About this new Club Whirled....

It should be obvious a few moments from now that I am just starting this new (2.0?) version of Club Whirled in first-person, and all about me vs. about and with the collaboration of the rest of my Washington circle of friends. I guess, to a certain extent, this is because I am leaving Washington -- and the United States -- for good on March 29th. It'll be the day after my 39th birthday.

So some more explanation of what happened since the old Club Whirled went into permanent hiatus. Yes, Club Whirled was a true story. Those things really did happen to us, and a couple of the names were changed in order to preserve that level of brutal honesty. And two important characters (not Kevin, or Sean, or Matt) were actually fictionalized composites of other people, or merely served as a "front" for those of us actually identified to tell some stories that might have been too intimate to publish on the world wide web any other way. These things are all about expressing yourself, sharing a part of yourself, right? Not about gossip, or exhibitionism. I think the most interesting thing someone said about Club Whirled (I think it was Sean) was that when you read back what your own life is really like -- and you know the stories are all true -- you realize how amazing your life is despite how it feels sometimes. It's hard to believe how great your life is overall when the day-to-day agonies of some of it can be overwhelming.

That's what Club Whirled has been since 2004. And so it will remain, I hope, moving ahead.

I fell in love with a Brazilian named Vinicius (or Vini) towards the end of the previous Club Whirled. A reader might have noticed a scant, somewhat aside and unexplained reference to a vaguely Brazilian character that "Kevin" was chatting on MSN with in the final posting. That was him. And he was part of the reason that I stopped contributing to the site, because he would not agree to that level of openness about his life. He's a very private person. And with how things stood at that time in everyone's lives -- some quite painful stuff -- it seemed everyone decided to stop at once. Oh well, I thought. And I noticed that we quickly lost our tiny audience. That was okay.

So what now?

Well, things followed naturally. Vini and I fell very much in love, and I realized this was the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And this, of course, presented some problems. He lives in São Paulo - I live in Washington. Without going into the long road we traveled, it was clear that due to the legal situation in the U.S., if this relationship was to be anything like what we both wanted, I would have to immigrate to Brazil. (Interestingly enough, my friend Chris was reaching the same conclusion about his life at the same time, and it's been nice to have someone to relate to in all of this.)

So we thought it through very carefully, and luckily due to the fact that I am an international consultant who works entirely in Latin America and the Caribbean -- and have not really had to be in Washington for any professional reason for quite some time -- this would be a very easy scenario to imagine doing, and benefitting from. Especially since the cost of living in Brazil is half that of the U.S., and I would still be earning my income in dollars from U.S. clients, all of whom were not only fine with the move, but saw the cost savings we'd share since I wouldn't have to fly down there anymore. I'd be there!

So we decided this was it. And befitting such a commitment, we decided we would marry. OK, so gay marriage is not legal either in the U.S. (at least not anywhere I live) or Brazil. But marriage isn't just a legal institution. It's a full-bodied commitment between two people to stay together and be as one for the rest of time. It's an emotional, material and physical commitment that, frankly, makes it possible to imagine something so huge as leaving your country behind - probably forever - and moving halfway around the world to start a new life. We agreed, and we announced our engagement in August 2006.

My parents presided over a lovely engagement party in Washington last summer, and it seems like my whole Washington life turned out for it. Don't believe the old Harry Truman adage: twenty years of living in D.C. means you have a lot of friends here. A lot of dear friends. And what I have also learned from my Irish Catholic heritage, perhaps one of the very few things that has translated into my gay American 21st Century life, is the value of rituals. Engagement parties. Weddings. Setting the date. It gave everything a structure that gave Vini and me both the emotional and spiritual space to reflect on what all of this really was going to mean, and to embrace it with our hearts - something that, to be successful, takes time and is a very delicate journey.

In November, Vini and I signed a civil contract in Brazil, which effectively asserted his constitutional right as a Brazilian to have his partner be afforded the same rights as the married partner of a Brazilian citizen. This would entitle me to a permanent visa. In a sense, that day in November, in a cartório near Praça da Sé, Vini and I were already essentially married. The contract reads a bit coldly in its legal ways, but what it adds up to is that we are forever bound together under Brazilian law. It was a very happy day in my life, not the least bit anti-climactic. Soon after, I applied for my permanent visa and have been told by my lawyers to expect it to come out by mid-May if not sooner. I decided I didn't want to wait.

So here we are. It's March 2007. My Logan Circle condo, where I lived the happiest and most successful 5 years of my whole life until now (a part of which was captured on old Club Whirled), sold in four days. I made a good profit, well beyond what all the scary headlines made me believe was possible. I am now in the midst of preparing to move myself, my dog, and my things -- in that order -- to São Paulo. We close on the condo here on March 29th at 10:45am - and my flight leaves Dulles that evening, with Clancy in the cargo hold below me.

I guess that catches you up. And it's where I sit. I hope this new venture has the same effect as the last, in giving at least me the perspective one needs to get through some difficult and amazing times in an essentially good life. And who knows, maybe share some more with the world out there about how strange, scary and marvelous life can be for a pale Irish American on the loose in Latin America.