Last night The Real World crossed my mind—The Real World Philadelphia in particular for its cast member Karamo Brown. I remember when he came out to the roommates to receive wide-eyed stairs of disbelief because of his stereotypical Black and masculine appearance. That and visibly gay cast member Willie Hernandez had already arrived—there couldn’t be two gay cast members, right?

The Real World began a trend of casting minorities insofar as they were minorities in the house as well—and the audience caught on to this. Despite never, too my recollection, having the number of people of color exceed that of the white cast members (or queer exceed heterosexual cisgender), the show is extremely open about homosexuality and issues within the queer community. Apart from its inclusion of HIV-positive Pedro Zamora in the San Francisco season and trans Katelynn Cusanelli in the Brooklyn season, in 2005 it gave a prime-time American audience one of its few, if not only, glimpses of two men of color being intimate with each other, showing Karamo and his Hispanic love interest make out in the shower. A little in-the-closet black boy trying my best to repress my erection while haunted by the voices of taunting kids on the school bus saying how gross Karamo was, I had no idea how much this image meant until now. And damn, Karamo sure was fine, wasn’t he?