Author Archives: Joel Derfner

As a service to my loyal readers, I would like to point out that virtually any statement or question in English can be turned into a come-on by the addition of the word “sailor” to the end. For example:

“Do you know what time it is, sailor?”

“A stitch in time saves nine, sailor.”

“I’m rereading the complete works of Jane Austen, sailor.”

Until a few days ago, I believed that this method could turn any statement or question into a come-on; this belief was shattered, however, when my friend R.A. came up with:

“I’ve just been diagnosed with Legionnaire’s Disease, sailor.”

If there are people who would be aroused by hearing this, I can only hope I never ever meet them.

To blog effectively about last night’s cheerleading clinic would require more mental focus than I am able to summon at the moment. I promise I will tell all within the next few days.

For the moment, I’ll just say that, of all the times I have been sore the day after spending an evening in the middle of a group of sweating, groaning gay men, this has been the most enjoyable by far.

Tonight is the clinic for the cheerleading tryouts next week. My friend D.R. is accompanying me for moral support. I have spent all day worrying about what to wear.

I wish there were an “i” in my name so that I could start dotting it with a heart.

With any luck, I’ll make the team and then become instantly popular and start being really mean and bitchy to all the unpopular kids.

I spent the day today writing a song about duct tape.

The Duck brand duct tape company is sponsoring a contest for the best song written about duct tape, with a first prize of $2,500. A brilliant collaborator of mine and I decided to write a song about being abducted by aliens.

Get it? AbDUCTed, DUCT tape? Get it?

So it’s this guy who gets abducted by aliens, who tell him that they have seen how powerful duct tape is, and so it must clearly be a weapon, though they can’t quite figure out how, but they’re going to destroy Earth rather than allow this weapon to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting galaxy. All the hero’s protests about the usefulness of duct tape are in vain. The aliens are about to pull the trigger . . .

. . . when all of a sudden a meteor strikes their ship, leaving a huge gash in the side, which our hero REPAIRS WITH DUCK BRAND DUCT TAPE.

So instead of destroying Earth, the aliens invite us to join the Galactic Federation.

We had better fucking win this contest.

If we don’t, I know where to send the aliens first.

I should note that the Honorable Mention prize in this contest is a year’s supply of duct tape. I would really rather have my half of the $2,500, but if I get the duct tape, I suppose I could use it to bind the disfigured man so that he’s no longer capable of following me to orgies.

Tonight I received a sign from God.

It was terrifying.

I went to an orgy in an apartment on the Upper West Side. When I got there, there were four or five attractive guys entangled in each other, so I joined in; several attractive guys came in after that, and I more or less appointed myself the unofficial welcoming committee. Everything was going beautifully—the atmosphere was relaxed and full of cameraderie and yet sexually charged; I was discovering where the various people I was doing things to preferred me to do them, and was also enjoying having things done to me. It was lovely.

And then who should walk in but the disfigured man from last week’s unmitigated disaster of an orgy?

It was as if I had been at a party at a friend’s house having a great time playing charades and suddenly Anna Nicole Smith had walked in.

Horrified, I accomplished what I had come to do, and, rather than sticking around and accomplishing it a few more times, I hightailed it out of there and walked 25 blocks home, hoping (in vain, as it turned out) that the exercise would rid me of some of the despair.

Perhaps this wasn’t a sign from God, and I am actually in some sort of pornographic spy movie without realizing it, and he is an enemy agent after the the microfilm someone has planted, without my knowledge, somewhere deep enough in my body that it hasn’t yet been dislodged by all the other things that have been planted deep in my body.

Upon reflection, that idea isn’t really any more comforting than the sign from God theory.

Trust New York City to have not one but two gay cheerleading squads. I found a second one called Cheer NY that has tryouts in a week and a half. (There’s actually a third called New York Twisters, based on Long Island, but a) they don’t have a web site and b) I’d have to go to Long Island.)

No power on earth is going to keep me away from the Cheer NY tryouts, especially since they don’t have bios of their members on the web site and therefore I can’t be certain that they’re all dancers and gymnasts and former college cheerleaders who will make me feel like a totally inadequate loser at the tryouts. The problem, of course, is that if there are two gay cheerleading squads in New York, what if one is the cool one and one is the loser one? And what if I end up on the loser one?

And I have no idea how to find out which is which. I can’t very well call these squads up and say, “Excuse me, are you the cool gay cheerleading squad or the loser one?” And neither web site has enough information from which to extrapolate. The New York Spirit Project marches in the Gay Pride parades, which makes me think they are the cool one. Cheer NY seems to be affiliated with the Gay Games team, which makes me think they are the cool one.

Oh, what’s a little fag to do?

This morning, before going to Thanksgiving dinner, my brother and his girlfriend and I watched the college cheerleading championships on TV.

It was a revelation.

It was like Bring It On, except real. These people were amazing. They would hurl each other fifty feet in the air and do all kinds of flips while they were high up. I loved them all, even the guys who weren’t as cute.

The thing is, I almost went out for the cheerleading squad at my college, but then I decided not to. After seeing this morning’s championships, I regretted that decision more than I have ever regretted anything in my entire life, including the time I went to a junior high school dance with my hair sprayed pink, wearing a bow tie and a bicycle chain.

But from the depths of that regret came a voice that said, “Come, now. You’re a gay man living in New York City. There must be a cheerleading squad here for you.” Trembling, I did a google search and, when I found the New York Spirit Project, I almost didn’t believe the world could be so kind to me. Giddier and more alive with joy than I have been since I saw my first opera at age six, I called the number listed on the web site and left a message saying I was interested in joining the squad. Then we all went to Thanksgiving dinner, on the way to which I demonstrated my round off and my front handspring (the only remnants of the gymnastics I did at summer camp when I was seven). I could barely concentrate on the dinner conversation, so wrapped up was I in fantasies of getting thrown high up in the air and doing flips and falling madly in love with a fellow cheerleader and moving in together and being blissfully happy for the rest of my life.

Then I came back and looked at the web site again and saw that every single member of the squad is either a professional dancer or a former college cheerleader and now I am going to go buy ten gallons of Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Truffle ice cream and cry while I eat every single fucking spoonful and get enormously fat so I don’t have to go try out and get totally rejected and lose the best dream I ever had.

Here is today’s second post.

Last weekend, when asked whether I was still with N.T., that guy I was with before, my friend A.N. replied, “no, they broke up so N.T. could go be a twink again.”

This is exactly true.

However, when one is approaching thirty, as both N.T. and I are, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain twinkhood.

In honor of this phenomenon (and out of bitterness at N.T.), my friend B.N. and I have written the following little poem:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Never mind how old you are.
Starry, starry little twink,
Pour yourself another drink.
Get yourself a sugar dad.
Close your eyes. It’s not so bad.

Two days ago, in an attempt to make up for the fact that I didn’t post three days ago, I posted twice, something I had never done before. When I started this blog, I had a few rules for myself, one of which was that I would never blog more than once a day. When I stopped in August and started again, I made another rule, which was that I would never blog less than once a day. A foolish consistency being, however, the hobgoblin of little minds, I figured, what the hell?

And then, after my orgy of posting on Monday, I didn’t post yesterday.

So I’m sitting here thinking blithely, oh, okay, well, I’ll just post twice today.

Nothing good can come of this.

But if you are a regular reader of mine and read only one post from 11/25 (thinking it was, as usual, my only post for the day), go back and read the second.

That’s actually the entire reason I’m writing about this: because the thought of somebody who likes to read my blog missing a post fills me with anguish and despair.

Thank God I have my priorities in the right place.

I can stop any time I want. Really. I don’t have a problem.

But watch for a second post today.

But wait, there’s more. In the final scene of Dance of the Vampires (the one with the garlic lyric), when vampires have taken over Times Square, there’s a huge sign on the backdrop of the set proclaiming that the musical Bats is “now in it’s [sic] 39th smash year.”

“It’s.”

Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a sidecar, they spent millions of dollars on this show and they can’t even distinguish between a possessive pronoun and a contraction?

And the horrifying thing is, this wasn’t even the worst thing about the show.

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog will understand how much I am saying by that.