Good morning! It's 7:30 AM here in beautiful Guerneville, California - rise and shine! I can't believe I got up so early; I intended to sleep for another hour. Must be the mountain air! Yesterday around 3:30 PM, my friend Bill and his roomie Jason picked me up from my old apartment in the Castro to make our way up the California coast to Guerneville. We took the scenic route, quite literally. It was gorgeous. I'll add photos to each of these posts when I get back home (or if I'm able to scrounge up a USB connector for my camera). We drove up the CA-1 highway -- it was truly breathtaking!

Of course the scenic route had a cost -- it took us some time to get here. But we arrived at the Wildwood Retreat Center (where Chris just informed me Eric Rofes was married to Crispin some 10 years ago), which is a gay-owned little piece of heaven near the Russian River. It's really beautiful! We had to climb up a one-lane, twisty-turvy stretch of several miles to get to the Center. It was a bit daunting! But luckily we made it up without incident -- and we arrived just in time for dinner!

We moved from dinner to a session in the "yurt," a circular, hut-like structure where we all sat around in a circle lit by candles. It was beautiful! Each attendee was asked to, when the spirit moved them, to call out the name of a person who had inspired them and that they would like to honor in that moment. The diversity of our group was reflected in the range of people that attendees called out to. For some it was a family member or a close friend; for some it was an author or activist; and for others it was a fuck buddy who had unexpectedly impacted them.

I called out the name of Eric Rofes, for the way in which he mentored me and "took me seriously" as a thinker and activist. I remembered the way that, before I moved to San Fran in 2005, I would e-mail him three or four-page mini-essays on HIV and gay men -- and how, within the hour, Eric would have responded with an email just as thoughtful and lengthy as mine. I said that he was a model for a "feminist gay man who has a lot of great sex -- which is all I can ever hope to be." Amen.

After the session concluded and everyone had spoke, we broke up and went to mingle around the center. Of course, I immediately jumped into my bathing suit and headed for the hot tub! Oy vey! I *love* a good hot tub, and their's was no exception. The best part was that the pool was seperated from the hot tub by a small partition, which made jumping between the two pretty easy! The pool was *freezing* -- but it felt great after roasting in the hot water for a bit. Yum.

I spent the evening milling around the center, having some really fabulous conversations with many of the participants here about any number of issues: HIV prevention, social marketing, gay men's communities, doing prevention work with men who have sex with men but don't identifiy as gay -- what a great group we've got here! There are men (and one woman!) here from Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Fort Lauderdale, New York, and even Australia! I'm really excited and thrilled to be joining such a lovely group of guys. I think I'm in for a wonderful weekend! I'll be keeping y'all up-to-date on things here. Have a fab weekend!

xoxo

Trevor