A journey of self-discovery, coming out and navigating love and loss within the gay community, with author John Giarelli.

CHAPTERS:
00:00
Introduction and Setting the Scene
03:03
John's Journey of Self-Discovery
06:07
College Life and Relationships
08:55
Love and Loss: The Story of Ted
12:11
Reflections on Coming Out
14:58
Life After Antioch: Moving and New Beginnings
18:05
The Impact of the AIDS Epidemic
21:01
Family Dynamics and Acceptance
23:57
Final Thoughts and Reflections
24:20
Coming Out and Family Dynamics
28:32
Life in New York and the Search for Belonging
32:53
Embracing Identity and Personal Growth
36:30
The Journey of Writing a Memoir
41:43
Struggles with Addiction and Recovery
48:55
The Future: Theater Adaptation and Life Lessons

TAKEAWAYS:
John's journey of self-discovery began in college.
He had a significant coming out moment while biking.
His relationship with Ted was transformative and deeply impactful.
Family acceptance played a crucial role in his life.
John reflects on the challenges of navigating love and loss.
The AIDS epidemic shaped his experiences and relationships.
He emphasizes the importance of embracing one's identity.

SUMMARY:
In this engaging conversation, John Giarelli shares his personal journey of self-discovery, coming out, and navigating love and loss within the LGBTQ community. He reflects on his experiences at Antioch College, the impact of the AIDS epidemic, and the complexities of family acceptance. John discusses the lessons learned throughout his life, the importance of embracing one's identity, and the motivation behind writing his book. The conversation culminates in a heartfelt exploration of belonging and the ongoing quest for self-acceptance.

BIO:
John Giarelli was born in Connecticut in 1957. He received his BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1980 and his MA from the University of Connecticut in 1988. He taught English literature and writing for 30 years at several colleges and universities across the country. He has lived in Boston, Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles, and has traveled extensively throughout Europe. He is done with cities and currently lives in a small town in the mountains between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. 

His recently published memoir, “A Gay Boomer Story,” is a roller coaster ride through the past seven decades. His story begins in the straight-laced 1950s, and runs through the tumultuous 60s, “Coming Out” in the Disco era of the 70s, moving to San Francisco in the 80s, and wandering through America’s Gay ghettos in the 90s. He finally settled down with dogs and nature in the mountains, and is currently producing a theatrical adaptation of his book and taking it on the road. 

Contact John:    Email: jliterati@gmail.com.        Phone# 323-271-8788

Contact Wilkinson: BecomingWilkinson@gmail.com

Transcript

WILKINSON (00:00)
Today my guest is John Giurelli. Hi, John.

John Giarelli (00:03)
Hi.

WILKINSON (00:03)
You're where? Up at Big Bear, said?

John Giarelli (00:05)
Yeah, I'm up in Big Bear Lake in the mountains between LA and Palm Springs.

WILKINSON (00:10)
I've been a big bear once. I think I prefer Lake Arrowhead.

John Giarelli (00:14)
Lake Arrowhead is posh. It's more posh and fancy. And it's really hard to get down to the water there because it's all privately owned properties and lots of estates, lots of Hollywood celebrities' estates. Big Bear is just kind of redneck and white trash.

WILKINSON (00:23)
Right.

I don't know though, I was talking to an investor, this is probably two years ago, and he had told me that a property, I don't know what it was, I can imagine, it sold up a big bear for like $38 million. I mean, it had to be on the water, obviously, but.

John Giarelli (00:41)
Wow.

Yeah, it was probably

an eagle point or boulder bay, one of the nicer coves.

WILKINSON (00:52)
Anywho, all right, so John and I met at a book fair, gay book fair, what a month ago? Something like that. And he shoved his book down my throat and said, you have to read this and interview me. So here we are. Not really, not really.

John Giarelli (01:00)
Yep.

I should give you

the backstory about that. I overheard you saying that you had a podcast and I immediately turned to Blake, the coordinator of the book fair. I said, Blake, I elbowed him. said, should I give him my book? He does a podcast. So Blake was like, sure. Yeah, get that exposure. So, yeah, I jumped up and

WILKINSON (01:14)
really?

John Giarelli (01:31)
Gave you my book.

WILKINSON (01:32)
I need to find Hollywood types and stop finding authors because this, let me reach here. These are the ones I just finished. And I've got.

John Giarelli (01:40)
Wow.

Are they mostly non-fiction?

WILKINSON (01:46)
It's a mixture and these I did part reading on and these are my next ones You guys are making me read way too much so but it's fun

John Giarelli (01:53)
That is insane!

Hey,

I proposed, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but the other night while talking to Blake, I had this idea that we should have a gay writers symposium, an evening with gay writers in Palm Springs at a theater. And he included Dak. I don't know if you've met Dak Kopek, but he was one of the writers at the book fair.

and he was interested in doing it and I'm sure, you know, like Suki and Kurgan and David, a bunch of them would be interested in doing that.

WILKINSON (02:30)
Well, if you do it, you can let me know and put it in the episode notes. It sounds like that's something that'll come down the pike at some future time, Yeah, okay.

John Giarelli (02:37)
Yeah, but

you could be there with the podcast and make us all famous.

WILKINSON (02:43)
Well, don't, I'm not a newscaster, so I don't know how that would work. But anyway, let's hear about you. Tell me a little about your story. Where'd you grow up? You're gay. How'd you figure that out? Blah, blah.

John Giarelli (02:47)
Right.

grew up in Connecticut.

went to a Catholic prep school, pretty straight-laced, track team, girlfriends, editor of the school paper.

and went to college in Boston for two years at a super athletic jock and cheerleader type college, Boston College. And I quickly realized that I was being attracted to guys, a lot of the jocks at the college. And I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified and just kind of in hiding. I would

actually get on my bicycle and cross the Charles River and go over to Harvard Square where a lot of the hippies were still hanging out and I met Harold, yeah his name was Harold, a hippie guy who lived right off of Harvard Square and we had a very lusty relationship for a couple months until my parents realized that

I needed to come home for the summer so that they were being a little overprotective. But I left Boston. But that fall, that following fall, I transferred to Antioch College in Ohio because I had done a transfer search to get out of the Jock and Cheerleader College and find my true home in a hippie artsy college. So I just kept.

searching through all the New England states and through New York state and Pennsylvania. And I finally found Antioch College in Ohio and knew that that as soon as I walked down the campus, I knew that that was my home away from home. And shortly after being there, I heard rumors of this guy, Tim, who was gonna be coming back to campus.

And lo and behold, there he was one day standing on the steps of the student union, six foot tall, corn fed blonde from Rockford, Illinois. And I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. Now, mind you, at the same time, I was dating and living with a girl because I had gone back to being straight.

WILKINSON (05:03)
Alright, back up, stop. So let's go back to the first college. So you didn't really tell anything about that. So did you realize you were gay? You just jumped right into, had an affair with this guy across the river. But what was the process that you had in coming to that point?

John Giarelli (05:15)
I-I-

Just one day when I got on my bike and I rode across the bridge on the Charles River and I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I had this coming out moment where I realized that I was gay.

WILKINSON (05:33)
Did you say gay or was it just I'm different?

John Giarelli (05:35)
I don't remember saying gay, I remember feeling the feeling of freedom. There was a feeling of freedom when I crossed that bridge and I knew exactly what I was going to look for on the other side of the river.

WILKINSON (05:50)
Okay.

Okay, and you were how old then?

John Giarelli (05:53)
I should have put that in the book. Oh, I did put that in. It is in the book. was probably 20. The summer of 77.

WILKINSON (05:59)
Okay.

Okay. All right. So now you're back at Antioch and you're eyeballing Tim. What happened?

John Giarelli (06:08)
Tim was in a relationship and

WILKINSON (06:11)
With a girl or a guy?

John Giarelli (06:12)
with a guy.

WILKINSON (06:12)
okay.

John Giarelli (06:13)
Yeah, so Tim was gay. He was in a relationship with a guy. They broke up shortly after that. And I thought, like I say in the book, I thought it was like Diana Ross says, it's my turn. I thought it was my turn now with Tim, this boy that I was absolutely enamored with. But Richard, who

a hot stud who drove a Camaro on campus and looked like the hot leather motorcycle guy in the Village People. yeah, he scooped up Tim real quick, real fast. And I'm friends with Richard to this day. And I constantly remind him of how he stole Tim from me.

WILKINSON (06:45)
brother.

John Giarelli (07:00)
But he would play tricks on me while he and Tim lived in the dorm room upstairs from me. And he would lower the radio, transistor radio on a rope down to my window while Gloria Gaynor was singing, Will Survive. And he would do things like that to me. But anyway, yeah, I was in love with Tim, but it was a totally unrequited love. so I had to go and find...

Find gay sex in other places.

WILKINSON (07:27)
And what happened with the girlfriend? Is she in the picture on this this whole time?

John Giarelli (07:31)
So the girlfriend is interesting because her boyfriend before me was this absolutely godlike blonde guy from California who suddenly out of the blue came out to her and she was devastated.

Then she and I hooked up and we ended up living together in my dorm room. And then with the whole Tim thing happening at the same time, my infatuation with Tim, I also came out to her. And at the time she was taking, I don't know if you remember,

the Werner Erhard and the Est seminars, she was taking Est. So she was already crying all of her emotions and everything. So I just made it 10 times harder for her to get through life. But I had to be honest with her that I was gay. So I came out to her.

WILKINSON (08:12)
Right.

John Giarelli (08:29)
And that was the pretty much the end of my so-called straight life.

WILKINSON (08:34)
Did she move out at that point?

John Giarelli (08:36)
That's a good question. So long ago. I don't remember if Cindy moved out, but I did find out. well, the other interesting thing is that 40 years later, I moved to this little mountain town up here in Southern California, and I'm walking down the street and I see a guy, an older guy with a, like an Australian cowboy hat on, and as I'm passing him,

I'm staring at him and I know that I know him from somewhere. And then I walk into the general store and Alex, the Asian woman who runs the general store said, Bob was just in here. You should meet him. He's gay too. And I'm thinking, Bob. And I said to her,

Is his last name Icaltz? I shouldn't be revealing people's names. And she said, yes, his last name is, he's Bob Icaltz. And I said, that's the guy who first dated my girlfriend at Antioch College and came out to her. So it turned out that Bob and I were living, are living in the same mountain town. Although Bob and his partner, Steve, have since sold their cabin here and bought a

beautiful hacienda in the movie colony section of Palm Springs.

WILKINSON (09:51)
well you need to get Bob on my podcast.

John Giarelli (09:54)
Yes,

Bob is great. Bob's a mate. Yeah.

WILKINSON (09:58)
So did you talk

once you talked to the lady at the store, did you walk out and meet him and say, know you? Okay.

John Giarelli (10:04)
No, no, he was already gone. I

ran into him later and Bob suggested that we have a reunion with Cindy, our mutual girlfriend, who we both came out to because she was living on the west side of LA after

WILKINSON (10:16)
Ha

John Giarelli (10:23)
after getting divorced from the guy she married and was with for 30 years, and now she's a single woman in LA, and he suggested that we bring her up here to Big Bear, and my first response was, no, no, no, that would bring everything back, you know? I can't handle that.

WILKINSON (10:39)
You

So you never brought her up?

John Giarelli (10:47)
Never brought her up. Never brought Cindy up.

WILKINSON (10:49)
So the big question

is, was her husband of 30 years gay as well?

John Giarelli (10:54)
Right. Because she had a tendency.

WILKINSON (10:56)
Do you think he was?

Do you think he was or don't you know?

John Giarelli (11:00)
No, I doubt it. Not if they were together for 30 years. I don't know.

WILKINSON (11:03)
I was together for

29 years with my ex-wife so that means nothing.

John Giarelli (11:08)
Wow.

You came out.

How old were you when you came out?

WILKINSON (11:15)
Old enough to know better. was 51. So, we had gotten, we got divorced the like six or eight months before I came out to myself because we just didn't have a good time for the most part. 1983 was a good year. That was it. I mean, and I'm not kidding. I mean, it was...

John Giarelli (11:19)
Congratulations.

Yeah.

WILKINSON (11:37)
Most of the time it's not fun. I mean, obviously when you're with somebody that long, you're in a good times and you have kids and stuff, but generally it wasn't a very good path. So.

John Giarelli (11:46)
Yeah.

WILKINSON (11:46)
So, what's after Antioch? I mean, I read your book and you moved around a lot.

John Giarelli (11:51)
Yes. So I was the editor of the Antioch College newspaper and my team on the paper, we were all getting ready to graduate and they were moving to DC and I had no path. I had no plans after college. So I followed them to DC and a bunch of us lived together.

in Adams Morgan in Washington DC. And I was going to the bars in DuPont Circle, the gay bars in DuPont Circle in 1980.

Sorry.

So I walked into a bar called Rascals and I saw the man who I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

He was playing pool. He had tight jeans on.

chocolate caramel skin, a beautiful, tight afro, great body, very, he had cowboys, his Tony Llama cowboy boots, which I still have here in my cabin, and I fell in love. And when he looked up from the pool table and saw me walk in the door, he later told me that he thought he was seeing an angel.

As I say in the book, well, of course I was an angel. I was a 22 year old Italian boy with hair parted down the middle like James Taylor and big, big eyes, big curious eyes. And yeah, we were hooked from that moment on. And we spent the rest of the eighties together. I followed him out to San Francisco.

and we had a wonderful life in San Francisco. He was teaching at the University of San Francisco, political science, and he got a better job at Louisiana State University. So we left San Francisco, but we were kind of...

ready to leave because the AIDS epidemic was really taking hold and we felt like we were escaping. So we went from San Francisco to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

WILKINSON (13:50)
Right.

And his first name is what? Ted. So how long were you with Ted?

John Giarelli (13:58)
Ted.

10 years, the entire decade of the 80s. He died of AIDS on Valentine's Day of 1989.

WILKINSON (14:08)
when you met him, was he positive at that point?

John Giarelli (14:11)
No.

No, he, we had an open relationship in San Francisco and we were going to the bath houses a lot and having lots of tricks and fun and drugs and.

You know, which was so normal for San Francisco at that in 1980 in the, early eighties. So.

WILKINSON (14:27)
Right.

So would you say

that was Ted the love of your life? Is that how you would categorize him?

John Giarelli (14:38)
Yeah.

WILKINSON (14:39)
Okay, and so he passed away and you survived. So how did that, how'd that work out? Did you have guilt or what?

John Giarelli (14:46)
I guess my guilt

got processed through all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that I could find myself in when Ted died. So my mom was always saying to me, even through my adult life, know, come home, please come home. So this time when Ted died and I called them, she said, come home, and I did.

I listened to her.

WILKINSON (15:14)
No, did

they know Ted?

John Giarelli (15:17)
They did. They did. They met him a couple times. My dad being the...

WILKINSON (15:18)
Okay. Okay.

John Giarelli (15:23)
Quasi-racist Italian, old-fashioned Italian man that he was wasn't too fond of Ted's darker complexion. Ted was the product of an interracial marriage, a black man and a white Irish woman. so I tell his story in the book too.

He was handed off to an all-black couple when he was a baby and he grew up in a black family in Buffalo, New York.

WILKINSON (15:54)
That's where

I grew up there, know, Buffalo. That's my hometown, yeah.

John Giarelli (15:57)
you did?

wow!

WILKINSON (16:00)
or bungalow as we affectionately called it then. We used to call it buffalo bungalow.

John Giarelli (16:04)
bungalow?

My brother was at SUNY, Buffalo during the big blizzard winter of 70s, was it 77, 78? I think.

WILKINSON (16:18)
I

left there in 73, I wanna say. Cause I went to school just outside New York City to NIAC. Do know where that is? You're from Connecticut. Do know where NIAC is? So I lived in NIAC and then worked in Tarrytown across the Tappan Zee Bridge. But in 1978, I moved to Seattle where I spent basically the rest of my adult life up until 2017 when I moved down here.

John Giarelli (16:25)
Wow.

Yeah.

okay.

WILKINSON (16:46)
But yeah.

John Giarelli (16:47)
Too

much, too much rain.

WILKINSON (16:48)
in Seattle, too much gray. Yeah. Yeah. I had, well, I lived in a town called Edmonds, which is north of Seattle. It's like a little beach town. I mean, I have no regrets. I mean, I had a mid-century saltwater front, triplex right on Puget Sound. It was gorgeous. But it was, you know, those first two or three months.

John Giarelli (16:50)
Yeah.

Too much gray, too much grunge.

Yeah.

Sure.

You

Wow.

WILKINSON (17:14)
great The other you know nine months whatever Not so good and it and you know you're looking out of the water and the Olympic Mountains It's just gray gray gray gray gray and I had that place for 14 years so but you know and since I sold it. It's gone up 1.4. Mill

John Giarelli (17:18)
Right.

man, I'm sorry.

WILKINSON (17:36)
Well, you know, you can't look back. What could have should have?

John Giarelli (17:39)
I, the one weekend that I spent in Seattle, it was, it was gloomy and rainy at first, but, when the sun comes out, that town is, it's glistening. It's, it's really pretty. Yeah.

WILKINSON (17:50)
Right?

What month were you there?

John Giarelli (17:52)
I was doing a road trip. My brother and his wife live in Portland, so I stopped in Portland and then I was on my way to see a friend in Bellingham. And I stopped in Seattle. I don't remember what time, it had to be summertime.

WILKINSON (18:01)
Right.

It's really funny because the, and then I'm not making this up, like 4th of July, lot of times it's just shitty weather. And then the 5th of July, just turns beautiful. And it's that way for a few months. It's uncanny. All right, so you move, dies, you move back with your folks.

John Giarelli (18:09)
but

Yeah.

I moved back to Connecticut for, and that lasted six months. I couldn't take.

WILKINSON (18:30)
Now, did you

go back, back up? So did you come out to them when you found the guy across the bridge or what? How did that work out? When did your parents find out you were gay?

John Giarelli (18:39)
No.

My parents knew, I asked my mom years later when I was visiting them, I was sitting at the kitchen table and my mom had her back to me doing dishes at the kitchen sink. And I said, hey, I must've been about 40. And I said, hey mom, when did you realize that I was gay? And without even skipping a beat, not even stopping washing the dishes, she said, I surmised a long time ago.

WILKINSON (18:53)
Right.

John Giarelli (19:07)
And I was like, you surmised? Why didn't you tell me? No, I, my parents found out, technically they, my dad found out that I was gay when Ted was sick because he wanted to die at home. So we were doing all of our treatments, everything for an entire year.

WILKINSON (19:09)
you

John Giarelli (19:30)
I was basically his caretaker at home. And my dad at one point asked me why I was taking care of him. And then he said, are you more than friends? And I said, yes.

WILKINSON (19:45)
That was it.

John Giarelli (19:45)
That was it. That was it. And it was never discussed again. moving back home after he died was the biggest mistake of my life because...

I wasn't ready for...

the complete denial of my life. No one wanted to talk about it, especially in 1989. know, nobody wanted to discuss it. Even though we had a family member, my cousin Gary died at home in Connecticut. He came, he went back home from Los Angeles and he died in Connecticut.

but we never even talked about Gary. And it just, it wasn't discussed. And my life with Ted wasn't, wasn't acknowledged. Nothing. It just felt like so much alienation and then the completely opposite experience of what I had gone through with Ted, because we had, we had a home, we had a life, we had friends.

WILKINSON (20:37)
Right.

John Giarelli (20:41)
and I gave all of that up.

So part of me, I should have stayed in our home in Louisiana and just close the drapes and become like an old Italian woman in black. I should have just put, worn all black and gone into mourning. But after six months at my parents' house, I connected with an old friend and we got an apartment in New York City in 1990.

WILKINSON (20:52)
Hahaha.

.

John Giarelli (21:07)
And I was in New York until 96, the big blizzard of 96 in New York City. And I was complaining about, well, we'll get back to New York City, but the reason why I left New York and came out here was because I was complaining about the snow. And my friend in LA was like, come to La La Land. I got the Jeep and we'll go to the beach.

He had the whole West Hollywood experience going on. I, he sold me on LA. So I moved to LA, but getting back to New York, I had a bunch of relationships. I had a couple intense relationships in New York.

WILKINSON (21:44)
So in your book, seems like, I might be getting this wrong, but it seems like you have a female friend that says something along the lines of, you moved a lot. And she was talking about that and she said something to the effect of, it doesn't matter where you move, you're still there. Do remember that? There's a line like that.

John Giarelli (22:01)
I can't believe you're bringing this up.

WILKINSON (22:03)
Well, I wanted to know about what's underneath all that because it really wasn't explained in the book. So talk to...

John Giarelli (22:10)
so when I moved up here, I was looking for a place to live and, I saw a little real estate sign stuck in the dirt that said Donna Mamone realtor. I called Donna and I said, like a jerk, just said, Hey, Donna, are you Italian? And she said, yeah, why?

WILKINSON (22:22)
Right, okay.

Thanks

John Giarelli (22:31)
And I said, because I am too. I'm from the East Coast. Where are you from? And she said, I'm from the East Coast too. And it just started rolling. I'm from Connecticut. So am I. She turned out that she was from Greenwich, Connecticut. yeah, although she made a point of saying that she wasn't from the rich part of Greenwich. She was actually from the one little working class

Italian Irish section of Greenwich down along the I-95 freeway. So she took me around to look at houses and one thing I said to her as we were looking, she was showing me places to buy or rent and I just decided to say to her, know Donna, there's something I should probably tell you.

WILKINSON (23:01)
Wow.

John Giarelli (23:20)
And she said, I know you're gay. And I rolled out of the car. The car was stopped, fortunately, because she was pointing out a house. And I opened the door and rolled out, very dramatically, rolled out of the car onto the street, just dying with laughter. And I said, well, I got back in the car and I said, well, the real reason why I told you that is because I'm not sure if I would fit in up here.

And she said, John, if you think you would have a problem fitting in, it might say more about you than it does about the town.

And then she gradually went into, I now think of her as my Deepak Oprah. I call her Deepak Oprah because she's just full of wisdom and you know, of, lots of corny cliches, but she's always told me when I've gotten on my bandwagon about, I want to find someplace different. I'm not sure if I belong here.

I'm sure there's somewhere better for me." And she just came out with, wherever you go, there you are, John. And that's the saying, wherever you go, there you are. And she said it was from the movie Banzai, forget the name of the movie.

WILKINSON (24:27)
Okay.

I knew it was from something, but I couldn't quite place it. So.

John Giarelli (24:35)
Yeah, but basically

she was telling me that I'm going to bring all my baggage with me no matter where I go. And that's kind how the book ends, that I have to come to this full circle, embrace my identity, who I am, who I've been, who I want to be, and where I am. And also it...

WILKINSON (24:39)
you

John Giarelli (24:58)
It kind of centers around the principles that I should have learned better from reading Ram Dass's Be Here Now. When I was at Antioch, I read Be Here Now. so, you know, she talked about that too. Donna talked about that. And so I've come to this greater understanding that where I am is where I should be.

WILKINSON (25:09)
Right.

Okay, because when I read it, I was thinking, you have some secret you're running from. That's not the case.

John Giarelli (25:21)
So.

No, I don't think there's a secret there might be There might be a secret that I'm running from I don't know sometimes I look at girls and I wonder you know, is there part of me that's still hetero Yeah, are we There's fluidity everyone's on a different part of the spectrum the sexual spectrum I don't I don't know if I could ever go back to being with women but but I

WILKINSON (25:30)
Okay.

Well,

John, I'm going to give you the same advice because I was in real estate for almost 40 years. And when I had the young couple, they would make their first home purchase. do all the paperwork. And of course they would always wake up at two o'clock in the morning in a panic. So I'm going to tell you the same thing I told them. So John, when you're having those thoughts, take two &Ms.

Chew them and swallow it, take a swig of water and go back to sleep. You're gay. So forget it. I know that's a house thing, but you're gay. All right.

John Giarelli (26:19)
Did you say take, take two what? &M's?

WILKINSON (26:22)
&Ms.

it actually worked because they would laugh and then sometimes they would do it. Actually it would be funny. And then you know you get over the buyer's remorse and you move on.

John Giarelli (26:26)
love &Ms!

Right, right.

WILKINSON (26:37)
But don't go by that house. Don't go by the lady. No.

John Giarelli (26:39)
My issue, don't buy the house.

Yeah, I think my issue started in my childhood when I remember my mom teaching us that to never settle for less, to always kind of pursue the greater, something better. And that theme runs throughout the book also, that I'm always looking for something.

I'm always looking, I'm always seeking something, either the better place or the better me, the more perfect me, and it's never, I'm just not getting there. I'm not, not, there are always things holding me back.

Anyway.

WILKINSON (27:21)
You better hurry up because we're not getting any younger, babe.

John Giarelli (27:24)
Right?

WILKINSON (27:25)
Right. All right, so now we'll talk about this a little bit. So there's your book. It's probably gonna show up backwards on there, but a gay boomers, didn't it? Well, I don't know what will happen when it goes through the process, but anyway, so tell me why you wrote the book.

John Giarelli (27:29)
That's the book.

No it didn't.

It was during the pandemic.

A friend said I should write my story. I didn't really realize what the story was until I just decided to outline it and write about the more pivotal events of my life and what I saw.

what I experienced from the 60s, seeing the 1960s as a young kid and the assassinations and Charlie Manson and Woodstock and the hallucinations and the great bands and the hippies and, you know, and all of this kaleidoscope of psychedelic images happening during the 60s while I was just a kid.

And then that transitioning into the wild disco era of the 70s, I felt like there was a story to be told, an interesting story to be told, and that I needed to document it, that I could document these different eras that we went through in this country between the 50s and now.

And I was sort of this walking embodiment of those eras that I could tell that story.

even though the older boomers up here disagree with me. In fact, Suki, one of the writers at our event, I don't know if you met Suki, gay British hippie, older hippie in his seventies, he was a lot of fun. He approached me and looked at my book and he looked back at me and he said,

WILKINSON (28:59)
No.

John Giarelli (29:07)
I'm not quite sure that you're a true boomer. And I said, well, I was born in 1957, the peak year of the baby boom. I've been through a lot of the different events of the baby boom generation from the Vietnam War or through the AIDS epidemic and all that.

WILKINSON (29:23)
Right.

John Giarelli (29:28)
You know, he proceeded to tell me that the older boomers were actually there. He lived on in hippie communes and he, you know, he did it all. And I get that. I get that as a younger boomer, I didn't have those full experiences, but I still feel like, you know, I could, I could tell the story.

WILKINSON (29:46)
Right. Would you change anything about the book?

John Giarelli (29:48)
I would change,

calling Anthony Fauci, one of the two researchers who discovered the AIDS virus. In the second edition of the book, I need to change that because it was actually a French research guy and the American Dr. Robert Gallo who discovered the HIV virus. But then of course,

Fauci went on to treat HIV patients and you but a couple things I would change.

Not sure if I thought about anything else. I guess I tried to be a little more focused. One of my friends said that the book lacks focus.

WILKINSON (30:25)
Hmm.

John Giarelli (30:25)
which is

kind of emblematic of my personality. I lose focus a lot.

WILKINSON (30:28)
Yeah.

So you were living in drugs and rock and roll. you try it? Did you used to do drugs back when?

John Giarelli (30:37)
Yeah, got, I had a friend in New York City who would give me little, little itty bitty bumps of crystal meth. I mean, we were, okay, backtrack. We were doing crystal meth in San Francisco in the 80s. And having sex and all that.

But it became different for me in New York and LA when it became more of an addiction and either stronger, either the drug became stronger and more addictive, but it gradually turned into a nightmare. Very scary bouts with

WILKINSON (31:14)
You talking generally

a nightmare or a nightmare for you?

John Giarelli (31:17)
A nightmare for me. turned the use, the fun part of drugs.

WILKINSON (31:19)
Okay.

John Giarelli (31:24)
became the ugly part over the years and went into paranoid psychosis and insanity. Insanity. So by the time I was living in West Hollywood for about 10 years, I was completely hooked. Although I was kind of a functioning addict,

because I kept my teaching jobs. I was teaching at the big flagship community college in Los Angeles called LA City College. And I had a great career there, but I was partying on the weekends and starting to lose it mentally. And that's when...

Everything coalesced everything came together my retirement age my need to get out of the city my Bad relationship with the new head of the English department at my school and and I just thought fuck it I'm moving to the mountains. That's it. I'm out I'm retiring at 58 and I'm and I'm out of here and I My first choice was a town called Idlewild

WILKINSON (32:25)
Right.

John Giarelli (32:26)
in the mountains above Palm Springs. So I fell in love with it. But in order for an addict to live in Idlewild, you can only access it through two different routes. One through Hemet and

WILKINSON (32:28)
Right.

Right. Right.

John Giarelli (32:44)
You got to drive down this boulevard in Hemet and see all the tweakers and homeless people walking down the boulevard. And that was a total trigger for me. Or you have to come up by through Banning and which is so close to Palm Springs where I partied a lot. I thought, no, Idlewild is a little too close for comfort to my addictive, for my addictive behavior.

And that was 10 years ago. So I decided on Big Bear. And I think now I could probably live in Idlewild.

WILKINSON (33:11)
Okay.

get snow where you're at, right? It snows up there, right? So, and it does up at Idylwild as well. No, no, no, no, I'm from Buffalo. Uh-uh.

John Giarelli (33:18)
yeah. yeah.

Yeah.

Right? I know.

WILKINSON (33:25)
No, no.

think two or three days of snow around the holidays are great. Then go away. I'm done.

John Giarelli (33:34)
It's, but if you think of it, think of the bigger picture, you get four seasons up here and we do have beautiful spring and summer, but then it, yeah, pretty quickly goes downhill around November.

So we had a pretty mild winter this year, but two years ago we had what's now known as Snowmageddon. That's when the whole mountain was shut down. up here we had a, we had that winter, we had a total of 26 feet of snow.

WILKINSON (33:58)
Yeah.

John Giarelli (34:06)
Yeah, it was fun.

WILKINSON (34:07)
No, no, no. No, sorry.

John Giarelli (34:11)
I know, but you know, so getting back to Palm Springs, being on one side of Ida wild, I, you know, I, at that time I felt like, no, I can't be that close to Palm Springs. Cause I'll be at the, at the sex resorts all the time at the CCBC or camp Palm Springs or whatever. And,

Now, I love being in the mountains because I feel like I'm more of a mountain man. And my standard response when my friends up here, you know, they constantly say, John, you should go to Palm Springs and meet someone. You need to meet someone. Because, you know, it's slim pickings up here for a gay person. Although some of the hotter redneck

straight guys are some of them are on the fence up here.

WILKINSON (34:54)
really?

John Giarelli (34:54)
yeah.

WILKINSON (34:55)
Mmm.

John Giarelli (34:56)
Yeah,

yeah, a couple in particular. But now my idea, my stereotype of Palm Springs is that no, could never live there because I'm a jeans and flannel shirt kind of guy. And I don't have the right haircut, the right $600 haircut or the right

hundred thousand dollar Jaguar convertible whatever I you know I'll never I would never conform to life the lifestyle in Palm Springs.

WILKINSON (35:28)
That is not everybody No, first of all shaving No, no 600. I can't even imagine a six hundred dollars. That's still a thing a six hundred dollar haircut. That's But all right so we will put your information in the episode notes and We'll put something your Facebook or whatever. However, you want people to get a hold of you

John Giarelli (35:31)
No.

WILKINSON (35:55)
And then, where can they find your book?

John Giarelli (35:57)
on Amazon in paperback or Kindle ebook and

Well, it was at a couple places up here on the mountain, but not that anyone, there's a small bookstore, a couple small bookstores on the mountain. so as I say, well, when you read my bio, at the end of it, I talk about how I'm currently working on a one-man show adaptation of the book for the theater.

WILKINSON (36:10)
Okay.

John Giarelli (36:25)
and I'm hoping to take that on the road. So I'll be the gay boomer if anyone sees a production called The Gay Boomer that's based on the book.

WILKINSON (36:36)
Alright, you better not go to those ladies if you want to be the gay boomer though.

John Giarelli (36:40)
Right. I don't know. I just saw I've been catching up with this season's White Lotus. And there was a great scene in the episode I watched last night where the younger brother who's who's feeling, you know, he hasn't come out yet, but. He pretty much had sex with his brother.

WILKINSON (36:59)
That's where grabbed his brother, It's funny, because I think yesterday someone was telling me about that. I haven't watched the series, and I probably won't, but.

John Giarelli (37:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

He was fucking a girl and at the same time reaching over and jacking off his brother.

So.

WILKINSON (37:18)
All in the family.

John Giarelli (37:19)
Yeah, but I'm way past that. That kid is like 20, he's 20 years old. I'm way, way, you know, but that was me. That was me back then. you know, searching for the hippie guy in Boston, hooking up with the hippie guy, but then doing a 360 and going, or a 180, I don't know, going to Ohio and hooking up with Cindy and unfortunately coming out on her when her

first boyfriend came out on her and, you know, so I don't know if it was bisexuality. I don't know if I was bisexual, but I think that bisexuality is just the on-ramp to the gay freeway.

WILKINSON (38:01)
Well, that's what all gay guys think. Bye guys do not agree with that, but gay guys pretty much that's where they come from. All right, so my last question. So what guides your life? What do you live by? What lessons have you learned that you live by?

John Giarelli (38:06)
They don't.

man, I knew there was going to be one of these metaphysical questions.

What? I don't know. I should have thought, I should have thought about this before. I don't know what guides my life. I that you stay tuned. I'll, I'll think about that. need 24 hours to think about that. honesty, integrity. I'm, I'm, I'm naive to a fault. I don't, I, I, I want everyone.

WILKINSON (38:20)
Step up to the plate, John, you can do it.

WHAT?!

John Giarelli (38:44)
to be.

just real with me, real with one another. I don't know, I'll come up with more.

WILKINSON (38:50)
We'll have to put the footnote in the, because the podcast is over, so now is your chance or it'll be a footnote. If anything. All right, sir. I will.

John Giarelli (38:59)
Embrace it all,

embrace every aspect of your identity, who you are, who you were, bring it all together. As I say at the end of the book, my identity hangs on several hooks in my identity closet. it's, you I'm always trying to connect with who I am.

Am I this, am I gay? Am I a hippie? Am I a mountain man? Am I Italian? I try to stay connected to all my different identities. So, and I'm gonna show this in the play, in the last scene, where I just bring it all together, full circle, and I embrace all those identities, and I embrace that wherever I go, there I am.

and that I'm bringing all those identities with me and that's my place in the boomer generation, that's my place in our community, in the gay community. Anyway, enough of that bullshit.

WILKINSON (40:02)
All right, we will end on that. I will be in touch. Let me turn this off. Thanks for coming on the podcast, John. Appreciate it.

John Giarelli (40:04)
All right.

Thank you.