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Background
I took my first "vacation" the Summer before my graduating year of college. I had two weeks to kill, so I just hopped in my Renault R12 and looked at the map to see where I had friends I could drop in on. I didn't plan more than a day in advance, and subsequently never gave more than 24 hours notice I was coming. Still, it worked out wonderfully. My friends were always happy to have me, and sleeping on couches and spare beds was an inexpensive way to travel. As I got older I remained stuck in this paradigm of vacationing. I would plan a little more ahead of time, but my destinations were still largely limited to where I had friends living within driving distance. I would go on trips for work from time to time, so I was accustomed to airports and hotels, but I never seriously considered a trip of my own choosing and at my own expense. Eventually, at the ripe old age of 36, I finally decided to finally pry open my wallet and take a grown-up vacation. The first task was to choose a destination. I was thinking of either Amsterdam, Key West, or San Francisco. I seriously considered Amsterdam. The air fare was surprisingly low, but I quickly decided that international travel was just a little too ambitious for my first time on my own. Key West was also very tempting. It turned out that Monté and his young friends were going down there around the first of the year. The problem was I found out like the day before they were to leave, and they were driving there and back in Stinky's magic bus. Not only was I afraid the vintage motor coach might suffer multiple breakdowns on the way, but I figured the bus would be a major cop-magnet whizzing through the Bible Belt with NY plates. Although they wound up making it down and back without incident, I would have been stressing out every mile of the way. Then one day I got an email in response to a series of photos I'd just released:
His note seemed rather sweet, despite the raunchy undertones. I went back through my email archives. I found that he had been emailing me every few months or so. In just about every email he'd stick in some sort of invitation to visit him in San Francisco. I would generally reply to his messages, but we'd never really struck up an internet friendship. I also realized that he had sent me some pix in the past. The tame ones revealed a nice-looking young man, and the explicit ones revealed someone I definitely wouldn't mind getting to know better.
Kenny in San Francisco I replied and said that this time he just might be able to talk me into coming. We exchanged a few more emails and I considered it more seriously. There was also Biron, a San Francisco-based photographer I'd been in contact with for quite some time. I asked if he'd be interested in photographing me, and he was enthusiastic about it. I decided to go for it. I picked the dates (largely dictated by the F1 calendar so I wouldn't miss a race), and went down to AAA to buy my plane tix. I needed to tweak my desired departure and return dates a bit due to unavailability on my first choices, and I had to shell out some fairly major bucks, but it was pretty quick and painless. I got hotel advice from an acquaintance who used to work at Cornell but moved to San Francisco some years ago. He recommended a place right on Market St. It had tiny rooms and shared bath facilities, but was very inexpensive. I called and made reservations. That pretty much did it. In one fell swoop I had everything I needed for a grown-up vacation in San Francisco. Now there was nothing to do but wait. I kept in contact with Kenny and made a specific appointment with Biron to do a photo shoot. Still, I had a lot of time to kill in San Francisco and not a lot of plans. I sent out a message to my email list giving notice that I was coming to town if anyone wanted to meet me or had any suggestions for things to do. A few people responded, but one really caught my attention. A guy named Andrew told me he participated in a gay men's drawing group. They got together once a week, and individuals within the group would take turns modeling for everyone else. This way they always were assured that there would be a model on hand. He invited me to attend the group that Wednesday to model and/or draw. With these few contacts and the handful of activities planned, I was all set for my trip. In the weeks that passed I got a little unnerved at what I was up to. Not only was this my first time really striking out on my own in a strange city, but every single person I was to meet was someone I'd only known on email. I hadn't even had a phone conversation with any of them. I knew from the past that these email meetings can go very well, or they can go very badly. But it was too late to back out now, so I just hoped for the best and waited for the day to arrive.
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