If you’ve been following this blog much, you’ve probably noticed it covers a range of subjects, from gay marriage to the odd movie of note and/or interest, to travel experiences (mine and others)… plus, of course, updates and information about the release of Wander the Rainbow, the travel memoir that this site is supposed to be really about.

At dinner the other night, though, a fan of the book noticed something was missing: why isn’t there, she mused, anything on your personal experiences? As many of you know, I chose to publish this book independently — a synonym for “self-publishing,” a term many people, including me, keep on the QT for fear of being branded “vanity press”. Also as a consequence of that, I’ve kept mum on details of “how it’s going”; the publishing business is normally quite secretive on book sales figures, mostly because very few books sell all that well (it’s rare for any title, self-published or otherwise, to sell more than 5,000 copies). Between that and the whole “always present a good face” mindset that infects so much of sales and publicity, I’ve allowed the publishing and promotional details to take on a blandly cheery feel.

No more.

From here on out, you’ll be getting it all — the good, the bad, and the ugly. This may surprise some, delight other, and (possibly) piss off a few… but I feel you’re all better served by learning the realities, the triumphs, and the heartbreak of this publishing odyssey. I’ve got plenty of all those stories and emotions to share, and it’s all coming soon.

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Say the words San Jose and vision of tech firms or (if you go way back) apricot orchards spring to mind; but this sprawling Silicon Valley nexus — a bigger city than San Francisco, in fact — boasts its own thriving literary and LGBT scene… and both of these converged this past Wednesday night at Crema Coffee to hear me speak.

Heading down there was something of an emotionally-resonant first: I hadn’t set foot on a commuter-rail Caltrain in over 14 months, when I was working at a gig in Menlo Park immediately after my return from the great world trip. Back then I would use the commute time productively — I sat with my little netbook, the same one I’d used on my travels, and began putting together the morass of blogs and journal entries into the beginnings of what would become Wander the Rainbow. Now here I was headed, books in hand, to speak about it — full circle indeed!

Since this was a 20somethings biweekly coffee klatch that met under the auspices of the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center, it was arguably the youngest set of people to whom I’d spoken; were the vagaries of fancy-ass flashpacking and liver donations to long-term boyfriends going to resonate with this crowd? The answer was an unqualified “yes.” Like many gays (myself included) these folks expressed a familiar reluctance to travel the world “roughing it” style — and were most curious to know about the “third way” I’d discovered between the low-rent and the five star. They were equally fascinated with the dynamics of a relationship that involved an organ donation — and the wrenching aftermath of a breakup that led to me striking out across the globe.

I also tried out a couple of new things those of you coming to future engagements will notice: I still read three excerpts from the book — but for the third excerpt, I give audience members a choice of options. To find out what they are… come to one of our upcoming events!

I also wore one of the new Wander the Rainbow T-shirts, one of which we’ll be giving away as part of our “trivia contest giveaway” at bookstore events next month. For those of you planning to attend an event, here’s the questionnaire to fill out and bring with you for a chance to win this and other prizes.

All in all, a great evening — thanks to Josh Weston, Joe Calderon, and all the folks at Crema Coffee and the Billy DeFrank Center for making it happen. Next stops: Berkeley, Boston, Toronto, and beyond!

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What The Social Network has to teach us about friendship, business, and the American Dream

If there’s one thing a long trip helps to sharpen and clarify, it’s one’s notions (and occasional frustrations) about life back home. Although not everyone utterly rejects and abandons their homeland, time away definitely induces one to notice the warts & all you leave behind.

This was on my mind as I watched The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-penned (The West Wing), David Fincher-directed (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) story of the founding of Facebook. For the uninitiated, the monstrously successful social network (500 million-plus users and an estimated valuation of over $11 billion) had messy origins, replete with student-life melodrama and big-money lawsuits as it climbed to the top of not only the social-networking heap (remember MySpace? Friendster?) but to the pinnacle of the web overall — it’s the number-two ranked site on the entire Internet, and its co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is the youngest billionaire in history.

I didn’t go to Harvard and I’m not a billionaire web entrepreneur, but so much of this film spoke to me: the social awkwardness of being a geek in college; the rush of excitement and raw emotion that accompanies youthful business endeavors; the fallout and reprisals between friends and lovers. Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) comes across as icy and arrogant — but he’s so unbelievably similar to many hyper-smart outsider tech geeks that I don’t consider the portrait all that unflattering. In my own past I’ve had run-ins with collegate political correctness and the intransigence of university officials. On those levels, I get you, Zuck (as the real-life Facebook founder is known).

But what echoed most deeply about the story is the ever-present competitiveness and money/power-grabbing that underlies the Facebook enterprise and the power centers where it is situated: America’s elite academic center (Boston/Harvard), its media center (New York, sidelined in the story as Facebook finds only modest success in securing early-stage advertisers) and its technology center (the San Francisco Bay Area). I’ve remarked for years how the Bay Area in general and San Francisco in particular have morphed from once-sleepy hippie spots to the center of America’s most prestigious and visible industry. This movie nails it, as Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), the partying, manic, glitzy Napster co-founder, seduces Zuck to the capitalist dark side with promises of venture funding and ultimate billions (both of which have since come true) at a San Francisco nightclub.

Like the fictional Charles Foster Kane before him, Zuckerberg makes the ultimate business choice: he sidelines his more cautious best friend Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) and his incremental business plans in favor of the growth-and-glory-obsessed Parker — just as Kane did to his best friend Jedediah Leland in Orson Welles’ movie. Earlier on, Zuckerberg blows off old-money Harvard twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their plans for a social network of their own. Just like Kane and Rosebud (his sled, which represented the simple, modest life he left behind), Zuck leaves all these guys and their moderately-winning schemes in the dust in pursuit of epic, huge-time success.

But just as Kane posited, so too this movie: what serious go-getter in our present-day capitalist age– an era where the U.S.A. acts as standard-bearer — wouldn’t make these choices? In my early days in this country I called it the American Nightmare — the dark side of the American Dream that compels anyone with an opportunity to take it and run with it to its greatest, most successful end, sometimes at the expense of your nearest and dearest.

Ironically, as both films show, those titans of industry who’ve been so instrumental in making our lives easier, more comfortable, or more connected suffer from an inability to truly connect with others: Kane tries to collect artifacts but cannot win the hearts of an electorate or the heart of his two wives; Zuck, at the end of the film, finds the girl who dumped him at the start of the story — on Facebook, natch — where he sends her a friend request and sits there, refreshing the page over and over, waiting for a response. The young man who connected so many millions remains, at heart, a loner.

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This past weekend was literally Wander the Rainbow‘s day in the sun, as we hit two different book fairs in the blazing California heat.

On Saturday it was the Sonoma County Book Festival, held in Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square. Although I’d been to Sonoma a couple of times (and even wrote about it in this GayCities piece) I’d never been to its largest town.

Most of us associate Sonoma with wine — or for the LGBT community, the Russian River. But Santa Rosa has its own vibe and even its own favorite son: Charles Schultz, the Peanuts comic creator, lived here, and his whimsical influence is felt everywhere: from an ice-skating rink he opened to statues of the iconic characters dotting the square to an appearance by a real-life Snoopy… given that it was 94 degrees in the afternoon, I can only hope this one had air conditioning for its hapless occupant.

Wander the Rainbow had a good run up in Sonoma, attracting attention and selling a pile of copies. But a travel book needs to stay true to its roots, and to that end we hopped on a Southwest Airlines flight — an echo of my first one on the round-the-world trip as it also left from Oakland during a heatwave — down to Southern California for Book Fair Number Two.

Sunday saw me at the West Hollywood Book Fair, held in the park behind The Abbey (a coffeehouse-turned-nightclub that was a haunt for my gang during our L.A. days a decade-plus ago). I roamed the crowd, made new friends, and even caught Christopher Rice (son of Anne Rice and himself a bestselling mystery novelist) in conversation with Matthew Link, co-creator of Columbo.

Monday was supposed to be a full day of postcarding (much like our Postcard Pub Crawl back in June) and scouting out venues for a future event… but at 113 degrees, it was the hottest day ever recorded in downtown Los Angeles and around, leaving me panting, breathless and mostly incapable of doing much of anything. Still, I managed to speak with a couple of venues… for you fans of the book in SoCal, sit tight… an event is coming your way soon!

As night fell it cooled off (though only a bit) and I experienced a California first: in all my years of living here I’d never ridden in a convertible. A friend of my brother-in-law indulged us with a ride in his vintage “land yacht” — I can’t believe they made cars this big back in the day. As we rode through Los Feliz, downtown L.A.’s shimmering skyscrapers were lit up behind a stand of darkened palm trees — an everyday scene for the SoCal crew but for me another magical reminder of why this part of the world bewitches me so — and keeps me coming back.

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Here’s what arrived in the mail just the other day from the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C.:

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Hard to believe but it’s already been two years since I first strapped on a backpack and jumped on a British Airways flight across the pond to begin my round-the-world odyssey.

A lot has happened in those two years — from a new American President to an economic meltdown to (in my own little world) a sister getting married and becoming pregnant with what will soon become my sixth nephew or niece. Oh, yeah, and that little book I wrote.

May the next two years be as momentous… though call me greedy for only wanting the good parts.

Also, a shout-out to Bambi Weavil and the folks at OutImpact, who just delivered a glowing review of Wander the Rainbow. This North Carolina-based, nationally-focused blog is doing great work as “a gay omnimedia company,” with both a blog and a TV show. Keep it going, guys!

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Wander the Rainbow turned three months old today!

It’s been an incredible three months, with sales both online and off, multiple book events, parties, and lots and lots of networking. And there’s more to come: tour dates are being planned across the United States and, eventually, overseas as well. Check out our new Appearances page for more information.

Also, we’re now offering those of you outside book-tour range the ability to buy signed copies of the book direct from the publisher. Quantities are limited — the new technologies of print-on-demand mean we don’t keep large volumes of stock on hand — but we offer cut-rate shipping within 24 hours to anywhere in the continental United States, with more destinations coming soon.

To buy your signed copy, click here (or click on the starburst button on the right).

Happy anniversary and thanks for all your support!

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I have something of a strange relationship with Burning Man.

On the one hand, the weeklong bacchanal out on the salt flats of the Nevada desert holds strong appeal — evoking paganism, Native American peyote-tinged personal journeys of discovery, and the myriad of music festivals common in the U.K. I first heard about it from a co-worker in Southern California some twelve years back — it transformed him from a somewhat uptight, opinionated sort to a mellower version of himself — and have yearned to go ever since.

And every year come Labor Day (it happens on the week leading up to it, ending tonight for 2010) I’m not there. One year it was my sister’s wedding; another couple of years saw me in mid-relocation; and several more were spent with the health-challenged boyfriend who was understandably loathe to place himself at a seven-day party hundreds of miles from civilization and the nearest hospital (given his penchant for overdoing things, this might have been a wise choice on his part.)

Finally I said “fuck it” and bought my ticket, booked an RV, and planned to go some two years back; in fact I planned to make it the first chapter of my round-the-world adventure… until the shit hit the fan with fights and recriminations (unrelated to Burning Man, alas; this is some of the backstory to Wander the Rainbow), making a pagan party in the desert the absolute last thing I wanted to attend. Plus it proved difficult to rustle up people to share in the pricey RV rental; a number of folks who expressed interest in January dropped out as the winter, spring and summer wore on.

Which brings up the logistical side of it: the festival is conceived as a “leave no trace” event, a quasi-ecological notion in fact driven by the locale. It’s on U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management territory, and their stipulation is that the place look as empty, barren and arid as it did the moment before Black Rock City (as the annually-erected venue is known) is built. Since it’s far out in the middle of nothingness (a reminder of how much empty space remains between America’s two coasts, particularly in the West), a foray to the Burn becomes as much an experiment in self-sustainability as it is a party or hippie commune. Everything you need must either be brought with you or gifted/traded (the place has a “gift” economy where practically no money changes hands and nothing is for sale); all refuse must likewise be carted away by the participants.

It’s a noble gesture, but the somewhat princess-ier parts of me yearn for someone to start up a hotel and complimentary shuttle service in a nearby town (Gerlach, NV for the curious). Oh, I know, it’s not what the festival’s about… but it sure would be nice. My seven months overseas convinced me even more that many of us crave even a modicum of creature comforts; the radical self-reliance thing is a nice gesture… but I’ll take air-conditioning and a hot shower instead, thank you very much.

Finally, there’s a more intangible issue that gives me pause: as with any event with a rabid following and a party vibe, Burning Man gives off something of a cultish feel from some of its practitioners; I sometimes joke that every tech startup here in San Francisco (where the Burning Man aura blazes strongest, as it began here) is assigned one of the faithful — that person who’s a multi-year veteran, who seems to spend the entire year planning for this proverbial Christmas On The Playa. You can see the signs: a certain scruffiness; a vibe that I can only describe as “extremely uptight about being laid back”; and — sometimes — an odd clannishness about an event that’s supposed to be inclusive and communitarian. One of these people, upon hearing I’d planned to go, insisted “talk to everyone you know who’s going to make sure you’re wearing the right costumes.” Huh? Is this a free-spirited party or a cotillion? Perhaps it’s an inevitable human trend, but whenever something becomes “insanely great” it spawns its own legion of devotees — just look at Steve Jobs and Apple.

All that said, the festival continues to enchant. And I do know a number of splendid people who attend. So who knows, maybe next year…

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We are the sum total of our choices, say any number of books, movies, poems, and umpteen other forms of art and media.

I was reminded of that this weekend when two old friends, a couple around my age, came to town. I’ve known Alon and Devin for fifteen years, from my early coming out era when I was still an anxious, conservative, boy-shy twentysomething. The pair have been together since those early days and have remained in the same city — Toronto — that whole time.

I, on the other hand, have been a model of transience, restlessness, a form of latter-day frontiersy-ness that characterizes so many American young professionals: Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lansing MI (didn’t see that one coming), Chicago, Boston, San Francisco once more. Oh yeah, and that little trip around the world as well.

And yet, catching up with these old friends (I’d lost touch with them a few years back but all that changed with the advent of MySpace and Facebook), I was struck with our similar outlooks on life, love, politics, even boys (Alon was the first guy I’d met who shared my taste in guys, and still does). I wonder: does one’s personality remain constant — or develop in much the same way — regardless of circumstance? We transients emphatically assert no; our entire raison d’etre is to grow and change via exposure to a kaleidoscope of different venues. And yet, I see friends all the time who’ve grown and blossomed just fine with few job or career changes, few or no spousal changes, and few or no big relocations. Does one have to move to grow?

Maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe some people need the ever-changing blur of cities, jobs, people in their lives in order to mature and develop as people. And even within that realm I’ve found my perspective changing: once I eschewed travel’s power to incite personal growth, citing all those college kids professing to have “life-changing experiences” on summer party trips to Corfu. But then, maybe that was that same younger me judging too harshly. At the same time, I found myself stuck in a perpetual “relocation rut” — always the newcomer, always befriending or romantically seeking the same pattern of people — until I did take that long-overdue break from everything and saw my own world (as well as the world beyond) in a whole new light.

Perhaps that’s the real “teachable moment,” one which Wander the Rainbow hopefully imparts: whether or not you’ve bounced around or stayed put, oftentimes the biggest personal transformations come when you’re out of your element. Relocation can serve that purpose, to be sure, but more often than not it’s travel — real travel, big travel, not simply the five-day sequestration at a Hilton that’s the de rigueur vaca for too many of us — that opens our hearts and minds.

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