South Philadelphia! In its heyday it was the center of Italian life in Philadelphia. Italian parishes defined the boundaries for denizens of this part of South Philly. Italian groceries and restaurants – everything Italian was just up the street or around the corner. Festivals, Bocce Games, and the Italian Market make South Philly unique. Neighborhoods were tightly knit villages. Each one different, bearing at least one distinguishing business, colorful character, or other distinctive feature.

The houses of South Philadelphia defined the term row home. Houses set side by side in rows make privacy a dream and solitude a fantasy.  Mysterious alleyways slice hidden pathways through neighborhoods and past backyards offering secret glimpses into the lives others live. That was South Philly: flavored oh so heavily with Italian spices, opera, Catholicism, and Southern Italian superstitions. It was into this atmosphere that Joe was born.

His Italian ancestry plays an important role in his life and writing. His essay, "Toccare il Fondo", in Hey Paesan, details the intersection of  Italian ethnicity and gayness. In the his first mystery series, his detective, Marco Fontana, is also an Italian, marked by the steamy stew that is Southern Italy. Fontana is also gay and often finds these aspects of his life on a collision course.

Catholic schools helped to shape Joe and gave him faith, a strong spiritual foundation, his notion of a loving God, and his sense of justice and right. He has come to love the Truths that can be found in all religions and respects what he find in them.

The Boy Scouts, which Joe would not be allowed to join today, brought him many happy hours. He became an Eagle Scout with one palm, a member of the Order of the Arrow (a secret organization within the Scouts dedicated to selfless service), and won a number of medals.

There were many heartthrobs in the Boy Scouts - from the older boys who were the veterans of the Troop, whose beauty he has never forgotten, to those guys who joined along with him, one of whom was the biggest heartbreaker of his adolescent life. All of it remains locked in his heart and waiting for the memoir.

Though he was willing to attend a secular university, his parents claimed they wouldn't pay for a non-Catholic education (though he suspects they would have paid for whatever school he would have chosen). So, it was on to a Jesuit school where he followed a rigorous course of study having two majors and two minors. From there, he decided to teach (the summers off were too appealing to consider other kinds of work).

In the meantime, Joe came out and celebrated his homosexuality, which he was aware of from the age of six, though he never felt fully free to express that side of himself until his university years. Then, however, he barreled out of the closet, breaking down the doors and using them for kindling.

He worked in the gay movement in Philadelphia, joining the successful fight for a gay rights bill, starting a number of organizations, helping to found (his name is on the original incorporation papers) the gay community center, which is firmly established in the middle of Philadelphia's gayborhood.

He worked on and became Editor-in-Chief of the Weekly Gayzette founded by Tom Wilson-Wineberg. Later Joe founded the magazine New Gay Life which had a run of about two years and was sold across the country. But, as with all largely volunteer efforts, when the volunteers burn out, the activity either finds funding or fades away. New Gay Life faded away, a happy memory for everyone familiar with it.

While on the barricades of the gay movement's push for equality, he met and settled down with his now late partner, William R.F. Phillips. They didn't know that homosexual relationships were not supposed to last, that homosexual love was purported to be inferior, that they were battling tremendous odds when they pledged themselves to each other. They just forged ahead.

Their relationship was a meeting of the minds, a partnership in which each person grows while they also grow together. They lived through an exciting period in gay history, made contributions to that history, then settled into their own careers. Phillips, a noted sociologist, made his mark in that field, publishing in a variety of journals, editing books, and authoring an important textbook. The area closest to Bill's heart was urban sociology.

Their relationship was composed of the same arguments, loving moments, anniversaries, and special events as any other relationship. They laughed and cried together. They loved the same things and loved different things. Their families were proud of their sons in equal measure and accepted each other's son wholeheartedly. It was by all measures an ideal situation. Fortune favored them in many ways.

But in 1999, William was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. This was no Tuesdays With Morrie experience. ALS is, perhaps, the single worst disease a person can contract. It robs the person of physical faculties while leaving the mind intact. In effect, the person slowly sees himself becoming locked into his own body, trapped and with no hope of escape except death. The next worst thing is watching someone you love slowly sink into this state. Despite the ravages of the disease, William learned how to use a computer, mastered web authoring programs and more. In the last few months of his life, his strength ebbing away, he created a wonderful online urban sociology course.

On March 11, 2000, William passed away. It was a quiet passing in the arms of his partner and in the presence of his brother and two friends. In that moment, the world changed for Joe and seemed lonely, foreign, and harsh. Life never felt so cruel and random.

Gradually, over many months and with the help of a most intelligent and understanding grief therapist, Michele Hyman, Joe reengaged with the world with a newfound sense of purpose. Joe moved out of the house they purchased together in Philadelphia's downtown, near what is sometimes termed the Champs Elysée of Philadelphia -- The Parkway and now lives in the center of the city.

Joe enjoys urban living. The sounds of traffic, the laughter of people in the night, sirens wailing, and the excitement of nearly constant activity make life worth living in the city. While solitude is important for any writer, Joe thrives on the city's hurly-burly, the whoosh of cars in the night, the rumble of subway trains, and the sight of soaring buildings stretching across the horizon.

In 2001 he decided to live part of the time in the city of Montréal after having visited numerous times and falling in love with the place, the people, and the culture. He now divides his time between Philadelphia and Montréal.

Joe is not entirely a solitary person, though he has grown used to living single. Friendship remains an important mainstay and finding new friend who can share hearts and minds and spirits is a particular joy for him. One person, in particular, appeared just at the time they both needed someone to lean on and understand difficulty and pain. They found they could bolster one another and in that help one another grow. Friendship creates a safe haven and they have done that for one another.

Joe is grateful for this friendship which is a crucial part of his learning to share himself again and become open to life. Jason is sweet and filled with exuberant joyfulness. A loyal and loving friend, he is also wise and intelligent. Jason is more than a friend, closer  than family, and has a special place in Joe's heart.

Joe has always wanted a career in writing. Through the years he has worked on any number of writing projects in a variety of areas. He has written for The Advocate, The Philadelphia Gay News (PGN), The New York Native, Gaysweek, Gay Community News, and others. He worked for a while as a contributing editor for Il Don Gennaro, a national Italian-American magazine.

He has published hundreds of feature articles, reviews, and news stories in these and other publications. His feature articles have included topics on diverse subjects including: teen suicide, drug abuse in the gay community, gay culture, the tribulations of Italian-American gays and lesbians, and a major series on gay sensibility.

His work has received awards and has been anthologized. His article "Gay Racism" which originally appeared in the Philadelphia Gay News in 1983 won the Gay Press Association's award for best feature article/excellence in feature writing and has been anthologized three times: Black Men, White Men (Gay Sunshine, 1984), Men's Lives (Macmillan, 1989), We Are Everywhere (Routledge, 1997).

His anthologized stories include: "Enthralled" in Quickies (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998), and "Adventurous Italian" in Men Seeking Men (Painted Leaf Press, 1998), "Arriverderci" in Quickies2 (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000), “Model Behavior”  Quickies 3 (2003), "Great Uncle Ned" in Charmed Lives (Lethe Press, 2007)

A few of his essays have been anthologized and include: "The Care and Feeding of a Friendship Network" in Gay Life (Doubleday, 1986), and "Toccare Il Fondo" in Hey Paesan! (Guernica, 2000)

In love with the theater, Joe spent some time writing plays, a few of which have been produced in Philadelphia, New York, and other places around the country. His play Weight Room was a winner in Philadelphia's Theater Center's one act play festival, and was produced in 1983. As one critic described it, “Weight Room is in fact about obsession, about two men alternately feeding and preying upon one another’s obsession in order to feed and nourish their own.”

You Betcha, a play which he has turned into a young adult novel, was the winner of The Drama Festival competition at the Allentown Cultural Center, 1984 and also had a production at Lansdowne Cultural Alliance, 1984.

Louie's Shadow, a play for which he has a sentimental attachment, was the winner of The Drama Festival competition at Allentown Cultural Center, 1985 and received a staged reading also at PlayWorks (in Philadelphia) in 1994. One critic put it this way, “What makes DeMarco’s excursion into his ethnic roots so compelling is how well he demonstrates the workings of this Italian family fraught with inner conflict…”

Pinto and Napoleon (retitled: Second Sight) which was produced at Studio R in New York in 1983 and at Eastern Michigan University Theater Lab in 1984 has special meaning for him and he still has hopes for rewriting this work and getting it another, better production which will do it justice. Ficus Darling, which he had a load of fun doing was produced by PlayWorks at the Painted Bride Arts Center in 1985; this is another play which he has begun to turn into a novel feeling that the possibilities and ideas in it can be more fully explored in that way. Mimi ,( a play loosely based on his experiences as a teacher in the Philadelphia public schools), was produced by PlayWorks at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia in 1987.

Some of his work is academic and scholarly. As a librarian, one of his research focus points is young adult literature which he studied at Columbia University. He has published articles analyzing young adult vampire literature and adolescent development. His research has been presented or published in several places, including: "Vampire Literature: Something Young Adults Can Really Sink Their Teeth Into" EL (Emergency Librarian), v24 n5, May/June1997  "Vampires and Young Adults: Perfect Together?" Kliatt, v32 n 1, January 1998

One of his current projects is A Dream To Take Home: The True Stories of Male Strippers. He worked for several years interviewing more than 200 dancers in seven cities. The result is data enough for more than one book. He has presented a paper based on this research, "The Language of Power in the Gay Strip Club" at the Lavender Languages and Linguistics VI conference at American University in Washington, DC in September, 1998 and has published scholarly articles in the Journal of Homosexuality and in the anthology Male Sex Work.

As a result of his research, his articles on Homosexuality and on Male Strippers appear in the Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity published by ABC-CLIO and edited by Michael Kimmel.  Most recently a portion of his research appeared as an article called "Stripper's World" featured in the March-April 2002 issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide.

Of course, Joe's greatest love is fiction and mysteries. Time travel and alternate history projects are in the works. Vampires and werewolves are just some of the creatures which inhabit some of his favorite fiction. Above all, a gay sensibility and gay characters imbue his work.

In 2004 an opportunity arose to take over the reins at Mysterical-E, an online mystery magazine which had been in existence for several years by then. The first issue under his direction appeared in March 2005 and was an unqualified success. In January 2006, DeMarco won the award for "Best Magazine Editor" in the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll 2005 for his efforts as Editor-in-Chief at Mysterical-E and won the award again in 2008

His first mystery series features P.I. Marco Fontana. This detective has been living with him for quite some time. After going through a number of changes, Marco Fontana emerged and took center stage in Joe's mystery writing. Fontana and the series opens with MURDER ON CAMAC released in August 2009 with the next volume, A  BODY ON PINE released in April 2011