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GTHO
(getting the hell out)

At first, it was Canada.
To which there were
several excursions. The
one we didn’t take as a
family of six in the tan
Leisure Van because Dad
wouldn’t part ways with
his fancy gun. This at
Niagara Falls, which was
a little embarrassing and
would have been my first
venture into another country,
1973. Then in graduate
school in the early 1990s,
at Bowling Green, Ohio,
there were all those
invitations to Windsor,
just through Detroit,
where my Dad had 

grown up (and Uncles
Earl and Dale, his two
living siblings lived) — 

for, yes, the male strippers, 

who, I was told, got very 

naked, and even (ahem!)

performed erect. I passed
on each of the invitations
as at the time it didn’t sound 

my kind of party. After school,

I fell for a francophone from
Ann Arbor, with whom I took
a couple of trips to Quebec.
Oh, Montreal! It was there I
learned the true riches of
Canada. Guys in Montreal
were gods. Every trip there
had me feel as if I were truly
foreign, what with the smat
tering of French spoken
alongside English, and the
outrageously gorgeous men
who I still think are the 

friendliest on the planet
(surely due in part to the
direction my libido kept
taking me - strip clubs - 

where friendly made money, 

perhaps even a weensy bit 

from me). Years later, I’d take 

two excursions back alone. But 

it never quite had the cache it did 

on that first trip. I did once stop
at Windsor, just to find that
notorious strip-club, and this 

was with a boyfriend. There 

we sat at a sort of rectangular 

boardroom table in high executive 

chairs, as men arrived from a 

curtain, like runway models, 

grazing our very mouths 

as they passed us by. It 

was there that I fell briefly
in love with a rather well-
endowed Native American
who must have found me
an easy target from the get-
go. Much to my chagrin,
the boyfriend had no desire
to stay for a second show.
A decade later there was a
train-ride to Vancouver with 

a new boyfriend on our first 

anniversary. I’d just spent
my first five years living in
San Francisco, so it was a
pleasure to arrive during a
snowstorm our first night there.
Once again, the men were quite
pleasing to the eyes, but I was
less interested in them than in
adventure, and the budding
romance that I’d have never 

believed would later grow so 

intractable that, thanks to him,

I’d lose pretty much everything. 

Soon, I’d escape for much more 

foreign destinations. But for de

cades, Canada was the one place
where I’d GTHO. It was significant

in whetting my taste for the kind of 

travel I knew I wanted. But I’ll save

those adventures, like the Gay
Cruise to Mexico, and the trip 

to Hong Kong (solo), turning 40 

in Paris, the trip to Tokyo (also, 

solo), the time I took a jerk to 

Italy for his graduation, stunned
at how it became my favorite
trip ever (thus far). Oh, and
the cruise upon the Baltic with
stops in St. Petersburg, Tallinn,
Oslo, Stockholm, Amsterdam,
prefaced by a cross-Europe 

train ride. I look forward to 

many more adventures. And
bringing further fantastical
wishes and dreams to

memorable reality.