college. My friends and I
are at the gates of decision,
no longer under the protection
of classes, University-owned
housing, work-study jobs, and
unending time to just “hang
out.” Now graduating seniors
scramble to find apartments
and jobs or to figure out how
to pay for graduate school.
Many of us are lucky
— never again will we have
such a clean slate to work
with. Twenty—one-year olds
can move back in with their
parents or head off for adven-
ture in American Samoa and
few people will fuss. After all,
youth and lack of establish-
ment (no house, no kids, etc.)
enable freedom of movement

I’m about to graduate from

 § Starting Out  

direction, I hold more privi-
lege than most. Begrudgingly,
I have to admit that having a
B.A. begins to call my own
working-class status into ques-
tion. Above I wrote about the
wonderful freedom of graduat-
ing from college, but, in fact,
the majority of people in the
country do not graduate from
college and many 21-year olds
have kids to clothe and feed
and mortgages to pay.

So here I am, in the
middle. I’m not working two
jobs to pay rent, but I also do
not have the luxury of being
able to move to New York and
“find ajob when I get there.”
Tens of my peers plan to do
exactly that. Their parents will
pay for rent and give them

When a boy has no money
and needs to survive,

he has to move back

to the house on Lovers’ Lane
and shack up with his parents.

and experimentation. Of
course, this freedom applies
only to people with privilege,
of whom there are few.

' I’ve had to come to
tenns with privilege. At
Wesleyan University, I was
sumbhnded by kids who took

3' _ theirs (and what they imag-

ined was mine) for granted.
Few students there come from
backgrounds that are actually
working class; across the
board, nearly everyone comes
from middle- and upper-class
families. Funnily enough, the
average, politically—progres-
sive Wesleyan student or pro-
fessor will accept that you’re
poor if you’re Black or
Latino, but a white boy from
Vermont? Especially_ one who
identifies with the overtly
political and economically
elite term “queer,” never.
Yet, from the other

money for food and they just
have to make sure something
is lined up eventually work-
wise so they have enough
money to go out and have fun.

Then there’s the case
of the student who’s moving
home for the summer because
he or she has not found a job
ahead of time and has no idea
where to look. Most people I
know are in this category, but
it’s not as cut-and-dried as it
looks. I’m talking now about
people who want to move in
with their parents after gradu-
ation.

These kids, who are
excited to live at home, are
from cool cities or nice sub-
urbs. Their parents have big,
beautiful houses and live well.
If my parents lived in a luxury
apartment in Manhattan or had
a housepn Haight Street in
San Francisco, I would have

probably never even gone to
college in the first place.

Other people who
move home don’t do it
because of mom cooking is
easier than doing it yourself,
or because there’s a pool and
free cable. Most of us do it
because there’s no other
choice. When a boy has no
money and needs to both sur-
vive and save some, he has to
move back to the ranch
(house) on Lovers’ Lane and
shack up with his parents.

My parents are easy-
going and more tolerant of my
noise, mess, bad habits, and
odd hours than many of my
friends’ parents, but moving
back in with them is a shock
to my system anyway. My
geography has changed from
sharing a large house with 3
other students in a neighbor-
hood surrounded by other peo-
ple my age and my own phone
line to a small house in
Brandon where privacy is nil
and neighbors and activity are
non-existent.

Not to mention I need
a summer job. Now that I ’ve
bitched for about 700 words,
let me come clean. I’m not a
complete lost cause because I
won a fellowship to study in
Germany next year. In
September, I move to Berlin
to research queer cultural for-
mation and its relationship to
early sexology. I stillhave to
move out from underneath a
security blanket and find
housing and meet new people,
but I’m supported.._lJ)g_,¢the fel-
lowship. ' I I

This summer,,t_hough,

I’m back at home. While hun- A ‘T

dreds of thousand__.sp»9__f'_high-
school and colleg§’_‘_ __
start out their live§,5;I;lAl start
mine, .too,»back in thesame .
place where itwbegéhlthe first
time. _v

Joel graduated on  26th
and does, in fact, live on
Lovers ’Lane in Brandon.

  
   

Good legal advice
can make all_the difference.

V

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Middlebury (802) 588-6356
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ATTORNEYS AT LAW

The Samadhi Singers
in I Concert

June  2002
3:0Q p.m.

st. Palurs Cathedral I
2 Cherry Street
Burlington,Vermont“ 

Tickets SIO (sliding scale)

Come OUT and support
Vermont's’ only GLBTQ choir.