You Can Run: Gay, Glam, and Gritty Travels in South America / Edition 1

by Jesse Archer

Overview

From Machu Picchu to a cocaine purchase in a Bolivian jail—and beyond!

How do you rough it in extreme South American travels and still dare to be different? You Can Run: Gay, Glam, and Gritty Travels in South America follows the intrepid and fantastic—and totally true—adventures of flamboyant gay men through the gritty rough and tough of South America. Author Jesse Archer and his American boyfriend Zane spent nearly two years traveling the continent in search of adventure. And find it they did. Discover incredible individuals like Patricia the pink lady, the Wolfman of Borneo, and Santusa the fanged Chola of a different color. Thrill to the astounding experiences of dodging crocodiles, doing a striptease for a Colombian bathroom bitch, admiring exultant transsexuals caught in a rainstorm, and navigating the most dangerous road in the world. This wild travel chronicle takes you through the real South America with wit, wisdom—and a hot pink wig!

An excerpt from You Can Run:

Gerardo runs off to buy the meat for baiting piranha and then we're in his tin boat out on the choppy Amazon. The humidity and heat on the earth's surface here seems to bounce back into the sky and burst, returning a downpour of rain. Luckily Gerardo's tin can has a roof. Yet for some reason we aren't headed to the jungle, but downriver to a shantytown along the bank.

I ask where we are going and Gerardo feebly utters something in Portuguese. I can't make it out. Zane is now convinced I've employed a waterfront gangster. We pull up to a shoddy pier of three planks supported by timbers that rot in the lapping water.

“We should have gone with the other one!” Zane decries my flagrant frugality. “See? There's his accomplice.” When Gerardo reappears outside the shack with another man Zane announces he hates to be killed with a cheapskate like me. “I'm gonna die, washed up over there with all that trash, my body all white and fat and . . . bloated!” zane has exercised too much in his life to die bloated. Dying bloated has just become the worst of all fates. Zane gasps earnestly to his active imagination. “Oh God, please not bloated!”

You Can Run is a funny, piercing, and poignant examination of memorable outcasts in the third world. Follow some of travel's most different adventure seekers—extreme travelers with a lot of sparkle!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560237099
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/11/2007
Series:	Out in the World
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.38(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jesse Archer has worked many uninspiring jobs in many unsuitable industries and has been fired from nearly every one of them. After a firing, Jesse is grateful for the free time to travel. Growing up in the beaver state of Oregon inspired him to get around. He first attended the University of Southern California, graduating with a degree in Theatre. Since Los Angeles, he has traveled the world and lived in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Capetown. Jesse can be seen on the big screen, starring in the gay romantic comedies "Slutty Summer" (2004) and "A Four Letter Word" (2007) which he also co-wrote. He has written freelance for numerous publications, and is a regular columnist for OUT magazine. Currently, Jesse lives at the end of Alphabet City in Manhattan. He looks forward to an unscripted future. For his sparkling latest, visit jesseonthebrink.com

Read an Excerpt

Gerardo runs off to buy the meat for baiting piranha and then we're in his tin boat out on the choppy Amazon. The humidity and heat on the earth's surface here seems to bounce back into the sky and burst, returning a downpour of rain. Luckily Gerardo's tin can has a roof. Yet for some reason we aren't headed to the jungle, but downriver to a shantytown along the bank.

I ask where we are going and Gerardo feebly utters something in Portuguese. I can't make it out. Zane is now convinced I've employed a waterfront gangster. We pull up to a shoddy pier of three planks supported by timbers that rot in the lapping water.

"We should have gone with the other one!" Zane decries my flagrant frugality. "See? There's his accomplice." When Gerardo reappears outside the shack with another man Zane announces he hates to be killed with a cheapskate like me. "I'm gonna die, washed up over there with all that trash, my body all white and fat and . . . bloated!" zane has exercised too much in his life to die bloated. Dying bloated has just become the worst of all fates. Zane gasps earnestly to his active imagination. "Oh God, please not bloated!"

You Can Run is a funny, piercing, and poignant examination of memorable outcasts in the third world. Follow some of travel's most different adventure seekers—extreme travelers with a lot of sparkle!

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Summer 1999
• Dippy and Pansy Go Trekking
• The Pink Lady
• Off Duty
• Freaks Like Us
• Tango Carnival
• An Argentine Never Forgets
• Where I Am
• Once Upon a Time in Rio
• Accepting Never-Never land
• Mr. Popular
• Greek to Me
• You Must Be This High to Ride This Ride
• The Long Good-Bye
• Vigilance
• Found in Translation
• Banana Fuck
• A Stick in the Mud
• Snaking Fate
• Survival of the Least Fit
• You Can Run
• Step One
• Milena the Exception
• A Gay Old Time
• Everything But the Ocean
• Ruts in Stone
• The Greatest Show on Earth
• Of Cons and Convents
• The Ugly American
• Coroico or Bust
• Goddess and the Garca
• Hooters
• Community
• The Ugly American Part 2: The Vengeance
• Crutches in Cartagena
• Play It Again
• Game Over

What People are Saying About This

Q. Allan Brocka

If Che Guevara and David Sedaris had a hunky love child wet-nursed by drag queens, it would be Jesse Archer. . . . More than a FUNNY, SEXY, AND FIERCELY ENTERTAINING South American adventure, it's AN INSPIRING CHALLENGE TO CONSUME LIFE AND LIVE YOURS TO ITS FULLEST. Archer's witty and penetrating observations offer delicious insight of not only South American and Western culture, but life itself. In the first few pages, it will compel you to pack a wig, hop on a plane, boat, or moped and read the rest along the way. (Q. Allan Brocka, Writer & Director of Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in All the World; Boy Culture; Eating Out)

Casper Andreas

One could argue that Jesse Archer redefines what it means to be a gay traveler. But really, You Can Run stops at nothing short of redefining how to live one's life. WILDLY FUNNY, CRAZY, AND TRULY INSPIRATIONAL! (Casper Andreas; Actor, Filmmaker A Four Letter Word, Slutty Summer)

Michael Musto

From Evita's palace to Chilean volcanoes and beyond. Jesse Archer TAKES US THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA WITH WIT, WISDOM, AND LOTS OF OUTFITS.

Josh Kilmer-Purcell

If Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were gay, not dead, and actually funny, You Can Run: Gay, Glam, and Gritty Travels in South America is the road movie they'd make. HILARIOUS, SOPHISTICATED AND SOULFUL, Jesse Archer writes with an inescapable charisma. (Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Author of the New York Times Bestseller I Am Not Myself These Days)