{"product_id":"the-vinyl-diaries-isbn-9781039011076","title":"The Vinyl Diaries","description":"\u003cb\u003eA poignant, funny, and lively memoir of sexual awakening, music, and discovering one's true self.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pete Crighton came of age in the early\/mid 1980s in the shadow of HIV\/AIDS. Growing up in Toronto, he was terrified that his friends and schoolmates would find out that he was “different” at a time when being gay felt like a death sentence. His only comfort was music, the songs a balm to his painful adolescence. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStruggling to make sense of his sexuality and fear of the disease stifled Crighton as a sexual being. Instead of exploring sex, he began curating a massive music library. He then took what he thought was a safe path and entered into two long-term monogamous relationships, both doomed to fail. Finally, in his 40s, Crighton decided to ignore his fear and live his queer life to the fullest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of Crighton’s mid-life sexual awakening. From one-night trysts to friendships resulting from app-based hookups, Crighton is honest and unapologetic as he chronicles the pursuit of his erotic desires. Each new connection and lover is linked to an artist, song, or album from his vast collection and backdrops the stories Crighton tells about his life, interconnected with the artists' work and histories. Kate Bush, the B-52s, Prince, The Smiths, Yoko Ono, and Stevie Nicks are just a few of the artists who provide an extraordinary soundtrack to Crighton’s adventures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBig-hearted, funny, thoughtful, and wildly entertaining, \u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is a celebration of sex, music and the discovery of our true selves.“\u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is a life-affirming journey through music and queerness. Like the greatest pop songs, it speaks directly and personally of love, longing, and belonging.” —\u003cb\u003eJordan Tannahill\u003c\/b\u003e, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted \u003ci\u003eThe Listeners\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The core of Pete Crighton's \u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is passion; a palpable and intense passion for art and music that bleeds into his journey through love, sex, fear, aging, and pandemics. We've all experienced how music plus experience equals vivid memory, but due to Crighton's expansive knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of artists plus his welcome shameless and explicit presentation of his emotional, romantic, and sexual connections, \u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is not only a fully entertaining, relatable, funny, sexy page turner, it inspired me to search beyond my rather limited musical tastes to an appreciation of all things Yoko Ono. This memoir sings.\" —\u003cb\u003eDavid Pevsner\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eDamn Shame: Desire, Defiance, and Show Tunes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Pete Crighton's \u003ci\u003eThe Vinyl Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e is a delightful, funny, moving and insightful account of one listener's love affair with music and his burgeoning queerness. Stars are honoured to be mentioned alongside one of the dirtiest passages ever written in Canadian literature.” —\u003cb\u003eTorquil Campbell\u003c\/b\u003e of Stars\u003cb\u003ePETE CRIGHTON\u003c\/b\u003e has worked as a marketing executive in the arts for many years. He has also studied comedy at Second City, graduating from their Conservatory Program in improv, scene writing and performance and still sings (badly) in the Dolly Parton choir “the Tennessee Mountain Homos.” He lives in Toronto.\u003cb\u003eGraceland\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was right about Matthew, his tusk and our mutual love of \u003ci\u003eTusk\u003c\/i\u003e. Our first night together with Fleetwood Mac and our Manhattan challenge was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA week or so after our \u003ci\u003eTusk \u003c\/i\u003edate we had a plan to meet at my place again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Matthew arrived at my house, neither of us exhibited the bashfulness on display during our first date. There was no time for drinks; no time for records; no time for small talk. We both knew sex was on the menu and we wasted no time getting to it. Matthew had barely made it in the door and we were upstairs, naked on my bed. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePost sex, it was time for a beer, and as I headed to the fridge I told him to pick out a record. He was a bit overwhelmed. The wall of records in my home can be a bit intimidating, but he took to his task as I had done to mine earlier, and dove in headfirst. When he surfaced, Matthew was holding \u003ci\u003eGraceland.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePaul Simon released \u003ci\u003eGraceland \u003c\/i\u003etowards the end of the summer of 1986, when I was seventeen. It was one of only a handful of albums that were positively ubiquitous that year, and the next. No matter what generation you belonged to, you could not get away from it. In a pre-internet world there weren’t many records that got this much play and attention, and when they found a wide audience, they stuck around. For months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMatthew would still have been a small child when \u003ci\u003eGraceland \u003c\/i\u003ewas released, so I was surprised by the choice. After he dropped the needle on side one, we sat and listened to a record I hadn’t heard in years. As the album played, we shared our experiences with \u003ci\u003eGraceland \u003c\/i\u003eand his choice became more clear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was decidedly not cool to like Paul Simon amongst my friends at seventeen. I was mostly listening to British imports like the Smiths, Depeche Mode and the Cure, not sixties folk stars. My experience with \u003ci\u003eGraceland \u003c\/i\u003ewas a solitary one, spent mostly in my room in the basement, headphones on, escaping the horrors of high school all by myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe album is widely considered Mr. Simon’s best, but it did not come without a bit of controversy. His solo career was at a bit of a low point and he took a big gamble by infusing his sound with a wide variety of styles and influences—and therein lies the problem. He collaborated with dozens of musicians, including many from South Africa, and while the beats and the sounds of that country are what make this album truly soar, Simon got a lot of criticism for what many perceived as breaking a cultural boycott in place at the time in protest of South Africa’s apartheid policies. Simon was not making a political statement, he was simply collaborating with artists who inspired him (not to mention paying them and giving a few songwriting credits to his co-creators). Most of the controversy flew over my head, and it sure didn’t stop the album from selling truckloads, but I’m sure it tainted the success for its creator.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMatthew’s experience with \u003ci\u003eGraceland \u003c\/i\u003ewas very different. He was too young to discover the record on his own; it was his parents who introduced it to him. They loved the album and he shared warm memories of being at home and on road trips listening to it on cassette. Happy memories to a great soundtrack. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI never had these kinds of musical experiences with my parents. On car trips with them I listened to my yellow Sony Sports Walkman as loud as I could to drown out the adult-contemporary “soft sounds” radio, all the while suffocating from cigar smoke. Yes, my father smoked cigars in the car with the windows rolled up tight. Hotboxed by my dad! My parents’ record collection of jazz artists, Barbra and popular Broadway musicals mostly sat in a corner, rarely played, and I don’t remember them ever coming home with a new album to introduce me to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt wasn’t exactly a generation gap, but it was interesting to hear how we both came to appreciate Mr. Simon’s most successful solo record. We also agreed that anyone who was married to Carrie Fisher, even briefly, had to be a bit of a badass. We both loved the original \u003ci\u003eStar Wars \u003c\/i\u003efilms and had made many a bad lightsaber joke in reference to our boners over the weeks of our courtship. Sometimes boys just don’t grow up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was all fun and games until “Under African Skies.” “Listen, listen . . .” he told me, and as the bass drum kicked in and Linda Ronstadt started harmonizing with Simon, Matthew completely disappeared. He was gone for the entire running time of the song and his eyes teared up while he quietly sang along.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLinda’s voice is exquisite and pairs perfectly with Simon’s. It’s not just him, though, she’s one of the great vocal collaborators there is. Paul Simon, Neil Young, James Taylor and others all have songs made infinitely better by her voice. The records Linda made with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris as Trio are inspired; the three of them harmonizing together is sweet magic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot to mention the gazillion records she made and sold as a solo artist in the ’70s and ’80s. Linda Ronstadt is a talent for the ages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMatthew and I were discovering that we were pretty good collaborators too. I could get really excited about a fellow who got so worked up about a deep cut on a Paul Simon album.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter that night, Matthew came back to my place again and again. More often than not we listened to Stevie Nicks or \u003ci\u003eGraceland\u003c\/i\u003e, but we played dozens more records and artists during our dates. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother thing Matthew and I agreed on was condom use. Matthew and I had talked about how more and more guys were using PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) to protect themselves against contracting HIV, but I wasn’t convinced of its efficacy yet and would only have sex while using a condom. A few of my online conversations on the apps would end when I wouldn’t agree to bareback with the man on the other end, despite the assurances they were on PrEP. Could I trust them? Most of those men were in their early twenties and what they didn’t understand was that for this Generation Xer, I had thirty years of HIV fear to unpack and get over before I could even consider anal sex without a condom, PrEP or not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne major problem arose after a few weeks of our ongoing dates: I liked Matthew. He was definitely worth dating, but I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to jump into another relationship. Not any time soon, anyway. And this was way too soon. For the first time in my life I had to have the “I’m not looking for a boyfriend” talk. I wasn’t even sure how to do it, but Matthew received the news incredibly well—he was happy to stay fuck buddies and friends. Wow. Great.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaybe there was a whole world of these lovely guys out there who just wanted to have sex and enjoy their lives as single men. To build real friendships and real intimacy but not end up dating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe concept was something I had never really considered. I’d never been shown any kind of gay relationships growing up, let alone something like this. We were friends, and we were having sex, but we had no romantic commitment. Matthew and I were clear on that—we were not boyfriends. Maybe that’s what I had wanted all along: true connection, real friendship and a healthy dose of sex. Was that real grace? Was that me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGay Graceland, that’s got to be a place I can find.","brand":"Random House Canada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301073703141,"sku":"NP9781039011076","price":20.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781039011076.jpg?v=1767742088","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-vinyl-diaries-isbn-9781039011076","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}