Author Archives: Joel Derfner

Zzzzzzzzzz.

I have decided to post ze very first entry with zees outrageous French accent, so as to show off ze complete functionality of my keyboard. I will also make references as often as possible to Zefirelli, Zagat’s, Leon Czolgosz, and zat hirsute 80s favorite, ZZ Top. Sad how much pop culture is cut off in ze absence of a single 10-point Scrabble tile.

A little Milksopian trivia: At the age of 11, I lied about my age to get a paper route. (My mother, ever a conspirator with fraudulent doctor’s notes, et al, backed me up on this.) With the proceeds from this child labor, I began the deliberate and methodical purchase of each and every Barbra Streisand album. (Note to Faustus: I am not encoding her name, because she’s a public figure, and this story doesn’t end with me having sex with her, anyway…) After a time, my mother forbade me to use my earnings to buy any more records. But I kept buying them anyway – one a week until I had acquired all 39 – smuggling the contraband (contraBabs?) into my house via taking the screen off my window, tossing them them (gently) through said window into my room, and then making a grand (read: theatrical) entrance, declaring how I had purchased nothing at the mall that day.

My life has only become gayer and more deceitful with time.

My Christmas had the most miserable beginning of any Christmas in my life.

I got home from midnight mass at about 1:30. (I know, I know, I’m Jewish—but I have a job singing in a church choir. I figure it’s my duty to my people to take the goyim for as much as I can.) I decided to give myself a nice Christmas present by setting up my punching bag. This particular kind of punching bag, rather than hanging from the ceiling, stands on the floor, resting on a very heavy base. The base is very heavy because it is filled with water or sand. So setting up the punching bag really just required filling the base with water.

You can already see where this is going, can’t you?

Earlier in the day I had bought 30 feet of hose from the local hardware store. It was a tough call—buy the narrow hose and risk its not fitting over the faucet, or buy the wide hose and risk its not fitting into the base? In the end I went with the wide hose, which was the right choice, as it just fit into the base, and the narrow hose would most definitely not have fit over the faucet.

So at about 2:00 this morning, I attached the hose to the faucet, shoved it into the base (my experience shoving wide tube-shaped objects into tight holes stood me in good stead here) and turned the water on. I couldn’t find the instructions, but I figured, how hard can this be?

All was well for several minutes as water entered the base of the punching bag, splashing mellifluously. Every so often I turned off the water and checked to see if the base was full, but it wasn’t. So eventually there was no more splashing sound, and I waited a while (because water still seemed to be going into the base) and then figured it was time to take the hose out.

This was a terrible, terrible mistake.

Within seconds, my walls were covered with water, a bulb from my lamp had burst, my notebooks were sopping wet, and my brother and his houseguest had run out of towels to mop things up.

Because of course, the water had been going into the base and creating intense water pressure, because there wasn’t any room for it but the faucet was still forcing the water forward.

Eventually, I was able to dry almost everything out and finally made it to bed at around 4:00. The only casualties seem to be the lampshade (irreparably stained) and my computer, which now refuses to type the last letter of the alphabet. This wouldn’t really be so much of a problem, since it’s not a particularly common letter, but the concentration camp I am writing a musical about is spelled using that letter and so I am at a loss.

Speaking of this musical, I am going back to Prague tomorrow to do more research; I’ll be back on New Year’s Eve. In my absence, a good friend of mine will be guest blogging. According to the latest report, he will be identifying himself as Milksop. He doesn’t have a blog, but he has become a devoté of this one and I suspect he will do a wonderful job.

At the very least I bet his computer will type the last letter of the alphabet.

I signed up yesterday for an online dating service at www.gayjews.net. It has the virtue of being far less comprehensive in its questions than some of the other online dating services I’ve signed up with, which means a) it requires far less effort to write a profile, and b) since there’s no room for the profiles to be scintillating, you don’t develop unrealistic expectations of others based on their profiles.

Unless you’re me, of course.

So somebody whose profile I responded to today sent me back an e-mail asking if I had a picture. I went to my profile and saw to my horror that I had somehow managed not to upload my picture. Which means, of course, that anybody who saw my profile between when I signed up and when I posted my picture will think that I had no picture because I am hideously ugly, including a few really cute guys I’d already sent messages to, even though I’m actually rather cute instead of hideously ugly, but it doesn’t matter because they will already have written me off as a gay Jewish Quasimodo and never look at my profile again and I will live out the remainder of my life friendless, unprotected, and alone.

Merry Christmas.

My office crush has decided that I am the perfect person to give him advice about the boy he’s in love with. I sent him an e-mail full of wise but fairly obvious advice. This was, in part, his reply (keep in mind that I am just days shy of 30 and he has just turned 22):

“i REALLY do not mean this to make you feel anything but happiness in knowing that you have helped a friend, but i want you to know that your experience and years have really helped me.”

Clearly I must check myself into a nursing home first thing tomorrow.

Jesus Christ.

Plus, at cheerleading practice tonight there weren’t enough bases for me to fly, so I had to learn base type things, which I was pathetic at, since I am about one inch taller and three pounds heavier than the flyers (for those of you joining us in the middle of our story, I have been designated a “mid base flyer”). So I had to watch other people do what I wanted to do while not even being able to participate competently in any way.

What if last week’s stint as a flyer was a fluke and my entire cheerleading career is like tonight?

Let’s look on the bright side, though: at the nursing home, at 5’6″ and 135 lbs., I will be a terrific base, able to hurl everybody into the air effortlessly without even taking a break from gumming my apple sauce.

I am about to cry. I realized all of a sudden yesterday that I don’t have a single pair of pants or jeans that isn’t too big for me. When I lost a quarter of my body weight a year ago, I bought new clothes, but I didn’t wait quite long enough, and lost a little bit more, so every single article of clothing I put on my legs makes me look like a homeless person.

So I’ve been wandering around New York looking for jeans that fit me (28 waist, 28 inseam) and there isn’t a single fucking pair. Old Navy carries them but they’re out—big fucking shocker, since it’s two days before Christmas. Lots of places have size 28 jeans (H&M, in fact, has size 28 jeans and lots of other attractive size 28 pants) but they all have at least a 30 inseam, which means they cover my feet and make me look like a deformed merman. Of course I could buy them and have them hemmed but I want clothes that fit RIGHT NOW. I’m going to Prague the day after Christmas and if I have to go in clothes that don’t fit I will have a seizure on the airplane.

Don’t ask me why I’ve had absolutely no problem wearing ill-fitting clothes for a year and now all of a sudden I would rather eat my own snot in public than go out wearing the clothes I own. Because I can’t explain it.

Also I bought a great jacket at H&M but it’s too big too.

Being thin again is usually great but right now I want to curse God and die.

N.B.: This is my second post today. See, I can be a man of my word.

My body is in mortal agony. This is not, as one might hope, from the ecstasies of physical love, but from exercise. In my determination to be a flyer come hell or high water, I went to a gymnastics class at Chelsea Piers on Wednesday, another on Thursday, and a dance class at the Broadway Dance Center yesterday. At first I was terrified that my legs were going to be in screaming pain forever, but now it’s clear that they’re going to fall off, so I won’t have to worry about it.

The Chelsea Piers web site lists several different gymnastics classes: Beginner, Beginner/Intermediate, Intermediate, Advanced, and Elite. Since the Beginner/Intermediate class claims to teach students rolls, cartwheels, round-offs, and handsprings, all of which I remember how to do from summer camp at the Jewish Community Center when I was six, I figured that the Intermediate Class was the way to go.

(A tangent here: at JCC summer camp, we each signed up for two activities of the twenty or so that were offered. I, nascent homosexual that I was, signed up for Flower Arranging and Needlepoint. I was not permitted to take either one of these activities. So I ended up in Gymnastics and something else that escapes me at the moment. I suppose I’m glad now, given that I can still do rolls, cartwheels, round-offs, and handsprings, but at the time I was extraordinarily bitter.)

Unfortunately, when I showed up for the gymnastics class I realized that there had been a misprint on the Chelsea Piers web site and that “Intermediate Class” should actually have read “Olympic-Level Gymnasts Who Will Scare the Shit Out of You Class.” There were two teachers: the main one and one who said, “If anybody needs any help, I’m in this lane.” After about three seconds, he came over to me and my cheerleader friend who’d come with me and said, “Why don’t the three of us work together over here?”

I felt as if I had shown up to summer camp wearing all my clothes backwards thinking it was Backwards Day, when actually Backwards Day had been scheduled for the following week, but then one of the counselors put all his clothes on backwards and said, “Let’s have Backwards Day together, just the two of us.” Both totally retarded and yet cherished and special.

(This actually happened to me, by the way. Except for the part about one of the counselors putting his clothes on backwards. So I just felt totally retarded and neither cherished nor special.)

By the end of the evening at Chelsea Piers, I was doing a round-off followed by a back handspring. Admittedly, this was on the tumble track (a long trampoline) and not the mat, but still. At the end of the class, the teachers very gently suggested that my friend and I try the Beginner/Intermediate Class, which met the next night. I went back, and once again I had to go in the remedial corner, but the people who were in the regular class weren’t nearly as intimidating as the people the night before had been. By the end of this class I was doing a round-off followed by a layout back flip. On the trampoline, but still. And my feet were bleeding. But still. All the triumph with half the mortification.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quit while I was ahead, so the next day I went to a Beginner Jazz dance class, which was none of the triumph and all the mortification. Once again, the brochure had a misprint and instead of “Beginner” should have read “People Who Will Obviously Be Dancing on a Broadway Stage Very Soon.” This class was made doubly terrifying by the fact that the teacher looked exactly like James Earl Jones. Imagine taking a class in which you are by far the suckiest person there and James Earl Jones keeps staring at you and shaking his head impatiently. And there was no remedial corner—I had to suck in the middle of everybody for the whole hour and a half. [Insert group sex joke here.]

But there was one time when I did something right and James Earl Jones nodded and I just about exploded from joy.

So I spent three days in a strange combination of ecstasy and humiliation. At first I wasn’t sure whether the one was worth the other, especially with the bleeding feet thrown into the mix.

But then all doubt was removed from my mind when I weighed myself and saw that I’ve lost two pounds since Wednesday morning.

A year or two ago I wanted to get business cards but then I couldn’t decide what to put after my name. I came up with a long list: “cad,” “ne’er-do-well,” “bounder,” “boor,” “blackguard,” “bad influence,” “roustabout,” “malefactor,” “evil genius,” “reprobate,” “miscreant,” “varlet,” “rapscallion,” “rake,” “libertine,” “debauché,” “roué,” “voluptuary,” and “serpent of sin” topped the list. Somehow none of them seemed quite right.

However, in light of my promise yesterday to post twice and my subsequent failure to do so, it’s clear that “black-hearted fiend” is the only appropriate choice.

In hopes that you can forgive me for not being a man of my word, I will post twice today.

Okay, this is getting annoying. My archives have disappeared, and no matter how many times I republish them they will not come back. Have I said or done something to offend them deeply?

If you have any ideas about how to fix this, please let me know.

N.B.: This will be my first post of two today. (Finally, a way to make up for the fact that I didn’t post on Sunday!) So if you read this but there isn’t yet another post from today, check back later.

The best thing I have discovered in my lackadaisical Christmas shopping is this, a solid gold replica of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.

I think they’re missing out on some marketing possibilities: “You, too, can own the source of all evil in the world for five easy payments of just $59.99!”

So of course I bought five.

Not being able to afford the solid gold kind, I got the cheap kind that turns your finger green if you actually put it on. But presumably if the people I give them to as gifts put them on, they will become invisible and therefore discolored fingers will not be an issue.

Can you imagine the thank you notes I’ll get?

“Dear Faustus,

“Thank you very much for the Ring of Power. As you may know, I am finding it very helpful in my quest to dominate the world. My favorite use for it so far has been to find the three rings for elven kings, the seven for the dwarf lords, and the nine for mortal men, and in the darkness bind them. I look forward to hours of fun creating Ringwraiths of men foolish enough to believe my deceitful promises.

“Wishing you a joyous holiday season, I am sincerely yours, etc., etc.”

Maybe I should have knitted people socks instead. Or given them lube.

I don’t quite know how this happened, but yesterday’s post showed up as being written by David Buscher, who writes Upside-down Hippopotamus and who has guest blogged for me in the past. Lest you impute my feelings about my colon to David, let me hasten to assure you that it was I and not David who got the colonic irrigation.

In other news, today has so far been a day full of disappointment and embarrassment. Which means it must be Wednesday.

Standing in the 0 Kelvin cold outside of the movie theater where my friends D.R., B.N., and I had tickets to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, I got into a fascinating conversation with the very handsome man standing in front of me (fascinating not least because he was so handsome) and was within seconds of asking him if he wanted to get hot chocolate some time when he said something about his wife.

I instantly stopped talking to him.

Then I got to work, where my crush asked me if I wanted to go to Starbucks. Heart a-flutter, I agreed; I started trembling when, after we got outside, he revealed that he didn’t really want to go to Starbucks but had something he wanted to talk to me about.

Then he told me all about the date he had last night with this guy he’s now totally in love with.

When I got back to the office from our hope-crushing nonvisit to Starbucks, I saw that some very considerate soul had placed the bottle of lube that I carry with me (and that must have fallen out of my bag) neatly in the center of my desk. I’m terrified that it was my boss, but I can’t very well go around asking, “hey, were you the one who picked up the bottle of lube that fell out of my bag and so considerately put it on my desk? If so, thanks a million!”

I want to die.