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!

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!

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…

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.

Winging my way home from a solid week in the South… the longest I’ve been away from San Francisco since coming home from my round-the-world trip in April 2009.

Work was the impetus for this journey — in my day job as a user-interface software engineer I work at a startup in San Francisco with an office in the Atlanta suburbs. For a company of barely a hundred employees we’re remarkably dispersed: in addition to the SF and Atlanta facilities, we have people in Austin, TX; Minneapolis, MN, Washington, DC, and Toronto, Canada. The magic of high-speed connectivity stitches us together some, but occasionally it’s worthwhile to garner some good old-fashioned facetime.

Business travel may seem humdrum, but the opportunity for observation nevertheless abounds. To kick things off I headed to Washington, DC over the weekend, where I now have four different friends from three completely different stages of life (L.A., Chicago, and way back from high school in Montreal) living in the city and surrounds. A couple of them I hadn’t seen in almost (or over) a decade. In a sense, this was a mini re-enactment of the connections I made in my travels — that global spider-web of connections I wrote about in Wander the Rainbow. It’s a commonplace scenario for most professionals in the United States: our circle of friends expands even as many avail themselves of the opportunities and mobility of this continent-sized country. The result: friends scattered all over. It’s sometimes an effort to try and stay in touch with them all, but it’s an effort eminently worthwhile. All those social networking sites help!

Even in Atlanta the party continued: Amid co-workers plying me with Southern cuisine (including barbecue and colorfully-named sodas of dubious health benefit), I managed to sneak away and visit yet another high school chum who’d relocated to the Peachtree city (yes, they have way too many roads named “Peachtree,” some of which intersect each other!) We spent a Tuesday evening catching up and reminiscing, as well as keeping two adorable, gregarious kids entertained with the Lightsaber app on my iPhone.

The South often gets a bad rap in the rest of the country, but my experiences in both DC and Atlanta belied that: a friend of mine once remarked that Washington is a big northeastern city cross-pollinated with a small southern town. It’s got the intimacy and charm of the latter while retaining the bustle and international flavor of the former (tip: a terrific “pan-Mediterranean” eatery in Dupont Circle made for a fabulous dinner one night). Atlanta, meanwhile, offered up congeniality enough to confirm all those cliches about Southern hospitality. And the weather, sultry and hot the entire time (though it had cooled off some in DC following an epic electrical storm right before my arrival — felled tree limbs everywhere) was actually a nice change from the chill of San Francisco.

Well, not entirely: chill weather is easy to find in the South… just go into any building, where the turbocharged A/C is cranked so high I found myself donning layers. It’s Northern California inside-out!

As promised, here’s my review of Eat Pray Love on gay.com.

Whatever your feelings about the movie or book (no shortage of opinions pro and anti, it seems), I will say it boasts jaw-droppingly gorgeous locations and a few equally hunky guys. And Julia, of course!

Also a big thanks to all of you who showed up at Books Inc. last night; it was another very successful event and it led to some engaging discussions about travel and life changes. A special shout-out to a couple of guys who post on FlyerTalk, the frequent flyer discussion site… my trip wouldn’t have been the same without a pile of frequent flyer miles, and these folks wanted to hear all about it!

If you’re in San Francisco and want to pick up the book, Books Inc. still has a couple of autographed copies left. Get ’em before they’re gone!

In between  all the news about California’s gay marriage stay of execution, there also appeared this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about Wander the Rainbow and the event tonight at Books Inc.

It’s our first appearance in print media (and online of course as well)… for all the changes going on in that industry, it still holds relevance and sway… to say nothing of the feeling of seeing one’s name in print!

Meanwhile, the Books Inc. counter (on their website) is ticking… we’re looking forward to making this a breakout event.

See you tonight!

The Wander the Rainbow road show continues — this time back in San Francisco!

Tomorrow night (Thursday, August 12) we’ll be at Books Inc, 2275 Market Street at 7:30 p.m.

As the West’s oldest independent bookseller, Books Inc. operates 10 stores in and around San Francisco — an example of an indie retailer more than holding their own during these transitional times in the bookselling business. We’re thrilled to be holding an event at one of their stores.

More information about the event can be found here.

Looking forward to seeing any and all Bay Area folk tomorrow night!

The folks at gay.com have deputized me once again — this time to go to the movies.

I’ll be at a special advance screening of Eat Pray Love, the new Julia Roberts film based on the bestselling travel memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I didn’t catch the book on its initial release in 2006, and only happened upon it midway through my own world journey. Gilbert’s adventure differed greatly from mine — she did longer stays in a handful of countries, and her book is filled with the sort of spiritual discoveries that leave secularists like me shaking our heads. Nevertheless, there are commonalities — as there are between many works of travel literature where a personal story is involved.

I’m looking forward to seeing how they translated this breezy, rambling (and somewhat divisive — people either loved it or hated it) book to the big screen… and who knows, maybe someday in Wander the Rainbow’s future a movie adaptation awaits…

It seems a bit strange to be turning this book blog into “the gay marriage channel,” but it seems that’s the way current events are trending.

Barely a week after my own father married two men back in Canada, a court here in California ruled that the voter-backed ban on gay marriage in California, the notorious Proposition 8, is unconstitutional.

The play-by-play has been done to death so I won’t get into it here, but suffice it to say that in spite of an election year that saw a Democratic sweep of Congress and the election of America’s first black President, this retrograde bit of referendum-style balloting still managed to win — partly thanks to a firehose of money and effort by the Mormon Church, a subject capably covered in a documentary recently released on DVD.

What always amazes me, though, is in spite of all the millions spent and ideological certainty put forth by gay marriage opponents… well, not one of them has ever come out and actually explained why gay marriage in any way “weakens” families or the traditional institution of marriage. We get the usual silly platitudes about “the Bible says so” (it really doesn’t) or “soon people will be asking to marry their dogs” (the notion that consenting adults in love is what’s at issue seems to have escaped them). But analysis? I’ve looked everywhere for it, and aside from a passing mention in some Wall Street Journal piece some years back about fluctuating divorce rates in the Netherlands, have found not a single shred of evidence, anywhere that allowing gay people to marry will in any way weaken existing marriages, harm children, or other jeremiads that issue forth from the religious right.

I move that, just like Germany has banned public expressions of Nazism from the post-World War II German state, that any bans on gay marriage be require to call themselves just that — “gay marriage bans.” No obfuscating language about focusing on families or protecting sacred institutions or other misleading nomenclature that probably helped Prop 8 win passage (and even with that, narrow passage at best). It’s time that bigotry and narrow-mindedness be forced to call itself what it is.