Road to Elsewhere, Excerpt #2: And so, to Paris?

But first, my mom had to read her Gaydar, and warn me of the "roving bands of homosexuals" in Europe.

MY ONE-WAY TICKET TO PARIS shocked my mother, who feared (reasonably) that I might never return to the U.S. Enrollment at the language school was my father’s idea, thinking I’d be better off if I had an institutional context for my lark abroad. Funding came from a  small parting gift from my grandfather, who’d died when I was ten years old. Compound interest being what it is, I was free to quit North America a decade later, with six thousand dollars to stretch as far as I could. 

I required only a destination. Days after a triumphal college graduation, I wrote these words in a blank journal I received from my brother as a graduation present. 

7 June 1978

What to do about my present situation? What is my present situation? I have just graduated from college and I am currently using my great potential for absolutely nothing. There, it’s in a nutshell now. Compounding the problem is the feeling that I am sponging off my parents at a time when I ought to be done sponging. My life seems, for…