Author Archives: Joel Derfner

That small thing moving
Faintly just out of my sight—
Could it be mercy?

Unfortunately, I have been contractually obligated to remove the blogathon haiku from this blog. Unless something goes terribly awry, however, you’ll be able to read them in print soon enough.

Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., I start the blogathon, during which I will post every half hour for 24 hours. No setting up scripts to post automatically allowed; every post has to be made manually.

Since the idea of coming up with ideas for 48 posts on the spot, especially at 4:30 in the morning, strikes terror into my heart, I have come up with a theme for my blogging.

I’m going to post 48 gay dating haiku.

I’ve written some of these ahead of time; others will be written in the heat of the moment. Some of them will be restatements of things I’ve discussed in this blog before; others will be entirely new thoughts. I’ll be observing some but not all of the traditional rules for writing haiku: all of them will stick to the traditional 5-7-5 syllabification; most will also obey the rule of cutting; few, if any, will contain a kigo indicating the season. (You can go here for a basic but nonetheless informative discussion of haiku technique.)

If you’re interested in sponsoring me (all donations go to the Generator Theatre), you can go here. You can sign up to sponsor me up to and even during the blogathon.

Wish me luck.

I have been informed by a common acquaintance that the anaerobic physicist is once again single.

The state of emotional upheaval into which this has sent me has rendered me unable to recite the alphabet, much less think rationally, but I have come up with a plan, which I have already begun to implement.

I e-mailed him asking if I could pick his brain about becoming an aerobics instructor. He will either answer this e-mail, in which case I will set up a time to take him out to lunch, or fail to answer this e-mail, in which case I will drink poison. If he does answer the e-mail and I take him out to lunch, I will at some point lead the conversation around to his recent trip to Italy and ask him if his boyfriend was there with him. If he says no but makes no mention of no longer having a boyfriend, I will drink poison, because this will mean that he doesn’t consider the information that he’s single important for me to have. If he reveals that they’ve broken up, I will ask him if he’s still in mourning (giving him an easy out) or if I can ask him out. If he says he’s still in mourning, I will drink poison, because, come on, he’s a fag in New York, plus they weren’t together that long, there’s no way he’d wait more than three seconds before jumping back in the dating pool, so clearly he’s taking the out I’m offering him. If he says I can ask him out, then I will explode with joy.

Hmm. Drink poison, drink poison, drink poison, explode with joy. Somehow none of these seems likely to lead to my eventual happiness.

But taken together they’d make a damn fine replacement for “Duck, Duck, Goose.”

I think I’ll go check my e-mail.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

My God, how glorious would my life be if I could find a way to believe that?

I have returned to New York. Somehow, magically, I seem only to have gained two pounds in my weekend of Caligulan feasting.

However, I seem to have lost the ability to be interesting. I’ve tried all day to come up with something worth posting, and I have failed.

I’m choosing to see this as a marshalling of inner forces in preparation for this Saturday’s blogathon rather than the incipient evaporation of anything of value I might have to say.

I am at a writers’ retreat in a small town in Delaware. Since arriving here on Friday evening, I have done nothing but eat ice cream and, presumably, get fat. I say “presumably” because my hosts, a lesbian couple in their sixties, have no scale in their house, so I have no way of knowing. Luckily, the ice cream is good enough that I don’t mind.

But I suspect most of upper Manhattan will be able to hear my screams of despair once I step on my own scale when I return tomorrow night.

And thank you to everybody who has been sponsoring me in the blogathon. Keep it coming. I have a lot of free sex to deliver, but I have faith that I’ll be up to the challenge.

If my sitemeter statistics are to be trusted—and I am inclined to believe they are, especially as they never told me we had to attack Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction apparently spilling out of every kitchen cupboard in that country—271 people have visited my blog today, and exactly one of them pledged to sponsor me in the blogathon.

I can think of three possible explanations for this:

1. The idea of sex with me is not as appealing as I imagined it would be. If this is the case, I will have to reevaluate what I’m doing here, because I don’t think I’m capable of being any wittier or more charming.

2. I wasn’t clear enough about the process. I do not see a dime of the money you pledge. It all goes to the Generator Theatre, a nascent not-for-profit theater company dedicated to developing and producing new and exciting musicals. It’s a good cause—perhaps not as profound as Doctors Without Borders or Amnesty International, but still worth your 25 bucks.

3. People don’t think I mean it.

I mean it.

Seriously—whether you’ve been a reader of my blog for a long time or have just tuned in recently, if you enjoy what I write I’d very much appreciate your making a pledge to sponsor me. I’d hate to think that the labor of sleeplessness I’ll be going through July 26-7 would be for $25. Plus I have a fabulous theme for my posts.

You can make a pledge here [link no longer active].

In the meantime, I hope he enjoys his free sex.

After yesterday’s cheerfiasco, I spent much of today trying to decide whether to swallow arsenic in the manner of Madame Bovary or to become a recluse and devote myself to a life of service to the deserving poor.

Then I remembered how messy and unpleasant Madame Bovary’s death was, and that made my choice much easier.

Then I remembered how messy and unpleasant lives of service to the deserving poor tend to be, so I figured, what the hell, I’ll just do the blogathon instead.

The general idea here is that participating bloggers post every half hour for 24 hours, in return for donations from sponsors to the charities of the bloggers’ choice.

This means that, starting at 9:00 a.m. next Saturday, July 26, I will blog every half hour for 24 hours. No cheating. No entries set to post automatically. In return, I want you to pledge money to the Generator Theatre, which is a writers’ collaborative theater some friends of mine and I are forming to foster the creation, development, and production of exciting and meaningful musical theater. You can read more about Generator here.

What I need from you, aside from continual assurances of your love, is money. Go here to figure out how to sponsor me. In return, you get not only the pleasure of reading my insomnious ramblings but also the joy of knowing you have helped a worthy cause.

Also if you’re a cute boy you get free sex.

The captain of the cheerleading squad told me last night that there are a lot of really small flyers (see this post for an explanation of the positions on the squad) trying out—enough to give us more flyers than bases next season—and that I’m therefore not going to be a flyer.

And they’re eliminating the position of mid base flyer.

Which means I’m going to be a base. And a more or less useless base, since I’m too small to throw anybody up in the air.

After having felt how glorious it is to fly, even in my limited capacity as mid base flyer, I’m now going to be permanently earthbound.

I don’t know that I can bear it.

I have at least a passing familiarity with eight languages, and I don’t know a word in any of them that describes how bad I feel.