The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life: Lessons Learned About Love and Death, Sex and Sin, and Saving the Best for Last

From America’s most beloved foursome—the TikTok sensation @theoldgays—a book of unexpected aspirational advice and inspirational stories drawn from their decades of living, from pre-Stonewall to the rise of the LGBTQ+ movement to gay marriage and beyond.

Ranging in age from 67 to 80, Mick, Jessay, Robert, and Bill are the real-life Golden Girls of the social media era, a quartet of old gays whose hard-won confidence and awesome authenticity have taken the culture by storm. They are America’s beloved Queens—and more importantly, they are survivors whose lives have been transformed by sweeping cultural change. In this fabulously fun and entertaining book, they share their stories—humorous, heartbreaking, shocking, and profound tales which only older gay men can tell. It was their generation that was devastated by AIDS, a health crisis that deprived us of so many brilliant, creative lives, including many of their friends.

In this delightful group memoir, Mick, Jessay, Robert, and Bill intimately reveal all about their lives, revealing who they are beyond TikTok, where they came from, and how they found each other. They offer their collective wisdom on a rainbow of topics, including coming out, sex, gay liberation, gay marriage, AIDS, aging, and saving the best act for last. Outrageous and hilarious, refreshingly earnest and unfiltered, engaging and insightful, they’ve been through it all—harassment, divorce, depression, bankruptcy, even near-death experiences. Between the four of them, there's not much of life they haven't seen or done, and now they dish on everything from fitness and fabulous dinner parties to church and orgies.

An intimate and moving portrait of four friends who have experienced the good, the bad and the ugly—and look forward to the best that is still to come, The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life is a celebration of lives lived to the fullest—sometimes against all odds—and a lesson for all of us that age is just a number and that getting older can be outrageously fun.

© 2023 Harper (Audiobook): 9780063333635

Release date

Audiobook: 28 November 2023