The Yellow Brick Road

“Mark, let’s get going”

I interrupted my vacant stare out across, well, nothing, and looked up. Ross was looking at me and smiling, like he had caught me in the middle of something he shouldn’t have.

My mind snapped back to the here-and-now. I was sitting on the flat, broken boulders of the summit of Mt. Whitney. It was early morning. We had hiked all night long to reach the highest peak in 49 states. I had been staring out across nothing, literally. There isn’t anything “across”, only down. I was sitting in the newly risen sunshine, and wishing I could remain there for hours more.

As Ross bent down to pick up his day pack and start down the trail again, I thought back to an event that took place five years ago, that would lead me to this mountain top. That would lead me to depart from a road I had traveled on for so long.

I guess it’s not often in life that a single instant, a single experience, or a singe statement or question changes everything. Not often, but I’m fairly certain that it happens at least once for everyone. It’s like lightning striking so close to you that the shock of it is burned into your mind. And from that point on you’re able to divide everything into what went before, and what came after.

For me it happened at a Christmas party five years before I stood on that peak with Ross. Ironically, it was I who was the host of the party, at a home I rented in Cupertino northwest of San Jose. The heart of the Silicon Valley, capital of the high technology industry. Prior to the mid-1970s Cupertino was covered with orchards and farms, a flat open expanse between the coastal mountains that kept out the cool fogs of the Pacific ocean, and the southern end of the San Francisco Bay. Even today, that bay still awes me with its sheer size and expanse.

But by 1996, the farms and orchards were long gone. Driven by the growth of companies like Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer, the farms had become a city and had been paved over into an expanse of low rise high-technology businesses, retail malls, and suburban housing. Miles and miles of uniform suburban housing. My rented house was one of those, in an older part of town with lots of tall broadleaf trees to provide shade.

I distinctly remember where I was when a question was put to me. I was standing in my living room, with a small group of four or five others. It was post-dinner, and the party had moved from the dining room to various other parts of the house and outside to the patio. The discussion in the group was about houses, as seemed to be the fashion then, especially with friends of my age. Maybe this is true of most cities, but real estate seemed to be an obsession among Silicon Valleyites. One of many, many obsessions of the high-tech set.

For the life of me, I can’t remember who asked me the question or even exactly who was in that circle of four or five people. But the question I remember. It was so innocuous, so meaningless. Banal even. One of those small talk type of questions.

Isn’t it those simple statements, those common questions that, when stated in the right environment and at the right time, can turn your whole fucking world upside down?

“Mark, why haven’t you bought a house yet?”

It was a reasonable question. It was 1996 and the economy was taking off, especially in the Valley. Rental vacancy rates were less than one percent and it was driving prices through the roof. It was a real estate agent’s dream economy. Why rent when owning was a sure financial bet? And my past excuse wasn’t holding water anymore. Before moving to the Bay Area I had gone to business school and gotten an MBA – and a whole lot of debt. It took five years and a positive move in Apple Computer stock to dig myself out of that financial hole. I was just beginning to feel whole again. A home purchase as a logical financial next step.

But this isn’t really what the question was about.

In the late 1990s, the culture of the high-tech set revolved around three things; where you worked, where your house was, and what was inside it. Where you worked conveyed status, and there was a definitive pecking order in the valley between firms. Where your house was indicated how much it cost, and thus acted as a proxy for how much you were paid and how successful you were in your chosen company. What was inside your house – well, the geek culture in this technological Shangri-la demanded weekly trips to Fry’s Electronics – a retail temple – to purchase the latest gadget. Or to Pottery Barn or someplace else to purchase that perfect sofa or wall decoration. These three facets of life in the Valley would tell you where you stood in relation to who you were talking with. A sort of universal scorecard. And so conversation at parties was designed to elicit these facts.

Even with the stock market crash, the mindset is so infused in the culture I can’t imagine it’s changed. To many in the Valley, even their 2.3 children were props in a perfect life that they were carefully building and maintaining.

So the question wasn’t, “Mark, why haven’t you bought a house.” It was, “Mark, why aren’t you doing what’s expected of you in the Silicon Valley? You’re weirding us out.”

I’m sure I provided a perfectly reasonable answer. But inside the question had burrowed deep into my brain. I walked through the rest of the party in a sort of daze. Guests came and went. Friends helped to clean up a bit. Goodbyes were said. At some wee hour of the morning, I climbed into bed. And the answer finally hit me;

“Because I don’t want to live here. Because I don’t like living here. Because I’m living a lie.”

And immediately another thought came into my head. “Uh oh.” In that moment I had pulled a thread from the carefully crafted tapestry of my life and I knew the thing was about to unravel. And I didn’t care, because I didn’t like that tapestry. In fact, I hated it.

I grew up in San Diego, the son of a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps from a minimum wage job to be a successful businessman. All in order to provide a better life for his two children. At age nine my mother was killed in a car accident, and since then dad had single handedly raised us. Determined, never complaining, single minded. Although I suppose I can take credit for what I’ve been able to achieve in life, the real facts are that my current life would not have been possible without his dedication and love for me.

Like most of us, as I grew up I took my queues from what I observed in the outside world. By that I don’t mean just what was happening around me in the small redneck town in which we lived. I paid attention to the bigger world. Who was going to college and why. Who made money in business and why. Who got to travel to far away places and why. I decided I wanted those things.

In high school I did what was expected of a high achiever. I got good grades. I joined the swim team. I ran for and held various class offices. And as might be expected, I was rewarded with praise. I applied to college and was accepted where I wanted to go. I worked for the university. I completed a double major. I applied to business school. One morning before class I received a call from Harvard telling me that I had been admitted. I had to go to work first, but then a position in the class would be guaranteed to me. So I worked for two years and then moved to Boston to attend the “West Point of capitalism” for two years. The family was thrilled, of course. That is after my dad got over the shock of how many dollars were going to flow out the door from both of us.

My whole life I asked others where I should go to get to where I wanted. And I got the same answer Dorothy got from everyone in the Land of Oz. “Follow the yellow brick road.” Society had laid out a road so clear it was impossible to miss. All I had to do was follow it, play by the rules, and I would reach the Emerald City and the wizard. And follow it I did.

As I lie in bed the evening of the party though, I realized that I was no longer following the yellow brick road. It’s not that I had left the road. I was simply standing in the middle of it. Without even realizing it, I had stopped walking. I hadn’t bought a house. I hadn’t done the other things expected of me. And other people had noticed I had stopped. As the sun came up that morning after the Christmas party, I finally came to the core reason why. Or rather I remembered the reason why.

I was a gay man walking a path that was built straight and narrow.

This is not a coming out story. Although I was a late bloomer in the sex department, in college I realized I was attracted to other guys and acted upon it. I didn’t wear it on my sleeve, but I did pretty much as I pleased.

But as I got ready to head to business school, the stakes got a lot higher. I wanted to graduate and join Apple and the rest of the exciting high-tech universe. I wanted to be able to travel the world. I wanted to be able to help build something that was going to be more than just a product to be sold. That’s what most of us who joined Apple believed – we were helping to change the world, one person at a time. Even after the high-tech crash, that’s still what most of us believe.

The high technology sector has been held up as a shining example for corporate America in the adoption of environments that are non-hostile to gays and in the adoption of domestic partner benefit policies. And to a certain extent, that’s true.

But the core of high growth businesses is financial – where the companies get the money to start up and grow. And the money comes from the venture capital and Wall Street firms that were lauded during the late 1990s. Even though their egos are bruised today, they still control much of the underpinnings of high technology business. If you are going to startup a business, you either raise the money yourself (good luck) or you turn to venture capitalists. Once you get into the executive ranks of a major high-tech corporation, your image on Wall Street matters.

How many openly gay executives are there at high-tech companies? How many gay venture capitalists are there? For that matter, how many high-tech executives, analysts or venture capitalists aren’t white married men? There are very few examples.

But I wanted in, to be a player. I wanted to be part of changing the world. Something had to give and I made a choice. Looking back on it, I knew I was making a choice and yet it all sort of just happened, like I was swept up in rush hour traffic. I poured my energy into my career. And somewhere I basically stopped being gay.

I got what I wanted. I rose through the ranks and into positions of influence. I’ve managed companies and products worth billions. I’ve helped save a company that was going bankrupt, actually two. I’ve co-founded a company. I was constantly dealing with Wall Street and venture capitalists. I was on the inside.

And the view from the inside was worse than I had expected. Yes, there were the social side jokes and comments about gays. But the real damage is done by the VCs and financial analysts when they read (or rather don’t read) business plans and when they recommend (or don’t recommend) executives to place in their portfolio companies. If someone is openly gay, that person is not seen as an executive, but as a “gay executive.” Just as women aren’t seen as executives, but as “women executives.” There is an assumption that being gay, or a woman, will prove to be a distraction from running the business. And that’s a risk they aren’t willing to take. Overwhelmingly VCs are white and married. And they overwhelmingly fund companies led by white married men. And they hire executives with the same qualifications. It’s not an explicit action, but implicit in the arguments of “risk reduction” and in the biases of those who direct the flow of dollars.

I watched the process, participated in it. And over time, this reality recolored my view of the world.

“Mark, why haven’t you bought a house yet?”

A single question had upended my life. I had achieved what I wanted. I had a track record had built a solid career. What was keeping me from taking the next expected steps? What did I want?

I wanted my life back. I wanted that part of me back that I had chosen to ignore, and implicitly to hide.

As I look back, the year following that Christmas is a blur. I made some changes in my life. Notably I started dating more seriously. But most of my friends I had met through work, and because of that they didn’t know I was gay. And I decided that as long as I was living in the Silicon Valley, I would still be in that career-first mode I chose years back. I was on the middle of the yellow brick road, standing still.

Have you ever been bungie jumping? Once in New Zealand while traveling alone I was in Queenstown and on a lark decided I’d do the jump from the then-highest permanent bungie jump in the world. As spectators, most people focus on the fall or on the ride back up as the bungie relaunches the jumper into the sky. But the most intense part of the jump is the decision to push yourself off the bridge. In that instant, every part of your body and mind is telling you, screaming at you, to step back from the edge. The only part that is telling you to jump, ironically, is a small quiet voice of logic.

I needed to jump.

Over the year, I had had an ongoing discussion with my skiing friend Tim about just picking up and moving to a ski mountain someplace. He talked about Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I talked about Mammoth, California. For most of the year it was just that – talk. Then in September, I got an e-mail. It read;

“Gave two weeks notice today. Bought season pass at Jackson Hole. Moving September 26. – Tim”

As I read the short note, that quiet voice of logic in my head finally won out, and I stepped off the bridge. I quit my job. I sold my sporty Miata and leased a new RAV4. I would need the four wheel drive, and the cash. I packed up and moved to Mammoth. I left behind the life I had built for myself. And I didn’t look back.

Out of the corner of my eye, a blur of brown fur caught my attention. One of the marmots on Whitney was darting towards a daypack that had been left unattended among the rocks, its owner no doubt distracted by the view.

In my last moments on the summit, I thought about the four years since I’d left the Valley. I thought about the house that I had purchased in Mammoth. I thought about the friends I had kept from my old life – friends that were closer now. Friends who would drag me off to New Zealand three days hence. I thought about the new friends I’d met. And I thought about the guy who I’d met the month before, and who I’d see again after getting of this mountain and before jetting off to the south Pacific, only to think about constantly as I crossed a half dozen time zones.

And it occurred to me. If I had the chance to do it all again, if I were back in college about to head off to business school, would I make the same choice?

“Well, come on.”

It was Ross looking at me, the look on his face a bit puzzled. I got up and grabbed my pack and began the long trek, back home.