Not Quite Queer

Abstract

The first time I met Eric Rofes was over coffee at the Oscar Wilde Bookstore on Christopher Street, At some point, I communicated the point that I was a lot more on the heterosexual (het) side of the continuum: “queer in the streets, straight in the sheets,” as they used to say. Rofes laughed, suggesting he had seen more and more of his students, many of them straight lefties such as me, embracing a blurry, lusty queer politics, less invested in identity than caring and social justice. He said this was really what the future was about—a space where people really did not care or need to define or categorize their desires. And this was a good thing. In the years before Rofes died, we supported each other’s projects and books, met at conferences, and corresponded constantly. He even offered feedback for a draft of the essay that eventually became this chapter years after he first suggested that I write it in 1998.