Writer Karl Dunn chats with me about his memoir, How to Burn a Rainbow.
Bio:
Karl Dunn has enjoyed a multi-award-winning 25-year career in advertising in Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Amsterdam, Berlin, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Rising to the executive level of Global Creative Director on several world-famous brands, Karl was often the only queer person in the boardroom.
A keynote speaker on Divorce Reform as a workplace mental health issue, Karl is also passionate about community-based capitalism and LGBTQ+ representation in the media. Karl lives between LA and Berlin working as an author, speaker and freelance advertising and branding consultant.
Welcome, Karl. Please tell us about your current release.
Readers have called How to Burn a Rainbow a gay Eat, Pray, Love. It chronicles my 18-month journey through my same-sex divorce where I used it as my crisis of identity to become the person I always hoped I’d be. I went from living in a loft house in the LA Hills with a high-flying advertising career to crash-landing mid-divorce in Berlin where I was sleeping on an air mattress in a former squat with no job, visas, or lawyers and only a few hundred dollars left to my name.
This spectacular fall from comfort and safety set me on a journey to use my divorce as my crisis of identity to figure out who I was, how I had gotten here, and what to do with the rest of my life. Guided by so many friends and strangers I met along the way, who imparted a banquet of incredible life lessons that I captured in the book.
My marriage didn’t make me whole, my divorce did.
What inspired you to write this book?
When my divorce started, I went looking for a book on gay divorce and I couldn’t find one. So I wrote it. It captures the kinds of loss very particular to same-sex divorcees; the loss of equality in the straight world that marriage gave us, the loss of your own community where many members feel you wrecked marriage for the rest of them, and the feelings of having spectacularly failed the cause.
But HTBAR became this universal story that resonated with people from all walks of life; every gender, every sexuality, every age.
Excerpt from How to Burn a Rainbow:
YOU GOT ENGAGED?!
Way back in 2012, when I walked into the office on the Monday morning after I’d proposed, my work partner saw the ring on my finger and was instantly out of his chair.
“You did it!” he yelled, bear-hugging me off the ground. News spread and soon every other married guy in the office came over. Straight guys I’d only ever seen in meetings served up huge congratulatory hugs and smiles. Champagne and paper cups appeared out of nowhere.
I was taken aback by what a big deal it was for all the married guys I worked with. Then I realized we may never completely understand each other’s lives, but every married straight guy knows what it is to get engaged. To buy that ring, organize the moment, get down on one knee, pop the question, and then slide that ring on the fourth finger of the left hand of the person they love more than anyone else on Earth. We had that in common now.
There were even a few good-natured laughs as one guy asked, “Wait, who proposed to who?” and I talked them through how I’d popped the question with a second ring in my pocket for Gunnar to put on my finger.
I can only speak for myself here, but I believe this would ring true for a lot of gay men my age: I’ve had a lifelong mistrust of straight guys. They were the ones I tried to imitate for years growing up. The bad ones beat me up in high school, and the worst ones write laws that make the whole LBGTQ+ community suffer. Ever since I’d come out, I’d always hung back a couple of degrees from hetero men till I knew I could trust them. I know there are lots of great ones—some are my best friends are straight guys—but even with them, I find myself envious of the ease with which they move through this world.
Then suddenly, those feelings were gone. For the very first time in my life, standing among all those straight guys in my office with that ring on my finger, I truly felt like I was their equal. One of the guys even said to me, “Now that you’re engaged, you just made my marriage bigger.”
I know I’m not supposed to say, or even think, that I needed straight men’s validation to believe that I was as good as them. I know that’s not PC. It’s not what we gays say to each other in the fight.
But it was true. I loved how it felt. And I hated how much I loved it.
JESUS, ARE WE GETTING DIVORCED NOW?
Returning to 2017, it was the second Friday night since I’d been back in the house. My wedding ring sat in a box on the mantlepiece but sometimes, when its presence was so loud I couldn’t ignore it, I’d take it out. That night, I palmed it gently, missing the superpower of equality it had once given me. Now I was a married man on his way to not being one. I was thinking about how there isn’t even a word for it, like “un-fiancé” or something, when Brian called.
“You. Me. Drinks. Now.”
“I’m not feeling it, Brian…”
“C’mon, man. Let’s go. You’re such a shut-in…”
When I continued hemming and hawing over the phone, Brian finally said, “Bitch, if you want to have a social life, that’s gonna require you to actually leave your house and let people see you.”
Couldn’t really argue with that.
So I scanned my bedroom floor, put on a T-shirt that passed the sniff test, then tried to compensate by hiding it under my most expensive jacket. I fixed my hair, hated it, and gave up as I walked through the mess to the downstairs garage, past the dirty dishes covering the kitchen counters.
It was a vibey Friday evening at the Eagle, our local gay bar. And as Brian and I got drinking and chatting, I was surprised to discover that I was actually having fun. I breathed in the LA autumn night air from the bar’s courtyard, watching the silhouetted skyline of stucco apartments, palm trees, and power lines. It felt good to be out of the house and out of my head. A good-looking guy came over and started chatting to the two of us. He seemed to be really into Brian and as they started talking away, I stared off into the distance for a minute. Then he turned to me. “So, Karl, are you single?”
I stared back at him like a deer in headlights. As the ever more uncomfortable silence stretched out, Brian had to intervene: “He’s getting divorced.”
At first the guy nodded in commiseration, but it was a reflex. Then his brow twisted up. “Wait… From a woman?”
“No, I was married to a man,” I replied.
The guy put his hand on my shoulder. It seemed like he’d lost his balance. Then he looked me right in the eye. “Jesus! Are we getting divorced now?”
I said the same thing to him that I’d said to Gunnar. “I’m sorry, I tried.”
The guy blinked a little.
“OK,” he said shakily, and then wandered back to his friends. They all had “so-how-did-it-go?” looks on their faces. The guy said just a couple of words, then they all looked over at me like I had leprosy.
“You all right?” Brian asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.
As I drove home, I realized the absolute, number one, shittiest thing about being the only gay man you know getting a divorce, is that you are the only gay man anyone knows who’s getting a divorce.
What exciting project are you working on next?
One of the reasons I couldn’t find a publisher is because there is a belief out there that the LGBTQ+ community is here for the world’s entertainment and not their education–they believe that they have nothing to learn from us.
I hold firm that we are clearly part of the plan, whether you believe 100% in God or Science or somewhere in between.
I’m planning a series of books where I answer the question, “Why do LGBTQ+ people exist?” not, should we exist. I’m looking at models of capitalism that LGBTQ+ people excel at for instance. And also how we could provide value on the world’s political stage. I want to explore why we are here, what we can offer the planet, and why that’s good for all of us.
An LGBTQ+ Malcolm Gladwell if you will.
I’m also delivering keynote talks in corporations on Same-Sex Divorce for Pride this year, and Divorce as a chronically overlooked mental health issue in the workplace.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I always have been I think. I loved writing as a kid and used to compose short stories. I went into advertising as a copywriter in 2005. I was a screenwriter in LA for seven years. I always wanted to write a book.
That said, every time I tackled a new kind of writing, I felt like an imposter all over again.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Advertising is such a great teacher–you have to be creative to deadlines. So I wake up, stretch, meditate, grab a coffee, and then sit at my desk for four hours writing every morning when I’m not freelancing. That’s my deep work time. No tech, no wifi. Just me and the muse.
Afternoons are for emails, business, adulting.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
My desk is always messy. I don’t how to keep it clean.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer, actor, thinker, speaker. Some kind of mix of all of these.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I honestly think that we diminish ourselves because of the worst things that have ever happened to us. We think it proves that we are unworthy. But I hold that if you take the thing that is your greatest shame, your greatest wound, and talk about it you find out that it is actually your greatest strength.