Author Archives: Joel Derfner

Everyone must go here at once. You don’t get the full effect unless you have the sound on.

It’s not exactly work-unsafe, but your coworkers might look at you funny.

Recently the coach of the cheerleading squad sent us an e-mail listing squad members’ positions (flyer, base, mid base flyer). I sent out a response to the squad asking if it wouldn’t make more sense to list top, bottom, and versatile. (This was obviously a joke, since with one possible exception everybody on the squad is clearly a bottom.) I got a couple “Grrrrl, you are so funny!” e-mails from squad members. Then the coach sent me an e-mail saying, “LOL, but in all seriousness, team members are discouraged from sleeping with each other, because it can create some very messy situations.”

I was like, oh, you spend half an hour at the tryouts talking about the importance of being on time to practice but you wait until NOW to tell us THIS?

I guess it makes sense, though.

Because why else did anybody go out for the squad? If he’d said at the tryouts that we weren’t allowed to sleep with each other, we would all have gotten up and left then and there.

Today, after gymnastics class, I was on the crosstown bus and a lady with a cane got on. I got up to give her room to sit down, which she did, after which she thanked me for my kindness. Several times. Then she started talking about how she had found her calling and she was going to become an Orthodox nun. This was different from a Roman Catholic nun, she explained; the Catholic Church was not the true church, having been created by the Bishop of Rome in the 11th century as a means to seize power. She kept on Jesusing at me until my stop came.

And the flabbergasting thing is that I didn’t mind at all.

Usually I can barely keep from flying into a rage at the sight of people merely reading the Bible on public transportation. But I kind of enjoyed listening to her.

“Thanks for letting me talk to you,” she said as I got off. “And say a prayer for me, for my legs.”

And I did.

What is going on?

This afternoon I overheard the following conversation on the subway:

BLACK GUY (to WHITE GIRL dressed in faux Black Girl Outfit): “You know, because of the state of the country, the way things are and stuff, your parents owe my parents some shit. Like 40 acres and a mule. But you can make up for it by buying me a drink.”

WHITE GIRL: “That doesn’t make any sense. I’m a first-generation American. My parents are immigrants.”

SECOND BLACK GUY (to WHITE GIRL): “Your parents immigrated from South Africa.”

WHITE GIRL: “So? That’s like saying all Germans are Nazis. That’s hating.”

FIRST BLACK GUY: “I should just walk around Wall Street giving people invoices. ‘Here, I’m from the Corporation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and you owe me 40 acres and a mule.’ I should go to NBC and give them an invoice. ‘You owe me 40 acres and a mule, or equal value. I’ll take a sitcom deal.’ I’d sure as shit be funnier than David Alan Grier.”

WHITE GIRL: “Yeah.”

It’s times like this that I wish I supported capital punishment.

N.B.: I posted twice yesterday. This is it for today.

What L. said to me after ten minutes of making out after watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider tangled up with me on my couch:

“This is an awkward moment to say this, but less awkward now than in ten minutes. . . . I’m not really into this.”

What I said:

“Well, drat. . . . You’re right, it is an awkward moment, but I understand.”

What I should have said:

“You’re damn right it’s an awkward moment, especially since you had the opportunity to say the same thing when you lay down on my bed ten minutes ago or when I asked you if you wanted to come into my bedroom fifteen minutes ago or when you put your arm around me on the couch two hours ago or in fact at any number of times before now, any of which would have spared me at least some of the utter humiliation I feel at this moment, plus when you showed up at my door I was appalled to see that what I’d thought (in the dim restaurant lighting) was blond highlighting was actually premature graying, and anyway I spent most of the movie thinking about how my office crush is so much more interesting and attractive than you are, so get out of my fucking apartment, you bastard.”

I’d thought for one brief, shining moment that there might actually be somebody I didn’t hate.

There goes that theory.

N.B.: This is today’s second post.

Among the many, many, many things I don’t understand in this world is why gay men hate country music. Two out of every three online profiles, under “music I don’t like,” list country music, usually along with some witheringly disparaging commentary.

I can only assume that these people have never heard real country music. I don’t think there’s any other music that so eloquently expresses the laughable despair of the human condition. (And remember that I not only compose for the musical theater but also make money singing Bach, Mozart, and all those other guys, so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to music.)

Take, for instance, the following lyric (the song is by Hoyt Axton and Renee Armand), the chorus of which has been my world view since I was six:

Rain’s comin’ down and the roof won’t hold ‘er.
Well, I lost my job and I feel a little older.
Car won’t run and our love’s grown colder.
Maybe things’ll get a little better in the mornin’.
Maybe things’ll get a little better.

Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?
Boney fingers.

I defy you to tell me that isn’t as accurate an encapsulation of how hard it is to live on this earth as anything Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde ever wrote.

N.B.: This is today’s first post of two. I posted last night in praise of a good friend of mine but have deleted the post because I realized that she would be uncomfortable with being discussed online in this context, even anonymously. The 45 people that sitemeter says had already visited my site by the time I removed the post are sworn to secrecy.

Remember that e-mail forward list of Children’s Books You’ll Never See? It had things like The Day Katy Was So Bad her Mommy Stopped Loving Her and Daddy Drinks Because You Cry. I contributed a couple when I forwarded it on to others, namely (if memory serves) You’re the Reason Mommy Left and You’re Different and That’s Bad.

For those of you who enjoy such things, go here for nine pages of children’s book covers twisted and warped by Photoshop evil geniuses. Here is my personal favorite:

If only I’d had books like this in my childhood, I might be neurotic and obsessive instead of the healthy, well-adjusted man I am today.

Oh, wait.

He does like me.

He e-mailed me today and said he was sorry for taking so long to respond, but he was in first-week-of-school mode. I would have a harder time forgiving him if I didn’t suspect that he was secretly a spy and had spent the last two days on a top-secret mission to shore up the government of a politically unstable Third World nation.

We’re going out this weekend. Unless he has to topple a dictator somewhere.

In other news, I left my wallet in Starbucks this morning, packed with money I’d intended to use to squire my Czech houseguests around New York. By the time I realized where I’d left it, I’d already cancelled all my credit and bank cards and the money had of course all been taken.

Clearly the lesson is that I should stay away from Starbucks.

Not like I didn’t already know that.

What if he doesn’t like me?

After our Saturday night date, I e-mailed him Sunday morning saying I’d had a nice time and he should let me know if he wanted to get together again. He e-mailed me back a half hour later saying he’d had a nice time too and he did want to get together again. I e-mailed him back later that afternoon suggesting that we go out on Saturday.

I haven’t heard from him since.

It’s been more than 48 hours.

There are three possibilities:

1. He is dead.
2. He reads this blog and realized when I posted about him that the guy he went on a date with is the same guy who writes the blog and he doesn’t want to date the guy who writes the blog.
3. He is a psychologically healthy person who doesn’t check his e-mail obsessively every 42 seconds and so he hasn’t gotten the message yet.

I wish I could say I hoped that the third option was true, but I don’t know that I am capable of dating somebody that well adjusted.