with meaning by its users as well as its creators, and even when its creators have the power to define its official and dominant meaning, its users are usually able to develop tactics that allow them to use the space in alternative, even oppositional ways that confound the designs of its creators.[1]
The high school gymnasium is a scary place. For many queer people, the locker room is perhaps the more frightening portion of that space—that chamber in which we would undress, shower, redress, address and avoid each other, pray for the bell to ring, and hope that everyone forgot we actually had to play sports. Unfortunately for me, my peers and the coach never fell prey to that last part. They were all too conscious for such a convenient, momentary amnesia.
What follows are very personal memories of that massive concrete room. For me, that 77-minute class period devoted to exercise, wellness, good health, and sportsmanship was incredibly distressing and, in hindsight, beautifully formative. Perhaps, to quote George Chauncey, that space had no natural character, no inherent meaning; rather, significance was injected and extracted by the actors performing on that laminated, synthetic stage with their balls and pucks and sticks and rackets. It is easy, however, for emotion and memory to suggest otherwise. To me, that place was teeming with intrinsic value: it was a theater that loudly demanded my physical and verbal demonstrations of “masculinity,” virility. I somehow just kept missing rehearsal, the director never asked why, and my understudy was always out sick.
Three times weekly I would spend my first period in gym class, counting down the minutes until the bell rang, calling me to verb conjugation in French class. Before that respite, we moved between the gym, the lockers, and the showers. The door that separated the hallway from the gymnasium was like a portal to another planet. Without sounding too cliché (but it will), I felt as though we had all fallen through the looking-glass into a scripted television show that commanded everyone’s best demonstration of what I might now refer to as toxic masculinity.
I would do my best to mindfully and carefully change into my gym clothes as s l o w l y as humanly possible. Alternatively, my peers would do so very quickly—brave souls. They were all eager to get into the gym to grab “the good basketball” (I still do not know what this means, but I am sure it is great). Eventually, I was alone with the lockers and grey tiles and showers and concrete and silence. Sometimes I would count the tiny interlocking squares along the floor while spending 3 to 7 minutes undoing my shoelaces, biding my time, and praying for the coach to forget I existed. I would check the clock repeatedly, waiting for French class, a desk, pencil and paper, my skinny jeans and American Apparel hoodie, verb conjugation, and best friends.
I would eventually join my peers, retrieving a “lesser” leftover basketball and twirl it around to “warmup.” After some minutes, we would be called to one corner for sorting. My body always slumped against the wall. I stood beneath what seemed like 13,000,000 triangular flags that hung above. The awards celebrated first and second and third place holdings in basketball or baseball or football or hockey or lacrosse or tennis or badminton and masculinity. They were awarded in 1925, 1939, 1956, 1958, 1999, 2010, and every single other year before, after, and between.
Beneath me were those lines that ran along the floor, dividing us like subjects within kingdoms. The team captains—the kings—of lacrosse or hockey or basketball stood at their nets or inside their literal courts, carefully selecting their councils, warriors, and serfs. Of course, the person who was least interested and even less skilled and willing (me) was always the first to be knighted, appointed to the highest, most respectable position in all the gym.
Once the kings proclaimed their kingdoms, I made it into one of the two by default. No one ever told me what those blue, black, red, and yellow lines and tiles meant, but I knew there was really only one important, gigantic border: a glazed stroke, loudly emblazoned that confirmed two opposing factions. People would yell and scream, shove in anger, cower in shame. I stood there, observing, awaiting my 10:17 AM verb conjugation.
The homoeroticism of sport is fascinating. Much analytic work has been done and I hope for more, but what about the everything else? How did it feel to always be picked last? Screamed at for “poor performance,” but never asked about their consistent and visible anxieties, aversions, bodily discontent? Did anyone else feel tiny and discarded? Did you feel like human gum glued to those prewar bleachers, or like some drops of water leftover and forgotten, stuck between the cracking locker room tiles, waiting to dry up?
…and even when its creators have the power to define its official and dominant meaning, its users are usually able to develop tactics that allow them to use the space in alternative, even oppositional ways that confound the designs of its creators.[2]
Today I have the privilege to remember and wonder about that place. At the time, I could never use it in “alternative, even oppositional ways.” Today, however, my space is wonderfully queer and allied, and I am glad (sometimes) to exercise while blasting Chromatica. Today, just like the late Prince Henry, I can enjoy “tossing the pike, or leaping, or shooting the bow, or throwing the bar, or vaulting, or some other exercise of that kind” in my own queendom/kingdom/realm.[3]
Today I can, but rarely do—a topic for another short talk on television and the comforts of bedding—, toss that pike while screaming and yelling in many places. I can do so without the peer- and self-imposed pressures to synthesize some fraudulent vocal depth that I once believed would demonstrate a “correct masculinity.” That insanity was and always will be unattainable and nonexistent, but remains an integral part of my gym class memories. Verb conjugation is still the “Chromatica II” to my “911.” Today, however, four soaring walls, some banners, grimy showers, and “good basketballs” are distant memories, no longer precedents to my “je suis, tu es, nous sommes, vous êtes” sigh of relief. The high school gymnasium was wonderful for so many of my peers, just not for me. What was yours like?
[1] George Chauncey, “‘Privacy could only be had in public’: Gay Uses of the Streets,” in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 224.
[2] Chauncey, “‘Privacy could only be had in public’,” 224.
[3] Thomas Birch, The Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King James I. Compiled chiefly from his own papers, and other manuscripts, never before published (London, 1760), 76. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1145654.