A homophobe in spite of himself?

Sunday: Just back in San Francisco from six weeks in New York, my home until my version of a mid-life crisis transported me West 27 years ago, and where I had just begun a relationship with a like-minded writerly-tempered psychoanalyst, I walked across the street into sun-drenched Golden Gate Park. It was nearly 80 degrees in San Francisco, a rare Sunday off from the NBA playoffs.

Missing Jane, I thought to divert myself with the noon jazz/swing dance festivities that take place weekly— barring rain— next to the De Young Museum, just a ten-minute walk from my house. This local institution involves a free 30-minute dance lesson that, upon ending, morphs into a two-hour dance party, typically featuring an impressive array of jazz standards good enough to rival the soundtrack of most Woody Allen films.

Spurred on by two lively, talented and appealingly friendly teachers illustrating as they teach, the participants are first instructed to choose one role— leader or follower— and stick with that for the lesson. The leaders form a row behind Ken, and the followers behind Ken's co-teacher Jen.

Avoiding eye contact

The two rows face one another, with transient partners determined by their positions in the line. They greet each other by exchanging names, and (generally) taking each other's hands, as this is the way the basic step rhythm begins. After about two minutes— time enough to demonstrate and practice one particular aspect of the lesson— the follower line moves one place to its left, and everyone has a new partner.

The event attracts a heterogeneous crowd. Through the first half-dozen segments, the bearers of the various first names with whom I was paired with ranged in social behavior from skittish avoidance of eye contact (perhaps because of my advanced age, who knows?) to exemplary upbeat friendliness that suggested an underlying capacity for joie de vivre. Karen, Sue, Consuela, Lucinda, Cheryl, Linda— they were starting to blur and merge in my mind.

The next rotation, as I was learning a third wrinkle on the basic step, brought me yet another partner: "Shaquille," he greeted me, as I grasped beefier and sweatier hands than had characterized my earlier partners.

Swarthy and overweight

I had not thought to question the convention of having the freedom of choosing one's role as one wishes, or the suggestion but not the requirement of equating leader with male, follower with female. But my two-minute stint with Shaq, a swarthy and overweight fellow of uncertain ethnicity (Pakistani, Afghan, Indian, I imagined) who was sweating visibly if not profusely, and was eager to instruct me as I gave an exaggeratedly wide space for him to pass on his "inside turn" (in part necessitated by his wearing a rather overstuffed backpack), made me ponder questions I would sooner have left at home that afternoon.

Having to give Shaq that extra space to execute his turn, so that his backpack would clear my outstretched left arm, I was reminded of the special difficulty that Shaq I (O'Neal) posed for referees in the National Basketball Association. With such bulk that it seemed like he had a large air conditioner attached to his chest, O'Neal seemed to demand more than simply the rule-mandated right to his own body space when he spun; opposing centers were understandably reluctant to stand their ground and take their punishment.

Was this reaction of mine simply a garden-variety case of homophobia rearing its politically incorrect head that sunny afternoon? Or did my discomfort reflect legitimate ethical and social questions worthy of thought— questions that lingered through the next partner change or two, and disrupted the flow of what learning I might have derived from the lesson that afternoon?

What would the ethicist say?

As I avoided looking at this unwanted if not repulsive dance partner— thinking of the Sunday New York Times ethicist's likely response, musing on what a San Francisco experience this was— I missed an instruction and fell behind.

With his back bulging, and his pungent sweat simultaneously both drying and replenishing itself, Baby Shaq posed more than the simple problem of comfortably sharing a two-minute dance with a man. In trying to dis-embed myself from the wastebasket category of homophobia, I recalled a trip Greece in 1971, where my friend Mike (who came out as a gay man about ten years later) and I joined the cavorting locals in gleefully dancing with one another after an outdoor dinner in a moonlit island taverna.

One night in Greece

I thought more about the possible contributors to my feelings of aversion, mitigators to be marshaled in my defense against imagined charges of sexism, racism, homophobia and ordinary curmudgeonliness: esthetics, pragmatics, regional variations on cultural competence.

Yes, men should feel free to dance with one another, the way Mike and had I that night in Greece; yes, some people's sweat is more aversive than other's (I recalled how overweight guys not wearing shirts would score heavily against me in schoolyard pick-up basketball games). No, they shouldn't alter their policy of leaving people free to choose the role of leader or follower (well, maybe they could pose it differently).

Lost in thought, I could never get back and grasp the full lesson. Like his intimidating NBA namesake, Shaq II had taken me out of my game.♦


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