EPISODE 45: conversion part 2
[Instrumental of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals begins to play.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER INTRODUCTION]: Welcome to Conversations with People Who Hate Me. The show that takes conflict and turns it into conversation. I am your host, Dylan Marron and I am so glad you're here.
I have to say it, Conversations with People Who Hate Me, the book, is in bookstores now, and it's been such an honor to hear from those of you who have read it. For those of you who haven't, it's an overview of everything I've learned about having difficult conversations from making this show. And if you want it to be, it's also a field guide on how to navigate those challenging relationships in your own life. It's available through the link in the description of this episode and wherever you love buying books.
Welcome to part two of our three-part miniseries on conversion therapy, the abusive practice that falsely claims to change people's sexual orientation or gender identity. Last week, you heard me speak with Garrard Conley, a writer and activist who shared with me how he came to attend, Love in Action, so called ex-gay ministry and how he escaped from it. Today, I'll speak with John Smid. The man who ran Love in Action when Garrard attended.
As I mentioned last week, this is an atypical story for this show. I usually host conversations between people who clashed online, but even though this isn't rooted in digital disagreement, the core themes of this project are front and center: shame, grace, and the cyclical nature of harm. Another core theme that you'll hear in this episode is a point I, and this show, have tried to drive home over and over again, that change takes time. As you listen to my conversation with John, I want you to really hear how long his evolution took. I want you to notice the painfully slow process, that unfolded over a series of years and the many different people and events who lit that path of evolution for him.
Now, I want to share two true things with you:
One, conversion therapy, is a harmful practice that has traumatized the many who have survived it, and it has driven others to suicide and suicidal ideation.
Two, the people who ran these conversion therapy centers, are human beings who thought they were helping. Both of these truths can, and, I think, must, exist together simultaneously.
That they are human does not absolve them from the harm they have caused. And the harm that they have caused does not erase their humanity.
A mantra that I created for myself when making this show, and a mantra that I've shared with you before is, empathy is not endorsement. I believe that we can feel for people without co-signing the worst things they've done, that we can hold people accountable while still caring about them. I encourage you to lean on that mantra as often as you want throughout this episode. And also long after this episode is done.
I shared this last week and I don't think it can be overshared, but if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, there's no shame but there is help. The national suicide hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255. And for LGBTQ folks, there's also The Trevor Project, head on over to thetrevorproject.org for more resources.
All right, let's begin. Part two of this three-part miniseries, here is John Smid.
[Music fades. Conversation begins.]
John: Hello?
Dylan: Hey John. It's Dylan. How's it going?
John: It's going okay.
Dylan: So I'm just going to start recording here. You see that it's recording, right?
John: Yes.
Dylan: Okay, great. So John, I guess let's start here. Separate from everything that we're kind of here to discuss, in only as many details as you want to share on this public platform. Tell me and listeners about the John Smid we may not know. The day to day, the mundane stuff. Tell us about you.
John: Yeah. John Smid outside of many popularly known features. I'm really just kind of a simple guy. I'm very casual. I don't make a lot of fuss about things. I'm a very routine oriented person. I eat three meals a day.
Dylan: (laughs) Congratulations.
John: (laughs) Yeah. I go to bed at 10 o'clock, get up at six or seven every day. I think I'm, overall I'm pretty unassuming, but I think people also understand me to be a vocal person. I do share opinions and thoughts and sometimes passionately, I care deeply about people, about relationships. Those are things I get the most emotional about. I can easily tear up when I think about that. So those are just things that are kind of part and parcel to me. I like to create, I mean, what I do almost full time right now is I, create home decor. I build furniture, refinish things. People send me Pinterest pictures and ask me to build them.
Dylan: Oh wow.
John: And I love it because it inspires me to create. I have an outlet for my creativity.
Dylan: And specifically woodworking.
John: Woodworking primarily. Yes. I like that my life today is not wrapped around, any kind of an agenda. I'm free to be my own person. I'm not involved in any official, anything. I just live my life and live with my husband and enjoy living in the country. We have about two acres and-
Dylan: And you're in Texas right?
John: In Texas. And it's very expansive and I go outside and I can breathe and I have space and my neighbors are cows and-
Dylan: Good neighbors!
John: Yeah. I really love that. I love the space of living in the country. So, yeah.
Dylan: So you're painting a very quiet, lovely life that you're living with your husband and this is very different, from a life you were living not too long ago.
John: Yeah. I think it is quite different. (laughs)
Dylan: Yeah. (laughs) I agree. So I know this is a huge question, but talk to me about what led you to Love in Action.
John: Okay. I was married as a young person, 19 years old, and I was extremely naive, sexually naive. I got married because life was painful and I thought maybe if I get married, that will simplify things and I'll be able to kind of get away from some of the things that were causing me, discomfort, relationally and otherwise. And so I married my first wife and we had two children and after six years of marriage, I came to the reality that I was gay. And it was quite surprising to me, to discover that about myself.
Dylan: You discovered that mid-marriage.
John: Yes. And so I made the decision to separate from my wife and completely come out and find my life as a gay person. And I was 24 years old and this was back in 1979, so it wasn't necessarily the age we live in now.
Dylan: No, that's quite a time to come out.
John: Yeah. I really didn't have an issue with it. And I... If anybody else had an issue with it, I figured that was their problem. I wanted to be out. I was out and that was life. Until I started to discover that in my twenties, I had some relational difficulties. I think probably the most difficult one was, I was in a relationship with a guy that I was completely head over heels, madly in love with. And he came to me and said, "You know, you're not really meeting my expectations and I don't think this relationship's going to work and so I'm going to be-"
Dylan: Like emotional expectations?
John: That, and sexual expectations, it was just kind of everything. He just... And so I was devastated and he broke off the relationship and the next thing I discovered is that, he was in a relationship with my best friend.
Dylan: Whoa.
John: And that was just kind of a double whammy for me. And I was really pretty depressed over that for a while and-
Dylan: Of course.
John: And then I found someone else and got into a relationship with them and then I discovered that he was deceptive. He didn't really tell me the truth all the time and he would be, out with somebody and I thought he was home and he would be telling me I can't come over tonight and then I'd realize he was going to someone else's house and those things were just really, really disconcerting for me. And I talked about that with a friend of mine that I worked with, and she began to tell me that, the reason I was having problems was because God said being gay was sinful, and so if you're living in a gay experience, then that's going to create problems. And so this lady was like, "Well, I'm mean, gay people aren't faithful to each other and that's just what you're going to expect, and if you accept Jesus, then you can live a life that's better and God can help you to be free from all of this."
Dylan: Yeah.
John: So after several months, I decided to accept what she was saying and I went to her church and I thought, okay, I want to live the best life I can live. I want to be a person of integrity. I want to be a person that people respect, and being a Christian will lead me to a life that's like that.
Dylan: Hmm.
John: And so it was very attractive to me, but that may not had to leave everything that had anything to do with homosexuality, but I was willing to do that. And I found that their church had a singles ministry and I started going to that, and I began to be involved in the leadership. And so I really thought during that time, I really thought, I had made the right decision.
Dylan: Yeah.
John: Because I was doing well and I was a person that people respected. And, I had friends and social engagements and things to do, and I like my life at that time.
Dylan: Hmm. Well, I also-
John: But-
Dylan: Yeah, you go first and then I'll say something.
John: Well, the "but" takes me into another chapter. So what were you going to say? (laughs)
Dylan: Right. (laughs) Many chapters here. What I'm observing now that I'm hearing the story in narration, it's like relationships, all relationships, heterosexual, homosexual, gay, queer, anything. Relationships are so confusing and can be so hard. And so you are having these relationship troubles which, if anything makes you so normal, but because there is, at the time, for sure, a culture of shame around being gay, it's easy to accept this answer of like "oh, well, it's unique to gay people that these things are happening. And it's because," leaning on a false stereotype, "gay people are deceptive. This is how it goes." And so you are turning your back on a thing that hurts you and going to a community of people who support you. Is that a correct read of what happened?
John: That's the way it felt at that time.
Dylan: Yeah.
John: Yeah, absolutely. And also, I didn't realize that, like you said, it's normal for people in their twenties to run into problems and try to figure out what's going on. And the twenties are hard. They're hard years for anybody, because it's our first experience in adulthood. It's our first experience with adult relationships. And we don't have, we don't go home to mom and dad or whatever.
Dylan: Right.
John: We have to figure it out, and go through the pain of it. So in that respect, yes, it was absolutely normal. But because of the church's view, then my struggles weren't considered normal. They were considered part and parcel to being gay.
Dylan: Right.
John: And I didn't know any different. I'd never read the Bible. I didn't know anything about that stuff. And so I believed it, because it was spoken with authority, the authority of God.
Dylan: Hm.
John: The authority of big G, God.
Dylan: Yeah.
John: And who am I argue with that? I'm just little J, John. I don't-
Dylan: Right.
John: I don't know anything about this stuff. And so I bought it, and there was a guy that came to our group.
Dylan: The singles ministry.
John: The singles ministry, that I pretty much assumed he was gay. My gaydar was active (Dylan laughs) and I just figured, this guy's probably gay. And he had just recently divorced his wife or his wife divorced him or something. And so during a weekend activity, I sat down with him privately and I said, "Hey, I think I can probably relate to you, or you can relate to me." And he confirmed that he was gay, and he was just asking questions. And I thought, I don't know what to tell you. I just know where I've come from and I don't know how to fix this stuff or what to say, I feel pretty naive about it. So I began to think about that question and I heard a radio broadcast on James Dobson's Focus on the Family.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Jumping in here to say that Focus on the Family is a fundamentalist Christian organization, that advocates for very socially conservative principles. For decades, it's been a powerful lobbying force against, among other things, LGBTQ rights and they have a flagship radio show. So that's what John was listening to.
John: Well, there was a lady who was the mom of a gay son, and she was sharing her story. And she was a very, very well known Christian author named Barbara Johnson. And she wrote all these book for moms and everybody loved it, because it was all humorous. And anyway, so she was a very popular person on the radio. And I wrote a letter to Focus on the Family for their information sheet on ex-gay ministries and I got information about Exodus International, Love in Action, and Desert Stream, those three names and addresses. And so I sent a letter to all three of them and basically two paragraphs. I said, "Hey, I used to be gay and work in this ministry and I've got questions about what to tell people. I don't know what to say, and what's your story? What do you have for me?" And I didn't get anything from Exodus and I didn't get anything back from Desert Stream.
Dylan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John: But I got a phone call from Love in Action. And it was the director's wife, her name was Anita Worthen. And she said, "This is Anita Worthen and we want to know if you're interested in applying for a position with our ministry, as an assistant house leader in one of our residential homes." Well, all of my questions and the details of my heart and the fact that I had met a girl in the singles ministry that I was interested in dating, and I started to experience some real challenging difficulties, emotionally like I would shut down. I felt there were barriers with her and it was troubling to me. It was very troubling. I thought this phone call and this opportunity, is the answer to all of my questions. It must be God. Because it fits. It fits everything I'm desiring. Full time ministry. These people know what they're doing, they're the professionals, they're nationally known. Oh my goodness. The best of the best. And they want me to come and work for them. And so I applied for the position. I filled out all the paperwork and went through all the requests they had, and the references and everything, and they agreed to hire me. And so within three months from that phone call I was driving to California from Nebraska to start my position there. And very quickly I worked in the office and started learning and responding and answering questions of people and writing letters. And I began to write articles and for me, it was like a family. It was for me, like a family I had never known before. And so initially being at Love in Action was a dream come true.
Dylan: But then you kind of climbed the ranks of Love in Action.
John: Yes. I started at as an assistant house leader. And so each year progressively, I had more and more responsibility. And like I said, it felt successful to me. It was working. And Frank Worthen came to me, the ministry director at the time.
Dylan: And this is the guy who created Love in Action. Right?
John: Yes. He was the founder. And he said, "I'm going to go to Manila, Philippines and start a ministry there and so, will you take over Love in Action?"
Dylan: Whoa.
John: "Will you become the director of Love in Action?" And I said, "Yes, of course I will."
Dylan: Wow. So Frank is off in the Philippines. You continue Love in Action. And now this is 1980, you started, so we're kind of in the mid eighties now?
John: 1990. It was September of 1990 was exactly when I took over as the director of Love in Action.
Dylan: September of 1990.
John: Yes.
Dylan: Okay.
John: Yeah.
Dylan: Perfect. Good to know. So speaking as yourself then, which is a difficult position to put yourself in, how would you describe Love in Action's mission? It would, of course not call itself conversion therapy, I assume, or ex-gay. What would, how would John Smid from 1990 describe it?
John: I would describe it the way that we did: Love in Action was a discipleship program, specifically focusing on people who were gay. And then on two nights a week, we would have special meetings, that were topically associated with overcoming homosexuality by the power of Jesus Christ.
Dylan: You fully believed that this was possible. Right?
John: I, in my mind, and in my spiritual convictions, I believed that people could live free of homosexual behavior. I believe that people could set their minds and their hearts to be obedient to Christ, like anyone else could. I saw it as the same, that people don't have to have sex. They can live without it. And if God says, you can't have sex with people of the same gender, then he'll provide a way for you to live that way. And that was the old mantra at Love in Action, God will provide a way, he'll provide a way of escape. And yet, while we were communicating that, I obviously was aware that there were a lot of people, who didn't live that way. There were people who would, we would call it, they would fall. It was called a fall. If you have sex, then you'd have a fall and somebody would have a fall and then we'd have this big old "what are we going to do?" And "how are we going to respond?" And so people would have falls. And yeah, we believe people could live free, but I saw people falling and so it created a kind of a double bind for me. We're known, people think we're doing well, but we're not. And it's like, we had to figure out what to do with that. And the only way we could respond to it would be to basically say, "It's your fault, God gives you a way and you're not taking advantage of that. And so you're even rebellion or you're unteachable, or it's your fault." We would just make it their fault.
Dylan: Which is, I guess, a convenient way to not look inward at perhaps the futility of trying to, heal people from their "disease" or addiction.
John: I think you're absolutely right.
Dylan: Yeah.
John: We held a belief system them that the Bible was the Bible. It's all true. It's infallible. It's without error and if we are following the Bible, then we are also without error.
Dylan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John: And so this is the standard. If you don't follow it, then it's your fault, it's not ours. And it was a scapegoating of people. It clearly was a situation where we just did not look, at ourselves and say, are we making a mistake?
Dylan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). But is there almost a sense within yourself that you're cleansing yourself, of your own gay desires by running this program?
John: I think the way I saw that, is I needed to be free of it as much as anybody did. And I was living authentically as a Christian, as a leader, I was not doing anything behind the curtain. If I taught it and I believed it, I lived it. I wasn't looking at pornography. I wasn't acting out. I wasn't cruising around places. I set my face like flint to the objective and I lived it. And I felt proud about that because I knew a lot of people weren't living it. But by that point, I'm married again...
Dylan: To a woman.
John: To a woman. And I married her in faith with the expectation, that if I'm obedient, if I'm living faithfully, that God's going to honor that and at some point I'm going to be attracted to her. And so year after year, I'm still not attracted to her and living in faith that I will be. So for me, the objective wasn't white knuckling to not have sex with men. The objective was maybe, maybe, maybe someday, if I hold on tight, if I do what's expected. Someday, God is going to give me the attractions for my wife, that a man should have as a husband. Well, maybe that'll happen. Maybe I'll get my gift at the end of the rainbow, you know? Maybe I'm going to get what I'm praying for diligently.
[BREAK]
Dylan: So what was the evolution that led you out of Love in Action?
John: (laughs) It's, I think it's not what people expect it to be. We encountered in 2005, we had a protest that completely took us off guard. And it had to do with a young man that was in our youth program named Zach. Zach had told his Myspace friends that his parents put him in an ex-gay camp, and they felt sorry for him and decided they were going to lead a protest against Love in Action and in support of Zach that was in this program. And so that began on that day. It was 8:30 in the morning, actually June 6th of 2005. We had, I mean, newscasts and television cameras and this whole nine yards, it was a big protest that just went viral. I mean, it just gained a tremendous amount of attention. And it really, what I refer to, it shot a torpedo in the side of our ship, that continued to explode over time.
Dylan: This protest shot a torpedo.
John: Yes. And the effects of that protest wore us down, because every single day we were facing media coverage, we were facing the health department, the alcohol and drug licensing department, child protective services came and it started to create so much stress in the ministry that the counseling staff, started to become at odds with me.
Dylan: So it was coming internally from your staff and it was also coming externally from this protest.
John: Oh yeah. It was on all sides. And I just got to the point where I said, if I don't leave, my mental health is at risk. I can't continue doing this. So I resigned from the ministry. And when I resigned, I just threw my hands up and said, y'all can have Love in Action. If you think you can solve the problem, fine have at it because I have not been successful. These people are not willing to work with me. So when I left, I just looked at God and I said, "Surprise me, because I don't know where I'm going. I have nothing. I have nothing, I don't have a career path. I don't have any education. I don't have anything I can do. I don't know where I'm going to go. All I know is I'm not going to be here anymore." Well, I didn't realize that, that breath of a prayer surprised me, would lead me to where I am today.
Dylan: So you leave Love in Action, but just to be clear, you only leave the organization. You don't leave this idea that, Love in Action is doing something dangerous to its participants.
John: Oh, you're correct. I didn't think about what Love in Action had done. That was not on my periphery at that time. My objective when I left Love in Action was to move away from doing anything with homosexuality at all.
Dylan: Yeah.
John: And just neutralized my life. I started recognizing every single week something would happen that was like, I never expected that one. And the first one was a lady that I had known for years. She and I started kind of dialoguing back and forth, because I'm still in this fighting position that being gay is wrong. And somehow or another Michael Bussee's name came up.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Michael Bussee, just to give you some background, helped start Exodus International, that umbrella organization, that houses a lot of "ex-gay ministries". He left the group in 1979 to start a relationship with Gary Cooper, another prominent figure in the group. Bussee then became vocally anti Exodus International. So that's who John is talking about here.
John: And I said, "Oh, Michael Bussee. Well, Michael Bussee, he divorced his wife and went off and got into an affair with a man and who knows where he is at today." I was very, very negative and judgmental about him. And she said, "John, have you ever met Michael Bussee?" and I said, "No, but I've sure heard about him. All through the years I've heard about him. They talked about him all the time." And she said, "Well, don't you think that's kind of critical of you to have such assessments about a person that you've never met?" And I looked at, I was on the phone and I'm thinking, "Yeah. You're right. You're right, Lisa.", "Well, would you like to talk with Michael Bussee because he's a personal friend of mine." Of course, I was humbled by that. And I said, "Yes, I think I have to be willing to talk to him. I absolutely, because that's who I am as a person. I recognize those things when I'm brought to the table." So she arranged a phone call between Michael and I. And I discovered that Michael was not in any way, shape or form the person that, all the other people who had known him told me he was. Meaning, the ex-gay people. All the people at Love in Action. All the people at Exodus. They were all, very critical of Michael and I heard that all these years. And so I talked to him on the phone and I'm thinking, "wait a minute, is this the same Michael Bussee y'all been talking about all these years?" Because he was kind and genuine and gracious and a man of faith and humble. I thought, "wow, gay people aren't like this, unrepentant gay people. Their life gets worse and worse and worse. It doesn't get better."
Dylan: Right.
John: Well his life's gotten better. And he's still a man of faith and-
Dylan: And this is, I assume, a big rupture for you.
John: Well, it was big, because I left that phone call and my thought was, what else have they lied to me about? They lied about Michael Bussee to fit their own agenda. What else have they lied about? And it really upset me. And I thought, this isn't right. And so Lisa said, "Well, I have someone else I'd like you to meet. His name is Todd." Todd and I had a phone call and Todd started talking about his spiritual life and his walk and serving communion in The Castro in San Francisco.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: For those of you who don't know, The Castro is a historically gay neighborhood in San Francisco.
John: And he's an openly gay Christian man. And I'm thinking, wait a minute I said, "Todd, you realize that most evangelicals would think that you were doing something horrific to bring communion to The Castro. Giving communion to these reprobates?" But I said, "Todd, I think what you're doing is right and I think it's wonderful and I want to know more about what, who you are and about what you're doing." And so that was another shock, but it resonated with me because I had already started making the transition of leaving judgmentalism. I started that years prior, I started realizing that God was more gracious and loving than what people were saying about him.
Dylan: Hmm.
John: So Todd invited me to go to his conference. So the conference was another exposure, to people who were people of faith, who were gay and trans and bi, and everything else in the LGBTQ conglomeration. And so again, it's throwing it in my face, how wrong the culture I had been in. How wrong they were.
Dylan: Hmm.
John: And so I was just blown away. I went to a six hour workshop in that conference, on the Bible and homosexuality. And that workshop, was absolutely mind blowing because the teacher went through all of the scripture passages that are traditionally against homosexuality. And he went into the depth of what these passages really mean, and where they came from and how they were interpreted and when we're done, I went up to him and I said, "Joe, I think what I'm hearing is you're telling me, it's possible, that the Bible has been interpreted with an anti-gay bias." And he said, "Yes, that's what I'm saying." And I said, "Joe, I believe you." And so I went home from that conference, a changed person.
Dylan: This was a big conference for you.
John: It was huge. So that started me down a path of saying, "Okay, how should I as a person? And how should we, as people of faith treat gay people. What should we do?" And my first response to that was we need to appreciate life's journey and that everyone's at a different place and God is big enough and gracious enough, to accept anyone wherever they are on the journey. I think God accepts you right where you are. And so that's a major shift for me, to no longer feel like I had to be everybody's judge and jury.
Dylan: Hmm.
John: I wasn't accepting myself yet, on my journey, but I was very much accepting others to be... People say, "Well, you've changed so much." And I would say, "I haven't changed at all. It's just that I now have the freedom to be who I am. I have the freedom to live by the convictions I've always had. I'm free to have the thoughts and opinions that I've always had."
Dylan: And does this also include sexual feelings or not yet?
John: It started to include that. It started to include, "if God is that gracious with others, then he is also that gracious with me." And so I have to learn to be gracious with myself like I'm learning to be gracious with other people. So this is a process here. This is from 2008 to 2012. And so that was at the point when I sat down with my wife and I said, "We've done this for 24 years, it hasn't worked and I'm not willing to live like this the rest of my life."
Dylan: Hmm.
John: I have prayed my guts out. Nothing has changed. It's only gotten worse. We haven't been intimate for over 10 years. I'm not going to live as a celibate man the rest of my life. I'm not going to do that. Connection's important to me. Intimacy is important to me and that's not how we're living our life. And so we have to admit, to ourselves that this is not working. And so that was the beginning of the separation and divorce that happened a year later and I feel grieved about it. Honestly, the marriage began in fraud because it was beginning in a hope that wasn't present. It should've never happened. It should've never happened to begin with.
Dylan: So there's a crucial next step. When do you start coming to terms with the dangers of Love in Action, the dangers of conversion therapy?
John: I think when I first started to realize what I had been involved in through these years was probably when I saw what happened in my marriage. And the damage and the harm there. I also, my daughter...
Dylan: Daughter from your first marriage?
John: My daughter. Yeah, my oldest daughter. When I told her that I was out again and that I was, where I was at with things. Her response was basically, "I'm glad that you're finally getting honest with yourself. I hope you will no longer harm people. And it's too bad that you spent so many years trying to fix something that never needed to be fixed in the first place."
Dylan: Whoa. How did that feel?
John: Well, those words coming from her, were extremely powerful and I immediately resonated with them. I knew exactly what she was saying because she was right. And I began to listen. I thought I need to reconnect with people from Love in Action. And I need to know where they're at, because I care, because I have cared about every one of them. There's, I've got a list of 475 people who went through the residential program at Love in Action. I have their names, and I look at that list periodically. I get the list out and I would get that list out and I would think, who should I try to find? Who's on my mind and heart? And I would begin to contact people just to say, "Hey, where are we at?" Just to test and see, do they want to talk? Do they want to? And so I began the process of making amends and listening and hearing and validating and trying to really be an agent of hope for these people. And so, one by one I would hear their hearts, I'd hear their lives. Some of them were friendly, some were angry, some were unresponsive. Some of them, I have ongoing relationship with, ongoing communication with them as friends, as people I really love and care about. And so it was very much an intentional process to do whatever I could, to make amends. I'm a much better person today, as a result of hearing the feelings that people have had, that are negative about Love in Action, because it helps me to step back and evaluate.
Dylan: Well, that's a good segue to our final question, which is that, you've never really had an in depth conversation with Garrard. Right?
John: No. When he was having a book reading in Eureka Springs, we spent a little time together and actually I felt really, really comfortable and just enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed the time we spent together, there just brief as it was and other than that, we've had a couple of messages, but no, we've never really had, a sit down conversation about any of this.
Dylan: So you are about to have your first in depth conversation with Garrard. How are you feeling about that?
John: Uh, pensive, (Dylan laughs) but prepared. And when I say prepared, because I really want to be prepared with an open heart because I don't know what Garrard is going to say. I don't know what he's thinking about now, after the book and the film and all the things that have happened as a result of that in his life. I mean, this has been a big, big deal for him. Much more of a big deal for him than me. So I just need to be open. I want to be open. So I feel pensive about it, but open and prepared.
[Phone line rings. Both guests are connected.]
John: Hi Garrard.
Garrard: Hi John.
Dylan [VOICEOVER]: You will hear their conversation in the finale of this three-part miniseries, next week.
[Instrumental of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals begins to play.]
Dylan [VOICEOVER CLOSING CREDITS]: If you have an idea for a conversation for this show, head on over to www dot conversationswithpeoplewhohateme dot com and fill out the brief submission form.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was mixed by Vincent Cacchione, the theme song is “These Dark Times” by Caged Animals, the logo was designed by Philip Blackowl with a photo by Mindy Tucker, and this show is made by me, Dylan Marron.
Conversations with People Who Hate Me the book is in stores now. Find a copy by following the link in the description of this episode, or you can buy it wherever you buy books.
Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week, but until then, remember: there’s a human on the other side of the screen.
[Chorus of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals plays.]