Fuck You Michelle Pfeiffer

As a teacher of young people who are primarily aged 10-12, I often find myself observing their behaviours, their groups interactions and silently adding individuals to the ‘Queer List’ in my head. My track record has been pretty impressive so far.

Having taught for almost nine years, my ex-students presently range in age from 13-25*. Over the years a few students have come out to me and many more have found a way to get in touch years later to ask for advice or to just casually drop the fact that they are gay or bi and have a new girlfriend or boyfriend they’d like to tell me about.

99% of the time, those kids had been on the Queer List. Having spent at least a year in the lives of many of these young people, I had picked up on many subtle (or not so subtle) clues and, in many cases, saw something of myself in those students.

So why is it that, often, everyone around us can see that we’re super gay and we, ourselves, have no clue? Life would be so much more convenient if we all had the space and time to work this out ourselves.

In high school, my friends (and many people I was most certainly not friends with) knew that I was gay WAY before I did. At the time I thought their side comments and nudging remarks were all very misguided and that one magical day the right handsome prince would ask me out and this would shut them all the hell up. I’d like to propose a theory that many of those handsome princes were probably reading the signs themselves.

The event which became my undoing, and turned this quiet joke into something which began to consume me, occurred during a sleep over in Year nine.

After a birthday party, my friends and I all rocked up to one girl’s house with movies, junk food and sleeping bags in hand. When no gay jokes were made over pizza, and I changed into my pyjamas away from the other four girls, I thought that in the darkness of the living room I would be fine. I thought, stupidly, that because the night had been reasonable up to that point, that maybe, just once, this wouldn’t come up. Naturally I was very wrong.

The first ridiculously creepy movie to be loaded into the VHS player was some horrendous X-Files situation. Before being subjected to watching this, however, a far more horrendous situation occurred.

Being a huge fan of hip-hop in general, and Coolio in particular, I’d heard that Gangsta’s Paradise was the theme song for a new movie called Dangerous Minds. I had been wanting to see the movie and, with plans to become a teacher, I was also interested by the fact that it was set in a high school and centred around a ballsy female teacher. For the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of the actress who played that role and while watching the movie previews before the X-Files was to begin, Dangerous Minds appeared.

I expressed enthusiasm for wanting to see it and with the beat of Gangsta’s Paradise thumping in the background, my friends all rolled their eyes in turn, not knowing why I was interested in that kind of music when bands like Take That also existed.

As the preview began to draw to a close the voice over declared that the name of the actress, who played the teacher, was Michelle Pfeiffer.

“Oh, Michelle Pfeiffer!” I exclaimed.

Well, let’s just say that the laughter that ensued, over my very innocent utterance, is still ringing in my ears today. The remainder of the painful sleepover was spent trying to ignore the whispers and stifled laughter from my friends around the room. Despite being a hater of horror and thriller films, I watched the X-Files movie intently, afraid to tear my eyes away from the screen and look at any of them. I could now, quite easily, relay the entire plot and can even recall the name of the repulsive creature that was the source of nightmares for weeks to come.

Two weeks passed with continued daily murmurs from the group. Often things were said within earshot, but just low enough to guarantee that if I really wanted to know what they were saying, I’d have to ask.

I never did.

Arriving to school early on the Monday of the third week, two of my friends came running towards me excitedly and seemed genuinely happy to see me. Instantly my mood brightened and I felt sure that the day was going to be a great one.

As I was packing away my bag, and sorting through my locker for the books I would need for our first class, I turned around and was surprised to be presented with a ‘gift’ from the two of them. It seems they'd had their own secret, lesbian free, sleepover on the weekend and had decided to put their mothers’ trashy magazines to good use.

Unrolled like a scared scroll before me was an A3 poster covered in at least 50 pictures of Michelle Pfeiffer. It wasn’t unlike me to be exceptionally quiet but, for the first time ever, I had no words at all. I remember clenching my jaw tightly as I felt my face redden beyond belief. I also recall turning to put my books back in my locker before I dropped them. When I didn’t reach out and grab the poster, and thank them both for their scrapbooking efforts, it was shoved rather unceremoniously into my chest. I remember hearing their laughter increase when I tried to angrily throw the poster to the floor. 

I particularly remember one of the girls shutting my fingers in my locker as she tried to shove the poster inside, slamming the door as I tried to hold it open to rip the poster out. The shock from the pain in my fingers ran up my entire arm which hung limply at my side for most of the day. This girl was the friend I shared a desk with in homeroom and had classes with for the entire morning. I did everything I could to hide my shaking hand from her, not wanting her to see that it was one more thing she had over me.

And these were my friends. My closest friends. They were whispering so loudly about me that it drowned out the sound of other any people’s comments. Every time I looked at a girl for one second too long, for the rest of the year, there were smirks. Every time I uttered the words girl, women/woman or female, there was laughter. Apparently liking the Fugees rendition of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ was something I should have kept to myself.

So they knew before me. Good for them. They had it all worked out while I was completely clueless. Interestingly, one of them ended up kissing me in a park a few months later and we spent summer break having secret sleepovers of our own. She phoned her boyfriend one night, said she wouldn’t be able to visit him and popped in a quick ‘I love you’ before coming back to join me in her bed.

Without a Michelle Pfeiffer debacle to her name, she coasted happily through our first few months of Year 11 pretending nothing had happened between us. The result of this for me was long stares at one girl for minutes at time, willing her telepathically to talk to me or even just acknowledge me.When suspicions began to flare within the group that something was going on between us, she was quick to tell them I’d tried to kiss her at some point over the summer.

That confirmation of their long-term suspicions was all that was needed for the whispering and the comments to return full force. When I heard the name Michelle Pfeiffer uttered, for the first time in months, I stood up from my place on the edge of their circle and walked across the quad. I ended ten years of friendship there and then and, to this day, I would rather watch a horror or a thriller than any film starring that blonde actress who played the teacher in that high school movie.

Fuck you Michelle Pfeiffer.

*This figure is a little devastating and I’m regretting doing the mathematics on that one. To put it in perspective, my first posting was a high school where I taught 16 year olds and was only 22 at the time…(it was important for ME that I get that clarified in print).