MarkWasson.com The Mark Wasson Site About Mark

MarkWasson.com The Mark Wasson Site

About Mark

Mark's Picture | Mark's Profile | Mark's Publications

"A lot of people who look like Mark are just a body and a smile. But Mark has it all.... He's charming, charismatic, sexy, sensuous, funny - and he knows how to laugh at himself."

- Soap Opera Digest, August 15, 2000, Vol. 25, #33

"The letters we received in response to this handsome man, as well as his obvious appeal, made us want to see more of him, so we brought Mark back as a centerfold."

- Playgirl, September 2002, p. 43

I was born in Cedar Rapids, IA, in 1961. I was raised in Cedar Rapids, Wheaton, IL, Hazleton, IA, and Oelwein, IA. I graduated from Oelwein High School in 1979.

I attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, where I earned three degrees. After college, I lived briefly in Eden Prairie, MN, before moving to Centerville, OH, for a new job in the Dayton area. I bought a house in nearby Springboro, OH, in 1994, and lived there until March 2002 when I sold it and moved to an apartment in a downtown Seattle high-rise.

Childhood basics include typical school stuff, the Boy Scouts (reached the rank of Eagle Scout), mediocre talent at the piano and trombone, president of the Oelwein High School computer club, and jobs at a family-owned A&W restaurant and later at Hickory Grove Country Club.

In college, in addition to my studies, I mostly hung out with friends, went to movies and went hiking. I once ran as an independent for the University of Iowa Student Senate, coming in 8th (of 16) for the five seats representing student housing (the beginning and end of my political career). I worked my way through college, first working summers at the family business and later holding jobs as a Linguistics Department teaching assistant and as a programmer for the Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health. When I was in graduate school, this included working 55 hours a week while a full time student.

As a grownup, I'm single with no kids. I work, travel and enjoy my hobbies.

Before moving to Seattle, I used to describe myself as a boring suburbanite, but I have had a few interesting experiences in spite of that. These include

	Visiting all 50 states, and taking advantage of an extraordinary number of great North American and international travel opportunities
	Getting published in professional journals
	Participating in the March on Washington for gay civil rights in 1993
	Working as an extra in the Jim Carrey movie Man on the Moon

One of my more unusual travel experiences took place in Tijuana, Mexico, in August 1999. What started with me stopping on a Tijuana street corner in order to check my map ended with a Mexican police officer who retrieved my watch from the underwear of a knife-carrying transvestite prostitute mistakenly thinking I was then-Ohio Republican governor George Voinovich. (Long story, but that's the gist of it)

Life in Seattle began in April 2002, but not quite in the way I expected. Within a week of arriving, I found out that I have Type 2 Diabetes. But so far I have done a good job in dealing with it, losing some weight, getting on a fitness program and restructuring my diet. No one knows what the future of their diabetes holds, but currently I am not on insulin or any medication for the diabetes, and my blood sugar test results have been within the non-diabetic range since late 2002.

But for the most part, I live a quiet life in downtown Seattle.