Author Archives: Joel Derfner

From the conversation I had with the man behind the counter at Subway when I went there to get lunch today:

MAN (wrapping the sandwich he’d just made): Will that be all?
FAUSTUS: No, I’d also like a bag of baked chips and a soda.
MAN: Would you like some chips and a drink?
FAUSTUS: Um . . . yes.
MAN: What kind of chips?
FAUSTUS: The baked ones.

I want to comment on this, but words fail me.

One of the greatest mysteries in the world to me is why this product didn’t become the thing every gay man in the world had to have. In fact, it seems never actually to have been made available at all.

And yet we have Freedom Rings.

There is no justice in the world.

I’m going to London.

I’m going to London to see the London production of a musical I wrote.

Actually, since this musical has actually been produced in London before

Ordinarily I am the pettiest and most jealous of men, and seeing other people write better than I do turns me so green I’m practically a Muppet.

But then every so often I read something like this and realize that I don’t mind that the author is a better writer than I am, because it’s just so beautiful and funny and good and vitally important.

So thanks, Choire.

Unlike the rest of the known world, I use neither a Microsoft-based e-mail program nor a web-based e-mail program. I use Eudora, for which I have a fondness because it’s the first e-mail program I ever used.

The great thing about Eudora is that it talks to you

Yesterday the cheerleaders cheered for the end of the Boston-New York AIDS Ride at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

We started our routine and it was going spectacularly. The hitch mount went up, the vault-over went up. We were preparing to do the split mount, in which I and another girl stand in four burly guys’ hands while a very small girl does a split on our shoulders before flipping over into more burly guys’ hands.

So I and the other girl jumped up into the guys’ hands, the very small girl jumped onto our shoulders . . .

. . . and then I looked into the crowd and saw somebody wearing a white suit.

After Labor Day.

I was so shocked and appalled that I almost dropped the very small girl. Luckily, I was able to master my dismay quickly enough to prevent her death.

But if I ever see him again, I may not be able to master my dismay quickly enough to prevent his.

Please forgive me for not posting Friday or yesterday. I’ve spent the weekend celebrating the news I got on Friday. The letter began:

“Dear Participant: FAUSTUS, M.D.

“We are pleased to inform you that you successfully completed both the written and practical portions of the AFAA Primary Group Exercise Certification Program.”

I’m one step closer to being an aerobics instructor! (I still have to get CPR certified. And then there’s the small matter of actually auditioning at gyms and, you know, getting a job.)

But I’m one step closer to being an aerobics instructor!

Yesterday, figuring that I should try something different from step aerobics every once in a while, I went to the hip-hop/funk class at my gym.

This turned out to be a big, big, big mistake.

The class was taught by someone whose name ought to have been Shoshana, though it wasn’t. She was a white woman, probably in her late thirties, with two pigtails. Not the type of person you’d think would be particularly good at hip-hop.

But you’d be wrong.

She showed us a combination (I suspect you don’t call them “combinations” in hip-hop/funk class, but I don’t really know what you do call them, so I’ll call them combinations) and I was like, okay, I can learn that. It’ll take me a while, but I can learn that.

And then she kept going.

And going.

Of course, every single other person in the class was having absolutely no trouble at all following her. But what not-Shoshana was doing was so complicated and difficult that I wasn’t even thinking about what a moron I looked like, because if I’d diverted one iota of mental energy to that, I would have tripped over my own legs and fallen and broken something.

After about ten more minutes of St. Vitusesque lurching, I came to a very simple realization:

I am not funky.

So I left, got some dinner, and went home to write.

Today I went to see The Magdalene Sisters. (I should warn you that this post contains a very small spoiler, if you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to.) I don’t know if it was this particular theater, or this particular showing, or what, but my friend and I seem to have managed to attend the Old People’s Matinee. So the theater was full of old people talking in normal tones of voices to each other, saying things like, “She says she did it because she wanted the other girl to suffer,” or “Oh, I can’t believe she did that! Can you believe she did such a mean thing to that girl? I can’t believe she did such a mean thing to that girl.” It was maddening.

At one point in the movie, there’s a scene in which one of the laundry girls is very clearly performing fellatio on a man whose face we don’t see but whom we understand to be the visiting priest we saw in the scene before.

From four seats to my left, I hear, “Mumble mumble mumble LESBIAN ACT mumble mumble.”

Let’s disregard the fact that the context indicates with crystal clarity that it’s the priest.

Let’s disregard the fact that the act of fellatio, even when seen through a window on a movie screen, probably looks quite different from the act of cunnilingus. (I have no personal experience of the latter.)

But even disregarding those things

Last night at cheerleading practice, the coach told me that he’s been reading this blog for two months. He came across it by googling “Cheer New York.”

I was absolutely mortified. I feel like I was talking smack about my boss in the bathroom and he turned out to be in the next stall or something. I kind of want to go back and count the number of mean things I’ve said about people on the squad so I’ll know just how petty and bitchy he now thinks I am.

The problem with this plan, of course, is that I’ll know just how petty and bitchy he now thinks I am.

Luckily, he seemed to think the whole thing was pretty funny.

Go figure.