It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer "I-I think I'm gay" into the phone, then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

It’s a scary, tightrope-walking way to write. It’s an ever scarier way to live. In both instances, however, at least in my experience to date, the results are always more wondrous, enriching and miraculous than any conscious mind could ever conjure up, because our conscious minds have access only to the visible portion of the iceberg.

It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer "I-I think I'm gay" into the phone, then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

“‘Portal land,’ my friend Sander jokingly remarked back in late 2017 when I told him I was moving to Portland. As it turned out, it was no joke... You see, I’ll be leaving Portland on or around May 28. Likely for good.”

Whether it’s historically, spiritually or metaphysically, November 11 carries much meaning for many people. It carries a particularly personal significance for me: That was the date of my bar mitzvah. Yet that my bar mitzvah occurred on 11/11 wouldn’t be the only measure of the day’s import, as I relate in this excerpt from my memoir.