Sad news this week
as my family’s close friend Hanns Ebensten passed away. Hanns (left, earlier
this year at the Key West Literary Seminar) revolutionized the concept of gay
travel—in many ways he made a mold that’s now broken, something eminently
civilized and literate that’s been replaced by throngs of shirtless men invading
exotic places to a disco beat, seeking only pleasure and vodka, blind to the
infinite variations and mysteries of the globe. Pleasure and vodka are of course fine things, but Hanns insisted that travel was as much about history, exploration and personal transformation as hedonism. I’ll write something further on him later, but for now please read
Nancy Klingener’s excellent piece in Solares Hill.
Something
Hanns signing books
at the 2006 Key West Literary
Seminar