Joe. My. God., May 9, 2008 — I started reading Swish on a recent flight to Florida and was actually sorry to have the plane land, I was that engrossed in it. It's hilarious, touching, and profound - often in the same sentence. —Joe Jervis
Booklist, May 1, 2008 — The subtitle says it all—almost. First, there's exclusion from summer-camp needlepoint class at age six—the impetus for Derfner's crusade. Then knitting, a pastime in which he got hooked on "deliciously soft blue-green alpaca"; casual sex while seeking for Mr. Right but happily, repeatedly settling for "Mr. Right Away"; cheerleading clinic: "Go, New York, let's go!"; go-go dancing, despite no go-go classes at the Learning Annex; and oh, yes, Derfner's a musical-theater composer. The ultimate swish-quest, indeed, though it makes for more than a delightfully breezy, campy read, for the humorous anecdotes morph into movingly evocative memoirs when, for instance, he recalls his liberal, civil-rights-activist parents' response to his teenage coming out: Not At All Good. His mother never accepted it, and he and she never achieved more than an uneasy détente. Thus this superficially facile book becomes more than the sum of its parts, as Derfner indicates when he observes, "Writing about my quest to become the gayest person ever led me to realize I was actually on a quest to become myself." — Whitney Scott
Booksplosion!
Instinct, May 2008 — These witty, fun and poignant essays knocked me on my ass more than once. I desperately want to hang out with him. — Sean McGrath and Jonathan Riggs
Insight Out Book Club, May 2008 — They don't get any gayer than Joel Derfner. (Trust us—we've looked!) Ever since that fateful day at summer camp where, as a six-year-old, he was told only girls could sign up for needlepoint and flower arranging, Derfner has dedicated his life to painting the town pink. He's become a musical theater composer, a go-go dancer, a step aerobics instructor, a knitter par excellence, a connosieur of casual sex and the poet behind the book Gay Haiku. And now, as the author of the fabulously fierce new memoir Swish, he's telling all about his lifelong quest to become the gayest person ever.
With complete candor and side-splitting wit, Derfner recounts his long hard road to gay godhood, from GLBT summer-camp trauma to more Internet-facilitated hook-ups than you can fit on a hundred-gig hard drive. But it's not all glitter, glamour and gorgeous men. Derfner also explores the question of identity, examines gay culture and explains how infiltrating a Christian Right conference for "curing" homosexuality gave him poignant new insights into gays and straights alike. And in the end, this hilarious, insightful book reveals how in setting out to be the Lord of the Gays, what Derfner really became was himself.
Gayest. Interview. Ever.
Joel Derfner's hilarious, poignant autobiography sheds light on his quest for identity
Metromix New York, May 11, 2008 — "Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever" is a very funny new memoir by Joel Derfner, who has done it all—being a go-go boy, a cheerleader and a knitter (hence the book title). But "Swish" is also Derfner's coming-of-age tale as a gay man. Writing with the nervous, breathless style of a David Sedaris, but with more self-empathy, Derfner, who teaches musical theater at NYU and leads aerobics classes for a living, includes on a chapter on going undercover at Exodus International, the organization that claims to cure homosexuality through Jesus Christ. We spoke with the author about all the highs and lows in his "Quest."
"On Knitting," "On Teaching Aerobics," "On Musical Theater"—are all great chapter titles. Are there chapters, though, that you didn't write? Twelve inches! Um, make it nine—I don't want to be unrealistic. What were you asking?
Chapter titles. Right! Well, the criteria for the book were it was either something I was doing or something I was interested in doing. I could do an exegesis of "Dynasty" and that would be a lot of fun, but it would be less interesting since I'm not a diehard "Dynasty" fan. I came up with seven or eight ideas, then I was stuck. I thought I could do a chapter about drag—I'd done drag a few times—but it's not a particular interest of mine. I did an afternoon class at Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, a cross-dressing academy. They gave me a ballet class and I was in a tutu.
I'd have loved to have read about that. They had a Hasidic man come in once and they were like, he has a beard he can't shave off, what are we going to do? So they gave him a veil. I also thought about becoming a flight attendant, but [then] I'd have to deal with people's babies. I wasn't sure whether I could train, do it once and quit or not.
So you turned to being go-go boy. Was the experience validating? The end of the go-go chapter was about how, when you're naked on a bar, there's nothing to hide behind. It felt like there was no way I could protect myself from being approved of or not approved of. For once, I wasn't being manipulated by me.
You write that whenever you'd go to a gay bar, you'd be 'immobilized.' So how could you be a go-go boy? Oh, because people aren't actually interested in the go-go boy—they're interested in the idea of him. If you have a decent body, you become in people's eyes a completely different creature. They're interested in the fantasy they project. Walking into a bar and having to talk to people—that's terrifying. But as a go-go boy, ironically, your character isn't at stake. It's not you they're interacting with. You can be thinking about the Muppets or chocolate or whatever.
Do you have any regrets about going to Exodus International? The whole time I was there, I thought, I don't know if I should be doing this. There's a scene in the chapter when I burst into tears—that was basically how I spent my time there. For storytelling, that wouldn't make sense, but there was a lot of that. I didn't mean them ill. But still, I'd lied; I'd practiced a deception upon them.
Do you really think it's possible to be an ex-gay? I think sexuality is immutable—and I now do believe there can be bisexual men. I was reading about a study that talked about how psychological bisexuality is more common that physical bisexuality. Men can be bi and have their attraction to women come more from a psychological than a physical-pheromone place. I don't think it's common. And through genetic or molecular manipulation, they will probably be able to change it. But I don't think you can change it by force of will.
Heavy stuff for a funny gay writer. Pain and humor are two sides of the same coin, right? The world can be such an awful place, so either you laugh or you kill yourself—so why not laugh? There's something about the gay sensibility that lends itself to a particular humor. I think there's a template there. You walked down the hall in school and someone called you a name and you didn't really know how to understand or relate to it in an emotionally honest way. But eventually you can learn to, with lots and lots and lots of therapy. Humor's a defense mechanism and not always a bad one. We need to be funny.
— Leonard Jacobs
Swish and Swagger
an über-gay memoir finds mirth in life's little defeats
Out.com— If you ask author Joel Derfner why his spot-on accounts of modern gay life resonate with barflies and bookworms alike, he's ready with the simplest explanation: "It's because I'm so attractive."
Facetiousness aside, Derfner's omnivorous literary diet and his capacity for self-examination give his writing an incisive edge over run-of-the-mill blogger bitchfests. In his new memoir, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever, Derfner unpacks the tightly packed Prada bags of Manhattanite wit offered in his debut, Gay Haiku.
Whether recounting his stint at New York's cheerleading squad or the eye-opening week he spent undercover at a North Carolina "ex-gay" ministry, his inner terrain of hope and devastation is recognizable to anyone who has felt the scrutiny of peers. In one typically sidesplitting passage Derfner leads his step aerobics class, seemingly with unflappable confidence, while harboring private fantasies of boosting student morale with a tray of homemade brownies.
"I have these moments of insecurity quite often," Derfner admits. "If you can point to your flaws in a way that reveals them to be universal, then your flaws are not unattractive — just human." Whether he's the next Noël Coward or a male Bridget Jones, one thing is clear: Queer America needs Derfner. In a culture where we disguise vulnerability with physical perfection and material success, Derfner skewers heartache with Wildean wit.
— Jerome Murphy
