JD Wilson is a hard-working, charismatic, and quick-witted Southern man. He is from Decatur, Alabama, a suburban city roughly two hours northeast of Tuscaloosa. From ’84 to ’88, he attended UA, where he became involved with the GSU and the local queer community in his senior year. After graduating with a BA in Journalism and Japanese, he moved to Tokyo, where he worked and lived for a number of years before returning to the States. In 2016, he secured a job as the Director of Marketing and Sales at the Northwestern University Press. Feeling a desire to reconnect to his roots, he returned to UA as faculty in December of 2022, being named the Director of the University of Alabama Press, where he is now one of the few openly gay men on staff.

 

 

 

00:06
CC: Okay, so I want to preface this by saying, we did listen to the informal interview that you did with Izzy and Dr. Giggie.

00:14
So, a lot of these questions are kind of based off of themes from there.

00:20
So, my first question

00:27
Oh, yeah. So, you talked about that encyclopedia? Oh, God, what was the name of it?

00:35
It was an encyclopedia. And in some page, it was like two pages of

00:40
a definition of homosexuality or something. I kind of just wanted to ask

00:45
have you thought back to those moments again, and thought about how it's shaped your idea of gayness?

00:52
JW: I don't think it shaped my gayness. What that was, and I remember this was the Ann Landers, encyclopedia and Ann landers was like an advice columnist for like, 100 years.

01:04
And if you might still hear that I think, Dear Abby is still alive. But Ann Landers was dear Abby's twin sister. And I think they got both started in Chicago, one was at the Sun times, and one was at the Trib or something. And landers died years ago. I think Dear Abby is still alive. I think her daughter writes it. And there was an encyclopedia, and it was like this thick, and it was like one or two pages about everything. And it could be etiquette questions, it could be anything.

01:31
And there was a entry about homosexuality, I should say, you know, my parents were extremely strict. But they also didn't like to talk about things which might be a southern thing. Maybe Virginia is the same.

EB: Yea.

 But mother would leave literature around so she if she got to bee in or bother about heroin, she would just go downtown and get some pamphlets about heroin and leave them around the house.

01:53
And I know I read that section, because I could see years later there was like a dirty fingerprint record. Right and I’d open this thing, it was a big paperback about three inches that. And all I remember from that was Ann Landers take on, it was, and this would have been in like

02:08
80 or 81. And she said, Well, the American Psychiatric Association

02:13
said in 72 or 73, that being gay is not a mental illness. And so we shouldn't treat it that way. She's like, what do I know. But I think this is the right way forward. She said, What I think is wrong is when someone tries to have a married life, tries to force themselves to be straight. That's definitely not good. Because then you just wind up having kids and kind of compromising the life and the happiness of your spouse and usually breaking up the marriage in the fullness of time. So we should simply kind of support these people on that path to being truthful. And I'm sure I've read that 100 times. And when I asked myself, Why did I come out of the closet 10 or 15 years earlier than most of my peers, that's, that's kind of what I kind of come to is there was some voice of authority outside of the church, and separate from my parents that seemed authoritative that I believed, but she didn't really say anything about what being gay meant, or was it was just what to do about gay people. And that advice was aimed not just to gay people, but all the people around them.

03:21
CC: Like, like what, um

03:24
And Sanders said, that's really insightful.

JW: Yeah.

03:30
Okay, just kind of sticking on the theme of childhood, I guess.

03:36
So, just based on what's in that encyclopedia,

03:41
it seems to be very strong-moraled. It’s a very, I'd say positive way to look at homosexuality. It's not a mental illness, all these things, but um, what can we do in the present or future to show that gayness is far more encompassing than just sexual orientation or gay sex or these things?

04:00
JW: I guess, erm,

04:04
I guess I don't, I don't

04:07
know. I guess I would say to the extent that you will need to make that change as people and people in your old generation. I mean, it seems like from the outside that your generation is very

04:18
aware of all these different categories of people.

04:25
Yeah, I don't I don't know. I really don't know what someone from the 80s could say in terms of advice. I think our impulses and reflexes are so different.

04:44
I don't know. I guess I feel like gay people my age we're looking for a kind of, not assimilation with straight people, but we wanted integration. I mean, I like straight friends and in some ways

04:58
if I were really in trouble at some of the

05:00
Straight guys I would want to come and get me right?

CC: Yeah.

05:08
But that doesn't seem to be what I observe in younger people. There are all these categories, and,

05:15
I don't mean to editorialize about your generation, it just seems like it's as, as

05:21
the people between my generation and yours tried to add these additional categories of sexual orientation to create some more flexible notion of gender as a spectrum that feels like to me on the outside has become sort of a dead end of categories and boxes.

05:36
And it kind of just lost this sense of just human connection. That's what it looks like. To me it becomes, the more you have these categories, the more people in the same category group together on Reddit or Tumblr or something.

CC: Reddit. That's crazy.

05:53
JW: And so, like when I go to the gym, I'm the one gay guy at the gym. And does it take me a little bit of emotional

06:01
abridge to kind of get on the same page of? Yes, and do I have to do a little more of that work that? I mean, the guys at my gym are mostly on the road crew and Tuscaloosa County. But salt of the earth guys, they know I'm gay, completely supportive, wonderful guys. To accept there's a little difference between us. Do I have to bridge more than they do? Yes, I do. But that's, I don't know. I think it's worth it. To have this sense of togetherness. So, I don't know I

06:30
I don't think it would ever occur to me. I think my generation was asking those people to open the door, and to kind of make a place at the table for us, but we weren't really asking them to change or anything like that.

06:44
I don't know. I guess I'm curious about your question about how people become more accepting. They seem quite accepting.

06:53
Maybe in the sense that my, my idea of people not being accepting is actually killing you or something which maybe because I don't see that level of hostility?

07:05
I mean, when I'm in my fraternity house, to the extent that the boys know I'm the gay one. I feel like there's a certain kind of awkwardness.

07:14
I don't know if there's there seems to be an also a kind of awkwardness anyhow, I'm not sometimes I don't know if it's the gay thing, or maybe just because I'm, at this point, 40 years older than they are.

CC: Yeah,

07:25
I definitely wouldn't equate

07:28
awkwardness to hostility. So I mean, that's-
JW: You have to for people age, you have to be pretty hostile for it to register as hostile. I think we we grew up in a time when debate was so lively, and encouraged that I think we just were acculturated to a certain amount of verbal

07:48
conflict is a strong word. But even when I was in elementary school, they coached us in my elementary school, like if another student said something in class that you disagreed with your switch to raise your hand and kind of say, I challenged that idea. It was very, I mean, to me, in retrospect, I think is very cold war time. And it was, it was kind of ideological, in a way everything was freedom. And

08:15
that's kind of a rabbit hole, we don't need to go down. But I do.

08:21
Let's put this way, you know, this, the the,

08:24
the concepts now of feeling offended by something or being out of your comfort zone, or needing a safe space were completely alien to us. Like, I think that was in the 60s and 70s, to the idea of a safe space would not I think people would have said you should not have a safe space, you just need to learn how to confront your fears, because I, part of my hypothesis is that they just thought we should all be ready for war again, anytime. And this idea that they should

08:51
create spaces within which we could flower and feel safe would have been antithetical to

08:58
the upbringing they were trying to give us.

09:03
CC: I will say probably one of the biggest differences between our generations, just from what you explained is like, there doesn't seem to be much room for discussion anymore. Like when we were talking earlier about,

09:15
oh, what was it?

09:18
polarization in gender? Same thing, and basically everything that we talked about now.

09:24
I would consider you know- hostility is someone calling me a faggot in the street. Does it bother me? No, because I you know, I can,

09:33
I can work through it, but I would still consider that hostility. And I think a lot of that has arisen from this lack of discussion. Nobody wants to talk about it. Everyone's just on their own side of everything.

JW: That’s right. I think when I was first coming out in the 80s there was always a lot of awkward feelings because nobody had any practice and really didn't have much of a vocabulary. And sometimes people just use faggot because that was the only word they had.

09:58
And it's taken years. Or I should say, just as a

10:00
funny factoid. Here in the south, you could teasingly call your gay friends faggot, you would never use the word queen. those are fighting words. And yet I discovered when I moved to Boston, it was the opposite. You could call each other queen, but you would never use the word faggot.

CC: That's really funny. I've never. That's just, it’s interesting.

JW: Yeah, this point, the word faggot I always kinda wince. It’s something I haven't heard in a long time, but-

CC: I apologize. I didn't-

JW: No. The whole point is you should not apologize. It's fine to say faggot.

10:38
CC: Okay, good. Um, okay. First of all, I just want to say I loved just the way you speak and the words you use, yea, I guess you, your diction and your syntax are really just amazing. So in the first interview, you called your college experience deliciously conformist.

10:55
It's really good.

JW: Did I say that? Yea.

11:00
CC: And I kind of just want to know more about how conforming like that, or, you know,

11:08
kind of impacted how you navigated your college life.

11:13
JW: You know, that sounds like something I would say, I sometimes I can be provocative.

11:19
But I also think it's important. I mean, because being conformist is just so universally considered a bad thing. And yet, there are parts of it that feel good. And I think sometimes it's, it's important to recognize when something feels good, even if you know, it's not supposed to.

11:37
But

11:39
you know, because even in high school, we had a lot of Emerson, there's an Emerson had a famous essay about nonconformity. So they were giving us that, and that was also mixed in with some anti Soviet propaganda.

11:54
But, yeah, I think what I would say is, as a young gay man,

12:01
and probably on the spectrum of gay people, I'm probably people would consider me sort of on the butch end, but they would not have an aid for right. Because I mean, guys were, you know, in a small southern town, guys were pretty, pretty badass.

12:16
I might, you know, my buddies in college, you know, going home and working on their cars, right. So the fact that I was going home and reading something was kind of bookish and bookish was a proxy for sissy.

12:28
But

12:31
I, I think it's important for young gay people to feel like they're part of their gender is what I would say, I think. And this is why I watched the trans movement with a little bit of curiosity. And a little bit of concern is a strong word. But I just look at so many little gay boys who are probably feeling insecure about their boyhood.

12:56
And to have someone intervene, say maybe your girl would introduce a lot of confusion, or vice versa. And because a lot of these kids just grow out of it.

13:05
So I guess what I what I might say is being

13:11
I think just so this is a side, you can't generalize too much. Just by by coincidence, there weren't a lot of boys in my social cohort, like it, and I think it's just because

13:25
as Gen X came along, birth rates fell. So, you know, my church, my sister was in part of this huge class of like, 40 or 50, kids all going to church together, all going to school together constantly. In my class was a lot smaller. And there were like, no boys, my own age, really at church. And I had a couple of

13:48
guy friends at school, but there were a lot fewer. And so really, when I joined a fraternity and all of a sudden, I just was together with this group of another 12 Boys constantly. I really liked it.

14:02
And that sense of bonding, that I think at that age, you're just open to relationships in a way that you're not in before or after. That felt really good to me.

CC: Well good.

JW: Yea.

CC: That's really nice.

14:18
EB: You, you describe yourself as being like, closer to like the butch end of you know, gayness? How much like, weight, do you think like, personality traits and things like aesthetic preferences hold and like defining sexuality?

14:37
JW: Oh, I I love the fact you use the word like aesthetic choices. I think that's one aspect of sexuality, but I don't think they're correlated much at all. I mean, they're certainly

14:53
Bossy, dom, femme, guys, right? And kind of butch,

15:00
sub, guys.

15:04
I think I am sort of the way I am mostly because I just come from an old family. My father was in the Navy and really disciplinarian. And just over the course of decades,

15:18
I've always felt more comfortable there probably just deep down because I'm what my father's approval. I had some old-fashioned Freudian analysis, that's kind of Freud, one-o-one, that my parents were so disapproving of effeminate men, that, that has always seemed like an unsafe place for me. You need to be, and I've said sometimes, as a thought experiment, you're from Virginia. So do this with me.

15:46
Did you go to church when you were a kid?

EB: Not often.

15:50
JW: As thought experiment, I would say I'd say southern people, I think if you drop me into a group of Southern Baptists, and I talk just like this,

16:01
you know, and I have outed myself plenty of times, just because I don't want to feel like I'm in the closet, I'll be with my dad and bunch of his guy friends. They're all like 75 years old, Southern guys. And I mentioned casually, I was dating a guy in Chicago, who, blah, blah, blah, just because if I don't, I don't think they think I'm gay. I'm sure my father didn't tell him I'm gay. And if I don't somehow gently out myself, that I felt like chickenshit. And that's kind of my pathology. I don't know if I would do it now.

16:29
But they're fine. Really, they just the conversation keeps going. But you drop in a straight guy, with a wife and six kids, and nothing to hide sexually. And he goes, guys, I have the best recipe for Maple oatmeal scones ever!

16:45
Then all of a sudden, you start looking at their watch, going look at the time. So I do think in the self, it's sometimes less real sexuality because most of the sex has taken place off stage than it is about gender roles, because there are kind of Femi straight guys, and they're all kind of Butch gay guys. And I think in a Southern Baptist Church, the Butch gay guy can kind of navigate that better.

17:10
I think the guys at my gym who paved the roads and Cottondale are more comfortable with me

17:17
than they would be with a super Femi straight guy.

17:22
But in terms of aesthetics, I love the point that you kind of zeroed in on. I've had conversations about what is the aesthetics of

17:30
Gayness. Speaking as a Japanese major, I said to someone, I said, Have you ever noticed

17:36
that among Japanese majors, there's a fair number of gay men, it's absolutely no lesbians. None, no lesbians. And I said to someone like, what do you think that is? And finally, after a year, someone said, I think it's the jewelry.

17:50
And I said, you know what, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. But it's the first thing that actually made any sense. So I said, I think lesbians me it's like the chunky like, kind of Latin American Studies. And I said, I think you're right, because you do see more lesbians in Latin American Studies, for some reason that the, you know, the gay men always wind up in Japan. So I think you hit on something interesting. But I don't really

18:15
I don't think it really affects

18:18
sexuality. I'm not sure it predicts sexuality.

18:24
Did I answer the question?

EB: Yeah. That was good.

18:27
CC: That was a good question.

EB: Thank you.

CC: Was that off the dome?

EB: No, it was on there. But I just worded it differently.

18:36
CC: Okay, this is kind of related.

18:38
We've kind of been talking about boxes, or we did a little bit about, you know, just breaking down-

JW: Categories.

CC: Categories yea. and

18:46
so

18:49
you mentioned kind of having parts of you that are gay. I guess this aligns with like the Butch identity. And parts of you that are less so.

18:59
Oh, was that the question?

EB: Yeah.

CC: Oh my god that’s so embarrassing.
19:04
Okay, so actually, I'm not going to ask that question.

JW:  Okay.

19:10
CC: Can you just, can you just go?

19:13
EB: Well, we really wanted to know about your time in Japan.

JW: Yeah.

EB: And like, how, because in your interview before you said that, like, that's where you came out to yourself. So like, how

19:26
does like how that work? Like how you came to that in Japan?

JW: Oh, I?

19:33
That's a good question.

19:35
Well, so when I was a junior, which had been 86, 87, I was an exchange student, and I was in a dormitory with about another 50 American kids and for the first time there were other kids in my cohort who were just out, right, so there was a slather of kids from the deep south most were from California. There was a bunch from Wisconsin, a bunch from New Jersey, and there were some guys who were just were out.

20:00
Yeah.

20:01
And that's the first time I met anyone, my own cohort who said, I'm gay.

20:05
And so at least I had peers who I could see navigating that and it wasn't especially easy, but, you know, it just was what it was. And of course, being 7000 miles from home, and not having like Facebook and stuff, you could really experiment, try on a new persona, and just explore that.

20:27
I guess the other thing is in Japan, I wouldn't say that Japan is super gay friendly.

20:35
What I would say is, the Japanese don't really have a strong connection between sex and religion. So even later, as I really came out of the closet, well, first off, since I was a white guy, they didn't really, you know, even if the Japanese had rules about that they didn't apply to me.

20:57
But they didn't, um,

20:59
the Japanese, traditionally, it's important to get married and have kids and there's this social contract.

21:05
But then they never put a whole lot of weight on monogamy to start with. And so gay men, what do you see just kind of get married, hopefully, if sometimes with a woman who was just in the loop, and she just wanted to get married too, and they would just fool around on the side just like the straight guys did. And that was kind of the way the Japanese managed things.

21:25
But nobody thinks that's immoral, immoral is not the framework, they would describe that because they don't have a holy text that says you're going to hell, because you have same sex relationships, that's just not the way Buddhism worked. It might have been transgressive of kind of manners, or kind of the right way to do things, but it didn't quite have the, you're gonna go to hell, edge to it, right? People,

21:52
people weren't having heart attacks about that.

EB: Yea.

21:56
JW: So it was a pretty good place to come out of the closet, and it was far away. And then I met my first partner there who was awesome. He was this Venezuelan guy. And we were together for three or four years. It was probably a good healthy choice. Because

22:12
you know, because well, HIV was burning its way through the gay community here. I was mostly in Japan the entire time.

22:21
Yeah, I guess I feel lucky in retrospect, that he was a good first partner, I don't, I think when we broke up, our relationship has run his course. But he was a wonderful guy, I didn't feel damaged, I think he made me feel loved when I didn't really think I was lovable.

22:39
So that was good. Otherwise, I would just say, you know, I was free to make my own decisions, I was free to get drunk, I was free to try on different personalities. Someone told me later, years later, they said, when I speak Japanese though like, you're a completely different person. It's like, and I can't describe what that's like, except that I was with some Americans who knew me, and that we were in Japan, and I broke into Japanese, and they were like, that was just like, it's like you're a different person entirely. And all I can imagine is, oddly enough for a culture that is so rule bound. Since the rules didn't really apply to me, I felt very free to be express, expressive a bit of a different side of myself that I couldn't do in English.

CC: That’s a pretty unique dynamic to kind of grow up in.

JW: Yeah, I think so.

23:28
Um, it’s a little bit like wearing a mask, I guess. But I just felt like I was I was somebody different, that I could just recreate. And I think when I came back, I had to try to integrate that part of Japan into myself, but in some weird ways, I think Japan and the South are actually kind of similar.

23:46
CC: In what ways?

23:49
JW: They both, um

23:51
in terms of language, both very polite, you know. Uh, When I, so imagine in ’84 I’m learning Japanese. If you say to a southern kid, okay, look, you speak to your friends one way and your parents one way and your minister or your doctor and you get these different levels of politeness you have to observe. And Southern kids would be like, well, of course, their rules just tell me what the rules are. Whereas kids out here from California who grew up calling their parents by their first names, and not only did they not get it, they kind of objected to it in principle, and wouldn't do it. But even in terms of the way we have different registers of politeness. Now, Japanese is like this whole other level of complexity. Like basic words like “is,” “eat,” “go,” “come,” and “see” all have three and four different words depending on who you're talking to. And every word has three and four different levels of politeness.

CC: That's just crazy.

JW: So just to use a real like come, you've got this box of 18 or 20 different choices, and you've got to pick the right one,

24:59
depending on

25:00
Whether you're exalting someone or humbling yourself or being polite to somebody, things like that.

CC: Wow.

25:06
JW: So southern kids seem, at least intuitively understand that there, there should be a framework of politeness.

25:16
So yeah, and they're both very kind of a little more nature oriented, and kids from New York are getting, I don't know. Clearly, I wanted to be there. And I was looking for connections and points of similarity. But Japanese culture always made sense to me.

25:32
CC: That's a correlation I never would have put together.

JW: No.

CC: Well, that's pretty cool. That makes complete sense.

JW: Superficially, entirely different. But I think if you look at underneath it, there's a lot of similarities.

25:48
CC: Yea. Um, Okay.

25:52
So you talked a lot about your experiences with like, maybe North, North-Eastern, or like Western gays, like in California or something, say, maybe your time in Chicago? I don't know.

26:04
What was it, like, kind of observing how different it could be just based on the region that we're from, be it in your college life? Or even in your work afterwards?

26:16
JW: Oh, that's a good question. I would say, Southern guys would struggle probably… Mm, y’know,

26:26
might be kind of bullshit. I was just talking to Isabella about this. Southern people do struggle. And I think there is a religion component to that.

26:37
But I was ruminating about this at SHA, and I was talking to Isabella because she and John are working on this project. And one of the themes of which is religion, and how that intersects with coming out.

26:49
And I said, you know, I can't say that the Baptist Church was helpful in the least. But I can tell you as children, they basically brought us up as children to believe that we would be persecuted for being a Christian.

27:03
And being Protestant, it was like choose, choose, choose. You must choose,

27:08
you know, to trust Jesus or not, I mean, it's all about free will. You have to make a choice, or you're gonna go to hell.

27:14
And I think all of that intersected with some anti Soviet propaganda, we're Americans, we're free, we have to choose. And all that kind of dovetails nicely with our Baptist religion, you must choose heaven or hell, and you must be resilient, and the world was gonna persecute you, and it kind of creates this little iron will for these kids. So that in the fullness of time, when the church kind of comes for you, you kind of got the gun to turn back on the church and go, no, you know what? This is not working. I get to pick. So I think when the church rejected me, I was like, okay, Game over, man, I'm out of here. And it was kind of a rip the band aid moment off, that was very painful for a hot minute. But then I was done. Whereas people I knew in Boston, who were Roman Catholic, Orthodox Jews really struggled a lot more because they were trying to come out, and their family and the priests was like, oh, but come back. We love you. We love you. Just come back. And let's just forget that ever happened. And we'll just go on, it'll be just like it used to be. And those people struggled for years. So I don't know, like my observation of being gay in the south, and religion at least is that

28:27
I think for a lot of this, I think you kind of got a resilience and a strength from the culture that made it helpful to come out. But it was still hard. And there were some people who were just broken by it, you know, the kid who I was sweet on in high school, you know, just went back to Decatur and never came out of the closet, never got married, either. Everybody knows he's gay, but he's completely broken on the inside. And why he could never get past that? I don't know.

28:57
I don't know. I guess what I would say is that there's kind of a barrier to get over to kind of coming out of the closet. And I think part of to me, like, Alabama culture gave me a sense of being ornery. And I was gonna make my own decisions. And it made getting over that hurdle okay. But there was a hurdle and some people just hit the wall and fall and never get over it.

29:20
And I just don't.

29:23
I don't know. I don't know what goes into that. Oddly enough with my friend. I thought his parents were more permissive than mine, which I thought was odd. I guess I thought he would have been the one who could have gotten out of the closet, but clearly. When my parents kind of came for me, I was like, I was ready. I was like, no, no. Because I was going to Japan. You know, they sat me down in a chair one time in the kitchen and lectured me for an hour and a half about how I was going to hell. They didn't approve of my lifestyle, and I was like, Okay, no problem. I'm going to Tokyo. See you later.

29:55
CC: Dang, you had a lot of spunk.

30:00
JW: Don't let me bullshit you, I didn't think I had a choice.

30:04
And I think a lot of my life in retrospect, I could paint in heroic colors and make you think that I was

30:11
really strong. I'm strong enough to do what I thought I had to, but I did not think I had a choice. In the moment, I just thought, this is what I have to do.

30:21
I was nauseous half the time. You know, I thought I had Crohn's or something. I just I was so nauseous all the time. But I really didn't think I had a choice. And I was just going to do it. God dammit.

30:33
CC: I'm glad you did.

JW: Thank you.

EB: Yeah.

CC: That's great.

30:39
You got a really good question.

30:41
Just based on your background in Virginia.

EB: Oh, yeah. And your interview before you talked about, um,

30:48
Like, the working to,

30:56
Like,

30:57
kind of

31:00
hold on. Let me figure out how to say this.

JW: Yeah.

EB: Um,

31:06
you talked about how some people like leave the south to do work.

JW: Yeah.

EB: In the community and some people's stay.

JW: Yeah.

EB: And how it's different, like in the north versus the South. How do you think you can kind of bridge that gap between the work that is done? Because you were like, pretty, like,

31:31
Like, you stayed here, like you came back to continue working.

JW: Yeah.

EB: So how do you think you can,

31:40
you know, use the moralities of the north and the south and bring them together to do progressive work?

31:47
JW: Yeah, that's a good question. Um.

31:57
I think I think in a way everybody has to answer that question for themselves.

32:05
I think in the south,

32:07
I seem to be good at selling it. Like I can, and maybe it kind of gets back to a little bit of kind of gender presentation.

32:23
Yeah, it's a good question. I,

32:26
I guess in my observation here on campus, there's a few things you have to do to succeed on campus. You need to show up, you have to be smart, you got to work hard. You have to be positive. You have to be a team player.

32:41
And I think you can get a lot done. As long as you do those things. There are some people who seem reflexively to kind of want to put themselves into opposition.

32:51
So I don't know if I mentioned this in my last interview, but like 10 years ago, I was on a spectrum meeting, I'm not sure spectrum still exists. It was the- it was the gay student union. About 10 years ago.

33:06
I think I heard it's kinda, I think it spiraled gotten to a purity spiral and collapsed or something. But I was at a meeting, and this was very early in the bathroom thing and the kids wanted gender neutral bathrooms, and they were organizing, um, they were going to organize, I think a protest or something in front Rose administration, for gen-, gender neutral bathrooms.

33:28
And this is such a me thing to have said. I'm like, okay, look. Look. Have you just asked Dr. Bonner yet? Dr. Bonner was the president before Dr. Bell. They were like No, of course not. I'm like, okay, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna call Dr. Bonner’s office and tell them you want to talk to Dr. Bonner. It’s going to take about a week, she's gonna get in there, the big scary office with the dark paneling.

33:51
And you're gonna talk for about half an hour, and you're gonna tell you tell it what you want. Y’know, some gender-neutral bathrooms.

33:57
And then nothing's gonna happen for about six months. And then very quietly,

34:02
in places all over campus, the bathroom signs are just going to change from men's bathroom- women’s bathroom to just bathroom. Right? You're gonna get what you want.

34:13
But if what you want is a press release, admitting,

34:18
2000 years of heteronormative discrimination against gay people, that's not going to happen. Right? But you're gonna get what you want. But if what you prefer is to go on a kamikaze mission

34:32
and die in front of Rose administration? Well, you can do that, but you're not gonna get your bathrooms.

34:40
And of course, that's kind of what they chose to do, I think is the kamikaze mission.

34:45
And all I say is I guess I just

34:50
going back, we all have to find our own solutions. And there are people who essentially put themselves in opposition to something in a public way, and I guess I think they're pushing from the outside. And there's a role

35:00
for that,

35:01
and I'm somebody who kind of works on the inside. People like me, I kind of make relationships easily. My boss at Northwestern said one time say, you know, JD you bond with people very easily.

35:15
And so I tend to try to build up some personal capital so that if somebody needs something that I could walk over there and just sit down with a cup of coffee and try to talk something out with with people.

35:26
And why exactly, I have that facility, I don't know, I think deep down, I just want people to like me, which is part of it.

35:37
But if you get to know people within the context of a relationship, then you could usually sometimes push them out of their comfort zone and get them to change a little bit.

35:46
And that's something I'd seem to do better than some people.

35:50
On the other hand, I sometimes have to remind myself, when you have to take a stand, even if you know it's going to cost you a friendship, right.

36:00
I don't know, I think just as even over and above, LGBT stuff, just as you, one of the things you do as you all grow up is you just

36:10
expand your repertoire of tone and type, the way you make pitches, so much of life is just selling something, selling an idea. Bonding with somebody,

36:23
and you just have to expand your range of ways to reach people. And rage is one of those, but only one. I think I see some gay people who are only shaking their fist at the sky. And that's not always the thing.

CC: The way to do it. Yea.

36:41
JW: I don't see that- I don't see that getting them where they want to go. But if that's the only thing they've got in their toolbox, that's just what they're going to do over and over again.

36:50
CC: Which is not, not very progressive, of anything.

36:59
Oh, this is another, I'm just going through all your best talking points at this point. Yeah.

37:06
You had said something about this notion of-

37:10
I’m so easily distracted.

37:16
of choosing a kind of beautiful danger over like ugly safety. So like-

JW: Did I say that?

CC: I think I might be paraphrasing a bit, but it was in, the context was being fearful of having a place for the GSU.
JW:  Yeah.

CC: Um, so choosing that that older, kind of antique beautiful room in Manley Hall, versus having it in some like underground, like just like concrete-wall jungle?

JW: Oh, yeah, I stand by that. Yes, absolutely. And I'm, it’s too bad. They chopped that up. I'm sure that whole building Manley because we don't call that Manley anymore. Originally, it was clearly divided up into cells. But obviously, in the 80s, they didn't need that much spacing to one of those walls down. And so the room was bigger than this. But these big, beautiful windows, and it was just looking out on the street, right? That was still a street, you can drive around the quad and just straight down to the river by the Student Center. So that was just traffic. Not exactly zooming by.

38:17
But yeah, I do think, you know, I like your use, your use of the word aesthetic. Because when I think about what is it about gay life? I think gay people do have a sense of aesthetics.

38:30
That's important. Yeah. But the I would not have gone if it would have been sort of in a locked room someplace.

38:37
Absolutely not. I think everybody likes a little free song danger.

38:43
CC: I tend to agree. I definitely do. Yeah.

38:46
Yeah, that's right. I think I mentioned, me and Johnny Rogers, Johnny Rogers was a guy on the cheerleading squad, and I think he died about 10 years ago. But big, tall, good looking, really dark skin, black guy. And he and I kind of dated for a little while, but there was really no place to go. And so we would go up to the top of woods Hall, which is the old one. And even now, they've still got these rolled iron things there, with spikes on top, but we just kinda flip over the top and get up on top of the roof. And on warm nights, those, the tar roof was kind of nice and warm and soft. To get up there, make out. And I said to the Dean of Libraries I'm like, that was illegal, at least three different ways.

39:29
CC: Yea, I'm sure.

JW: Yeah. But it was, but it was fun. And it felt a little dangerous. And I think I think even the dean said, you climbed over? And I'm like, yeah, like it actually, if you look, it's not that dangerous. I don't think, maybe getting over the spikes would have been the scary part. But I think that I think that's that's true of your generation as well. I mean, you're, I think you're

39:52
I think you're more intelligent taking a risk like that. I think that's okay.

CC: Yeah. It's a really interesting dynamic, because it seems to be

40:00
I'm not at all saying that other groups don't have this trait, but in the LGBTQ community, this idea of like risk taking, just for that thrill that adventure,

40:10
which is really

40:12
cool.

40:14
JW: Yeah. That’s right, uh, you still see this willingness to take risks. It just feels like right now it's risk more in terms of personal expression. So I don't think I don't entirely get the sense of safe space- we need a safe space.

40:31
I guess to an extent, like Chucker, there was a bar there was kind of a safe space. But

40:37
yeah, I that I don't quite get I, we never really, I don’t know.

40:42
The concept of a safe space doesn't entirely make sense to

40:46
my generation, I think.

40:48
Or maybe we just think it's an illusion anyhow.

40:53
I guess in my mind, when I think about someone saying, Okay, here's the set aside, this is a safe space for you, I would feel like I'm hiding. And in fact, when I, when I came to town, I tried all the gyms

41:04
in front of the owners, and I was down at bars and stripes. And I think the owner’s wife, or both are bi, one of them or something. And I mentioned my partner said, well, you know, we're super welcoming, look at our gay flag. And I'm like, I'm just thinking, like, I don't want to go to the gym, I don't want to I don't want to go to the safe gym, I want to go to the badass gym where the guys trash talk me like everybody else.

41:25
But that's obviously part of my pathology, I mean whatever people want to do is fine.

41:33
CC: So, kind of going back to that beautiful danger versus ugly safety. I definitely am paraphrasing that I'm like, those definitely weren’t your exact words. But-

JW: Yeah, no, that's all right.

41:44
CC: Now, um,

41:46
she kind of talked a little bit about your own work kind of trying to mend the northern perception of southern culture versus, you know, like, the truths of southern

41:58
ignorance. But um, what kind of ways does this beautiful danger versus ugly safety manifest in activism, or activism you've seen or carried out, maybe not even just in, like protests, but also just like kind of making those, those bonds, like you said?

42:15
JW: I would be more risk taking in terms of activism of this.

42:20
I would never, I would never reflexively undertake, undertake some kind of activism to create safety. Right? My reflexes were like bringing on, asshole. It’s, I don't want your fucking safety. I don't want your approval is still kind of

42:36
my reflex, this idea of going to President Bell's office and saying, I need you to do something to make me feel more safe. Doesn't even make sense to me. In fact, I took the Safe Zone Training, and I said something like that, and now they really hate me I think. It's just this idea, I don't know, I just I think safety is an illusion. I think you just have to be strong and resilient. And you have to just work on yourself to withstand people being assholes, because there'll be assholes to you for other reasons besides your sexuality.

43:10
So for me, that's probably why I wind up at the gym I'm at it's like, just like constant exposure to that trash talking rednecks, then I know how to manage those guys. And they like me, like, I get there at five o'clock. And they're like, good god, JD, about time you can get here.

43:26
And they and I know they liked me because they, they trashed me like they do everybody else.

43:33
And the gym is not exactly beautiful in an aesthetic way. But I feel elevated by being there as opposed to, if I was at the gay friendly gym, I would feel like I was hiding. And the hiding is the, it would be the ugly part to me.

43:50
You know, I have to show up here for these people. And I have to be strong and resilient. I have to defend these people. And if I'm at the gym hiding in the morning, that's, that's not the way to start my day. Right?

44:01
CC: Yeah.

44:05
It's just so insightful. It's like, I've never seen that perspective in

44:11
the gay community. But I'd venture to say we need more of it.

44:15
That's just my opinion.

JD: Yeah.

CC: That, no one asked for.

44:22
God. So many of the things we're talking about now just don't align with the questions we're asking. And it's amazing.

44:29
I love the conversation, but

44:33
I guess we can ask more about the GSU. Who was the president? His name's David?

JW: Vandergriff.

CC: Okay.

44:44
Could you tell me more about him, I guess, and his leadership?

44:48
JW: Yeah, I think Isabella I think they interviewed him. And I guess the two of us are an interesting contrast. He's from Chattanooga, so just

44:59
here.
;
45:00
I was born here. And we're exactly the same age.

45:06
He was probably a little more-

45:11
bookish and intellectual and I should say, Decatur standards, I was extremely bookish and intellectual, but I will say, as my life progresses, I clearly am more of a doer than a thinker.

45:24
And

45:27
and yet also he was he was very brave, I would say except when he came, he came to, he came to university out, right. And I came out early, but I was more like a

45:38
junior. and he and his partner were living in Mary Burke

45:44
as an out gay couple, which was really more bravery than I would have had at that age.

45:51
Not that I had a boyfriend to be out with.

45:55
You know, what was interesting that Isabella said that he said, because he never articulated this to me that he grew up in a house full of with a lot of women. And actually, North Alabama Appalachian families were very matriarchal, right? They just do what the women folk say. But the way he described is the women in his family kind of formed this protective wall around him, which is maybe why he could come out of the closet. And I guess, when she said that, I've been ruminating about the differences between me and David. And I think, to some extent, and the outcome of not having had that wall.

46:35
And yet, it was Isabella, who said this, I kept saying, Well, I said, you should talk to David, right, he was in charge.

46:43
And David really was the

46:47
moral conscience of the organization. I'm not, you know, I get stuff done. I'm not anybody's moral conscience. I mean, I can be praved to do the right thing. But I'm not one to sit around and ruminate about what that is, I just

47:01
like to say I'm more of a doer than a thinker.

47:04
But there was never anything sheltering me from my father in menfolk church or something, that there was an idea of masculine Alabama manhood that I needed to conform to full stop.

47:21
And so what Isabella said, which was very kind of her is, I kept trying to turn the conversation back to David, and Isabella said, yes JD, but you're the one who's here, right? He left Alabama 40 years ago, and never came back.

47:37
So his life clearly had more protection, and probably intellectually, he's gone further in gay rights, and has thought more about that.

47:49
And I didn't have quite the kind of protection but it gave me somewhat of a thicker skin and maybe a greater sense of social resourcefulness, that you can stir me into a bunch of rednecks at the gym. And, and I can, I can navigate that, right? I can, I can flex between being

48:06
an urban homosexual and, and talking to guys at the gym. And so David, can't do that. And it's not like one of those things is wrong. I think the gay community needs all of these different kinds of people to work together.

48:22
I, you know, thought sometimes, if you guys have met Josh Burford, from this Invisible Histories project, he's someone who's going to push from the outside, right. He's a firebrand. And he's super gay. You know, and I think for the gay movement to move forward, you need somebody like me on the inside, even someone on the outside kind of create a little bit of pressure on the outside. So, create some pressure on the inside.

48:47
I guess the odd thing was, at some point, I decided I liked it better here. I'm not I'm not here sacrificing myself. I mean, I was a scholarship student, and it feels good to kind of come back and finish my career here. But I like it here. I mean, I like it here better than when I was in Chicago as much as I like Chicago.

49:05
I should say. I always liked Chicago. I never really liked working in Northwestern.

49:12
If I'd had just a job down the loop or something I probably would have liked it a lot.

49:16
CC: What didn't you like about Northwestern?

49:21
JW: Oh, well,

49:24
Northwestern, it's um,

49:31
it's one of those places that’s really fake. Nice. I mean, I guess I always thought in the fullness of time, I might wind up at the University of Chicago. I did realize the culture at the University of Chicago we just open warfare all the time.

CC: Really?
49:45
JW: And at Northwestern it's more like fake nice. I guess I decided I'd rather have fake nice than honest hostility.

49:55
But I guess on the other hand, I never really felt like I was from Evanston. People were very nice there.

50:00
It's an excellent university. But I do feel like there's more I can do here. I mean, especially, you know, in terms of out gay men, there's the guy David, who's the head of the English department, but there's not that many of us. And so, identity just showing up someplace, I can walk into alumni, and go JD Wilson, class of 88.

50:20
I think just being out and visible, helps move the ball for a lot of people.

50:26
Just still, we're still in that place, sometimes in Alabama, where you meet people who don't know any gay people, right? And so just the more they know, a gay person, I don't think I'm really representative of the gay community, but I'm out, right.

50:39
And I can show up in places where people have to deal with me. Not really have to. But

50:45
you know, usually, if I'm meeting new people, I will usually refer to my partner in Chicago, just so they know I'm gay. And that should open their mind and open doors a little bit more for other people. And that's, that's something I can do for Alabama.

50:58
CC: Yeah, Isabella definitely is right. You are the one who's here. And that's really important work.
 
51:04
Even just existing in this space, you know, like being here?  
JW: Yeah. Well, I think even I don't do anything with the fraternity house much anymore. I'll have my meals over there. But yeah, if any of them have any problem with somebody gay, I'm just like, shut the fuck up. And that's-
 
51:20
I'm not being hostile. That's just the appropriate way to speak to a boy in a fraternity house.
CC: I completely understand.
 
51:26
JW: But just showing up and being in being visible there, as somebody different is important.
 
51:32
EB: I agree. Yeah.
 
51:37
Going back to the GSU, could you talk about like, the different kinds of people that were part of it, like, diversity?
JW: Yeah. It was surprisingly diverse, I would say. And it wasn't just students, there were people from the community.
 
51:58
I would say you know, diversity was more like,
 
52:02
gender, there was only one or two Black guys who would come I didn't know any Black lesbians. A typical meeting would be over in Manley Hall, there'd be 12 or 15. People, probably of which five or six would be women, two were from campus? Well, this is almost like an old joke. But all the, all the lesbians were couples and most all the gay men were single,
 
52:30
except for David and his partner.
 
52:33
CC: Still so true.
 
52:38
But
 
52:40
I think mostly it was David doing presentations, trying to raise our consciousness or talk about gay issues of some kind. But sometimes someone would just talk. There was a lesbian who kind of ran, had a hair salon, and she came and did, like a 30 minute presentation about hair care through the ages, Ancient Egyptians and how they dealt with their hair. So sometimes, people were just goofing on each other.
 
53:06
But in terms of diversity, it was just whoever showed up, really. And so what they would do if they would just put signs up all over campus that the Gay Student Union was meeting, and you had to call a certain number to find out where it was. So it was very cloak and dagger as if it was taking place in some secret vault under the quad. But it was always in the same room at Manly.
 
53:29
That there wasn't
 
53:32
more people of color, I don't- I don't have any, I don't have any answer of kind of what those barriers were because the signs were in public places. Johnny, the guy I was kind of going out with would not have gone because he was a cheerleader in the athletic department just, well you know, it's almost its own universe over there.
 
53:54
So I would meet Johnny afterwards, but
 
53:57
it wasn't like he didn't want to go. But um, I had a fraternity brother who was also gay and also a cheerleader, but he didn't go either.
 
54:06
So I would say in terms of the marketing, it was just put up signs everywhere and see what you get.
 
54:13
But, to my knowledge, I don't know that there was another.
 
54:17
I don't believe there's another group of gay guys who were who were Black or people of color who were meeting someplace else. I don't know, I have an idea
 
54:29
that the Black guys who were all in fraternities and if they were,
 
54:34
you know, if they were in the closet that was that was that was a tough gig, right?
 
54:43
And I think they were struggling with a slightly different set of pressures. I mean, my friend Claude I mean, he was a Phi. He was branded, right, it was tough.
 
54:58
Yeah, so that was typical.
 
55:00
The meetings will be about an hour, but they were very loose. I mean, they did have some
 
55:07
notes or a constitution or something someplace, but we never.
 
55:11
To the extent we're voting officers, it was always David.
 
55:16
Isabella said, what was their consensus page? I said, no, it wasn't consensus based at all. David had clearly done all the heavy lifting. He felt very passionate about it and the rest of us wanted to show up and support him. But if he wanted to do something, we simply said fine.
 
55:30
There was never a whole lot of discussion, but it's like, how can we help?
CC: Yeah. Sounds like quite a guy to know.
 
55:38
JW: Yeah, he was really passionate and I think Isabella I mean, considering he was my neighbor in the dorm, I never knew this because I was just over at the fraternity drinking so much, but I think the straight guys in the neighbors’ like invaded their room and Isabella said pulled the mattress off their bed and threw it out the window and set it on fire.
CC: What the hell?
 
55:58
JW: Yeah, it was awful. So I think they moved out after that.
 
56:04
In retrospect, I was surprised they even lived in the dorm because his partner’s mom, just lived right up Bear Bryant, up by Queen City.
 
56:14
CC: For you talking about how much bravery he had,
 
56:19
I mean, of course, it takes a lot of bravery to get over something like that, like people doing that to you based on your sexuality. But I mean, I think it says a lot about your bravery or your urge to bravery that you stayed and he didn't, just kind of commentary.
JW: Yeah, I was probably stubborn in a way it's like, I will not be I will not be pushed out, was kind of my point of view. And I guess when I would do things that were brave, sometimes they bordered on stupid. I almost- a guy tried to get get me kicked out of school. I was a New College kid. New College likes to stir the pot a little bit. And HIV was still new, and we're all scared shitless. And in a seminar, some guy who's probably a nice Catholic boy, said he observed that perhaps HIV was nature's way of controlling overpopulation.
 
57:10
And I said something really awful. Which I'll tell you, if you if you want me to tell you.
 
57:16
CC: We can always blur it out.
 
57:19
JW: So I just quickly shot out of my mouth, I said, if nature wanted to control the population, it wouldn't strike gay men, it would strike Catholic women.
 
57:31
And this kid went right to the Dean and tried to have me expelled, and the Dean was like, well, we have lively debate here at New College, and if you disagree with that, then you could bring it up in the next class.
 
57:43
So actually, I got to see the Dean about six months ago and was like, man, you saved my bacon. Thank you. I really appreciate that.
 
57:50
So I can be quite confrontational, because I did have kind of a short fuse. But then yeah, I would just kind of stand my ground. And that's, that's, I think that's kind of weird that that little bit of religious upbringing that is growing up Southern Baptist, they just kind of prepared you to kind of be ornery like that.
CC: Yeah.
 
58:11
JW: That was a stupid thing to do. I shouldn't have done that.
 
58:14
CC: Makes a good story.
JW: Yeah.
EB: Yeah.
 
58:17
CC: So kind of continuing with this GSU,
 
58:23
you had said that a nurse came and gave kind of a discussion about HIV and AIDS. What was it kind of about?
 
58:32
JW: Well, so it would have been like in the fall of ‘87.
 
58:37
Um, in retrospect, it was quite late. Because I mean, we were hearing about AIDS as early as ‘82, or ‘83.
 
58:46
But I didn't know anybody who'd had it. Clearly, by that time, people were dying in like New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. But David or someone organized like a one of the nurses from Russell Hall to kind of come over. But bless her heart, she didn't know shit. I mean,
 
59:07
first of all, you know, bravo for her for showing up. Right? She showed up.
 
59:12
I think we're all nervous about like, wondering if she was going to memorize our faces, or something. She was very nice, didn’t know shit. And people are just asking her questions like, “well, how do you get it?” And she's like, “well, we don't know. We think anal sex is more dangerous than oral sex.” And somebody said, “well, so if you get fucked, what are the chances you're gonna get HIV?” She goes, “I don't know, one in three.” Which is, you know, which is kind of a crazy thing to say. It's not even appropriate metric, right? She goes, “I don't know.” So it was a lot of, “I don't know, but; I don't know, but,” and then she would take a guess.
 
59:50
CC: Guesses are crazy.
 
59:52
JW: Yeah, well, and we were all just scared shitless. You really had to, I think at the time you just had to size people up so
 
1:00:00
much.
 
1:00:02
And as I observe kind of young people kind of go right to anal sex immediately, I don't, I still don't quite get that because we were almost like, we're almost like straight kids in that regard, because anal sex was kind of scary. So you would put it off until you got pretty serious.
 
1:00:21
But after that, you know, the next fall, I went back to Japan, which was,
 
1:00:27
in that regard, a much safer place to be anyhow. And when I came back, I was living in Boston, that being in ‘95, and the gay newspaper had three, four, sometimes five obituaries in the paper every single week. It was scary.
 
1:00:43
So yes, she she didn't know.
 
1:00:46
And we were all scared shitless. And yet, Alabama, benefited from being so far out of the mainstream that,
 
1:00:55
you know, people my age from New York and other big cities, that generation just lost thousands and thousands of people.
 
1:01:04
I don't know, I don't know anyone from the Gay Student Union that died of HIV.
 
1:01:14
CC: Kind of expanding, I guess, on this idea of gays in health care,
 
1:01:20
it just blew me away that a nurse came.
 
1:01:24
I guess there's just this really huge-
 
1:01:30
I know you hear about all this backlash that gay men got in the AIDS epidemic.
 
1:01:37
And it's just insane to hear that a nurse had come to the GSU, took her time.
 
1:01:43
But so, anyways,
JW: Which, the blowback was coming from politicians, and they probably feel like it wasn't. I mean, people don't usually become doctors to be assholes, right?
CC: Right.
 
1:01:58
JW: So no, I really wasn't that surprised. I've never really had problems with doctors and nurses.
 
1:02:04
Even when I was in Boston, I was really on the front lines of this marriage debate when that happened, which is not something we look for, it just sort of happened, which is another story. But I happened to be in Boston, doing a lot of volunteer stuff for LGBT stuff when this gay marriage thing happened.
 
1:02:18
And, we would always say, well, what if my partner is in the hospital, and they won't let me see him? But you know, what? Happened all the time.
 
1:02:29
Doctors and nurses are nice people. And usually, if you just go in and ask them nicely, just everything happens. So I think to some extent, there are certainly real stories of people being cut off from their loved ones, but did it happen all the time? No, no, it didn't. And I don't think it's honest to overstate that. We certainly said it at the time, because it served us politically
 
1:02:54
and whatnot.
 
1:02:57
But if we have left the impression that it happened all the time, then we're not doing you all a service. I'm just like, you know, as you all grew up, again,
 
1:03:06
a part of what we have to learn as a grown up is how to be persuasive.
 
1:03:11
And doctors and nurses are usually not the problem in the world.
 
1:03:17
CC: Sounds about
 
1:03:19
Right.
 
1:03:21
Kind of going back to your childhood and healthcare, I guess. What do you think would be different about your gay side? Or- there's a better way to say that, but um, had there been sex education in place when you were a child? I can't imagine in the 80s there was probably any talk about that.
JW: We had sex ed
 
1:03:41
When I was in the eighth grade,
 
1:03:44
which would have been spring of ‘79. It was not a class. It was like, one week, and they would separate the boys and the girls and you would have five days of the mechanics of sex and they did not discuss gay sex at all. In fact, I think often said, I didn't really heard the word faggot. And Decatur was so straight. It wasn't like they were pounding straightness into you. It's just, gayness did not exist, it just wasn't on the menu. And I would have these kinds of impulses and feelings about other boys. But if you don't know what that is, I didn't really know what to do with those feelings. You know, and I only went out with girls until I was
 
1:04:28
21 or 22.
 
1:04:31
So yeah, we did have
 
1:04:35
sex ed and they would have talked about gonorrhea because well, we were all scared of herpes, right? Which is kind of naive and sweet in retrospect.
 
1:04:46
CC: Little bit.
 
1:04:48
JW: But yeah, they didn't talk about gay sex at all, at all. And I'm not sure what difference it would have made. I don't know.
 
1:04:57
I think they were-
 
1:05:00
I think what they were just trying to make us understand is the mechanics of where babies come from, so we didn't have unwanted pregnancies. I think that was why we had sex ed. It was just all reporting unwanted pregnancies. Because Decatur is like a very striving, bougie, upper middle class town and we don't want unwanted pregnancies.
CC: Right, that’s icky.
 
1:05:23
I guess that's it on healthcare.
 
1:05:28
EB: I was curious about something you said earlier. You said that a lot of the lesbians were coupled up and most of the gay men were single. Why do you think that is?
 
1:05:39
JD: Oh, I guess I don't want to indulge in stereotypes. I don't know. I mean, even for years, people just talked about how lesbians just instinctively kind of couple up. Though gay men certainly did, too. I mean this, the old joke about a U-Haul,
 
1:05:59
was sometimes true of gay man as well.
 
1:06:04
But
 
1:06:06
I don't
 
1:06:08
know. I mean,
 
1:06:11
I had- the first time I had a boyfriend, I was just so glad to have a boyfriend. I mean, I just,
 
1:06:19
I don't know. What do you think?
 
1:06:23
EB: Oh, I don't know.
 
1:06:27
In your other interview, you talked about, it was just like this quick story
 
1:06:35
about how the Southern Baptist men would like, drop their wives off at church and then go
 
1:06:44
and look at like, the magazines. My hypothesis is that it's just a cultural thing. With men, there's like this hypersexuality, where with women, it's this repressed thing. So,
 
1:07:00
when it comes to expressing
 
1:07:04
their sexuality in like queer spaces, it translates that same way where like lesbians are more prone to like,
 
1:07:12
couple up and do the more romantic things, whereas men are still in that hypersexualized state.
JW: Yeah, well, it seems to me,
 
1:07:22
I think women need more of an emotional context to have sex, whereas young men can compartmentalize sex. And I say that it probably, when you’re my age, it just feels like, as you get into your 50s, you kind of need a little emotional context, to be interested in sex. But it seems like the women were like that much earlier.
 
1:07:47
Whereas a young man who's 20,
 
1:07:51
you can compartmentalize that and take care of it and go about your day without
 
1:07:57
without being too involved. But I think we were all very lonesome, I think, as well. And we all wanted that kind of relating.
 
1:08:06
But it wasn't- if those two things came together, it was great. But it wasn't necessarily necessary. Whereas I think the women really enjoyed the emotional context more, or maybe to some extent, they could just manage it more.
 
1:08:21
Maybe a lot of the guys I knew were also Greek, though, and I think that just was so hard, right? Trying to square that kind of particular
 
1:08:33
masculine stereotype with having a, you know, in a dating situation.
 
1:08:41
So, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit different for everybody. But there is that is kind of a stereotype that persists over the decades is that women tend to pair up very quickly. And men tend to pair up much more slowly.
 
1:08:56
EB: Yeah.
 
1:08:58
CC: It definitely is really big. That's kind of why I asked that question about,
 
1:09:03
is there anything we can do about? Or what do you think we can do in the present or future to show gayness is more encompassing than just like sex? That kind of stemmed from an observation of gay men
 
1:09:17
looking for that carnal aspect of it more than the intimate or emotional one.
 
1:09:23
JW: Yeah, well, you know, bless your hearts, you've got just,
 
1:09:28
Sex for your generation is so mediated by the Internet, which is just so awful, right? It just
 
1:09:35
makes it so easy to find people and yet makes it so hard to actually relate to people because it's all the construction of this false persona on the internet.
 
1:09:47
On the other hand, you've got so many choices, and yet those choices are just, there's all this static,
 
1:09:53
so it's hard. I can't just say just get rid of the internet, but
 
1:09:59
I wish there were more
 
1:10:00
places for young people to just meet in person. But the problem is, even if there were those places people would still be on their phone.
 
1:10:12
I know that when I lived in Boston like ‘95, ‘96, ‘97, and bearing in mind, that by that time, a kind of internet existed, but certainly you didn't have on your phone, right. You had a big desktop computer at your house.
 
1:10:28
And you had AOL chat rooms, so it wasn't shaping your life the way it is. And there was this boom for about 10 years, in country western dancing.
 
1:10:41
Even in Boston, if you can believe it.
 
1:10:44
And it lasted a good long time. In the case of Boston, it was started by a bunch of guys who'd been in AA and just wanted something else to do on a Saturday night that didn't involve going to a bar. And they would meet in this big downstairs basement of a church,
 
1:11:02
down near the public gardens.
 
1:11:04
And it's very mixed crowd, about half men and women. And where I'm going with this is, I was so fascinated by that as a social thing. Because even in a gay bar, A. you're drinking, and B. we were all smoking and you were kind of drunk and it's dark and you can't really make good choices anyhow. And you're really just assessing people based on what they look like across a dim and smoky room. But in this context of dancing, and it wasn't, there was a little line dancing, but not much. It was kind of what you call progressive dancing, you know, like this, in a circle. What was interesting is, first of all, if somebody asked you to dance, you pretty much had to say yes.
 
1:11:45
If you said no, you had to lie and say you're just exhausted, or you had to go outside and smoke a cigarette or something. You could not say no and dance with somebody else. If you really didn't want to dance with somebody, you just had to say, “oh my god, I'm so tired. I couldn't possibly walk another step, I gotta catch my breath”,
CC: Make some excuse
JW: And you better go outside and just be lost for three minutes.
 
1:12:10
And where I'm going with this is, I dated this guy, who- I say this with affection- was kind of mousy to look at. He was like,
 
1:12:19
he was like an intern minister at the Universalist church back there. But that tone is his hair had gone prematurely gray. Very quiet, didn't make very good conversation. He asked me to dance. I'm like, “Well, okay.” Well, on the dance floor, he was very aggressive. I mean, it was like I was hustling to keep up with this guy.
 
1:12:41
And I remember thinking, “wow.” So we actually dated for about six months. And I just remember thinking, that really taught me to not just judge a book by its cover: very athletic, really smart, really aggressive on the dance floor, just not aggressive in conversation.
 
1:12:59
And I remember saying to myself, there was a time and culture when this kind of dancing was held, young people met each other. And it was interesting that you would have to go through an evening, even if you came with a date, you still had to dance with everybody else, right. And it was a way for young people to get together and mix with a whole group. In fact, a little bit like speed dating, really, you had spent like three minutes with everybody in the room. And they would express themselves physically, sometimes without a lot of conversation, and you would get a different side of someone's personality than when they talk. And athletes always get this, right? There's probably people who are very quiet, and don't talk a lot. And yet, when they're playing basketball, they're a badass.
 
1:13:51
And I felt that ,and I guess I have always wished for young people that they could kind of bring that back because it was the most interesting kind of courtship environment I ever saw.
CC: It's beautiful. Yeah, that's, that's really beautiful. I wish that's what we had for my generation of queer individuals.
JW: Well, nowadays, kids just have sex to see how it feels. But you'd be surprised, you're like dancing a two-step or something, you can get a sense of what it's going to be like, you know, it's physical enough without really being erotic. But there are people, look, if if they're clumsy on the dance floor, they’re gonna be clumsy in bed. Also, and if they're timid on the dance floor, it's kind of-
 
1:14:35
Yeah, you're going through the motions, sort of, of sex, but with your clothes on and with some nice music and in a social environment, but you're gonna learn a lot about a person that way.
 
1:14:45
And the fact that you go in someplace and you just have to work your way through thirty people in an evening. It kind of gives you some variety and keeps you from just focusing on one person.
CC: That's just so dope.
EB: Yeah, that sounds so fun.
CC: I wonder if Kyle would do anything like
 
1:15:00
That at Icon?
 
1:15:02
JW: Oh, that's a good question. I met a guy on Facebook, who actually does country western dancing. And I said, “I wouldn't mind doing some two-stepping. It's been 20 years since I did.” And he said, “Oh, that'd be really cool.”
 
1:15:14
But Icon would be just about big enough. But I mean, the way it would work is they would always have like a free lesson. But I mean two-stepping, it's just so easy anyhow. You just give people like a 15 minute lesson, and then just start with slow songs and then work up to a little bit of speed. But it's a really nice way to, to meet people. So I'm not so down on the internet. I mean, I think I think social media is kind of
 
1:15:39
cool. We should just limit how much we use it. But I don't think that,
 
1:15:44
you know, I don't think Grindr is making people happy.
 
1:15:50
Yeah, I just I don't think the net outcome is happier. And I don't even think the quantity or volume of sex is that much either.
CC: It’s not rewarding
 
1:16:05
in any way.
 
1:16:09
That was a good kind of side quest.
 
1:16:13
I don't think I have-
 
1:16:16
Oh, this is a really good one. So, coming from your Greek background, do you think there is any way,
 
1:16:27
just given the diversity within the LGBTQ community that gay men could participate in frat life without hiding their identity?
 
1:16:38
JW: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I did.
 
1:16:47
I can't get into their heads. I mean, clearly, my fraternity has 150 members, you have to assume, you know, five or ten.
 
1:16:56
And I guess sometimes I see some and count the room like, “Okay, that one.”
 
1:17:01
Sometimes you can't tell. But you know, the reality is, is you can't tell them just to come out, and that'll be okay. That would be it, really. I had a straight guy, man, tell me 10 or 20 years ago, which I thought was super zen-like, he said, “JD, the horrible thing is, if somebody comes out the closet to you, and they feel awful about their sexuality, it makes you feel uncomfortable as the straight person, right?” It's like if someone comes up to me, and he feels like crap about his sexuality, there's really nothing I can say to fix that. And it's hard to reflect positive energy when someone clearly is like, fucked up on the inside.
 
1:17:43
And I’d love to stand out from my frat house and say, “Hey, guys, if you're gay, just come out of the closet.” Because the more you just kind of do it with some confidence, the more of the guys are going to be like, “Yeah, whatever.”
 
1:17:54
I really don't think that your average fraternity boy- I think they got weird ideas of masculinity- I don't really think they're homophobic. I haven't gotten any shit for being the gay one.
 
1:18:06
And I think they all know I'm the gay ones. I'm sure it just takes one to look on Facebook and they're like, “he's the gay one.”
 
1:18:13
I think I went over there one time wearing some kind of Daisy Dukes and a little shirt looking a little too buff for a man my age. And the sorority girls are like, “Oh, you look good daddy!”
 
1:18:26
So I don't think it would be a problem for some of the guys to come out. Well,
 
1:18:31
I think if a guy came out as non-binary, I think challenging gender roles, I think you'd have a problem. But if he just came out as liking dudes, I don't think it would be a problem.
 
1:18:44
I don't know. Like all things, you kind of have to sell it. But I don't think it'd be a problem. I saw a kid walk through some sort of rainbow ish t shirt that said, “You’re Enough” and I thought that looks a little gay.
 
1:18:56
But I wasn't going to stop and say “hey, are you the gay one?”
 
1:19:00
CC: Why not?
 
1:19:03
JW: Well, if he's not,
 
1:19:05
you know, I don't know. I
 
1:19:08
don't want to push people off out the closet. I think there's plenty of emotional room for White boys in fraternities to come out of the closet. I think they have to have the confidence to do it. I don't think their fraternity brothers are going to ask them to. I don't think there's going to be a meeting where they say, “Hey, if you're gay is totally cool to come out.”
 
1:19:29
I'd be curious to talk to some Black guys and see how that works. You know, my Black guy friends, it seems like Black people- it's almost a little harder to come out of the closet. And yet when you do it's a little more cool because the people around you are. You know, to me Black culture is a little more collective. Like, “I'm here, I'm black, I'm your fraternity brother, deal with it.” It feels like the Black fraternity guys are a little more, even a little more heteronormative, and yet, once you get over that- once you've come
 
1:20:00
Out, it's a little less drama.
 
1:20:03
They’re like, “Okay, Billy’s gay.”
 
1:20:06
That sucks for an afternoon and then it's over.
 
1:20:10
Whereas I think it would be a little more drama with the White boys for a while. But the boys who are gay and in the closet have to come out and just own the space, and I just don't really see that happening.
 
1:20:24
CC: Cool.
 
1:20:27
Do you have anything else you want to touch on?
 
1:20:42
That was gonna be- my next question was like, how do you think they'd react to gender expression differences?
JW: When someone went on TikTok and a trans girl tried to go through sorority rush, I really wasn't surprised that didn't fly.
 
1:21:01
I mean, sorority rush is just-
 
1:21:03
The fraternity system’s kind of as little fucked in its own way, but the sororities, that's a whole different level.
CC: Yeah. What do they call it?
 
1:21:12
Dead week? No, that's right before finals.
 
1:21:16
JW: It's like bid day and rush week.
CC: Oh, hell week. No, there’s a name for it.
 
1:21:21
I can't remember.
 
1:21:24
Sorry. But, anyways.
JW: Yeah, that's tough. I mean, that was even kind of mean and hard when I was in school. The sorority rush has gotten bigger. I don't know it's gotten any worse; it was always pretty bad. Whereas the fraternities, there are always more fraternities than there were boys who wanted to be in fraternity, so it was always pretty chilled. You just needed to find one that you kind of clicked with.
 
1:21:51
And I had a girlfriend- I mean, I got lucky in my fraternity because I just kind of got drunk and woke up there.- but I had a girlfriend who said, “you know, your fraternity brothers are conservative but not conformists.”
 
1:22:04
So I think I had a very easy time in my fraternity, but that would not have been true of every fraternity.
CC: And what fraternity was that?
JW: I was a Phi Kappa Psi, which is one of those big houses on the Row. Now, at the time, it was actually a small house behind Bidgood.
 
1:22:22
And they moved the house twice, and they tore down the old one. But that fraternity was founded by the head of the history department, and had the distinction of being the only fraternity that was invited to put a chapter here. And nobody knows why really, the head of the History Department had been here for 20 years, when suddenly he
 
1:22:44
was invited to found this fraternity. I think- this is my untestable hypothesis, since all these people are dead. I think Alabama was drifting into the civil rights movement, right? So fraternity  came in, like ‘61, ‘62.
 
1:23:01
And I think the stuff with Vivian Malone, I think was the first or maybe Arthur and Lucy might have been the first. And then George Wallace and schoolhouse door was ‘63, I think.
 
1:23:17
In the 60s, you've got the whole Southeast, drifting into the civil rights movement, I think,
 
1:23:24
you know, there was the murder of people like Medgar Evers, I think in 57. Anyhow, my hypothesis is that the head of the history department, and the head of the university, decided to try to establish a new big fraternity that was outside of the Machine,
 
1:23:42
that would be kind of free-thinking intellectuals, and not part of the Machine.
 
1:23:47
And just to an extent, it kind of worked, it just took 50 years longer than they thought because now it's kind of where a lot of the out of state kids go, a lot of the kids from Chicago, wind up in that fraternity, and they're still not in the Machine.
 
1:24:03
Which is good. I mean, whenever they ask, it comes up every two or three years, should we join the Machine? And
 
1:24:08
at this point, I think the undergrads don't really care and us alums are against it.
 
1:24:14
And they want like $25,000 or something crazy.
 
1:24:18
So I think that was the point. I'm not sure it really matters, the Machine just has its own
 
1:24:25
momentum right now. So, the fact that right now the focus is still just kind of hold itself aloof from that and still doesn't really get too involved in Interfraternity Council stuff and all those orders and awards and stuff like that.
 
1:24:43
People tell me I should push them to do it and I'm like, “I'm not gonna do it.”
 
1:24:47
If the boys just want to do their own thing and that's better as far as I'm concerned.
CC: I tend to agree.
EB: Yeah.
JW: Yeah. Well, they're much more integrated and with the Greek system than we were. When I was, because we've literally-
 
1:25:00
This is hard to imagine- but Old Row. When we say Old Row now you think of like the Sigma Nu house and there's fraternity University. Old, Old Row was, you know where the planetarium is, you know that building?
CC: Yeah.
 
1:25:17
Well, if you come right out of the stadium, that little road that goes over toward Morris Spring or something, there were four or five fraternity houses that faced the quad behind Carmichael and Bidgood and Morgan. So you had the decals where those were, but then it turned. So you had this L shaped Fraternity Row. And my house had been in the pipes or something but then the pipes moved across campus, and they tore down the other three and there was this one old fraternity house there behind Carmichael. And that was the Phi Kappa Psi house.
 
1:25:54
So we didn't really hang out with the other fraternities. And because we were a little smaller, we didn't have enough pledges to kind of do swaps with big sororities, anyhow. When we swapped, we swapped with the Jewish sorority because our pledge classes were about the same size. They're all these Phi Si Jewish weddings.
 
1:26:14
So like I said, yeah, my girlfriend said, “Well, these guys, you can actually say conservative, but not conformist.” So I really wasn't that surprised, you know, when they didn't really care that I came out of the closet.
 
1:26:25
But I think if I had been in another fraternity house, I probably would have just quit, as a lot of people do.
 
1:26:34
But that was just luck of the draw, right? That's just, sometimes in life, you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. And it just happened that I fell into that. And it felt good. Just like, you know, I went to Japan and I had a good time in Japan. But a lot of people go abroad, and they don't have a good experience. And
 
1:26:49
people sometimes ask me now like, “what should my child learn: Japanese or Chinese?” I'm like, “those two things are so different.”
 
1:26:56
Yeah, I tend to say, “look, if your kid is kind of drawing on the wall with their crayons, and kind of crazy, that's a Chinese child. And if you have a kid who likes to tidy up, right, that's more like a Japanese kid.”
CC: Interesting.
 
1:27:12
JW: So yeah, I think in lots of ways, I just I fell into things that suited me really well. And my life has been really fun. So, to me, my fraternity has been a net benefit to me and those guys who are still good friends of mine. And I think probably it helps me relate to straight people because I have had straight friends for forty years. But that's not to say I would encourage people to put their kids in a fraternity or really, actually, I wouldn't and at this point, you know, at this point, they’re big social clubs. They're not- it's not something you can pay for out of a part time job, right?
CC: God, no. Can barely afford rent right now.
JW: Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a bazillion dollars and it's just the social club. And if something goes wrong, it's just
 
1:27:56
the members point of view is it's a social club. I'm paying- my parents are paying for its annual services.
 
1:28:05
So yeah, I have I have sort of mixed emotions about about the whole fraternity system.
CC: Yeah.
 
1:28:11
The question was kind of just for shits and giggles. In what ways gays- wait, oh my goodness- in what ways can gay men participate in frat life? It's just- I don't think those groups would ever realistically mix very well.
 
1:28:24
Besides in your case, I don't want to undermine that.
JW: No, that's fine. I you know, my shrink said to me- and I still haven't gotten to the bottom of this- he said, “you know, JD, everybody has a weird thing. I've been a shrink for a long time”, he was not just a shrink; he was a Freudian analyst. He said, “your weird thing is this:
 
1:28:46
Virtually all normal human beings- not normal- regular human beings, look for and find their comfort zone and stay at it. You for some reason, find your comfort zone and avoid it.”
 
1:29:00
So it’d be so me to, of course, I would identify the gay friendly gym and avoid that at all costs.
 
1:29:08
I've made friends with the owner; he's really nice guy. I see him all the time downtown. But that's the last gym I would go to. And of course I would make myself go stay in a fraternity because I'm not a quitter.
 
1:29:19
And why on earth would I work in a place like Northwestern which is so gay friendly, but I could work here in Alabama, which just is a little more- I don't know- you talk about beautiful danger; I don't like safety. Right? There's a little bit of an emotional tightrope here sometimes.
 
1:29:37
If I have to go see the provost, to me the whole thing is, the whole university can be so heteronormative, right? You all are here, too.
 
1:29:47
Super straight.
 
1:29:50
Although I would say even Northwestern was super straight, too. Northwestern was like,
 
1:29:57
“We love you. We love gay people as long as you look like a straight
 
1:30:00
Person.” It was kind of like that.
 
1:30:05
And yet, I guess I liked that sense of, I don't know if danger is the right word, but it kind of keeps you on your toes to think about it.
 
1:30:15
I don't know. I don't know where that comes from.
 
1:30:19
Partly from my insecurity, that I think that as long as I can make people, as long as I can bond with people and make them like me that I must be doing the right things, somehow. When I was a kid, I was always that kid that would hide behind my mother or my father's leg. And at what point I decided that
 
1:30:38
I felt more safe by throwing myself into the middle of the room. At some point I made that switch. I decided hiding in the corner was not the safe place. Just like I decided a long time ago, even my first job in the 80s that I was safer out of the closet than in the closet. Because if people have information on you, they will use it against you, is what I think.
CC: Yeah, especially in corporate spaces or
 
1:31:05
professional ones.
JW: That's right. If someone's gonna like you, because you're gay, just go and take your knocks and get that out of the way.
 
1:31:13
But also, people in the closet always had this weird energy, anyhow.
 
1:31:17
Right? It's kind of
 
1:31:21
weird.
 
1:31:23
I don't want to be judgy. But you know, kind of a little, I guess, when I think about the way people in the closet are- well, first of all, the odd thing is, is
 
1:31:32
in my observation, men in the closet act more gay than men out of the closet, because I think they're suppressing their gayness so much. It comes out in sort of weird, uncontrolled ways. They're the ones who can get a little handsy, right.
 
1:31:48
You go to a wedding, it's a bunch of straight people, drinking too much. And all sudden, there's the married guy who's kind of just getting a little handsy with all the men. That's really crazy. I think once you come out of the closet, you're like,
 
1:32:01
you take a deep cleansing breath, and you're just out, right? You don’t have to prove anything else anymore. You don't have to hide anything. And I think you just settle down and be more like a normal person.
 
1:32:13
Yeah, that's kind of what I just what I think, but people in the closet? They're nervous. And if you're sensitive, you feel their nervousness, and it makes you nervous.
CC: Watching that, like rubs off.
 
1:32:28
JW: Oh, heck, yeah.
 
1:32:30
Heck, yeah.
 
1:32:34
CC: Well, from someone who struggles a lot from going out of their comfort zone, it's very admirable
 
1:32:41
that you just start like that.
 
1:32:45
JW: Yeah, well, I guess I'll tell you is, I think
 
1:32:48
part of this is just going to Japan and realizing just, you know, if I'm going to eat, I've got to talk to these people. But yeah, just like being in the closet, you just
 
1:32:57
have to get out of your comfort zone. I mean, every time I go to Rose administration, I stop at the door and I have this moment of
 
1:33:05
imposter syndrome. Like, “what the fuck am I doing here? I can't believe they gave me this job. I'm gonna fuck this up.” And then I'm thinking, well, that's just, you know, even at my age, that shit happens. And you just have to quiet your mind and just do it, right? I always admire athletes, because so much of what you do is just, you know, I have to quiet my mind and let my body do what it has to do. Which is kind of why I like even going to the gym. Because what's amazing at the gym is, you know that 100 pounds weighs the same every single day, but some days it feels like 1000 and some days it feels like nothing.
 
1:33:42
And it helps me get out of my, my brain and my shit just to engage with my physical surroundings.
CC: Absolutely. Yeah. What is that gay gym? Do you?
JW: Oh, it's really nice.
 
1:33:55
The gay gym is called Bars and Stripes. It's on 15th.
 
1:34:00
And it's 24 hours, and the owner's name- he's on Facebook- his name is Jacob
 
1:34:07
Summers. He's really nice. He and his wife both wait tables at the Half Shell. And it's called Bars and Stripes, and it's on 15th right where the overpass goes over the train tracks.
 
1:34:23
On the outside, it kind of looks like it's CrossFit gym, but it's not. It's not a ton of machines like you would have at Planet Fitness. A lot of free weights. So it's gonna be like dead lifting, and stuff like that. But he's really a peach.
 
1:34:39
He and his wife get totally into cosplay stuff; he's a little crazy. They're both a little crazy.
 
1:34:45
They love cosplay stuff.
 
1:34:48
And I think not long after he came here, he hung out a bisexual flag or something and I'm like, “okay, so that explains everything.” I think he was in the military or something. I don't know.
 
1:35:00
They're really high spirited, interesting, fun people.
 
1:35:06
And really cool and the gym was was pretty cheap and it's 24 hours- they just give you a passcode to let yourself in.
 
1:35:14
I don't think there's a shower or anything, but there's not really a good shower at my gym either.
 
1:35:19
But yeah, really sweet guy, and he would just beat the living shit out of anybody who was homophobic.
 
1:35:25
And he could, he looks like a badass.
CC: Good for him.
JW: He could and he would
 
1:35:31
CC: Not to sound like a stalker: what gym do you use?
JW: I go to Strong Inc, which is up on the corner of 69 and Union Chapel.
 
1:35:43
And even my gym in Boston and in Chicago was such a grungy, really grungy gym. And it was under the street. It was really filthy. And it's been there since the 70s. And the guy who runs it was like 85 years old, and he was like, passionate after 70s. Yeah, he had like the North American bench pressing record for two or three years. And he was awesome. And that gym was like, it was, in a way it was such a mess. But if you could think of any piece of equipment you ever saw anywhere in your life, somewhere in there, it would be there.
 
1:36:20
It was under the street. And the roaches were like this big.
 
1:36:24
CC: So grungy.
JW: When I say grungy, I'm not saying like the, pretend to be grungy. I'm saying like, roaches this big. I never saw a rat, which surprised me because in that neighborhood in Chicago, you would see big rats.
 
1:36:40
And no air conditioning. Yeah. But it was such a good gym. And there was a Black guy named Elliot who cut hair and he was my BFF in the gym. But he was he was a straight guy, unfortunately. He was a cutie.
 
1:36:58
And so when I looked around at gyms, I went to Crunch but I gotta tell you, even at five o'clock in the morning at Crunch, it's really loud, it's really orange in there. And there's a juicing community in Tuscaloosa. That's where it is,
 
1:37:14
you know, guys with biceps, the size of my neck. And the pimply backs, you know. I dated like 20 years ago who was juicing, so I guess I know what that looks like. I'm not scared of it. I don't really believe in roid rage. I think steroids just magnify whatever's in you: if you're an asshole, it'll make you a really serious asshole.
 
1:37:37
But if you're not an asshole, it’s not going to turn someone into a rage machine or something. But there were a lot of guys, I thought, at Crunch at six o'clock in the morning, who were juicing. And they always had like some little needle exchange boxes in the bathroom. But that was not for insulin, I don’t think.
 
1:37:58
And then the Planet Fitnesses are cheap, but there's not really any free weights. And I guess they yell at you if you grunt or something like that.
 
1:38:09
And so what I didn't mention is, osteoporosis runs in my family, which is why I'm kind of still a barbell boy at my age, because my family is kind of shrinking.
 
1:38:19
And my doctor in Chicago with this diagnosis at 49. She said, “What do you do?” And I said, “Well, I'm 49 now so I don't I don't lift weights anymore. I swim, I do yoga.” And she goes, “No, no, you gotta go back to the gym, that's got to be free weights and double leg days, and not the machines.” So for 10 years, I've been just doing that, like lots of deadlifting and lots of squats and stuff like that. And my bone density is sort of at the low range of normal. So it's been really good. But that's why I'm in the gym all the time.
 
1:38:51
Besides in my vanity, that I'd like to.
 
1:38:54
But if you're going to join a gym, I would say this. So I came in January the ninth, and everybody's running a huge special.
 
1:39:05
So that's the good time to join a gym. It's, I mean, on the one hand, when join a gym in the beginning of January, there's always newbies, and it's a pain, because they don't know where anything is.
CC: Oh, that's me.
 
1:39:16
That’s me.
 
1:39:19
JW: But this place, it was a really deep discount. A good thing about Strong Inc is then you get to stay at whatever price you sign up for
 
1:39:30
forever. So I think it's usually like 400 bucks a year or something and I got in for three, so I could take three forever. On the other hand, it is like you gotta go across the river and it's like, two, three miles up 69.
 
1:39:45
The Rec Center seems fine because it's super crowded.
CC: It is really crowded. It's a big facility, there's a lot to do there. It's just always so many people there.
JW: That's right, I tried it. It doesn't open till 5:30,
 
1:40:00
Which,
 
1:40:01
it's only a half hour later than I usually start, but it makes a difference. But you kind of get there at 5:30 and it is packed.
EB: Really?
 
1:40:10
JW: Super, super crowded. Anyway, I feel a little old to be working out with all the undergrads. Although my boss, the Dean of Libraries goes during lunch and gets in a workout there.
 
1:40:20
CC: That's nice.
JW: Yeah.
 
1:40:23
There used to be a little gym in the,
 
1:40:26
I guess you called the Aquatic Center- we called the natatorium in the 80s- there used to be a little gym over there. That was pretty cool.
 
1:40:34
But yeah, I looked at all of them. But yeah, I thought
 
1:40:40
Bars and Stripes was good, but it's almost all free weights, in which case, if you're just new to it, then you kind of need to figure out what it is you're doing.
 
1:40:50
CC: Yeah, for sure.
 
1:40:54
You have anything else?
 
1:40:56
EB: I don’t think so.
CC: I think we're good.
 
1:40:59
Thank you so much.
EB: Thank you.
JW: You're welcome. Well, if you have any follow up questions, always let me know.