I'm Michael Caven
I was a chameleon and shapeshifter for many years. I’d go into a metaphorical phone booth like Clark Kent and come out pretending to be whomever or whatever I thought I needed to be. I often wanted to be anything other than who I’d been told I was or should be.
Maybe you can relate.
Writing
I am currently developing my memoir: “Spilling the Tea” which chronicles my adventures in a gay bar empire, removing a predator high school teacher from the education system and co-founding Out On Main Restaurant, the first LGBT-themed restaurant in the U.S.
The official starting point of this story is 1989. I was living in Dallas and had just received sexually explicit Polaroids of myself in the mail. I found myself thinking, My god, who is that boy? Is he having fun? His eyes seem dazed. I was drunk and high when the photos were taken, the amyl nitrite having lifted me out of my body. I’d lost myself, and now, again, I found myself wondering: Who am I? How did I wind up here? What’s next?
Biography
Michael Caven is a visionary restauranteur who co-founded and operated the USA’s first LGBT themed restaurarant Out On Main in Columbus, Ohio.
Prior to Out On Main, Michael Caven was enmeshed in the gay bar empire and soap opera of his adopted father, mogul Frank Caven in Dallas.
Michael Caven was also the main student witness in the New Hampshire pornography trial of his former high school teacher Larry Lane Bateman; insuring that Bateman was permanently removed from the education system, including his final position at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Michael Caven is semi-retired in Central Vietnam and is a Business Communication specialist at University of Economics Da Nang. Michael Caven received the Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign; Living Legend Award from Outie Magazine.
tupaiwin tupaiwin tupaiwin tupaiwin tupaiwin tupaiwin
Speaking
Michael Caven is available for speaking engagements. Michael delivered a Keynote Speech for the grand opening of Am Thuc Tran restaurant on Nguyen Van Linh, Da Nang. He has spoken to victim survivor groups in the past. Michael speaks on the following topics: male sex abuse survivors, life in a gay bar empire soap opera, building Out On Main Restaurant.
Vanity Fair
EXETER’S PASSION PLAY
DECEMBER 1992 – JESSE KORNBLUTH
“…Probably the most heartfelt and sympathetic portrayal of a convicted child pornography trafficker (Larry Lane Bateman) yet to appear in print.”
Further, “not a kind or empathetic word for the man who claimed to have been abused by Bateman as a teenager…if Bateman’s cache of pornography featured little girls, rather than little boys, it is unthinkable that he would have become the object of a sympathetic profile in the likes of Vanity Fair.”
Media
Michael Caven has been featured in:
- Nation’s Restaurant News (Gay Culture Moves to the Mainstream at Out On Main);
- Columbus Monthly (multiple times for Out On Main);
- CNN International profile of Out On Main
- The Advocate & Out Magazine (Out On Main).
- Relating to his predator teacher Larry Lane Bateman, Michael Caven was featured in “School for Scandal” in Vanity Fair.
Podcasts
Testimonial
Howard Fradkin, author of “Joining Forces — Empowering Male Survivors to Thrive” and leading specialist on male sexual abuse trauma, read a preview of Michael’s memoir-in-development “Spilling the Tea” and his response: “Spilling the Tea is a compelling memoir told with incredible candor, vulnerability, strength and hope. This is the honest story of a man who experienced multiple traumas in his childhood and throughout his life and all the ways he struggled to find healing…Healing, no matter what traumas you have experienced, is absolutely possible and achievable as Michael has eloquently described in these pages.”
