Author Archives: Joel Derfner

I have only one thing to say today, which overshadows all other happenings of the day:

Bernadette Peters was robbed. Robbed robbed robbed.

Faustus has instructed me to begin each entry with a mention that it is I, and not he, who is blogging for the next few days. To avoid reader confusion, you see. So, Faustus is away, he will be back Monday, I think, and until then, you will have to make do with a neurotic lesbian New Yorker, rather than a neurotic gay New Yorker.

I am sure you all have been waiting to hear how my reunion adventures are proceeding. I have to say, it has been extremely exhausting. And it’s hard to be pithy or humorous about it, as I am standing at a Mac kiosk, experiencing extreme nostalgia for all the times I stood in this very place and checked my email after a lecture or before running to work at the music library. My old dorm is just the same, even the mural paintings in the tunnels connecting the buildings are pretty much unchanged. So really I am just a big old ball of sappiness right now. No neuroses. I am even recalling studying for finals in a melancholy and longing way.

Now if only I could experience such contentment IN the moment, rather than looking back at it!

Last night, my friend HK and I were searching for a bar on the Upper West Side. This seems like an easy task, but for some reason, I haven’t found just the place to hang and get a cocktail, nor the place to get a pint of beer. I do know one decent pub, but they don’t have a lot of room to sit, and they no longer have my favorite beer (Newcastle) on tap.

So HK and I poke our heads into a few places and reject them, and then wade through the crowd of smokers outside The Racoon Lodge and walk two steps into the bar, at which point the bartender shouts out from waaaaay across the room: “I need to see some IDs, ladies!”.

Of course, everyone in the bar turns to look at us, and we have already determined the place is WAY too much of a dive for our mood, but its too late—we can no longer leave without appearing to be guilty under-age Columbia students.

You see where this is heading, right? HK and I are about to be susceptible to negative inferences about our age from this obnoxious, drunk bartender. See, if she had said, “Welcome, come have a drink!” we would have turned and exited immediately. But be rude, obnoxious and totally wasted and suggest we don’t have a right to be there? We’ll prove it, damnit! We’ll drink two rounds, in fact! Who cares that we’ve wound up in a bar far worse than the other ones we have rejected, paying $5 each for a bottle of Heineken (this, of course, is the problem with going to a dive bar on the UWS—its not even cheap!).

Even better, when we go up for our second round, she IDs us again (once obviously not being enough to convince her we are 27, not 20). I’m suprised we didn’t stay for a third round, just to prove ourselves one last time.

So if anyone has any UWS bar reccomendations, I am obviously wide open to suggestions.

This weekend I am attending my five year college reunion. From this event, so many psychological issues arise (not to mention the financial ones—no college party, open bar or not, is worth $85—I will be dead due to alcohol poisoning if I actually drink my fair share), and in the midst of this plethora of potential neuroses, for some reason I am focusing on a scheduling conflict.

See, they have these “mini-reunions”, so you can get together with people with whom you actually share a common interest or experience (other than a diploma, that is). I have two potential mini-reunions, both of which are (of course) at the exact same time. I guess the lesson to be learned from this is that one should have only one social affiliation.

The particular decision I must make, therefore, is whether I am a theatre person or a lesbian. I am leaning towards the theatre person reunion. It’s closer to where I am staying, and I was actually friends with other theatre people in college. On the other hand, I think I have some secret fantasy that some really hot straight woman I knew in college will have since come out of the closet, and will show up at the gay and lesbian mini-reunion. In reality, a more likely scenario will be that no women, formerly-closeted or out-and-proud, will show up, and I will be surrounded by gay men taking pity on me and chatting me up so that the lesbian feels welcome.

Although the more I think about it, I am not sure the decision even matters, since whichever mini-reunion I choose, I will be the only lesbian among musical theatre queens.

Starting tomorrow, we here at the Search for Love in Manhattan (by which I mean I here at the Search for Love, etc.) will be trying an experiment. I go into rehearsal tomorrow for a reading on Monday of the Holocaust musical I’ve been writing for the last nine months. Since to attempt to do the rewrites that will become necessary the instant we start rehearsal while also keeping up with my blog would cause my head to explode, I’m going to have a guest blogger, as I have at various points in the past when I’ve been unable to keep up.

Here’s the catch: the guest blogger is a lesbian.

But don’t worry. She’s just as neurotic as I am. You’ll be in good hands.

My ultimate goal in life is to find myself in a situation in which I can appropriately use the following line, spoken by Mr. Bennet to Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you. Of what are you talking?”

Then I can die a happy man.

N.B.: Yesterday, I posted three times. Today I’m back to my regular one.

In my junior year of high school, I threw a birthday party and invited my whole class. Unfortunately for me, Matthew Gibson—one of the few decent people in the class—happened accidentally to be throwing a party the same night, so everybody went to his party and three people came to mine. All four of us sat around and pretended nothing was wrong.

When I walked into homeroom at school the next day, Mary Beth Crawford turned around, saw me, and said, “Hey, Faustus, I heard you had a really bitchin’ party last night!”

This was thirteen years ago and I still have dreams about rending her flesh into a thousand tiny pieces.

N.B.: This is the third post of three today.

My collaborator just sent me the lyric for the finale of our concentration camp musical, which has a reading a week from Monday.

I read it and it was so beautiful I got goose bumps on my face.

Or maybe I’m just breaking out.

N.B.: This is today’s second post of three.

I have known for ages and ages that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for homosexual acts following his unsuccessful libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproving father of Alfred, Lord Douglas, Wilde’s inamorato. The Marquess left a calling card for Wilde on February 18, 1895, on which he called Wilde a “posing Sodomite” (or perhaps accused him of “posing as a Sodomite”—the handwriting is unclear).

What I never knew until this very evening—why does no one tell me anything?—is that the Marquess of Queensberry didn’t actually call Wilde a “posing Sodomite”; he called him a “posing Somdomite.”

You can see the calling card here.

If somebody called me a Somdomite I would sue him for libel too.

Actually, I would sue him for double libel, because I am not a Somdomite; I am a camtamite.

I mean catamite.

Oh, hell.

N.B.: I’m going to post three times today, in an attempt to make up for recent laxity. Though I may have difficulty doing so, given the depth of the swoon into which the subject of this post has sent me.

Oh, my God.

Richard Chamberlain came out yesterday.

There are very, very, very few things that make me wish I had been born 70 years ago instead of 30, but this is one of them.